Permission to Fail
We’ve said it before, homeschooling is hard. Parenting is hard. We are going to make mistakes, and we are going to do things wrong. We need to give ourselves permission to fail.
I like to think most parents enter into homeschooling with the best of intentions to serve their kids well, in life and in academics. I’m not sure anyone enters it to do an “okay” job (although those “World’s Okayest Homeschool Mom” shirts are pretty funny). Because, the truth is, despite our best intentions, sometimes things only turn out okay. How we define okay is relative to how far we feel that we fell from our goals and intentions.
Sometimes we have a unit or an entire semester planned out lesson for lesson, day by day. Perhaps, you have made it a goal to teach your child to read by the time they finish kindergarten. It feels so great to set goals and know exactly what we need to complete each day to meet them. However, life is real and things come up and our plans get derailed. It can feel like a complete fail (as we discuss more thoroughly here and here), which makes us, in turn, feel like a failure. Nothing stings the mama heart more than feeling like she’s failing her child.
So, how do we give ourselves permission to fail?
Change Your Mindset
We hear so much about mindsets these days, and for good reason. Our mindset when entering situations can help us to better deal with the outcomes. When it comes to homeschooling, it becomes extremely important to reframe the idea of failing, to go beyond just giving yourself permission to fail. You have to expect failure and prepare for it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with setting goals and making plans, but adjust your mindset to know that you’ll need to be flexible and changes will happen. Know that a plan change doesn’t mean a fail, it means that you had the opportunity to experience something else instead.
Pro tip #1: Don’t overcommit in your planner. Write in pencil. Leave lesson numbers blank when setting up your plan and add them in as you complete them.
2. Give Yourself a Grace Allowance
It is very disappointing when our plans fail and it’s easy to be hard on ourselves, but we need to be resilient in order to be a successful homeschool parent! We need GRACE. Be generous in giving yourself grace, it doesn’t mean ignoring the fails, it just means you can forgive yourself, resolve to keep going with a positive attitude and move on.
3. Get Good at Adapting
With a positive mindset and a grace allowance, you will need to get good at adapting. When your plan changes, learn to adjust quickly! Know what your priorities are so that you can make compromises without losing your sanity.
When you create a plan and know that it might go sideways at some point, you’ll be mentally prepared to adapt. This may mean scrapping a plan altogether, but with some creativity, maybe it just means the plan is on pause while something awesome is happening at the moment. Be okay with pushing a lesson back by a few weeks. Learn to readjust the schedule to accommodate a new interest or a new friendship.
Many of us choose to homeschool because we don’t see a difference between teaching life skills and academics. We see it all as valuable and important for our children’s growth. Entering a season where academics might unintentionally take the sidelines to other critical life skills is okay. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve failed, it means you’ve changed course for a time. By giving yourself permission to fail, you stop viewing things as “failures” and give yourself the opportunity to succeed.
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”
