Friday, December 2, 2011

Avoiding Burnout In Home Schooling

By Owen Jones


It doesn't matter if you are teaching in a traditional school or in a home schooling environment, there will come a time when you will come across burnout. This is something that you have to prevent so that your learning progress is not adversely affected.

Here are a couple of helpful tips that you can make use of to prevent possible home schooling burnout:

Understand your limitations. From the very start, you should already know your limitations and your child's limitations. You must be capable of taking things slowly sometimes, especially if your child is still young since you have to consider your child's learning capacity. Most students are average learners, obviously, so you have to give the lessons based on your child's learning pace. Never expect your small child to read complicated reading selections nor your teen to ace SAT exams.

Don't follow strict schedules, as this could put undue pressure on your child. You should simply set an interesting routine for your child to follow. Children spend most of their time doing routine activities like getting up, eating hearty breakfasts, reading books, practising writing, doing light chores, etc. You must ensure that they finish their routine activities before they can play outside or with the computer. Even these routine activities change from day to day, but you have to make sure that your child follows these routine activities. You can throw in occasional incentives or fun activities if they finish their routine tasks early.

You should enjoy home schooling with your child. This is one way you can develop a good relationship with your child and if you and your child can relate to each other, you will find it very easy to handle curriculum struggles and motivation problems later. Aside from motivating and guiding your child, you can also pursue some of your own interests like gardening and cooking. If your child sees you enjoying your own interests, then he or she will also be motivated to do likewise.

As your child is in a home schooling program, you should not try to copy a traditional schools environment. Try to use unusual ways when teaching your child. Home schooling is also about flexibility and creativity, and if you can create a light-hearted but firm atmosphere, you can probably prevent burnout.

Just always try to bear in mind that with home schooling, you don't have to structure your teaching methods in the scholastic way. You can simply do things in an enjoyable way especially when teaching very young children, so that they learn naturally. Make sure you keep the day in the right balance to avoid burnout. Although your children may forget some of the day's lessons, that's all right too because somehow children develop their intelligence as well as their physique.

Of course, your children will always cherish your moments together and remember fondly how well you treated them. The song goes: "... there's no place like home" and for little students this is the best place to learn their first lessons in life. If your teens are already in high school or in college, they too can still pursue home schooling if they want to. That is also a good decision because you get to monitor your offsprings' performance.

Parents always try to look after their children's best interests, so, if after careful consideration, you still reckon that home schooling is the best option for your family, then run with it. Just follow the tips mentioned previously to prevent burnout. Make time for enjoyable activities from time to time in order to prevent monotony.




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