Rebecca: Welcome to the Sequoia Breeze Podcast, a breath of fresh air for your homeschool.
I am your host, Rebecca Losavio. Thanks for being here for a great new episode. If you missed last month's interview with Jamie Happ about creating vision and mission in our homeschools, I encourage you to go back and give that a listen.
It's worth it.
I am with Becca Heath, one of my fellow family liaisons today, and we are going to talk about a book that we've both found really interesting. So I'll get into that in a second.
But welcome, Becca.
Beka: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
Rebecca: So Becca's joined me before, but for new listeners, remind us who you are and who your your tribe is that you.
Beka: I'm the family liaison for the Butte County, Tehama county kind of Northern California area,
and I homeschool six of my seven children.
So they kind of range all the way from just starting out to kind of getting into that. What are you going to do with your life age? And we've homeschooled since my daughter started, so it's been quite a journey.
Rebecca: You have a lot going on in a pretty small house.
Beka: Yes.
Rebecca: Homeschooling as many kids and working, as well as supporting a lot of the things that your husband is involved in. And so you have a busy life.
Beka: Very busy, yes.
Rebecca: And that matters because of the book that we're talking about, which is called essentialism by Greg McCowan.
I came across this book a couple years ago after listening to a Read Aloud revival podcast, which I will link in the show notes.
And I was,
I almost pulled the car over because I was kind of on fire with what they were talking about because I knew I needed this concept, this book in my life.
I got the book and I started reading it over the course of, like, I don't know, a year. I intentionally read it slowly so that I could try to digest it and not just read it all and forget it.
But being me, I definitely need plenty of reminders. So I'm looking through it again.
So I've listened to that podcast, I think three times now, that episode, and asked Becca if she would listen to it and read the book and join me to talk about the concepts that are in this book.
So,
Becca,
what are your kind of. What, what hit you with this book or that podcast episode?
Beka: Well, I listened to the podcast of Read Read Aloud revival that you sent me before I read the book, and I also had that pull the car over moment.
Rebecca: The.
Beka: The one thing that stuck with Me, before I even book was. He talks about this idea of, like, he draws this little picture.
I'll try to do it with words since you can't see us, but it's. It looks like a sunshine, right? Like, it's a circle with all these arrows going out in all these different directions.
And this concept of, like, you only have so much energy. Your energy is finite. And so if the circle is you, you can go in all these little different arrows,
or you can have one circle in the middle with one giant arrow pointing out and send all your energy that way.
And I remember explaining it to my husband, like, it's like a car. Like, I can put a full tank of gas in my car, and I can either make 20 short little trips or one long trip, but no matter what I'm doing, the car can only go so far on that tank of gas.
And that really just, like, blew my mind. Even though I feel like it's an obvious concept as you explain it to someone else, but when you hear someone say it about your life, it's a light bulb moment.
Rebecca: Because as he talks about in the book, we have to make conscious choices about how we spend our time and energy. And if we don't choose, somebody else will. If we don't make the decisions about how we spend that time and energy, somebody else will make them for us.
And so I think a lot of times, especially as moms, our energy does get sent in all of these different directions because we're just putting out fires and meeting needs all the time.
And so I think it's easy to not realize that we haven't chosen how we want our time and energy to go. So I want to explain a little bit more.
So this book is not a homeschool book. It is written primarily to, like, businessmen.
Yeah.
Beka: Business world.
Rebecca: But there is so much application for homeschooling because the. The. The whole premise of the book on the COVID is the disciplined pursuit of less with the idea of doing less but better.
And homeschool parents, did your hearts just explode a little bit? Like, doing less but doing better to make the effort that we're putting in count for more.
And that's.
It feels. It does feel like a sort of a simple, basic concept. And yet there's an entire book to help walk us through being able to do it.
Beka: Seminars. Right.
All these things that.
So I was thinking about that as I was reading it,
because I also have that initial pushback of, like.
And I think part of what it is is there's, like, some guilt about being a homeschool parent of. I chose this lifestyle for myself and my children,
so it is on my shoulders to make sure that they get all the things all the time.
And then if I don't give them all the things all the time,
am I depriving them of some kind of essential experience or craft or read aloud or field trip or science class or frog dissection? Or I could go on, right?
I could see your face. Like, oh, no, we didn't do that.
So we feel that of, like, oh, no. If I. If I choose,
it's that fear of missing out. Like, what am I depriving them of? Because I'm the only one providing it for them.
Which is terrifying.
Rebecca: Which is an interesting point to bring up in that this book does not address mom guilt.
Beka: I just shoved it right in there because it's just reality.
Rebecca: Well, maybe we should get Greg McCowan on the phone about that. But. But he does talk about. I was just looking for somewhere. I know I wrote it down that.
Oh, okay. That saying no to things takes emotional discipline.
Yes.
Beka: He has a whole chapter on how to say no, which I thought was brilliant. Not to jump too far ahead, but.
Rebecca: Well,
we're gonna jump all over the place. And I was telling Becca before we started recording that I'm not an essentialist. So it's actually,
I do know some people who are essentialists, and so I can kind of try to channel them as I'm trying to learn some of these cons,
what they do,
but that's not me. So I. And I'm never. I'm never going to be. That's the truth of the matter is I. I can read this book and think I can adopt some of these principles and I can simplify my life and focus my energy.
I will never completely be an essentialist, I don't think.
But the concept is beautiful. It's making sure that your time is spent on the things that are most important so that those things get the best of your time and your energy,
and that those things that are most important include your family and in our case,
for our discussion today,
our homeschool, and making sure that we're putting our energies into the right places.
So were there any changes that you kind of immediately were like, we have to. I have to cut certain things out or simplify this or that or, well.
Beka: You nicely did not throw me under the bus. That I kind of am like a get rid of all of it,
which is not what he says. Honestly. That was. I was like, ooh, Maybe I do this too much because I'm like the watch it burn. Like,
throw the Legos away if they're on the floor. Mom, I want to be. I want it all gone.
Rebecca: Which I will say, this is why I invited you, because I wanted, like, two of me. Having this conversation is not helpful.
Beka: I just wanted to keep everything.
Rebecca: I wanted to have our varying opinions.
Beka: I think think the. What I kept coming back to and what my takeaway was, was purpose. Was that you're not just saying no to everything, which I tend to default on.
But not as, like, an essentialist, as a stress response. I just start saying no because I'm overwhelmed. And more.
You're purposefully saying no because you're purposefully saying yes. And your yes is focused. And when you have that really clear goal of, like, this is what we're shooting for. We need all the gas in the tank to get to this destination.
Even though it's still hard, it does make it easier to say, oh, no, we're not doing that.
Oh, no, we have to pass on that. Like, even the really good opportunities. And he does talk about how it's not hard to say no to the junk. Right. Like, it's a lot easier to say no to stuff you don't want to do.
It's when those things come up that you're like, oh,
that would be so good.
I just want to do that. But it would get in the way of the thing that I'm really, really shooting for.
That's when that no comes in, and that's where that, okay, why am I doing this? What is my purpose? What is my goal that I'm trying to reach or that we're trying to reach as a family or that I'm trying to reach as an educator for my children?
Rebecca: So do you feel like you can say no to those things? Do you think you can cast that vision to your kids? Do.
Beka: Do I feel like I can make.
Rebecca: Them like it, Understand it?
Beka: Yes.
As they are becoming older. Yes. Because they are starting to adopt and realize, like, the value of really putting in time and energy.
So I would say probably my two oldest and maybe one of the other ones that's a little bit more focused are starting to realize,
oh, this is why we're saying no to everything.
Because, like, for instance, for them,
they're very, very focused on jiu jitsu. They do that sport,
and that's a pretty fairly new within the last year or two development.
But they are realizing now,
you know, if I say yes to every sleepover and Every field trip and every movie trip. And I keep missing practice, and I keep missing practice.
I go, and suddenly I'm not improving. And my own personal goal is improvement. So they're starting to see, oh, I have to say no to some of these things that seem really good at the time and are really good.
There's nothing wrong with sleepovers or movies.
But because I have that goal for myself. I mean, the younger ones know, they just want all the things.
Rebecca: I just actually thought of a way that I didn't even think of it in terms of essentialism. But our family decided that we were going to eliminate all of the little junk food.
So bits of candy here and there, store bought cookies, all of the little junk food that comes at us all week long. Like, let's just say to. No to all of that.
But once a week I will make a nice dessert as a family.
Beka: And then you have.
Rebecca: Yeah, you have this calorie. And we have. Right, we have the. And because so often I don't bake or cook sweet things for my family because I feel like there's no room for me to.
They've already eaten all the junk they can find. Yeah. So trying to narrow down, but that's that actually, I realized maybe I'll even show them the picture of the. Lots of little arrows and the one big arrow.
Beka: Yeah.
Rebecca: And you know, I think the, the three olders get the. They understand that bigger picture. They can, they can see that.
Whereas the little guy is just gonna have to live with it until he gets it, you know, for the ride.
Beka: Well, as happens.
Rebecca: And that's where you just say, trust mom.
Beka: Like, right, I have your best interest at heart.
Rebecca: Right. And I think you're gonna end up liking this. But to you, time is really long. And so you don't get it yet.
Beka: But it was for me. I feel like this year in homeschool was kind of a revelation. You and I did the plan. Your yearbook club, we did a podcast on it.
I was trying to focus a lot more on having a focus and having a why, which we've talked about. Why am I homeschooling and just being able to kind of edit down and out the extra things as far as,
you know, do they need to do this craft? If it has glitter, the answer is absolutely not.
Rebecca: If it's.
Beka: Or, you know, do they even. As far as writing, I have students that are struggling with writing. And I was thinking about this the other day and I had this, you know, the whole fancy writing curriculum and we're writing paragraphs And I realized they're really struggling with writing sentences.
And so the essential goal being, I want you to be able to construct a few sentences that are well written and explain your meaning. So we're going to cut out, like, fancy writing, paragraphs and reports and all these other things, because the essential thing that you need to do is be able to construct a sentence that other people can understand.
So even as far as just looking at what am I teaching and how am I teaching it? Is it stressing me out? Is it stressing them out? Is it draining my energy?
Like, what things can I cut off because they're not essential or they're not helpful? They're not shooting me towards the goal?
Rebecca: I want to go to one of the homeschool philosophies. I don't. I'm not sure what the right word would be. That has freed me up a lot, is just knowing you.
You can't teach your kids everything before they leave the house.
So your goal is to give them the tools that they need to be able to learn on their own.
Right. If they know how to research, if they know how to discern between good sources and bad sources, if they're curious,
if they know how to follow a thought through,
ask good questions,
then you don't have to teach them everything. You've given them the tools to realize a hole in their knowledge. Ask themselves a question of, like, I wonder why this works like this?
And they can go and find that out on their own.
And so if you have taught them to. To read well, to ask good questions, to find good answers,
and then to know how to sort through information,
well,
then you've educated them. Well, yes, of course we're going to keep going on facts and concepts and things like that, but you can't do everything,
so.
Beka: And they're not going to remember. See, you're more of an essentialist than you realize.
Rebecca: Maybe you have things like these goals,
but you. Well, I. I mean, when I remember them. But I.
And you know, the truth is I teach myself stuff.
I'm a. I'm a curious person and I have, you know, I'll pick up new hobbies. That's why I don't feel like I'm in a session as an essentialist. Because,
you know, I used to crochet, now I garden,
all the little crafts sitting around,
but at the same time, it's fun for me to go learn those things or learn how to.
How to do a new skill or research a question or whatever.
But I. It never once occurs to me,
why didn't I know this in high school?
That's not, you know, nobody was supposed to teach me everything.
So what I can do is give them a love for life and a thirst for knowledge and. Or at least direct them towards those things. Right.
And so much of it is really up to them, but we can give them some of those basic skills and then they can run with it in the direction that is their own choosing.
Yeah. Well, their own project to, you know, what, what are they good at? What are they.
What is their bent? And so, you know, what's essential to them is not necessarily going to be what's essential for me someday.
Beka: Yeah. They don't always like what we want them to like.
Rebecca: So, Becca, tell me how you.
One of the things that I struggle with, with this concept of essentialism is that, okay, I can figure out what's essential to me,
but I have four kids,
and what is essential for each of them is not necessarily exactly the same. I mean, yes, my husband and I have talked about, like, what are our goals as a family,
but when I'm looking at school,
I still feel.
I don't feel like I can have just one arrow pointing up. I feel like I have to have four arrows that can go further than the,
you know. Yeah. Or.
And what does that child need? And you know, right now,
my younger one needs a lot of direct instruction and has to be sat next to my olders need a lot of checking in on and did everything actually get accomplished that was meant to be accomplished?
So where it just. So what they each need is very different. And I'm curious how you.
The idea of managing that with six.
I mean, you have seven kids, so really you're dealing with seven.
Beka: Yeah. And I'm not the expert in it by any means.
I, I still think you should give yourself more credit for like, having a focus,
because I think you can have that focus of like,
for instance, one of the focuses is I want them to. To know how to learn, which you kind of touched on.
And I want them to enjoy learning.
And so that might look five or six or in your case, four different ways, but I can still kind of check in with that and make sure that that's the reason that we're doing something and make sure that the reason that we're doing something isn't because I saw that curriculum online and it looked really pretty and flashy or because I'm feeling mom guilt because they haven't cut and glued anything that week,
or because I talked to you and I Realized I hate reading aloud to my kids. And suddenly I'm like, we're reading aloud. And my children are like, stay away from Rebecca Lazadio.
We hate this.
The pressures outside. But you have that goal, right? Right. Then I can still check in and say, okay,
you know, if. If you're hating this.
Slogging through,
you know, I'm doing a certain curriculum or a certain math, and we've tried it, and it's not just initial resistance or,
you know, that kind of initial. I hate all things math, but it's really something that's making you miserable.
Oh, well, that's not really the goal. The goal is for you to kind of want to learn, so switch things up. Or if we're doing something that is really fun.
We were doing science, and it was really fun, but they weren't learning anything.
You know, they were, like, lighting stuff on fire. So my kids would 100 tell you, like, a plus, best science ever.
But then I'm like, what did you learn? And they're like, oh, I know how to use a lighter.
Don't think that that was the goal of the chemistry lesson.
Rebecca: Okay.
Beka: So, like, okay, we're. Yeah. So I think having those goals, even when you have these different kind of pathways to the same overall, why are we doing this? And what do I want you to leave this homeschool experience with?
And how do I want you to feel about our homeschool experience when you leave it?
Rebecca: Mm.
Beka: Helps me to kind of check in when I start to veer off course and say, oh, why are we. Why are we doing this? Why is everybody miserable? Or, you know, why am I so exhausted?
Rebecca: So one of the things that struck me about the tagline, the disciplined pursuit of less,
he also talks about.
He uses the word relentless pursuit of less, but better.
And both of those words,
they're strong words, you know,
disciplined and relentless. And I think,
you know, it does raise a question of, are we.
So he's not saying cut everything out so you can lay around.
Right. He's. He's definitely still talking about working hard,
but in a very specific direction,
and that being an essentialist takes effort. He even talks about how in our culture, in our society,
success is sort of punished when you.
Beka: Yes.
Rebecca: When you are doing well, people want you to do more. Right. Or they figure you've got it all under control, come to you for things.
So there takes discipline to say no. It takes discipline to continue to discern. Which is another word up there with, like, I don't know.
I don't know. How often we talk about these words in our homeschools, like,
do we live disciplined?
Do we run disciplined homeschools? And by that, I don't mean blowing whistles and making kids line up the bot traps,
but. But disciplined in that it.
Today is not a good day for a field trip because today is a day when we need to get this or that done or we are going to say no to one more enrichment activity because we need more time to be quiet at home or to focus on math or to have.
I mean, maybe.
Maybe one of the goals of your family is to have time that isn't structured so kids can just play and use their imagination.
And then that feels like empty. Time is so easy to fill. Right?
Beka: And just think about how many things I'd have to say no to to make that happen right automatically.
Rebecca: Whoa.
Beka: That would be the hardest thing to do, to just leave it empty like that.
Rebecca: So I guess the. The word discipline struck me as this. That's something. That's a character trait.
And do we work on that within ourselves? Do we encourage that within our kids?
Because it takes work.
Beka: It does take work. Yeah, man, that's. That's a heavy. It is. Like, it's a heavy word of how do we do that and how do we.
Rebecca: Sometimes I find it easier to be disciplined in a new area. When I think about areas I'm disciplined in already without thinking about,
like,
what's a good example? I don't feel like a disciplined person, so I don't notice the things I'm good at. Okay. I always start the dishwasher before I go to bed, you know, And I always make the coffee so that it's on a timer and it's ready for me in the morning.
So it's not hard for me to push myself to do those things, because the coffee I want,
and I know that the whole day runs more smoothly if we wake up to a clean dishwasher in the morning,
that just is.
So if I then want to extend it to this is.
I know these aren't my homeschool examples.
Beka: I can think about extending it to. Like, if I don't want to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off the whole week, I need to take that Sunday when really what I want to be doing is, like, reading a book and drinking a coffee.
I need to take that two hours to make sure everything is printed, because I'm 100% guilty of, oh, no, we should have printed this worksheet or this PDF or this Monday morning.
And we need it now. But I have to stop. I have to stop. What I'm doing might be fun or good, but make sure I'm ready for the week so that it doesn't get away from me.
Rebecca: And I think those are some of the hardest things for me to be disciplined in, is making sure I'm fully prepped and taking the time to correct or gather the papers, make sure it's all turned in and it's actually completed and done well, and those kinds of things.
It can be easy for me to say, do it, do it, do it. Are you done? Great. And then not follow through on that last step.
And so. But that.
But yes. Being fully prepared gives you so much more freedom during the week.
Beka: In the long run, it does. And then we were talking about earlier how your day snuck up on you. That was no fault of your own.
Rebecca: But just was life. Yeah.
Beka: Yeah. But it happens, and it happens more. The less I'm prepared, the more that happens to me because I think, oh, I have to print this off. I walk over to the printer.
There's stuff on the printer. I take the stuff from the printer. I start to put it away. I notice the junk drawer is dirty. I start cleaning out the junk drawer.
Oh, my daughter was looking for these pushpins. I better take them up to her. Oh, my gosh. Your room's the best. I need to bring up the vacuum. Right. Like, the add cycle of insanity kicks in.
My day gets away from me. All because I didn't want to get up and get the printer ready on Sunday because it was my day off. Or.
Rebecca: Or. And sometimes it's. It's simpler in that, like, something took longer than you expected. So now you need to make a decision about what's next and how are we going to rearrange our day.
But if it's not fully clear. Well, okay, but where did I put that paper? Is that ready to go? It's hard to make decisions when the information is fuzzy.
Beka: Yeah.
Rebecca: Keeping the information clear by,
you know, making sure. I mean, that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately is putting either the down times or the prep times on the calendar. It's not like.
Well, I was hoping to get to that this week. It's on my calendar. Something can't interrupt it. Or if it's going to. It's got to be rescheduled first, you.
Beka: Know, because you need to do it. You're looking at discipline. That isn't something that's important.
Rebecca: Yeah. Because it's part of a disciplined pursuit.
Beka: Yes.
Rebecca: Of doing less. And so, you know, doing what we are doing well.
And so in order to do that.
So on a slightly, on a little bit of a tangent, one of the things that, that this brings out to me is how much I like to think that time is elastic.
It took me an embarrassingly long number of years to figure out,
oh, time doesn't. It's not elastic, it's finite. And so I can't say I have two hours and I'm going to try to get all these things done and hope that the time stretches to fit all those things right.
But instead to look at it and say,
you know, to see how long things are going to actually take and, and then assume they're probably going to take 15 minutes longer.
Beka: And he talks about that, he talks about time and how most people think that they have more time than they do. And also I think he says, like add 50%. So if you think something is going to take 30 minutes, give yourself 45.
It all comes back to that. Not rushing, not getting behind on your day and saying no and all those things. Yeah.
Rebecca: And I think some of us non essentialists think that if it's all done in time and we're not rushing, that we could have done more.
Beka: You could have fit one more thing.
Rebecca: We could have fit one more thing.
Beka: Yes. You're the person that like goes back and does one more errand before you leave the house and then your friends are at the restaurant, me being the friend, waiting for you to get there.
Rebecca: This has never actually happened. This is a purely hypothetical situation.
Beka: I mean, I'm calling out a few of my friends that might be listening to this that are notorious for time blindness. But I.
Rebecca: Well, yes, and,
and I think too, we're also. This conversation feels a smidge scattered to me just in the. As I was explaining to Becca before we started, for me, it's really hard for me to focus only on homeschooling when I'm talking about essentialism.
Because the reality is when you homeschool your parenting,
if you are only thinking about school, you're missing a chunk of what homeschooling is, which is guiding these little people who need to learn to govern themselves and to learn through life.
And sometimes the bigger lesson is not addition,
it's learning self control.
So you're parenting while you're schooling and we're doing it at our home, so we can't ignore the fact that we need the laundry to be going or whatever. So it's very hard for me to focus.
I think that's why I feel like I'm not an essentialist, is because there, there are lots of things to be done and taken care of at the same time. And it's very easy for me to read the book and start thinking about work or start thinking about my marriage or start thinking about,
you know, there's all these different pieces to my life.
But we are trying to keep the conversation focused on school.
Beka: Okay, well,
it was interesting that you brought out the discipline and you were thinking more of a schedule when I read the thing about discipline and about. I think, what does he say?
He says the unimportance of practically everything is the subtitle for the discipline chapter.
And what stuck out to me was, wow, we have this charter. And one of the beautiful things about our charter is like, I have resources.
I can order practically anything from the lending library. I can go on all these field trips. I have all this fabulous funds.
The horrible thing about that is now,
like, I have no discipline. I'm going to just buy all the washi tape I have. Washi tape that I've had for three years. I don't even know why I bought it.
And then the thing is, I wanted to tell my 3 year old not to use it last night for no purpose other than, like, I don't know, I needed it there.
So obviously I'm not as essentialist as we thought.
But we have all these resources and it can be really hard to be disciplined when you have so many options. Because when I was homeschooling independently and I had to pay out of pocket for every single thing, please believe that every single thing was going to be used and it was going to be fine,
tooth combed and it, you know, I really, like, I really had to have it before I got it. And now I'm like, oh, I could get that thing from teachers, pay teachers,
why not? What if I don't use it?
Rebecca: Electronic resources are out of sight, out of mind so much at my house. Okay, that brings up.
So he uses cleaning out a closet as an example of how to evaluate what's worth keeping and what to get rid of and then to have a plan to keep it going.
And he says,
you know, he's. Apparently, studies show that we value things that we already own more highly than they are actually worth.
And tells you to ask the question, if I didn't already own this,
how much would I spend to buy it?
Beka: I loved that part.
Rebecca: But I wrote, I made a little asterisk to myself and it says if school didn't Pay for it,
would I buy it?
And I think that that's actually been pretty helpful in ordering less,
reducing how many activities we're trying to do. If school didn't pay for this,
Sometimes it's a. We get to do this because school paid for it. Like go to Hamilton.
But if,
but I'm talking a lot more about stuff. Because if school didn't pay for it, would I buy it? Because if the answer is no, then it's not essential.
Beka: It might not necessarily be anything that's contributing.
Yeah. Even as far as curriculum, if school didn't pay for,
you know, this craft kit to build catapults,
not like I bought that, which I did,
would I have bought it? And then it just took up space and it took up time and it stressed me out. And I remember thinking, why did I do this?
Because I would have never didn't. It didn't add anything. Let's be honest. It added zero things to our lives. I'm sure there's some kid that would have learned from catapults.
My children did not.
I should have cut it out. Right. Like, if the school wouldn't have paid for it, I would have never given my time and energy to that particular project.
Rebecca: Whereas Crunch Labs,
we weren't buying a year long subscription, but we were getting those as gifts. Like they were important to my boy, they are important to my boys. They want,
you know, and that. And they're learning and it's definitely something that is important to them. So we were finding ways to pay for it before school was.
Beka: And like I said, there are some things that maybe I wouldn't,
you know,
sacrifice to get the really nice watercolors, but I would sacrifice to get some watercolors. And it's very nice that because of our school, my daughter can get nicer quality watercolors or, you know.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Beka: Hamilton again. Or like things that maybe I wouldn't have gotten that quality or that amount, but I would still place a high value in. It's the other things, like activities or.
Rebecca: One of the things Becca and I have in common is that we will both sacrifice for Broadway.
Beka: And we have and we will. It's just a thing.
Rebecca: And it's.
Beka: Well, okay, so it's something that we've both kind of deemed essential.
Rebecca: Right, Right.
Beka: Because I would look at it and say, this is something that I'm ready to break my routine and kind of tear apart my day because I don't live really near any theaters and kind of mess up everything because I want my children to have this experience and I feel like it's worthwhile for the music and all the things deemed it essential.
Whereas someone that maybe I. I crazily talked to someone the other day that was like, eh,
I don't think I'd go see Hamilton if somebody gave me a free ticket. It's like we're no longer friends.
You have to.
You are not essential in my life.
But again, someone else might not. That might not be deemed essential and.
Rebecca: Right.
Beka: It might not be deemed something that you tear apart your day for. But I think another example is there's like a park, a regular park day by my house.
And I'm always tempted.
I was just tempted the other day because I heard all the moms talking about it. And I'm always tempted to like, throw apart our whole day to go to this park day because I'm thinking, oh, you know, my kids friends and they'll make new friends and we'll be outside and.
But it's just not essential to what they're learning for them specifically in this environment. And it's not worth throwing apart our routine, destroying our whole day, getting behind on everything, the chaos that comes with taking seven children to the park.
So saying no to that, even though in the back of my head I have all those, oh, what if, what if they meet their best friend there and,
you know, they'll be 90 and talking about when they met at the park day, and I'm depriving them of that moment. But no. Okay, I'm not. No, I'm gonna say no.
I'm gonna say no. I'm gonna say no, and I'm gonna keep our routine and I'm gonna value the sanity that comes with, well, saying no in that moment.
Rebecca: And as somebody who sort of grew up always being encouraged to seize the day, seize the moment, go do the things, go. You know, I.
I've realized that I can really come to appreciate a quiet, peaceful morning.
A day when we get through school and we aren't all stressed and relationships aren't strained and we didn't lose a shoe somewhere and, you know, we can just.
Beka: Yes, everything just works.
Rebecca: It worked. And that day is not going to be a memory for my kids. But the feeling of peace in our home can be a core foundation in.
Beka: Something that they value overall when they're looking back and saying, this is the kind of environment I grew up in.
Rebecca: Yeah,
and we certainly are still going to go have fun.
The other thing I've been trying to weigh, like, how do I describe in the, in the Realm of essentialism is how we fit into the school.
And I don't personally deem samples essentially.
Beka: Well, just sit around and read all day. It's like breaking out hives thinking about that.
Rebecca: We don't sit around and read all day, but we do read, do try very hard to read every day. But we have deemed the school essential.
Beka: Yes.
Rebecca: Right. We've decided that the school is essential to how we're doing things, to being able to do things that we think are essential.
And so if the school is essential, then samples are essential.
It's been a really slow process for me to learn to, like, put that on the schedule. Okay, what are we going to be doing this month for science? That's going to be our.
Our sample and make sure that that's thought through ahead of time. So the last day samples are due. I'm like,
hey, boys, build a volcano so you can take a picture really fast.
Beka: Right. Trying to run through it.
Rebecca: So. Because that's not.
That's not choosing something that fits in with our plan to be a better homeschool. Right. To do what we want to do better.
And so one of the ways that I can make sure that we are doing what we want to do and to do it better is that samples are just a flow through that.
Did I explain that?
Beka: You're planning it in there. You're putting it in there so that it doesn't get forgotten. And I think if we look at it like a car again, like, I don't.
I don't want to spend my gas money that could get me to Tahoe on, like, a spark plug. But the car needs the spark plug.
Rebecca: Right.
Beka: I don't necessarily want to put together a sample or sit down for testing, but it has to happen to keep the car going. It has to happen to keep the things going.
So it's essential and it's.
We try to make it a lesson and, you know.
Rebecca: Right.
Beka: And we do hard things, and sometimes we have to do hard things.
Rebecca: And sometimes when you plan it, then you realize, okay,
actually doing the sample is pushing me to maybe do something that's a little better,
you know, to do. Maybe I'm gonna do a lesson that's a little more thorough than I might do if we weren't more correct.
Yeah.
Beka: Gonna check your spelling. You need to hand write that's not chicken scratch.
Rebecca: Or put a little better effort, you know, a little more careful effort into what you're doing.
Beka: And it does, I think, samples and testing and all the kind of things that,
you know, kind of make us grit our teeth and not necessarily love.
They are essential in our life. You know, like, there will be times,
you and I, we had to fill out a smart goals worksheet for our work.
Rebecca: Right.
Beka: We have to prove that we're working honestly. It's essentially a work sample for our bosses. We have to show them that we know what we're doing, that we have goals. Like, we have to do a work sample for them.
We have to.
When you're working in retail, you have to fill out a schedule or a report or when you're working, you know.
Rebecca: And when you're a policeman, you write out a report of what just happened.
Beka: So, yeah, so I think this kind of idea that goes around of, oh, well, that's not a real world skill. I mean, it is, you have to, you have to show your knowledge very frequently in the world.
And so that's not a bad thing to teach.
Rebecca: And you don't always get to choose the format that that's done in either.
Beka: That's true. Yeah. And you have to put your best foot forward in whatever way is asked of you.
Rebecca: If you, you know, it's time to renew your driver's license and you have to take the test again.
Beka: Well, even like we had to, you know, sometimes we have to provide paperwork or I have to write a letter to,
you know, a doctor saying, this is why I need this, why, and this I have. It has to be good. It has to. I'm proving why I need something. So it's,
it's a skill. And I have to take a driver's license test. I have to take a test to apply at Walmart. I mean, these things are so, they are essential.
They're just not fun.
Okay, I have a question for you because I, I, I am not good at this.
He talks a little bit about part of essentialism is not just saying no, but uncommitting to things that we're already committed to that are not working well.
And my question was, where do I draw the line between it's not working or it's just not working yet because we're teaching, right? And so maybe the spelling curriculum that we're kind of slogging through, everybody might hate it today and tomorrow, but maybe six months from now they know how to spell or maybe they don't.
And I was wrestling with that with myself, because I'm the one that will, like, throw the baby out with the bathwater and just get everything, it's not working. Get rid of it, start again.
But also realizing,
switching Curriculums three or four times a year is not conducive to anything. And we're not in a business where we can necessarily say, you know, this is losing money. We don't have a profit and loss sheet.
We have education where we're trying to say,
is this working? Is this.
Rebecca: Well, some things are probably easier to. More to evaluate more than others. But like with spelling, okay, they don't like it. But are they learning?
You know, and if they're learning, then you can say,
we're going to work on this until Christmas or we're going to stick this out for a month and then we're going to, we can talk about it. And giving them like, I expect you to do something, even if it's harder and pleasant,
but you have a voice. I will hear you. You know. Yeah, we're going to, we're going to give this a shot,
and then we will reevaluate. I'm, I'm huge on reevaluating. And I actually think that that's an essential skill for homeschooling is,
you know, evaluating what worked and what didn't.
But have you. Part of that evaluation is have you get of it a real shot? Sometimes you hate a curriculum because you didn't actually follow the curriculum.
Beka: Yeah, 100%.
Rebecca: But the, you know, as Pam Barnhill says, the best curriculum is the one that gets done.
So if you're not doing it because everybody hates it, it should go.
If you're, if it's not working because you're not giving it a fair shot, then you should probably be a little more disciplined in giving it a fair shot.
And then is, is the child learning what needs to be learned? And if it's not the right tool for that,
I mean, that,
that's the first important question. Because there's lots of things we don't like to do that we just need to do. So, you know, we can ask ourselves, do I hate cleaning the shower because I hate cleaning the shower, or is it because they've got the wrong tools?
You know, so are the tools doing the job?
And then if they're doing the job,
are they, do they hate it because they have a bad attitude? I guess I go there a lot. You know, I, I have one kid especially, that I can have a difficult time trying to sort through.
I.
Trying to coach that child to communicate better so that I can figure out is the curriculum or the class or the topic, is that the problem or is the problem your attitude?
You know, where's,
where's the actual Problem. And I don't quit things for bad attitudes.
We fix the attitude first.
So,
you know, if they're learning spelling, but they don't like the spelling curriculum, is that because of an attitude problem? Is that because of their curriculum? You know what I mean?
So I think trying to evaluate, to me, the attitude is more essential than the topic. So we're going to keep working on the topic. If the problem is just an attitude, once you've done the work on yourself to improve the attitude, if there's a problem with that class, the topic,
the curriculum, now we can have a different conversation,
start reevaluating.
Beka: Yeah.
Rebecca: But if you're willing to try it or to face the parts that are uncomfortable about it, then I hear you better.
Beka: Yes. Yes. If you're having a better attitude about it.
Rebecca: Yeah.
So I guess I have a hard time articulating the things that are essential to me. Often when it's time to, like, make a list. What is your mission statement? I'm not very good at that, but I can come down to, like,
attitude over.
Over performance. Like that's. That's more important. Or family time and reading together. Yeah, those are absolutely on my essential list.
Being curious,
those kinds of things. I think I have gotten better over the last three or four years of trying to not get more things done, but get the right things done.
And that, I think, has huge implications for homeschooling because there are a lot of things that you can do.
So are you doing the right things?
And I think that changes from year to year. You know, a couple of years ago,
we. I decided I was tired of feeling like we were always trying to learn typing. And so we just quit a whole bunch of stuff. We didn't worry about spelling or handwriting or anything.
Like we were gonna do typing. For six weeks,
we focused on typing. The kids knew what their words per minute goal was. They were going through a program, and when they hit that words per minute per minute goal, different for each age,
then we could stop the typing program and move on. And they had a skill that they're really not going to lose, most likely, you know,
so deciding that that was essential for that season and then another season for a different kid, it might be. We.
If. If we don't have time for anything else. Today we're going to work on reading in phonics because this is what needs to happen. It has to be super consistent or we're never.
But again, once your child learns to read, they know how to read. They don't forget how to read. Right. You know,
so that's one of those things that's worth putting in the time and the concentrated effort and the direct instruction on.
Because once they know how to do it, you can move on. So you can dabble at it and play at it and play games on tablets and do different things for three years, or you can really focus and spend an hour a day working on that skill and then you can move on and do other things.
My point being that while that's a focus,
science might be a little lighter because they're still young enough that we can say a lot of science is curiosity. We can, we don't have to necessarily be doing the really formal experiments.
We can be talking about science concepts and cooking and doing those kinds of things that give them a foundation. While what we're focusing on, what's essential right now is learning to read.
Or, you know, we can go back to spelling after you've learned to type. And we can. It's only six weeks, you know.
Beka: Yeah. In the book he actually calls it, I had written it down, he calls it the ratio of activity to meaning. Which I think is exactly what you're saying is, are we spending all this time doing something that doesn't necessarily have a large or a long term impact?
And so, you know, I would much rather spend 30 minutes teaching my kindergartner to read or to just love reading and to love that time with mom. Then 30 minutes about, you know,
how the flag was made that she's not gonna remember.
She can color a picture of a flag. She knows we have a flag in America. That's her turn in let's go read a book or let's sit down and snuggle or whatever.
Rebecca: Associating reading books and school with time with mom, right?
Beka: Yes. And positivity. That's the meaning of that. I would much rather take a long term time to doing something that has meaning and is going to stick and is going to like typing, that's going to take,
that's important. That's just the reality of life in this world is you have to be able to type. So it's going to be more important than necessarily remembering what happens.
You know, the chemical formula for baking soda and vinegar or whatever that is.
Rebecca: But I can tell you that when they get to high school, what that all looks like and what the, what is, what becomes essential is really different.
Beka: It's a whole different animal.
Rebecca: It is an entirely different animal. There's less choice in a lot of ways because you have, you know, before you have to learn some basics of education. And you're growing as a person and in high school you still want to foster those interests.
And that's the benefit of being able to homeschool, that you can be a little creative with classes that you're choosing. But there's still graduation requirements.
Beka: Yes.
Rebecca: And if they're college bound, there's college requirements. And so you have to fulfill those things. And so choosing what's essential,
I, I think high school and maybe college, maybe less. But high school especially is a time when what is essential to you is sort of chosen by others more.
Beka: So like history, you're learning your history this year, whether you want to or not. You know, you're learning biology this year. Sorry.
Rebecca: Right.
How vigorously you do that.
And if you have extracurriculars or if you're focused on all A's or, you know, you do still get to choose what's essential to you, but you have different parameters. Right.
Beka: And it does, it does help them like we were talking about, to kind of come full, full circle. That my older kids kind of embrace this idea of essentialism more, especially my oldest two, because they're having to face these decisions of, hey, these are the classes that you're taking.
It's non negotiable, the work has to be done.
And these are the other things you want to do. So, you know, you have to weigh if you want a job and you want money. That means you might have to say no to camps that come up because you've made a commitment to work on Fridays or if you want to do jiu jitsu for 12 hours a week,
then you might have to say no to working or, you know, all these things that they're having to face for themselves. As far as what are my own desires.
And you know, I have one child that can stay very busy and prefers to be that way and it doesn't stress her out. And the other one that is learning.
I said yes to everything this week and now I'm having a little bit of a breakdown because I was too busy. So.
Rebecca: And that's something we haven't really even talked about is just the trade he talks about. Everything is a trade off. Every yes to something is a no to something else.
Yeah. But every no to something is a yes to something else. You know, if you.
So you know, the trade offs, we, we're talking about productivity or doing things better. But some of those are, are about emotional well being as well.
You know,
okay, you have this and this activity this week.
Are you going to have the energy for this other thing following that, like learning to see the big picture or even with friendships.
Beka: Like how much energy is this friend taking you? If you. She wasn't already your friend,
how much would you invest into making her be your friend? You know, how much, how much is it worth to you? Is it worth the struggles? Is it worth the toils?
Is this relationship worth the stress? Kind of all of those things that again, we're a little off of homeschooling, but also not because we're homeschooling and they're there and.
Rebecca: Right. And it's all involved in.
Beka: I mean it's a big, it's a big topic that's hard to narrow down into like it is.
Rebecca: And the, the point of this podcast can only be to give you a taste to go out.
Beka: Please read it.
I do not like self help books in general. I'm not. I'm like a. I want my book to shut my brain off and be pretty mindless and stupid. I'll just admit that about myself.
I want my reading to be enjoyable. I don't want to.
Rebecca: An escape.
Beka: Yeah, stressed. I just want nothingness. But I actually really,
really loved reading this book and I will read it again because I think there's just a lot of. Even if you don't leave it wanting to become this super committed essentialist,
I think there are a lot of good little tidbits and little quotes and little mantras and I even wrote down. I keep coming back to the idea of if I didn't have it, what would I do to get it?
Because I think just in life,
even teaching our kids that this idea of like, what is this actually worth to you?
What. What would you be willing to give up to have this thing in your life?
It's just such a good like editing tool for existing.
Rebecca: And imagine graduating from high school with the ability to ask yourself that question. Like you would have a life skill that. Here we are.
Beka: We're not gonna say how many years after high school. Thank you.
Rebecca: We're. We're working really hard to learn yes.
Beka: And learning to say no. I mean, there's a whole chapter on how to say no, which I think if you,
if you buy this book for nothing else,
buy it and, or get it from the library and teach your kids how to say no to stuff. I mean, how valuable is it to like instill in your children this idea of no, thank you.
Rebecca: I think you need to be able to write in it. So while I'm a huge fan of libraries, this might not be.
Beka: I borrowed it. If you guys could see my book, there's like 500 tabs because I couldn't write in it because I borrowed it. So I'm like tabbing all the pages.
Rebecca: I. One of the things I really like about the book that I want to say before we go is that throughout, to help you wrap your head around it, he has these little tiny charts.
Like a non essentialist would do this. An essentialist does this.
Here's one from the no chapter.
A non essentialist avoid saying no to.
To avoid feeling social awkwardness and pressure.
And a non essentialist says yes to everything.
Whereas an essentialist dares to say no firmly, resolutely and gracefully says yes only to things that really matter.
So being able to evaluate what really matters is the first question, which he will have already taken you through the. In the book. But I really, I appreciated those little charts all over.
He'd sort of take everything he just said and make it essential.
Beka: For you.
Rebecca: Yeah, well, and also as a non essentialist, it helps me see myself over here and like, okay, so here's what I do instead. You know, it's, it's really concise.
Beka: Do you want to talk about the scary schedule word?
Rebecca: I. Well, you. The routine.
Beka: Routine.
Rebecca: Yeah.
I want to whet people's appetites because I don't know, I see another episode in that perhaps in our future.
Chapter 18 goes into the genius of routine.
And I think that has huge implications for we homeschoolers. Because if you have to wrestle your kids into math every day because they're never sure if they're doing it at all or at 8:00 or at noon or at 2 or, you know, if there's no routine to it, you're going to wrestle with your kids about getting it done.
Beka: Yes.
Rebecca: But when there's routine and they know what's coming and they know there's an end and they know what they get to do afterwards.
Yes. There's so much less mental energy,
so many fewer decisions to make because we all need fewer decisions to make and so much less emotional wrangling.
Beka: Yes. That was. He was able to put into words something that I could not explain, which is the mental. What you said, the mental energy of like especially. It compounds. Right.
If you're starting with one child, if you have more, for the love of God, give yourself a routine. Because it compounds. Right. If you just have one kid that you're homeschooling and they like, what are we going to do today?
Oh, what do you want to do. It's. It's easy and you flow. But then when you have two or three or four saying, what's next? What's next? And you're saying,
you have to check the schedule or you have to check what they've done already. And then. But what's after that? What's after that? It. It is a lot.
Rebecca: And there's a phone call in the middle of it and somebody selling carpet cleaning at the door.
Beka: Yeah.
Rebecca: And suddenly you've forgotten everything you were trying to think about before.
Beka: Yeah. He basically talks about how it takes your demand and your attention off this. These little things that don't need your attention. Like if you're showering. If you think about showering, like, you get in your shower and you do the same thing,
you never deviate.
But also, you can think about other things. Right. Because you can focus.
Rebecca: You have all the mental.
Beka: I mean, I love. I always come out with genius. Right. I would be a millionaire if I wrote down everything I thought of in the shower.
My husband will, like, what did you come up with today? Like, we should invent.
Not gonna give it away on a podcast,
but. Yeah. So you're. You're no longer having to think about these things. You're just doing them, and then you can actually think about what's important, and they can think about what's important.
And.
Rebecca: But routine requires discipline. Right. And especially.
Especially at the beginning,
because you have to lay down the routine and you have to kind of convince your kids, yes, we are going to do the same thing. And then you have to convince yourself,
don't change it today. It's not a good enough reason to change your routine.
Beka: Go to the park because it's not worth it.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Keep your routine. And if you find yourself lonely, if you realize we don't have enough activity, then build the park into the routine so that it becomes part of. I just talked to a friend the other day who's in a very different stage of life than I am.
But, like, every afternoon after nap time,
she loads up the kids and they go outside for a couple of hours. And then when they come home,
everybody's at peace. So that, like, go time is built into their system and it gets some energy out before everybody comes home for the evening and dinner. And everybody is calm because they got that go time, you know?
And so if your family needs that, build it into the routine instead of.
I mean, if you're the thousand hours outside lady, your routine is you go outside in the morning, and that's what you you do, you know, it's already there. So it doesn't have to be sit at a table.
But. But what is your routine? So that there's so many fewer questions and maybe even post it on the wall and then stick to it, especially if,
because of outside factors, whether it's therapies or classes or whatever, every day might be a little bit different,
but every Monday is the same or the first hour of the day is the same, or.
And that discipline, though, and you always need new discipline. We all know this at the beginning of the school year, right? You're establishing new routine,
and then as the holidays come, it messes up a little. So when you get back from holidays, you have to put that discipline into. Establish a new routine again.
And sometimes maybe at summer, you establish a new summer routine, but putting the effort into two weeks of, we aren't breaking this,
and then everybody's on the same page.
Beka: Yeah.
Rebecca: And. But there's that. That discipline word again. Right. And that relentless pursuit of doing things better.
Beka: Yeah. And it's not that there can't be flexibility or, you know, all the unschoolers and our listeners are dying right now, but it. You can. It's just part of your. Your routine, but I think still be those other things.
Rebecca: Right. But maybe your routine is, we spend the first hour doing chores, we spend the next two hours going on nature walks.
Beka: Exactly.
Rebecca: We spend the next two hours reading together. We spend the next hour doing lunch. Or, you know, it can be. But there's still routine to that. There's still predictability for our kids and for us.
Fewer decisions to be made.
Beka: And it'll. It takes such a weight off of me being the primary homeschooler. So whether your mom or dad or grandma or uncle, that's primary homeschooling.
If you get sick or you're just having a really bad day or you have to leave them with someone else or, you know, whatever it might be, if they don't have that, then either school's done.
Which is fine if, you know, school gets canceled, but if you're sick for like a week, you're not doing school for a week. Or it just takes that pressure of, like, I have to be on and ready to go and 100% constantly, because I know they know what to do.
So maybe they'll come and say, where's my math book? And I can say, you know where your math book is and you have a schedule.
You know, what's next?
Rebecca: I think routine allows flexibility because if you don't have Any routine, it's not flexibility, it's chaos.
Right? But it, when you have routine, you and everybody knows it, you can deviate for a day and come back to it.
Beka: You're making a conscious. It's back to editing. You're making a conscious decision to say, okay, today we should be doing history for two hours, but we're making a conscious decision to go to the museum or we're making a conscious decision to go to the park, knowing that that's what we're missing.
But you're not in chaos. Kind of what did me with. What do we have to catch up on? I know what was supposed to go there. I'm choosing to replace it with something else.
Rebecca: Part of our routine is that there's a day a week when stuff isn't scheduled.
So it doesn't mean we don't do anything. It actually means that because I've built that piece of the routine in, it's easy to put a field trip on that day because then we aren't missing a million other activities.
We don't have to even make that decision.
Is this worth missing this class for that we normally take or something? Because that day is normally an open day where we just get school done.
And so if we choose that this field trip is worth interrupting school for, the day is available and that that makes, there's fewer decisions to make to have that flexibility.
Beka: Ours is that I plan four day school weeks consciously. And then we know that there's the fifth day, which is Friday, which is if we interrupt during the week, there's a day to make that up.
We're not going to fall behind. And they know, oh, if I don't do science on Tuesday or I don't, you know, whatever it is, I'm going to do it on Friday or.
And then my older kids that are maybe not necessarily in that structure, they know they have Friday for I didn't get all my math homework done, I didn't get my English essay done for hsva.
And they know they have that kind of buffer as well, of there's kind of that extra day. But again, it gives that buffer of this is our routine. And we know we have a makeup day built in so that we can make choices.
Rebecca: Well, there's no good place to stop.
Beka: No, it's so good. I could just keep talking about it.
Rebecca: And I do feel a. I don't know, I don't know about you. I feel a book club coming on.
Beka: Or like an extended series. Yes, this is fun. It's fun sitting and talking about it.
Rebecca: It is because and there's so many things that I've been rolling around in my head forever.
I wanted to be able to talk and sort of like calling Sarah McKenzie,
who else to talk to.
So thank you for being here. And I you really had to go out of your way. So I appreciate you making this work and putting in the effort to read the book.
So I had somebody to talk to.
Beka: Oh, it was so fun.
Rebecca: So thank you, Becca, again. And we'll have to check in later and see how essentialism is going.
Beka: Yes, let's do it. Let's keep ourselves accountable.
Rebecca: Thank you listeners for joining today on the Sequoia Breeze Podcast. I'm so glad that you joined Becca and I to talk about essentialism, and I hope that you will get that book and let it impact your homeschool next month.
Don't miss it. We are going to be talking about how to use high school outlines,
a topic that if you have a high schooler is or an eighth grader, you're going to want to know all about.
So come on back next month for another breath of fresh air for your homeschool.