Kara S. Anderson

Homeschool connection, not perfection.

  • Blog
    • Mama Self-Care
    • Anxiety
    • Homeschooling
  • Kara’s Book: More Than Enough
  • Kara’s Amazon Favorites

The More Than Enough Audiobook is LIVE! (and even more fun news!)

by Kara S. Anderson

You guys!

Yesterday was kind of the best day …

Because yesterday, The More Than Enough audiobook, which is officially out now, hit No. 1 in homeschooling new releases on Audible!

It also hit No. 1 in new Motherhood books on audio!

And No. 3 in ALL Motherhood books.

I could barely breath most of the day, and I am just so grateful.

Honestly, this has been so encouraging for me. It’s incredibly reassuring in a process that is definitely scary and at times overwhelming.

So I wanted to share a little peek behind the scenes for a minute …

That Cover Art

First you may notice that the cover art looks different than the paperback and Kindle versions of More Than Enough.

Some of you may remember this cover – it was the original book cover, but then we had to go with something else for the paperback and Kindle versions.

I love that cover too, but I’m glad to get to return to this original cover for the audio version. Isn’t it cozy?

Wait – you wrote a book?

Yes – in case you are as newer friend here, yes! I have a book. It’s called More Than Enough, because I honestly believe that we have everything it takes (more than enough) to homeschool our kids well.

That doesn’t mean it’s always easy or that we never worry – but I actually have become pretty convinced during the past 13 years of homeschooling that worry just means that we are invested – so invested, that we really can not fail.

To learn more about my book and how to get it, you can head here.

A huge favor

Thank you so much to each of you who has purchased my book, or now the audiobook. I am so grateful for the support.

I do have a quick favor to ask!

If you have read my book and have a moment, please leave an honest review here. Reviews help SO MUCH. It also helps to tell you pals!

And if you listen to the audiobook, I would love if you left a review here.

Thank you again for all of your continue support!

Much love,

Kara

This post contains affiliate links.

The hard part of homeschooling isn’t really the “school”

by Kara S. Anderson

I know this sounds a bit controversial, so roll with me.

Right now, we’re heading into our 14th year of homeschooling. My son is 17, and although we haven’t had a cap and gown ceremony or party (I should get on that), I’m not really “homeschooling” him anymore. Instead, he’s taking college classes and working one-on-one with a Japanese tutor.

My daughter is 14, and we’re heading into high school, so I am still neck-deep in homeschooling.

And I feel confident to say that after years of various ups and downs, starts and restarts, bummer curriculum and stuff that has made it for the long-haul, the actual teaching/learning isn’t the hardest part.

I think these are the things that make homeschooling really hard:

Expectations

Expectations are a killer, whether they are your own or someone else’s; whether they are on you or your kids.

If you ever find yourself feeling like you are “drowning,” most likely you’re actually drowning not in work, but in expectations.

These are the supposed tos and shoulds that creep up on us.

A friend recently told me that she just doesn’t love outdoors stuff and it was so freeing I wanted to cry.

I’ve wanted for years to be an outdoorsy mom – hiking and camping, and taking my kids on awesome nature walks.

But two things always got in the way:

  1. I don’t actually know a lot about nature.
  2. I don’t really enjoy being in nature a lot of the time.

I’m allergic to bee stings – I’m allergic to a lot of nature, actually.

I hate being hot. Or cold.

I get lost super easily.

All of these things make nature walks a little scary and overwhelming.

Still, when my kids were young, I forced myself to do them.

I just wish now that I would have considered other ways – teaming up with a crew – maybe especially another mom who knew more about nature and would also be there if I got attacked by bees or got us lost.

My kids did lots of nature camps, and did nature study with an awesome naturalist who was part of our old co-op.

I wish I could have let that be enough instead of feeling constant guilt and failure about not being “better” at nature.

Comparison

Instagram is the living worst. It used to be Pinterest that made me feel bad, but now, when I start to get overwhelmed, one of the first things I do is take Instagram off my phone.

I always put it back on, because I also somehow love it? but the exposure to ALL of the ideas can make us feel like everyone but us is “doing it all.”

Theodore Roosevelt said comparison is the thief of joy, right before he hopped off the moose he was riding and wrestled a bear and then made that bear his best friend.

Only part of that is true, but my point is, he did things his own way and was successful.

Teddy would have loved nothing more than to punch Mark Zuckerberg in the neck for thinking up social media without considering social consequences.

Fear

A few nights ago, I dreamt that I was at my own birthday party, but I was wearing all kinds of sentimental jewelry and I kept losing track of pieces of it.

So I couldn’t enjoy the insane blow-out party, where I was surrounded by friends and karaoke and cake.

When we worry, it distracts us.

It takes our focus away from what matters most, which is our kids and their overall health and happiness.

We were never meant to be teachers first.

If we wanted our kids to have teachers who cared most about our kids learning just like their peers, we would have sent them to school.

This is not to insult teachers – they work hard and receive specialized training and serve a huge, valuable purpose. I’m just saying, that isn’t our role.

None of that was ever ours to carry.

Guilt

I’ve started to believe that we can get through most things if we can deal with the guilt and shame surrounding those things.

It’s not the mistakes that get us – it’s the guilt and shame over the mistakes. It’s picking a math curriculum that makes our kids cry, and still trying to force it and then later seeing how much harm it did and not being able to let that part go.

I can’t tell you how many mistakes and missteps have made up the last 14 years.

(That last 44, really. Once, as a baby, I slept on my ear wrong and it got folded over and stuck like a Spock ear and my mom, a registered nurse, called our pediatrician sobbing because she was convinced it was going to stay like that. Sorry Mom.).

When we hold on to guilt, we get stuck in the mistake. Like some kind of emotional quicksand. The harder to try to “fix,” the deeper in we get until we’re up to our heads, still trying to justify and explain.

Let the mistakes go, friends. Give them not just wings, but a ride to the airport.

Worry Over Enough

I named my book accidentally. I started writing and stuff came out, and part of what came out was a title, “More Than Enough.”

Because I desperately wanted homeschool parents to know that they were enough. That their family was enough, even if their family doesn’t look like the little Instagram squares that get a billion likes.

I wanted parents to be able to stop wasting their precious time with their kids feeling less than.

This became the whole theme of my book, of course (and shameless plug – it’s now available on Amazon!), but I want to remind you here too – worrying that you are somehow not enough to do this right is nonsense.

No one cares about your kids more than you do.

I have seen it time and again – in every DM, in every email, at every conference where I speak – the parents who worry are the ones getting it right because sadly, the way our love comes out sometimes is worry.

What can we do about that? Maybe I’ll let you know in another 14 years.

Trying to do life too

Where do I begin?

I guess I’ll say this: if all we had to do in a given day was homeschool, it would feel like a Sandals vacation.

But someone has to cook, and clean and do laundry, and take care of pets and cars and broken appliances and plumbing and drop off a casserole and take a sick parent to the doctor and also do our own eyebrows and work-out, preferably before lunch because this afternoon is PACKED.

You’re a damn treasure and we should all get summers off of everything, just so we can sleep.

Re-imagine …

I just want you to open up to the idea that the hardest parts of homeschooling really come from our mindset.

  • It’s trying to force what isn’t working.
  • It’s comparing our amazing, goofy families to how we imagine other families to be.
  • It’s trying to make homeschooling about school first.

Homeschooling is about not being in school; not trying to replicate school. It’s finding freedom outside of a building where someone made up rules a long time ago.

Homeschooling can be HARD. For so many reasons.

But we can release some pressure by not trying to do it the way someone else wants us to, by not comparing to others, by not letting the fear take over, by not getting hung up on missteps and by stopping the worry that we aren’t enough.

OF COURSE you’re enough.

For crying out loud, you’ve read this far.

Let’s practice the beautiful art of letting go of something we never needed in the first place. 🤍

This post contains affiliate links.

Stop trying to do it all in your homeschool

by Kara S. Anderson

Well first, let me apologize for the bossy title.

I’m not normally so forceful, it’s just that I happen to have encountered a lot of moms lately who are dealing with burn-out.

Like, drag-me-up-off-the-floor-to-make-a-quesadilla level of burn-out and exhaustion.

I think a lot of things can cause us to burn out, and right now, I think a lot of us are still coping with pandemic exhaustion.

Yesterday I was talking with some friends and we decided that the pandemic has made everything at least 15 percent harder.

Everything.

Some things are even harder than that.

  • My son opening a bank account –  at least 40 percent harder than it used to be.
  • Our family just bought a car – minimum 50 percent harder than it was two years ago when we bought a car.

And this applies to everything right now.

Enough

Yesterday on the way to physical therapy, I realized I forgot a mask, which is still required at the clinic. I found one ON THE FLOOR OF MY CAR, picked it up, inspected it, and put it on my face.

Near my mouth.

Where the food goes.

(Speaking of food – food is just always hard. Forever. Send Doordash.)

So if you are like me, you are always looking for ways to make things a bit easier.

That’s where this post comes in.

And my bossy tone.

Giving up?

Because none of us feels like it’s OK to give up, right?

Our culture tells us moms are supposed to work hard, be exhausted, surrender to the messy house and messy bun, and then start drinking wine at 4 p.m.

Yikes. (Yikes about the wine being the answer – I have proudly rocked a messy bun pretty much every day of my life since college).

We’re constantly told that to BE ENOUGH, we have to DO “ENOUGH.”

Now, I wrote a whole book about how this is not true, but still, I get haunted by the lies. They sneak up on me like ninjas whispering: “your bathroom sink is gross right now, you are a Complete Failure As a Human Being.”

Doing less in your homeschool

A while back, I sent out an email to my blog friends (you guys!) asking about your Number 1 struggle with homeschooling.

It was kind of incredible – the answers varied, but many, many of them said the same thing: being consistent.

Now I’m not saying I have all the answers, but I definitely think I have an answer to this:

Do Less.

Doing less it just easier than doing more. It’s a lower barrier to entry. It’s attainable and therefore less intimidating to start.

I know – we think homeschooling isn’t supposed to be easy, because then we aren’t “doing enough“.

But I promise you, that isn’t the case.

And if trying to do it all is causing you to feel exhausted and burned out, you’re kind of shooting yourself in the foot, friend.

Simplified homeschooling

The past several weeks, my daughter and I have been doing a pared down, simplified version of homeschooling.

And amazingly, we’ve been really consistent about it.

Here’s the thing: Less is more when you do it more often.

 

 

And you know how I know it’s enough?

Every day Almost every day, we get through everything we set out to do.

Is it perfect? No.

Is it fancy? No

Is it infinitely Instgrammable? Gosh no.

Do those things really matter?

Hell to the No.


A mindset shift

So as you plan our your days and weeks, I have a few resources for you to simplify things:

  • My book, More Than Enough: Grow Your Confidence, Banish Burnout and Love Your Homeschool Life.

 

  • Cactus Schooling  – my gentle approach to homeschool planning.

Sending virtual hugs friends, and a reminder that you don’t have to do it all to homeschool really well.

I promise. 💙

This post contains affiliate links.

How I know that you’re enough, homeschool mom

by Kara S. Anderson

I can still remember the day that I quit homeschooling.

I was on our cordless phone (this is an old story), pacing in my dining room. I was talking to the woman at the nice Montessori-esque school, and she was walking me through how to enroll my son to start in January.

And I’m going to tell you, in that minute, it didn’t feel like giving up. It felt like such relief. It felt like getting good news from the doctor.

If we’d had any extra money then, I might have celebrated.

Because I had tried homeschooling for an entire semester, and I couldn’t hack it. But in a few weeks, all the responsibility wouldn’t be on me anymore.

Hi there, Doubt

Our homeschool story doesn’t end there, of course.

My son attended the Montessori school for 5 months, and it was great, but the next year, they wanted to move him into the 6-9 year-old classroom because he was an early reader. We were sent home that summer with instructions to work on handwriting every day.

In turned out that trying to force a kid whose fine motor skills were not ready for handwriting to practice handwriting EVERY DAY was a fairly miserable way to spend a summer, so we gave that up pretty quickly, and in the fall, I registered him for Kindergarten, but then panicked and decided to try homeschooling again.

Now we’ve been at it for almost 12 years, and we love homeschooling, but let me tell you, I have dealt with some doubt.

What’s interesting is that I haven’t doubted my kids.

But I’ve doubted myself A LOT.

When a particular homeschool method didn’t work 100 percent in our home, I blamed myself.

When a certain curriculum wouldn’t work for my kids, I figured I was doing it wrong.

Maybe I wished for a minute that my kids weren’t so wiggly? Or that they didn’t dislike timed tests quite so much?

But again, I saw that as my own failing. Better moms would be better at getting their kids to sit still. They would be better at instilling perseverance!

For so long doubt was my companion in our homeschooling journey.

What changed?

So what’s changed?

I think things began to shift when I started writing to you.

Of course it helps that I’m actually seeing my children succeeding. At 13 and 16, neither of them have become bank robbers or Mob bosses.

But what really changed things for me was writing here – sharing our struggles and wins, and all the bumps and U-turns.

Because homeschooling is anything but a straight and simple path – but that’s kind of a benefit, isn’t it? We get to chart our own course.

Like Magellan.

Or Oprah.

Of course, any time we do something different from the norm, it’s a little scary. So doubt still creeps in for me.

It’s just that now, I know I’m enough.

And I know you are too.

I know because I feel my intense, overwhelming love for my kids, and through talking to all of you, I’ve learned you have that too.

In fact, for so many of us, it’s that intense love for our quirky kids that led us to homeschooling in the first place. It’s that love that keeps us going, even when we hit rocky patches – days, weeks, even months.

But I believe in us and our love for our kids – so much that I wrote a whole book about it.

It’s called More Than Enough: Grow Your Confidence, Banish Burn-Out and Love Your Homeschool Life.

It’s for all of us who feel scared and overwhelmed sometimes. It’s definitely for all of us who doubt ourselves – for those of us who wonder if our family is cut out for this.

(Can I tell you a secret? The very fact that you worry means that yes – you are equipped to homeschool. Because that worry is just our intense love peeking out.)

I truly believe that you are enough, your family is enough, and your love for your kids is more than enough to homeschool well.

So if you need that reminder right now, I hope you’ll check out my book, available here.

I KNOW that you love your kids endlessly – so how could you possibly fail?

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Hey there!

I’m Kara – writer, tea drinker, yoga-doer and girl with the overdue books.

 

My Book

My Amazon Shop

Get $25 off your first order:

Copyright

You are welcome to link to my blog (of course!), but please do not use my words or photos without my written consent, that includes reblogging. Copyright 2013-2023. Read this site’s policies and disclosures here.

Disclosure:

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Please Note:

Karasanderson.com is not currently an active site. As such, some downloads, freebies, posts, pages and links may not be available.

Karasanderson.com is not currently an active site. As such, some downloads, freebies, posts, pages and links may not be available.

Copyright © 2023 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in