Are you a homeschool mom that’s trying to figure out how to manage homeschooling while working?
In this post, I’m coming from the perspective of a solopreneur (or mompreneur- as I like to call it). If you work outside of the home, your experience will be a little different as you might need to show up at an office or clock in. Whatever your work opportunity looks like, there are ways to make homeschooling fit in with it- if you have help.
Help is crucial for you if you decide that homeschooling while working is something you want to balance. I’m just going to share with you my experience and hopefully, you can take something from it to help you in your particular circumstance. Watch the video below and keep reading for my tips on my own experience as a mompreneur and how you can do both if you really want or need to.
Tip for Homeschooling While Working
Expand your time by shifting your sleep/wake cycles
When I first started my full-time gig as a professional blogger and freelance writer, I would work long hours and mainly at night when the kids were asleep. This was usually my only time to work uninterrupted and I craved these long and silent hours to work. After a while, though, I started noticing that staying awake at night wasn’t such a great idea. My homeschooling during the day suffered because my night hour routine of staying awake until the wee hours of the morning was making me groggy and pretty much useless during the day. I fixed that by getting to bed earlier and waking up earlier.
Nowadays, when I wake up around 5:30 a.m. I tend to get a lot more accomplished first thing in the morning after a full night’s rest, and I still have a few hours to spare before my kids wake up. It’s a better routine for me and it helps me to get work done more efficiently without dipping into my sleep/wake cycles in a negative way. Keeping that balance is important although sometimes it feels impossible to balance it all.
Set blocks of time for work
As a working mom who happens to homeschool (or the other way around), you’ll need time for work. And how do you find that time when homeschooling can obviously take up a good portion of your day?
Try a few ideas with other moms, like rotation play dates when you take turns with other moms caring for each others’ kids. This can work as a babysitting co-op and give you a few hours a week (or every few weeks) to get a big chunk of your work done.
If you have family and friends that can be a great help to you, this is a great opportunity for you! Years ago when I lived next door to my mom, she enjoyed taking her grandchildren for a few hours once in a while to spend time with me and help me out.
Another option is to hire a sitter or mother’s helper. If you trust a family friend’s teenager to come to your house for a few hours a week and watch your kids while you work, you might be able to work out a very convenient arrangement for both of you. For a small babysitting or mother’s helper fee, you can have a few quality hours of work time and get a good bit accomplished.
And, of course, if none of those options will work for you, going to bed earlier and waking up earlier might also be the best solution.
Getting the family on board
One of the most important things you can do as a mom is to know your goals and ask for help. Sometimes your family is going to be your best solution for that help, and you can turn to them for assistance by getting them on board with you.I like to pump up my kids and get them all excited about the prospect of mom making extra money. I let them know the benefits of my work- how I’m happy to do the work and the results it brings into my life and theirs.
Sometimes I even bring the kids on board and allow them to help me create my products or brainstorm ideas. Allowing my kids to be a part of what I do helps them to appreciate the work I do more, and to give me the space I need to accomplish it.
Set priorities for your time when homeschooling while working
At the end of the day, my priorities have to be in order. I think work-life balance can be achieved to some degree, although I’m not perfect at it. Who is, really?
What this means, though, is that I need to center my work around my family- their schedules, extracurriculars, and outside commitments. (This also means creating homeschool goals that are doable for this season of your life.)
First, my time with God is crucial. That’s #1 in the total equation.
Next, my husband and kids are priority, #1 over business. This is what I always remind myself. It’s what causes me to structure my life in a way that the family’s needs come first.
How do I do this? Well for me, this is what works and it’s how I do it: I build my business around my homeschooling time. I homeschool a big chunk of the day, and what’s left around homeschooling and the kids’ activities and homemaking duties is my time to work. For me, that leaves early morning time and sometimes a bit of time late at night when the family is asleep. I always work a bit during lunch breaks. Once in a while I head out to coffee shops when my husband telecommutes.
You have to figure out what works for your family and work it. And if you work outside the home, getting into a work routine that allows you the needed time to homeschool is a puzzle you’ll need to piece together, but you can do it. Homeschooling while working is definitely doable.
I hope these tips have helped you! If you are working from home, or homeschooling while working outside of the home, how are you doing it?
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