Return to Radiance with Danielle Venables

094. To Homeschool or Not To Homeschool: My Own (Very Real) Contemplations About Education

• Danielle Venables • Episode 94

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This episode explores my own internal conflict of whether to homeschool my child, highlighting the challenges of traditional schooling and the quest for personal alignment in parenting. Through vulnerable storytelling and community engagement, the importance of prioritizing children's happiness and well-being is contemplated.

• Reflecting on my daughter’s struggles in a traditional school setting 
• Questioning societal expectations surrounding education 
• Balancing personal time and professional life as a parent 
• The insecurities of teaching foundational skills to young kids 
• Inviting community experiences and insights into homeschooling 
• Emphasizing the power of shared parenting challenges

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to Return to Radiance, the podcast with one core purpose to remind you of your innate power and essence. I'm your host, danielle Venables, an Akashic guide and soul coach, here to activate, heal and empower the new wave of soulful CEOs to become radically aligned and unapologetic. In these episodes, we will be diving into all things mystic, soul level transformation, the new paradigm of leadership, business, energetics, awakening, healing and more, as well as holding potent conversations around connecting deeply to your personal power and owning your truth. If you are here for it all, be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode. While I'm confident the discussions in this podcast have the power to change your life, these episodes are for information only and are in no way a substitute for individual medical, legal or mental health advice. Should I homeschool my kids? Should I not? These are the questions that I legitimately ask myself. Hi, I'm Danielle Venables. I am known as the Radiant Soul Coach. I'm an Oracle Deck author, spiritual midwife, intuitive life coach, among many, many, many other things, and today I wanted to dive into something a little bit different. In a world full of online experts, people posing and posturing themselves as having all of the answers and being the expert in their niche. I wanted to show up a little bit differently today and come at it from a place of community. I wanted to utilize this beautiful community that we have on the podcast and on YouTube to actually start a dialogue and to ask you for your input, for your advice. So, if you are a homeschool parent, or if you have considered homeschooling or maybe tried homeschooling, or even if you're just a conscious parent who has also gone down the rabbit holes and made that decision for yourself one way or another, I would love for you to stick around as I talk through something that I'm navigating as a parent, because, at the end of the day, nobody's perfect, no matter what they try to demonstrate online, no matter what highlight reels they share, and I really, really want the input of other like-minded people, and that's you. So welcome to the Return to Radiance podcast. If you are new here, welcome, welcome, welcome. If you have tuned in before, welcome back. And if you're finding me on one platform or another and you would rather either watch the video or just listen to the audio podcast, I will put the links down below so that you can easily find the other format, if that works better for you. So let's dive right into it.

Speaker 1:

This morning I was waking my daughter up for school which I do every morning and once again it was a groan. It was do I really have to go to school? Why do I need to go to school? I don't want to get up, and for a while I thought maybe she was just having a tough time adjusting to being in school Because for the first five years of her life she was at home with me, which is a luxury that I am blessed to have had with her. But over time she's now she started in September, so she's four, four months into school now and she's still having a really tough time adjusting.

Speaker 1:

There are certain things where, socially, you know, she thinks that people are being rude to her, which is very possible Kids are kids. There's also been things with her teacher where maybe she's been reminded to follow a rule and probably felt embarrassed that she was being corrected, you know, in front of her classmates or something like that. She is the type of kid that can kind of get embarrassed kind of easily, which I resonate with, because that was me as a kid and so like there's things like that, obviously social dynamics and then a lot of stimulation, right, like going to school. When you're used to being at home with your mom, going to school can be a big change, right. And so I want to like honor that too and give her a chance to adapt, while also trying to make sure that I'm doing right by her. And so the reason that this came up is this morning she was like why do I have to go to school? And I didn't really have a reason for her. You know, like I was like, well, you have to go because you have to go. And it kind of challenged me to be like why does she have to go to school? And the fact that I couldn't give her a good answer means that we're doing things just for the sake of doing them. We're doing them because that's what's normal or that's what's expected and accepted. And that kind of bothered me because, you know, I was always that kid that asked why too, and so the fact that I couldn't give her a good reason as to why she had to go to school, it challenged me and it opened my eyes a little bit and caused me to revisit this topic again.

Speaker 1:

Now, this is something that my husband and I have talked about in the past with our oldest. But the difference is he is very social, he enjoys school, he enjoys conventional learning. He, you know, likes his teacher, likes seeing his friends and all of that. And it's not that my daughter isn't social, but she just doesn't seem happy going. It always seems like a chore to get her to go. So that's why I'm revisiting this question and so I wouldn't pull my older kid out of school, because he legitimately enjoys it and you know we've got some great discerning conversations when a teacher will say something and he questions it and then we talk about it, and so I don't worry too too much about, like, his indoctrination either. But my daughter is a little bit more of a sponge, partly because of her age and partly because my son's a Scorpio and he's just naturally skeptical of everything and everyone. So anyway, that's like a little bit of an overview.

Speaker 1:

Now my hesitation with committing to homeschooling I mean there's a few, but my biggest hesitation is that is my me time. You know I run a business and I help my husband run his business and I create things and I record things. And you know I'm recording this right now while she's at school, and if I lose that time uninterrupted, right, obviously, I have my one year old at home, but it's a lot easier to kind of navigate one kid at a time than it is to try to avoid interruptions with multiple kids, especially because when she decides she's a very hard headed individual. I have no idea where she got that from it definitely was not her mom but she's a very, very strong willed child and so when she wants to interrupt me or when she does not want to listen, um, there's no like stopping her. Like when my oldest would be home and I'd be trying to do something, I would tell him okay, I'm going to record this, can you go play in your room for 20 minutes and I'll let you know when you can come out. And he would go do that without too much of a fight, but with her she'll go for five minutes and I'll start to record something, and then she'll come out and interrupt and I'll have to pause it or edit it or restart.

Speaker 1:

I'll completely lose my train of thought and it makes for like disjointed and just weird, like podcast episodes and stuff as well, as it frustrates me and so it messes with my energy when I, you know, get myself ready, hype myself up, show up on camera and then she turns around and interrupts. You know, once, twice, five times, 10 times. I get extremely frustrated and it messes with the energy of what I'm providing. So not only does it like just dilute it because I'm losing my train of thought, stopping recording, picking it back up, that kind of thing but I'm also getting increasingly frustrated and so even just the things that I want to say, the way that I want to express myself, just doesn't come out the same, because I'm no longer in the headspace that I was in when I decided to start recording. So that's like a big concern for me, because my business, my podcast, my YouTube channel those are all things that I love doing, that bring me a lot of joy, and I really don't want those like selfishly, I don't want those to be ruined or be made even more challenging than they already are by keeping her home during the day.

Speaker 1:

My other concern is like who am I to teach a five-year-old to read and write? I feel like there is a part of me that would feel more comfortable homeschooling an older child, because they already have that foundation and that foundation is so important, right, like learning to read and write and spell and the basics of math and things like that, and I know that there are like homeschool curriculums that you can follow, and maybe part of that is my aversion to structure. But I am concerned with my ability to teach in a way that she will understand during such critical years. Once she has that foundation, I trust that I can build on that foundation. But I'm really struggling with my confidence in teaching like the basic basics that she's learning, like currently.

Speaker 1:

Every day, when she comes home from school she's, you know, learning the sounds of the alphabet and learning, you know, within a week she knew how to write her name and like all of these different things that I hadn't been able to teach her and that when I had tried to teach her, she would basically just tell me I was wrong, which is funny. But you know, I would even, even once she started like learning the alphabet and stuff, I would be like oh, like good job, but your S is backwards or something, and she would be like, no, it's not. I'd be like, well, it is, but okay, you know. And so it's navigating that dynamic as well, where she doesn't like for me to tell her what to do or what's right or wrong or any of that either. So I do have my hesitations about our ability to gel together in an educational setting as well as my ability to teach such foundational and important pieces. So, yeah, that's that's kind of where I'm at.

Speaker 1:

I do worry about, like, the hours of the day. I do worry about just my general lack of structure and whether I would be able to really schedule things and get things done and, um, you know, still be able to do the homestead thing and do the business thing and, um, take care of the house and all of these different things, if my attention is is being like scattered in that way. Um, so I guess what I'm looking for is just a confirmation feedback. Has anybody been where I am and felt the intuitive nudge that it's the right thing, but also had so many reservations? Obviously, this is a conversation that I'm having with my husband as well, but we've never done this before. This isn't something that I've ever considered.

Speaker 1:

If you had asked me two years ago if I would be a homeschool mom, I would say, yeah, that would be cool, but I could never. And so I'm just kind of in this exploratory phase of like, well, what if I could? And I think that's one of my biggest lessons in being a parent is that I have been able to, and been forced to in many cases, become the person I need to be for my kids at every phase of their life, and they have thrown me curveballs, they have challenged me in ways that I never imagined I would be challenged, and I've always been able to rise to the challenge and come back to being the mother that my kids need, and I'm extremely proud of that. But now I'm like on this, teetering on this edge again of like, oh, am I, am I making this up? Am I trying to just be a homeschool mom because it fits with the homestead and the homemaker and the stay at home mom and the? You know the beliefs that I have about the government and the institution and all of that like, is it that that's kind of pushing me or nudging me, or is it really the deep, intuitive and I know the answer to that it is intuitive, but my mind is still trying to justify why I shouldn't do it, or why it's a bad idea, or why I'll fail or why I don't want it, quite frankly. So, yeah, if you've been in my headspace, if you've been in my shoes, what did you do? What helped you make your decision? What curriculum did you pick? We are in Canada, for what that's worth, but I would love to hear everything that went into your decision making process, because it gives me more to work with than just my own limited perception and my own stories and my own limiting beliefs about what I can and can't do. So I would love to hear from you.

Speaker 1:

Please, if you're watching this on YouTube, leave a comment. If you're listening to the podcast, come find me over on social media or email me. I'm actually kind of on a break from social media right now, so don't message me on Instagram, but you can message me on Facebook or send me an email radiant soul, creative at gmailcom. I would love to hear what you've got going on, what your reflections would be for me, any advice that you have. I am so open to hearing it all. So, if you listened to this thing in its entirety thank you so much for being here Don't forget to give it a thumbs up on YouTube, hit, subscribe on both platforms and, if you really feel like giving me a hand and you're enjoying my content, please leave a rating on the podcast and a review.

Speaker 1:

That helps me reach more like-minded people and grow this amazing community. So thank you so much and I will talk to you next week. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this podcast podcast, it would mean the world if you take a moment to download a couple episodes and rate the show to help it reach more like-minded leaders. If you loved today's discussion and decide to share it, be sure to tag me on instagram at radiant soul coach to help expand the ripple effect of this podcast.