30 Ways to Simplify Life (and Survive!) When You're Homeschooling with a Baby or Toddler
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This week on The Homeschool Sisters podcast, I had the chance to talk with Cait and Kara about my experience homeschooling with a high-needs baby.
Spoiler alert: it has not been a walk in the park. (Yes, that is an unedited photo of him destroying our homeschool cabinet).
While we’ve had a wonderful year, all things considered, our family had to make lots of adjustments to our routines and norms in order to keep homeschooling in a way that worked for us. As I was preparing for my chat with Cait and Kara, I started listing out some of the changes that we tried this year, and since we didn’t have time to chat about them, I thought I’d share them here instead. As with all online advice—and real-life advice—YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. Pick and choose as you feel led.
Here’s some of the ways that I’ve survived this intense season:
Simplify Your Household Routines
Get your partner involved. I don’t think that I have ever seen this mentioned on a homeschooling blog, so let me be the first to say: if you have a partner, you are not responsible for managing this load alone! The arrival of a new baby presents a natural opportunity to revaluate the distribution of labor in your family. If you need some help to walk you through that process, I’ve heard great things about this book.
Stop folding kids clothes. Children ages 3+ can hang their “real” clothes on hangers, while underwear, socks, and pajamas can be stuffed into drawers with no dire consequences.
Stop folding towels, including hand towels (if you have the space to store them). Shove them in a closet and nobody will be the wiser.
Stop matching socks. It is pretty obvious which socks are a pair when you look in a drawer. Just throw ‘em in there. Or make your toddler do it (that’s what I do).
Choose one day a week where you don’t cook. For our family, this is Sundays. It’s a HUGE break for me, since our family’s food allergies mean that I prepare every other meal from scratch. We eat leftovers and super simple meals: boring sandwiches, frozen pizza, or Trader Joe’s taquitos. No cooking also means less clean-up, and I love that.
Wash sheets monthly. I read once that this is the standard for Scandinavian households and that’s good enough for me.
Plan for “no recipe cooking.” I don’t know if this is true for everybody else, but using recipes majorly slows me down. I’ve stuck to the meals that I can make by heart this year and I don’t regret it. My older kids don’t want to try anything new anyways, so it’s a win-win.
Grocery delivery (or pick-up). How did women even survive raising children for thousands of years without this incredible convenience? I have no idea.
Don’t feel the need to teach new chores to your older kids. Yes, in theory, older kids can help out, but here’s the thing—all that training takes time! I definitely didn’t have the time or emotional energy to force my older kids to learn new chores (and enforce them) this year, so I just did more myself. We are just now reaching the point where we are resuming some habit training and life skills education and they are fine.
Ditch the seasonal decorations. They are just an extra project that you do not need right now.
Sign up for subscribe and save. If there are products that your family regularly uses, set up deliveries of them so that you don’t have to keep a mental inventory.
Use plates sparingly. I realize that at some point, our family might need to run the dishwasher twice a day, but right now, I am holding on for dear life to our once-a-day schedule. So are my kids, since it’s their job to unload it. We rinse and re-use plates as needed, or sometimes I serve lunch on a platter and just let them pick off of it. Paper towels also stand in for plates in a pinch.
Ask for and accept help. You don’t have to bootstrap this. If you have access to help, paid or otherwise, take it. There is no prize for homeschooling with the least amount of help.
Simplify Your Homeschool Schedule
Use a scripted curriculum. In a perfect world, I would have the time to research, customize, and coordinate every aspect of my children’s education, but guess what? We’re not in that world! I am exceedingly grateful for the bilingual homeschool curriculums that our family has chosen, almost all of which are scripted and do all of the planning for me.
Buy used curriculum with pre-prepared materials. This has been a huge time saver for me, especially with our reading curriculum. I am so grateful that the mom that I bought it from had already cut out and organized all of the activities that are included-it has literally saved me hours this year!
Use subscription boxes for hands-on learning. Instead of researching projects and gathering supplies, why not subscribe to a service that will do that for you? There are subscription boxes for everything now; we like Hola Amigo for Spanish learning and subscribe to TalkBox.Mom for Portuguese.
Backwards plan your time. I school my older children while the baby is sleeping, so realistically, I know that I have between 2-2.5 hours—ON A PERFECTLY SMOOTH DAY—to homeschool. On many days, it’s closer to 45 minutes. Knowing that helps me prioritize what we have to do and make peace with what we sometimes can’t fit in.
Use a loop schedule for those “extra” subjects—and absolve yourself of guilt for not doing more. Our composer and artist studies this year haven’t been as regular as I would like, but I now have them on a loop schedule and that has relieved a lot of pressure.
Aim low for field trips. And since we’re still in the middle of COVID, aim even lower. I’m talking the post office, DMV, grocery store level. After seven months of quarantine, your kids will be thrilled to go to Target (mine were really psyched to see the new air filters in ours).
Layer subjects back in for your return to school. Be gentle to yourself and don’t try to re-start a full schedule at two weeks postpartum. Your first week back can be read-alouds, the second week back read-alouds and handwriting, and the third can include the rest (and adjust this schedule as needed).
Use the atmosphere of your home to encourage learning. Model curiosity for your kids and talk with them about what you’re learning. Let them see you reading, listening to the news, finding new music, and talk with them about what you like. Answer their questions—show them how to Google something effectively! Learning how to learn is a valuable lesson in and of itself.
Simplify Your Baby Care
Wear that baby! Even if this is your fourth baby, it’s never too late to start babywearing! There are so many options now, from stretchy wraps to mei tais to soft structured carriers—there is surely one to suit you and your baby. For help with the learning curve, you can join a local Babywearing International Group (many have lending libraries for you to try carriers) or ask around on moms groups on Facebook. And relatedly…
Figure out back carries ASAP. With our high needs Baby #3, I needed to switch to back carries by four months, since at that point, he was still needing to be worn for 6-8 hours/day and weighed too much for me to carry on my chest. It was worth it for me to buy a new baby carrier in order to be able to do this. A Girasol wrap that did the trick for us, freeing me up to do chores and teach my other children comfortably.
Make the baby the lesson. This is a piece of advice that I’ve heard from other homeschooling moms, who usually mean “teach your kids to change diapers.” While that sounds like great advice, my older boys weren’t ready to take on such hands-on care, so I instead focused on teaching them about baby development during this first year. The time that they’ve spent learning about normal baby behavior has made them more patient and compassionate brothers and I hope will help them care for children throughout their lives!
Once a week baths for baby. It’s better for their skin anyways.
Simplify Your Mindset
Eliminate whatever social media platform is causing you false guilt. I had to take a break from Instagram babies when we were in our hardest season with a sick newborn and two older kids. Seeing clean babies and well-rested moms wearing matching outfits was not an encouragement! So here’s your permission to do the same.
Put your phone on do not disturb during homeschool hours. Protect your school time (because the baby sure won’t).
Invest your “free” time in true leisure. “Reading, not scrolling” is my goal. I don’t always achieve it, but I know that I will feel much better after five minutes of reading a novel than after five minutes of scrolling Twitter.
Create pockets of pleasure for your day. Babies are just plain hard work, and homeschooling with a baby is doubly so. Especially in those brutal early days, remind your body that it is capable of enjoying life with a short, daily ritual of self-care. You can light a candle during read-alouds, ask your partner to make you a morning pour-over, or keep cut flowers on your nightstand—whatever small details will remind you to experience and appreciate beauty (which is really important when you are trapped in vomit-covered yoga pants).
Keep your sense of humor. Have a phrase for when you are about to lose your mind—my husband and I like to say “babies be crazy.” It just reminds us not to take ourselves too seriously.
So that’s what I’ve got! And now, I know that some of you readers are even more experienced at this than I am—what additional tips would you share?
