How to Help Your Child Cope when Homeschool is Hard

Support your child when homeschooling is hard. Here are 5 tips to help. 

Here's what you'll learn in this article: 

• Just because you are home, school still has its hard days, and, unlike traditional school, as the caregiver-educator, you have to help them cope with the school part, while also being a parent.
• 5 tips to support your children with their coping when homeschooling is hard.
• Answers to commonly asked questions about coping with the demands of home school.
• Key takeaways for shifting hard days into part of the process of learning.
• Where to learn more about managing home school.

Children Still Have Hard Days When Homeschooling

While homeschooling can alleviate certain pressures associated with traditional school, there will still be hard days for your child. Not all learning activities will come easily. Not all subjects will be met with the same motivation. There will still be tired days when everyone is out of sync. 

Hard days are a part of any life long endeavor. No matter how you spend your days, some of them will be harder than others. Helping your children see the hard days as part of the process will alleviate the pressure to expect only good days and create the space to try different coping strategies.

5 Tips for Helping Your Children Cope with the Difficult Home School Days

There are a lot of ways to cope with challenges. One of the most difficult parts of coping can be finding what works for you in any given situation. Here are 5 tips to help you support your children to find coping skills that work for them:

1. Creative Coping

There are broad categories of ways to cope like breathing or journaling your thoughts. The most effective coping comes down to finding the unique details that make it work for you. Children need lots of support to tailor coping strategies to suit their needs.

As a caregiver-educator you can help your children tailor coping strategies to meet their needs. Coping strategies can even be covered as a practical life lesson. Including learning about coping as a regular part of school will help you work with your children when they feel calm to role play coping with different scenarios to creatively tailor strategies to try in the future.

2. The Art of Reframing

When days go poorly reframing to focus on the context or behavior, not the person. Helping children cope with bad days will go much more smoothly long-term if they aren't made to feel like bad people. 

If your child is having an off day, then use language with them that focuses on the behaviors that aren't acceptable. It can look something like--you look frustrated, is that it? It's ok to feel that way, but throwing your pencil on the floor isn't ok behavior. Let's take a moment to breathe together or do you have another idea? Reframing won't always work for your child, but it will help you stay present in the moment to support your child.

3. The Power of Perspective

Sometimes when we have a hard day it can help to regain some perspective. If a math lesson isn't going well today, what's the worst that can happen? You try it again tomorrow. In the moment it can feel overwhelming, but in the grand scheme of schooling, it isn't a big deal.

Helping your children gain perspective and place this challenging school moment into context can help. It can also be helpful to recall a past lesson they had trouble with that they have now mastered. This tactic continues to make it about the process. Hard days will happen, and there are ways to cope.

4. Switching the Setting

If the difficulty of the moment is significant enough to spill into the entire day, then think about a change of setting to do a reset. Taking even a few moments out in nature adds literal distance between your child and the difficulty they experienced. 

Helping them learn that it is alright to step away for a moment is a valuable tactic that still gives them something to do to manage their feelings, but isn't destructive or antisocial behavior that can negatively influence those round them.

5. Modeling Your Coping Strategies

When a homeschooling day is hard a guiding coping strategy is to normalize that hard days are part of any lifelong process. You can further instill this valuable lesson by modeling your coping strategies to your children. 

When you go for a walk you can voice that you are getting fresh air to maintain your energy levels. When you take a 15-minute nap you can voice that you are doing so because you feel tired and need a refresh to feel good. Creating openness for visible coping in your home will give your children the confidence to try different coping strategies too.

FAQs: Support Your Children to Find Coping Skills that Work for Them

What if All of the Days are Hard?

If more of your home school days are hard than easy, then it might be time to seek additional support from a professional or the community, depending on what your situation is. While some hard days are part of the process, if each day is hard, that is a signal that more intervention is needed to get to a comfortable baseline. 

What if All the Ways of Coping Feel Overwhelming?

Keep coping simple. If you include coping as part of a practical life lesson, jot down ideas to try in a notebook. In a moment that is hard, don't underestimate the power of sitting together for 30 seconds. Then try and find a coping option to try.

Key Takeaways

• Homeschooling has hard days. Just because you are home, doesn't mean your children won't have hard school days.
• Get creative with coping. Experiment with tailoring common coping strategies to meet your children's (and your) needs.
• Reframe and gain perspective. When a day is hard focus on the acts and behaviors in context, not labeling the person as difficult.
• Change the setting. On really rough days, look to take a moment in a new setting to create literal and mental space from the challenge.
• Model how you cope. We all need solid coping strategies to manage difficult days; share how you cope with your family.

Where to Learn More