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When you feel like you're not doing enough.
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After looking (and drooling) over some of your blogs/schedules/subjects, I feel as if I’m not doing enough. I know that I should not compare…that is a horrible mind trick of our enemy, but sometimes I still give into it. Or, maybe I should say that it forces me to look at what I have planned/scheduled and can see where I may be falling short OR where I am convicted of the need to do better. I think feeling bad because I compared is not good. Being convicted to do better is good. Make sense? Don’t know at this point which it is.
Do any of you with these perfect looking schedules ever not get it all done?? I love schedules (even though mine doesn’t look as perfect) and use ours faithfully. But I still feel like our science courses get behind, my dc don’t seem to read quite as much as some of yours (if your reading this, they may be your dc or not, don’t know) and our written narrations don’t seem to get done weekly (I really try hard to get them done, but the “polishing” has me stumped).
I think I’m just having a moment…I normally feel like we have tons going on, educationally speaking, but sometimes I just feel like I’m not having my dc do enough. So looking at the schedules is a good and bad thing for me…they help to encourage me to work a bit harder (I know I can and probably should at times), but then again, they make me feel like I haven’t done my best for my dc.
Anyone ever feel this way?? And if you do, what do you do about it?? I’ve been praying, looking over what we are doing, making some adjustments, etc., but am still feeling a bit concerned about what I should revamp, or not.
Thanks for reading if you did.
I overplan. We usually end up dropping a book or two. We’re dropping the Thomas Edison book now and replacing it with a movie. We’ve had two months of illness, injuries, dog surgery and travel and something had to give. We also are not reading the Stories of America or Nations books right now. We just can’t get it all in. They are there and we will do them as we can. I was trying to record myself reading and them listen during lunch, but the mentioned stressors have stopped that. I’m not concerned anymore. I know that even dropping 1/2 of the books I have planned would leave us with a great if not stellar year of learning.
That’s me. Plan it all out, usually over planning and then scale back if need be.
Always wanting to do more here but having to realize I can’t do it all. 🙂
I am always in the same boat. I love what others do but can’t do it in the same way. We have different schedules, different kids, different things that need to be done at different times in our lives.
Different stages in our lives determine what we can get done. I feel like I am always spinning my wheels to get things done.
So much to do so little time….. 🙂
I have over planned and had to scale back, but this year I did the opposite. I planned out the skeletal system, keeping it simple and making sure the basics were covered. We started our year and school seemed to be getting done a little too quick. I’ve been slowly adding things, fleshing it out as we are getting in a good grove. We added a biography of Brahms to composer study, I realized the 1-3 independent history books from module 5 are not enough to keep my 3rd grader busy so I am adding some from the 4-6 range. I realized I had actually put math on “overwhelm” so we tweaked that. I also realized I needed to bump up our copywork dedication and insert some beginning sentence writing for my son.
You can always add and subtract. I try to do it gradually rather than flipping around chaotically.
Tara
Ever feel that way? Oh yes!
What do I do about it? Stop reading blogs and start praying. Seriously, I have to regularly stop reading some blogs that make me have this ‘am I doing enough?’ complex.
Okay, that’s not all I do. I also try to look at what we’ve accomplished so far in the year and where we are headed. Are we on target for the goals we set for the year for each child? Are there goals that need tweaked (harder or easier)?
Another thing I have seen is that I dont’ have to do every subject every week, month, or semester! It’s really freeing. One year we did all our history studies the first half of the year and ignored all science. Then at the midpoint we took a focused interest in science and ignored all history. If the kids wanted to learn something it wasn’t the semester for they could – on their own time after school.
I have done this in shorter ways too. Science focus one month, history one month, literature or health or whatever on the third, then cycling back around.
Or I only do health in one month of the year. Or only one artist or composer every few months, with none in between.
It’s so easy to compare but once we have a well-laid and prayed over plan I think we do our children a disservice if we start changing things back and forth all year long based on what we see others doing. Will there be times when God leads us to change direction? You bet. But I think they are probably far less often than seeing what others are doing leads us to.
Thank you all for your encouraging words; this forum is a Godsend to me.
I think I will post what we are doing, really doing, not hoping we will do or even have scheduled. I’d like some feedback on what our family is really doing, not to compare, even though that is what is happening, but to just be honest. If there are obvious gaps, I’d like those pointed out, if there seems to be too high of expectations, I’d like that, too.
You ladies are amazing. I look forward to what your thoughts are.
Well said, Tristan. I agree. I am one that puts together a perfect plan becuase that is where I am most confident starting from. I know from the get go that things will be tweaked, changed, dropped or added because that is life. I also realize that I can become to caught up in making the perfect plan. Today, we’ve simply read a book, drawn some pumpkins, kids drew some silly life-size monsters, worked on attitude, watched the diggers in my back yard. We are about to have lunch and Bible time, watch a video about Tesla and Edison, and maybe do some math. That’s it. This is with my ds8 and dd5 and ds2. DD11 is out of town with Daddy right now. This was not the plan I had in mind for today, but ds2 threw up everywhere last night, my dad left from a visit this am and this was what was best for today.
Planning is good, but we need to keep bringing it back to His plan and make sure ours is in line with His. We also must make sure we can flex when life throws a curve ball, because it will. The other thing is to avoid comparing. It really is a must. Like Tristan, I will take a break from reading blogs if it causes me to be discontent. Same as I don’t look at Pottery Barn magazines, but throw them in the trash.
Hugs,
Christie
Hi,
I am still a newbie. its our first year. so not a lot of experience. Any time I feel like I am not doing enough with them I try to remind myself the quality of what we do outweighs the quantity. 🙂 just my 2 cents.
Rachel
Mommy to DD6, twins DDs 4 and happy day time home for two other little ones.
We overplan as well. I try to at least get phonics and math done each day, but the rest don’t always happen. I tried CM methods when my oldest was in 1st and failed…I think mainly since I wasn’t getting it all in. To keep that from happening this time around, I’ve been very flexible in my expectations. I also look at how far we’ve come instead of what we haven’t done.
I haven’t even set a date to finish our artist/composer studies…we’ll just continue on until we finish our biographies. If we only get to 3 this year, I’ll be fine with that. So far we’ve only gone on a couple nature walks…my goal is 8 per term, but I don’t think we’ll get to there this term. One of my ideas is to have a focus each term…in the spring, I really want to work on gardening, so that can fit in for nature studies, handicrafts, science, etc. This winter, we’ll probably spend more time on art and sewing (and shoveling snow).
I’ve also cut out what isn’t essential. I just readjusted our language arts to the minimal…I Googled “Charlotte Mason language arts” and found some nice checklists of what’s required for each grade. By cutting some language arts out, we can have more time to work on narrations. For example, I just dropped PLL for DS so he can focus more on phonics and narrations, as those seem to be the focus for 2nd grade.
Also, if we do a science write-up sheet or notebooking pages, I drop copywork for the day. I’d much rather have quality work on a few subjects than have them sloppily do the minimum on each subject. I try to do narrations once a day and I vary the subject…one day we’ll narrate on science, another we’ll narrate our history books, and maybe another day it will be our artist biography or character study. We don’t narrate each subject each day.
It is good to hear that I’m not the only one struggling with it. It’s hard to see a blog where they’ve done so much, and then look at my own week. In reality, they are probably not posting on the weeks where everyone had the stomach flu or several doctor’s appointments. A friend of mine commented that they do a lot of chores for school. I always think of that on our bad weeks…sometimes they’ve learned quite a bit from real life during the weeks where we feel nothing was accomplished.
Yeah, comparison is a dangerous place to be. I’ve been there and know! This forum has been a wonderful blessing to me to be able to set up a realistic, doable schedule and feel like I’m doing well, though never as well as I plan to! We have yet to do picture study, nature study, Greek (or any language), or literature analysis and grammar w/my eldest this school year. I could blame it on travels and illnesses, but a lot of those are always a struggle to me. We just keep plugging away. I try to prioritize and make sure I’m doing core subjects well. We may not cover as many composers, artists, Shakespeare plays as some, but we do them as we can. Even thought it may look beautifully planned on my schedule:)
I’m terrible about getting us outside to do nature study, but try to take advantage of nature center classes when we can. My kids don’t sit around reading all the time, but they do read classic books. So, I think we need to keep trying and improving, and being faithful, but not beat ourselves up and try to be something we’re not. And don’t compare:) Hope you feel peace soon! Blessings, Gina
Gina, you said: “So, I think we need to keep trying and improving, and being faithful, but not beat ourselves up and try to be something we’re not. And don’t compare:)”
That is such a good point – to not try to be something we’re not. And of course, to not compare. At this present time, that statement you made is great encouragement to me.
You also said: “We just keep plugging away. I try to prioritize and make sure I’m doing core subjects well. We may not cover as many composers, artists, Shakespeare plays as some, but we do them as we can.”
I know we’ve talked about the TQ guides and AO before. I chose to stick with AO as our core curriculum. But this school year, some things have changed since we started our school and I am at a place right now of trying to figure out if we need to scale back. As others on this forum probably already know, AO in the upper years can be quite a lot. So, we don’t do a regular year as it is. We do a lighter version. But what do we scale back? If we want to offer that liberal education that CM offers, especially at the high school level, what is the criteria for picking and choosing how much time to spend on what? It seems in high school, there’s more pressure to make sure you’re covering certain things. So how do you balance covering what *needs* to be covered yet still enjoying all the extras like art, music, etc.?
I tend to compare, and overplan too… common problem!
anyway – whenever I’m feeling bad, My dh makes me get out a book by Todd Wilson that I have…..
“Lies homeschooling mom’s believe”
suzukimom, I should probably get that book. 🙂
Thanks ladies.
@Mrs. K, I don’t know what to tell you about the picking and choosing of what to still enjoy and keep it CM when there’s pressure to get the core subjects done. I don’t want to abandon CM’s philosophy when we hit highschool either and will probably rely heavily on this forum when the time comes.
I feel much better today. Always do when I get some narrations done and feel that we’ve had a full day and all our “scheduled” subjects have been worked on.
I’m not really a big blog reader, but I will occasionally click on someone’s blog from here or look at a schedule that is posted. I steer clear of any other sites that make me feel bad (I can do that all on my own) but I think that most of us have seen pictures of actors on the covers of curriculum (those people can not be real live homeschoolers!) or read perfectly painted articles about homeschooling/homesteading families and the knife just goes deeper and deeper. I prefer reality. The reality is: I have 3 boys, enough money to pay the bills (not much more than that, but we’re not suffering either), we live in a small home, have no “school-room” to speak of, drive broken, but good, reliable cars, have decent meals (no whole foods going on here), and just ordinary/extraordinary blessed Christian lives. I think the pictures painted on blogs/curriculum guide pics/schedules give “me” a false idea of the reality that lives behind it. That’s probably why *I* need to avoid them, even though they do spark some ideas. I should probably limit *myself* even more than I already do, which is about 1x a month as it is, LOL.
I’m super visual anyway and probably don’t need the extra “visual” of perfection, LOL.
Thanks again. And I hope you find an answer to your question, Mrs. K, it’s a good one.
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