 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way, I'm Jessica, and today's video is going to be a let's chat question and answer about homeschooling and only. Before I get started answering questions, I really, really wanna get something out of the way. I want you all to hear this straight out of my mouth. Homeschooling and only does not necessarily mean that you have an only child. There are many situations that can put you in to the homeschooling and only bubble, and that can be that you, like me, have an only child, or it can mean that maybe you have step kids and you're only homeschooling your biological or vice versa. Maybe you have older kids that have already left the house or are in college and you're only homeschooling the youngest. Maybe your situation is that you have some kids in public school and only one home with you. Maybe you are, you know, as a grandparent, just homeschooling one of your grandchildren, but you have, you know, multiple kids. Whatever the situation, if you are at home schooling one child, you fall into the homeschooling and only bubble. So don't think that this is just like for parents of only children, it's not. Homeschooling and only no matter what the situation is a very unique dynamic. Okay, now let's get to the questions. So I'm going to be looking at my phone because I asked you guys questions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and I sent out an email too. So I'm gonna try to get as many answered as possible. Let's see, the first person wants to know how often Emily asks to hang out with other kids and how often she gets to do things with other kids. Emily is what I call an outgoing introvert. So she loves people until she doesn't and when she's done, she's done. And it took us a while to find that kind of perfect mix for her. And there are times when she desires more or less but on average about every other week was like the perfect number. And so what I did to ensure that she was getting that is I started my own or our own co-op and that was a wild and free group here in our area. I knew if I did that that no matter what she would be getting that interaction with kids every other week which was kind of like her bare minimum. And so that's what we did. Obviously this is prior to the situation that we're in right now. And it worked perfect. It was ideal she was getting interaction every other week and then when she needed more we could schedule a play day or we could go on a field trip or we could do whatever we needed. I can kind of sense when she needs more she'll get a little stir crazy, a little antsy and I can sense that I need to do something. I need to schedule a play date or I need to look up homeschool days in our area something that's gonna give her that interaction with other kids. And actually it's not even just every it's not just other kids with her with her it's just interaction outside of me and daddy. We can go to my parents, to grandparents and that meets her social needs or her, I hate using the word socialization but that meets the socialization need that she has. It's just somebody outside of me and Kevin that's really what she's looking for. But the co-op every other week was like the ideal situation before obviously coronavirus happened. I have somebody else that asks about let's see feeling guilty for not giving them somebody else to do preschool with at home. And I will be honest, I think we all as mothers want better for our child. And I think sometimes we tend to think the grass is greener on the other side. I've had moms of multiples tummy. Man, I wish not that they don't love their kids but sometimes they think it would be easier to only have one and I have moms of one that think it would be better if the kids had a sibling. I think the bottom line is your situation is what it is and you make the best of it. Would Emily be better with another person doing homeschool with her? Maybe, but she gets more of me because it is only her. So I think it's a give and take. I think there's pros and cons to everything and I don't think you should feel guilty about it. It is what it is, make the best of it. Okay, somebody else asks about entertaining Emily and having time to myself. I find entertaining Emily exhausting sometimes. I love her and she knows that I love her and I can tell her that. There are days when my husband gets home and I'm like, I'm done, she's yours. And I don't mean that in a bad way because I love my child. But when you are homeschooling and only you are there, everything from sun up to some down. So sometimes it can be mentally exhausting. You're like, oh my gosh, I can't play another game or I can't talk to you or have a conversation or entertain you any longer. And what I find has helped is that we take lunchtime unplugged from each other. So middle of our day, we sit down from lunch. We may still be at the same table. We may still be in the same room together. But we are not entertaining each other. And normally to unplug from each other means plugging into devices and I am totally okay with that because it saves both of our sanity. And in the long run, it's saving our relationship, trust me. So we will listen to an audio book. We'll listen to a podcast sometimes, like I said, in the same room together. As long as it means I don't have to be turned on for her. So I will do audiobooks, podcasts. I have no problem letting her play apps while she eats, no problem letting her watch a show. Sometimes if I'm like, I just really am, we're having an intense day, I'll put earbuds in or headphones on so that I can tune out even further. And that 20 to 30 minutes saves the rest of our day. So if that's what you need to do to get some alone time, that is totally okay. I also obviously stay up late at night. It is currently, let's see, 2 22 a.m. When I'm filming this video, just so you get an idea. Emily went to bed at 11. I stay up for hours after she goes to bed to fill my cup a little more. Nope, probably not the best thing in the world to do, but it's what I do. It's how I get alone time. It's how I get extra things done. It's when I work. It's what works for me. I'm a night out anyway. So maybe if you're a morning person, get up a little bit earlier. How do I encourage independent play time? I started out really, really small when she was younger and we would just kind of bring her toys into the same room as us. So when she was younger, it would be in the living room. We would bring her Barbies in there and we would watch a movie or we would work while she played. And she would talk to us throughout it and we just slowly kind of continued to do that. Shrewing is one, she knows that now that she's almost eight years old, she knows that for the first hour of the day, don't talk to mommy. Mommy's really cranky and grumpy and I'm not a morning person. And so she does talk to me. You guys, she talks to me all the time. But she knows to try to play independently. For instance, this morning I shrewd single player logic games and yes, she still came to me every time she beat a level. Mom, look, I beat level 12. Mom, look, I did an expert one. I mean, so she's not not talking to me but she's doing the game independently of me and then she's just sharing her successes with me while she's doing it. So I think it just is kind of like, it's slow. Like when we first started shrewing, if we made it 10 minutes, that was great. And then 15, that was great. Now we can go about an hour. So it just, I think it's just something you have to kind of cultivate and like grow longer and longer and longer. And I think it's okay to know that they can play along and still be with you when you have an only child, they're always with you. So not being with you seems really odd to them. So if it makes it easier for them to have their toys or have whatever it is you want them engaged with or whatever they want to be engaged with in the same room as you in the living room in your bedroom, wherever. I think it's okay to let that happen for a while until they get used to the idea of playing alone. This one I'm gonna go ahead and address because there was a ton of people that asked me something along the lines of homeschooling an only or having an only child during the coronavirus. And in case some of you click off this video, I wanna go ahead and address this one kind of early on. The first few weeks weren't so bad because our life pattern changed a whole lot because we live in the middle of nowhere we were already used to only running errands one day a week. Like I said, we were only doing co-op every other week. So it wasn't until actually May, like April wasn't really an issue at all. It was a little like, it stinks, we can't do what we want. The biggest one was not being able to go to Disney from our birthday, that one really upset her because we had like big plans and that would have been the beginning of April. But other than that, April wasn't so bad. But by the time May rolled around, I could tell that she was really empty and she was really, really needing that social interaction that I could not give her. So I logged on to out school and she sat down next to me and we went through literally every class that they had and I signed her up for a class on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, yeah, let's see, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. So she is taking an out school class three days a week right now. She has Mondays off and she has Fridays off but she is taking a one hour class three days a week. It's three different classes but, and they all lasted anywhere from four to six weeks. So it gets her time to be on Zoom with other kids. What's great is out school even has some classes that are literally just called Let's Chat. I think the one that she's in right now is Let's Chat about big cats. Wild cats, it's something about cats. And so it's a group of eight kids I believe that range from about seven to 10 and they're just sitting on video chat just chatting about big cats and the teacher is there to kind of guide, to facilitate, to moderate. She'll correct if one of the kids gets a fact wrong like, oh no, I think this is it or whatever. They're just talking about something they love. So yes, it costs a little bit of money but it was totally worth it. I mean, I would have had to have paid gas to take her anywhere anyway. So I'm just putting that back into giving her that social interaction. Albeit over Zoom, at least she's getting it. So you guys all leave a link for out school in the description box down below. If you are new to out school we'll give you $20 off your first class. If you're homeschooling and only just go look up a class, something that would interest them and try it. I highly recommend it. We'll at least give them that interaction even though it is through a video chat. So somebody asked me about morning basket being effective when you only have one and kind of how do you present it? I never really even presented it when we first started. It was just, she was probably three or four years old and I'm not even sure I had a basket when we first started. I think I literally just had like a stack of stuff and she was eating breakfast and I just sat down and started reading and she loves being read to so it didn't occur to her that like this is odd and we've done it ever since. I wasn't like, oh, hey, let's do morning basket time. Let's do, we just did it. And now even when things are crazy that's the one thing that she still wants to do because we've done it for so long it's become the foundation of her day. It starts our day every day. So if you have only one, I mean, yeah, you're not doing this big group thing but you can still read aloud. You can still do all the things. For us, a huge portion of our day happens during our morning basket time because we're doing almost all of our read alouds during that time. We're doing fun things. We're doing hands-on things. We always try to play a game before we're done but the bulk of it happens during her breakfast like while she's actually eating and then she's free to get down and do anything quiet as I finish up our read aloud. I will link up here a few of our join us for morning basket videos so that you can kind of see what kind of happens during morning basket for us. Okay, somebody asks how I balance giving her space to make mistakes and learning on her own and being there to fix them because you're one on one, you're giving them so much time and attention and I will say that is really probably one of our personal biggest struggles. We are one on one so she's not used to having to split time with me. She's not used to me ever splitting time or walking away or doing anything else so when she's doing like let's say a math workbook or something she wants me right there next to her. She needs me right there next to her. I have actually started like making excuses like oh I'm gonna go get a drink or hey you want a snack because I mean she's not ever gonna say no to a snack or like oh let me just go switch the laundry and things like that like I've started making those excuses and let those things get a little bit longer each time so that she's starting to be a little more independent and growing a little more comfortable and realizing she doesn't necessarily need me. And I try not to be over her constantly as far as like if she's playing or like building a Lego or something when she's really really intent on something I'll just quietly slip away and just not be there because I'm a perfectionist and so if I'm standing over her I tend to want to correct even though I know I shouldn't and so that's probably like the best suggestion I have is to just slowly phase yourself out in a way where you're not there as much. Another person asked me what made me brave enough to homeschool only and I will link our why we homeschool video up here and kind of how we started homeschooling so you can see that but honestly nothing really made me brave enough. I didn't know I was homeschooling when I started homeschooling so by the time we fell in love with it and we decided to homeschool we already loved it and we already knew it was working for her. It's not like I was like I'm gonna homeschool an only child because I didn't know that that's what I was doing. We just kept her home for preschool. We had every intention of sending her for kindergarten. By the time we didn't send her for kindergarten we absolutely already loved the lifestyle and we knew it was working. We had, you know the proof was in the pudding kind of thing with her so we knew, like we knew it was just gonna be okay. What makes me brave enough to stand up to other people when they ask me about socialization is because I think it's absolutely ridiculous when they ask and half the time my response is literally have you met my child? Like if you meet her that is the furthest thing from your mind. She is literally the most social person I have ever met so normally when people ask me that I just giggle and go well obviously you don't know my child and I just kind of leave it there. The last question that I had over on Instagram I'm gonna answer was do I think I could go? I'm probably not gonna get this right. It's something about do I think I would be able to go as in depth if I had more than one kid? And I actually asked my husband this question because I was like, well do you think I would be able to? And his question was 100% without a doubt. He said, now would the Waldoch Way exist? Maybe not. But my personality is 120% or absolutely nothing. So if I was gonna homeschool I would homeschool exactly the way I do now times one or times 10. It just maybe would limit the things I do outside of homeschooling. So because I have one maybe that's why you know the Waldoch Way has been able to come to furtation and continue to grow. And if I had more maybe that wouldn't have happened. But according to him and I happen to agree with him the depth of our homeschool in the way that our homeschool it's our family it's who I am it's who we are. So I don't think it would have made any difference whether we had one or whether we had more.