How do you balance running a business while homeschooling your kids?

Corey Winter 0:01
Welcome to 10 minutes to being boss, a buy side show for creative business owners where we give you actionable insights, tools and tactics on Korea winter. And here's your host, Emily Thompson.

Emily Thompson 0:14
I'm so excited that it is full on springtime here in Chattanooga. But it's also been raining for days on end. I'm really hoping that we don't get interrupted by thunder today.

Corey Winter 0:26
Well, that actually might be a great setting for our question today. I know you've talked a lot about this during the last few weeks, it's on a lot of people's minds. And it even came up in a recent call with some being boss community members. But how do you deal with having your kids at home all day while you're running? not one, but two businesses. And on top of that, you actually homeschool Lily as well. And you have for several years. So how do you how do you manage all this?

Emily Thompson 0:53
This is quite the hot topic these days. I never anticipated that whenever I began homeschooling my kid that I would be ahead of the curve one day and that people would be coming to me on mass basically asked me how it is that I do this thing, which is staying at home working from home with my kid at home, literally every day of every year more or less as I homeschool her but also just like run my business with a kid in the house. So let me give you a little bit of background, I'm going to share a bit about how it is that I make this do and also share a bit of that homeschooling stuff because I think this is really important. I think even more people may be considering this as a more viable option moving forward. So let's get started. First, we started homeschooling our daughter six years ago, so she has been home with us since the first grade, she is currently in the sixth grade. And it's fine, it's totally fine. It's fine. I'm not gonna say this is like the best thing ever. But it is something that we continue to choose to do every year. We're also completely open to it changing at any point. So it's not like even if she wants to go or there's a better option or anything, we're definitely going to homeschool is just at the moment. This continues to be the best

Corey Winter 2:10
option for us. And I mean, she has been in public school before.

Emily Thompson 2:14
Yes, so she was in kindergarten. And it wasn't the best kindergarten experience. I'm going to talk about that a little bit in a moment. But we have and she was in preschool before too. So it's not like we're anti school or anything. We're like pro life. Not that kind of pro life. I mean, this is not that conversation. This is about enjoying our lives. And making her education work within the context of our lives, not the other way around. So my partner is at home. So I'm not doing alone. I do want to say that very clearly. We both work from home, David more so works out of the house. But in a situation where he can take her with her quite often, which is also really nice. So our entire family is at home, which is also funny, I'm having plenty of people being like how do you work at home with your husband. And you just do it when you have to. And it's even more fun when you want to, and you sit him out of the house a lot, right? I used him out on errands that just send him around in circles and keep them gone for a long time. It's fine. Don't really do that. But maybe I'll start doing that because you imagine little scavenger hunts that I send them both on. Basically you learn to get creative. So we do take turns with who is sort of guiding Lily's education on any given day or week or hour even. And we do set aside time as well to do things all together. And this is all very intentional. We sit down every Sunday or Monday morning and we discuss the week ahead. When we're laying out when things are busy when there's things going on who's going to have what sometimes there's a planner with highlighters I've been saying funny means but like are you that homeschool mom with planners with highlighters. Sometimes you have to be folks that is not a funny joke, get out your highlighters. Don't be ashamed of it. But we're looking at who's doing what project who's taking her to this thing that she needs to do, when does the house need to be quiet because there are meetings or if there's recordings maybe everyone needs to be out of the house. It is like our life is quite a production but I would imagine literally everyone's is just in a different way. And for me it goes right along with like the preparation for like meal prepping, let's say or, you know managing a project at work. It's just another layer of management that you have to work into your daily weekly monthly routine. Another big tip here for having your kids at home homeschooling or not is to set boundaries and hold to them. One of my fun ones is we'd have breakfast together every morning and sets a little bit of time that we try really hard not to talk business. But we are all together. Having Breakfast, and sometimes it's a bowl of Cheerios, that's perfectly fine. Sometimes it's actually cooking a nice breakfast. When it comes to like hard work boundaries, put those in place, too, one of the ones that I have is, if my doors closed, which I only do when I'm working very hard on something, or if I'm in a meeting, you're not even allowed to knock, and don't even think about walking through it. When my door is closed, everyone knows that I am off limits. Another one is, let's say my door is open and someone comes in to ask me a question. And I see someone because these are rules that I have in place for both my daughter, and David, to be very clear. If my fingers are moving on the keyboard, if I'm typing something, don't speak to me. I'm gonna finish that email or that Instagram post or whatever, and then I'll stop and then you can ask me the question, or whatever. But one of the things I've that sort of prompted this was I'd be typing people to come in and ask me question, I would completely lose my train of thought. And so implemented, a boundary of my fingers are moving on the keyboard, do not speak to me. And it works out fine. I often have parents who struggle with setting these kinds of boundaries that are kids ask me how it is that I get my kid to listen to me. And maybe I have an exceptional child doesn't every parent thinks so. But very clearly, I don't give up whenever it comes to creating boundaries for my kids. And sure it takes him I say kids, because sometimes David's my kids do. Sometimes it takes a long time for it to become a normal thing. But I don't give up and I simply expect my kid to at some point, follow it to a tee.

Emily Thompson 6:38
And then I will say to add my own schedule, I scheduled time each week when I'm spending time with my kid when we're learning we're playing or play learning, which is also a thing. And then I also have times in my schedule where I'm doing things like batching meetings. So for me Tuesdays and Wednesdays are pretty heavy meeting days. So those are the days that I know any David to be more hands on, I'm going to be doing all of my meetings so that the other three days a week, we can be a little more fluid. And then David does those things as well. He has time during the week when he needs very focused work where I'm responsible for Lily, and was one of trade things back and forth. It again as a production and it works. It totally works. Alright, so let's talk about homeschool down. So what I just described is some tactics for simply having your kid at home, create some hardcore boundaries, find ways to balance the work, and the hanging out with your kid. So my number one tip, if you're homeschooling your child is to ask your kid what they want to learn about. For us, our daughter did not have a great kindergarten experience. So for the first couple of years of homeschooling, it was all about making learning fun again, which meant learning about what she was interested in. And then a not formal structured way, we had to be kind of sneaky about it. But it totally worked. If your kids are coming out of traditional school, they probably have a little bit of PTSD, little trauma, around school around learning things around reading books, around studying things. Sometimes there is some unlearning that has to happen in order to remind your kids that learning is a fun thing to do. And so you have to be a little sneaky, but it can be totally worth it. And because we started in that way, we were able to sort of keep some of those habits and routines in place as we have grown with her homeschooling. So even now she leads what she's learning for the most part, I would say, over half, maybe as much as like 75 80% of what she's learning is based on what she wants to be learning everything else is like core curriculum sort of things. But everything else is what it is that she wants to be learning. And on any given day, we're only allotting about two to five hours of learning, which started as two to three hours when she was younger and has grown as she's gotten older. And those two to five hours of very day to day, week to week depending on the weather, what projects are being worked on what sort of family stuff we have planned, like travel, this is not hardcore rules. This is just where some some fluidness which is another thing that I really love about homeschooling. And of those two to five hours, our days generally look like this. One hour a day is reading every single day. And this is a reading that she is doing on her own. And this has pretty much been in place since she was about seven or eight years old before that it was like 30 minutes of reading or 45 minutes, but since she was about eight, it has been an hour of reading every single day. And this is in addition to any reading that she's doing in the morning or at night. This is like during the day, hardcore reading time. For the most part. She's reading things that she wants to be reading, but occasionally I'll assign her a book that she needs to be reading as well. She's also learned that those books are usually going to make her cry.

Corey Winter 9:55
What are you making her read? Oh my gosh.

Emily Thompson 10:01
Right What did I get hurt?

Corey Winter 10:02
My kid cry every day by learning? No, I

Emily Thompson 10:06
mean, it's like in so I recently had to explain this to her because I made her read. I mean, let's like the Golden Compass, or I think her and David read hatchett together recently. It's like the books that you read in school. It's the books that are like Common Core for most human beings alive today, or at least most American humans alive today. so that she can like just be part of like modern culture, even though she's a homeschool kid. But those like Nobel Prize winning books are all sad. I can probably gonna make her read The Diary of Anne Frank soon

Corey Winter 10:42
as she read of my Sunday. Yeah, that's probably not until she gets older. But

Emily Thompson 10:47
no, no, she has it that one is on the list, though. So it's mostly like those list of recommended reading books does not mean making her cry. It is the school system that still making her cry. But it's important for kids to learn that things are hard, because Lily's life is not hard. But it's important for her to learn that not everyone's life is homeschool and cookies. Alright, so during that reading hour every day, though she's doing or I'm usually doing meetings. So I like to time that hour of day where she is entertaining herself basically, for when I can do meetings, or do focus work. So even if I am responsible for Lily on any given day, I can still get work done. One to two hours is online learning. So things like some coding practice, or some online school setups, or whatever it may be, there are so many options, we've bounced between a couple of them. This is also great for focused work on my part, or meetings. And then I like to do one or two hours of some sort of writing practice. So this can be writing letters to friends and family or research projects, which she loves doing. And I love that she loves doing them or paragraph prompts or handwriting or workbooks or something, some sort of non online learning, that usually writing focused. And that's kind of all it is, more or less

Corey Winter 12:09
so outside of schoolwork. Does she ever, like help you do your work? Is she ever like watch you design something or watch you bookkeeper or anything like that?

Emily Thompson 12:19
We try. She's like on the verge of getting fired. Oh, okay. We have had her doing some stuff at Almanac. But she's a preteen right now, and she doesn't like being told what to do. So when it comes to work stuff, it's become enough of an argument that I've just simply said, I'm not trying to make you work and like, hate me. So let's just not work and you we can still be friends. So we're working on that. But again, preteen guys, I do have a preteen, she has worked with us plenty and sometimes she'll sit down, especially if I'm doing a graphic design project, she'll sit and watch me push some pixels around. She likes watching that. And she is also definitely very involved in business stuff, especially when we are going up to the almanac office. Sometimes she's around whenever meetings are being had, whenever we're getting ready for markets and those sorts of things. So that's another one of my favorite things about homeschooling is that she very much is deeply understanding of the work that we do as entrepreneurs. And I think that that will only serve her and make her more aware of her options when she is older. It's a piece that I whenever we went into it, I was aware that that was going to be an advantage of homeschooling her but it's one that I feel like I still don't even understand the impact of I'm constantly amazed and surprised and excited about how much her watching us do this work has opened up options for her. She gets very excited about the unlimited opportunities that she has both in the working force, which sometimes she's like, I really want to work here and I'm like, honey, that's great. And other times it's like I want to start a business doing this and I'm like yeah, that's great, too. So yes, she does she is quite involved with work, though not and not in the ways that you would usually expect.

Corey Winter 14:08
Now just note, we do not condone child labor.

Emily Thompson 14:12
Okay, so here is a fun thing though. If the kid is yours, it's not child labor. You don't even have to pay them.

Corey Winter 14:18
Oh, okay. Well, there you go. Legal loophole, everything.

Emily Thompson 14:22
Yeah, you can totally employ your own child. We do pay Lily let me be very clear whenever she is working, especially doing some things that Almanac like she's really good at putting like the warning stickers on the bottom of the candles, those sorts of things. We do pay her for those sorts of things. But also we don't have to, it doesn't even have to be minimum wage. So you can actually get your kid to do work for you and you don't have to pay them but you can think of it as like allowance on steroids.

Corey Winter 14:53
I used to help my mom in her classroom, but I never got paid for it. She paid me the love

Emily Thompson 14:59
All right, I don't pay in love. I'm just kidding. Okay, so um, I also want to add on top of the two to five hours a day is that Lily is doing work. Like schoolwork. We're also occasionally incorporating other things that she wants to learn. So at least a once a week, she does like some sort of baking project. She's gotten really good chocolate chip cookies, guys, which I very much so love. And that's one of those things that she wants to learn to do more of. So we're working that into her sort of, quote, unquote, curriculum. Also fun kits and projects. So Kiwi crate is a monthly subscription box that we've done before that we really enjoyed. We've gotten some chemistry kits before that we love finding inexpensive projects to do from Pinterest is really fun and easy. Teachers Pay teacher's calm is a really great resource that you can go for very school oriented projects. And then also just watching documentaries on netflix is also totally learning because you know, your kids are watching lots of television at school, so you can do that at home too. And then there's also outside of the house stuff we like to supplement our in house work, which sometimes is also done with a tutor not these days. But we've had tutors in the past who will come in and do reading or math is like really hardcore school skills that make David Nye really angry to sit down and try to teach her like multiplying fractions or whatever it may be, you can get a tutor to come in and do those sorts of things. And then outside of the house stuff like Forest School is becoming a very popular option. Lily does one and really enjoys it. It's a repeat, she likes doing it. She's done it a couple of years in a row. Children's museums usually have homeschool programs as well, as well as aquariums and zoos. Look around your local area and see what you have. There are lots of options out there. And I like using those times. For David nice to have lunch dates. Right, which is a ton of fun. So anyway, those are all of my sort of tips for engaging with your kid or without your kid if you have them at home. And if you're homeschooling them. And I will say to that I chose this life because it allowed me a greater sense of flexibility. My schedule is not run by drop off and pickup times. I am not at the beck and call of any teachers or principals or PTA or any of those things. And I was really tired of my kid coming home sick every other weekend when she was in school. Now I can travel when I want and I will never grow old and wish I'd spent more time with my kids. Because literally I'm with her all day every single day. No, and really whether you choose this or not. Or whether you chose where you currently are with your kid being at home or not. With a bit of effort, it can go a long way. And it's a wonderful opportunity to create a bond with your kid that will serve you for decades to come. I think it's important and fine, it can really be fun. Literally teach your kid to make chocolate chips and you will not be sad about it.

Corey Winter 17:59
And when you get old they can take over the business.

Emily Thompson 18:03
Oh right now she doesn't care attitude right?

Corey Winter 18:10
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