Hi, I'm Nicholeen Peck. I'm a lifetime homeschooler and I speak at a lot of
the homeschool conferences around the world. People often want to know how to homeschool
with a toddler in the house. And that's what we're going to be talking about in this video.
If you can homeschool when you have a toddler, you can homeschool forever. We're talking anytime. It
is literally the hardest time to homeschool when you have older children and you have a toddler.
And if you've got a baby to boot, then you know for sure you can do it forever.
But here's the good news: And if you remember nothing else from this video I hope you remember
this. That one of the greatest lessons that you can teach your other children is how to
take care of the younger people around them. Because it gives them confidence for their own
life going forward. They learn what it means to run a family, they learn what sacrifice means,
and they learn that older people always take care of younger people. There are adult skills and life
lessons that are learned while they watch you take care of that younger child that cannot be learned
anywhere else. So, even if the homeschool day gets botched because of the toddler... I'm repeating
that. Even if the homeschool day gets botched because of the toddler, you will be successful
just by taking care of the toddler. We're going to talk about how to homeschool with a toddler
in the house but I want you to know something. My very best tip, I'm saving for the last. So,
please stay with me to the end because this final tip that I give you is going to be something so
fun is going to transform your homeschool. It's something we've created as a tradition
in our family and it's made homeschooling through all the years no matter the ages
fun and enjoyable. First, let's talk about how to start your day out successfully. So, number 1,
you have to wake up. Okay? Waking up is important. I had a friend when I was a young mother,
when I just had toddlers who said to me that she had a goal every day to wake up, get showered and
make her bed. She didn't care whatever else happened the rest of the day. She would feel
good about herself if she could get showered and get her bed made. And I thought, that's actually
a good rule of thumb. I'm going to remember that. I'm not going to stay in my pajamas all day. I'm
gonna feel like I got up and I got going. Now, I know, it can seem so nice to stay in those pajamas
especially when you're homeschooling and you don't have to go anywhere. In fact, it could seem like
one of the perks. But I'll tell you what, your enthusiasm, your inspiration level goes way,
way up if you actually get dressed. And in my case, if I put my shoes on. I'm much more willing
to run outside and do something spontaneous with the children if I've got my shoes on. So,
tip number 1 with toddlers especially because they take so much energy and run around time,
if you are not up, showered, and have the bed made before they get up and get going. Then your day
will not quite turn out right. And you'll always feel like you're running a few steps behind. So,
even if it means just taking a little bit less sleep or a really fast shower, just do that for
yourself so that you're ready for whatever is coming at you with the toddlers and the rest of
your homeschool that day. Here's one of my secret weapon tips: So, when I had 2 toddlers and I did
not want to have them in the middle of everything all the time. I realized that my older children
could wake up earlier too and we could get a lot done before the little ones even woke up. Now,
to be fair, I wasn't one of those moms who put my toddlers and babies to bed at 7 P.M.
No. They usually stayed up until like 9:00 P.M. I know that seems like unheard of. But I did that
because I wanted them to sleep in the morning because school for the older ones in the morning
is better than school at night. Now, you can do homeschool whenever you want. But the brain is
fresh in the morning. So, I thought, we're going to keep everybody up and we're going to go to
bed at like 9 or so and then I'm going to wake the older ones up earlier. We went to a special little
place in the basement of our house. I mean, of course, the basement is finished but we went down
there in a special room. The furthest room away from the babies. We brought the little monitor
with us and we had our special mom school time just us. It was magic time. It was a time where
they could just sit and talk to me and never be interrupted by the babies. They loved that time.
Even though it meant waking up earlier in the morning, they got me all to themselves. And I knew
that if I had that moment with them, it didn't matter what happened the rest of the day. We'd had
a beautiful connection moment sparks flew. They learned things, we discussed things, we had done
homeschool even if for the rest of the day things started going a little off because of all of the
catch the baby, get the baby, change the baby, feed the baby. All the things you have to do when
you've got babies and toddlers. Number 3, put the babies and toddlers first. They need to be first.
In fact, it's good for the other children to learn how to sacrifice. They should see these other
children as worth sacrificing for. They shouldn't see them as people who get in the way. In fact,
if you think of the toddlers as people, little people getting in the way of what you're trying
to accomplish with homeschool, you'll teach your older children to be entitled. They will feel
like they deserve time away from their younger siblings. This will be a very bad thing for the
family for the future. In fact, the bonds between the siblings won't form properly. They should all
feel like they honor each other in their specific time and role of life. When a child is a toddler,
they need more attention, more guidance, more help. And everyone in the family should be willing
to do it. Even the older ones who want to read their book or work on their project. Sometimes
they have to sacrifice. It's healthy, it's good learning, it helps them learn priorities,
not to mention, adult skills. I have more tips for you but are you liking this so far? If so,
give me a thumbs up. Also, you might want to know that on my website teachingselfgovernment.com,
I have videos dedicated to how I homeschool. I show my book collection and talk about all
kinds of things. So, there's a lot of things there for you to learn from just my journey as
a homeschool mom. So, check those things out --teachingselfgovernment.com. Sometimes it is
useful to have private time in the day with one of the older children. But it's difficult when
you have a toddler that needs your attention so much. Especially if the toddler gets to the age
where they won't take a nap anymore. Because what I did do for a while is during toddler nap time or
baby nap time, I would take the older children and I would work on things especially with them
again when the younger ones were down for a nap. But once they start not taking a nap
as much or maybe it's just one of those days they're a little bit off, you have to figure
out another way to have that private time with the olders that might be needed. So, what I did
is we had switch off time where one of the older children would take one of the younger children
for a certain period of time. Maybe 20 minutes. And they would do something fun like a game
and then we would switch. The next 20-minute block, another older child would take another
one of the younger children or the same younger child, that same toddler child and they would go
and do a fun thing with them while I spent some one-on-one time with the other child. So,
we worked it out when we had to. And the younger children saw that mom needed to spend time
with the olders too so that they didn't get any entitlement growing within their hearts either.
But we did make it so that also the older children got the opportunity to serve
from time to time so that other people could get the learning experiences that they needed. Our
family loves family reading time. In fact, we did it every day after our family canon which is what
we call our family devotional time. So, during this reading time, toddlers are a little restless.
They can't sit as still as the older children who can focus on all the words. But don't be fooled.
They are listening. There have been those magical moments where you hear the toddler
quote something from the book and you thought, "Surely, they weren't listening. But actually they
were." So, what I had is I had a big basket. In fact, this big basket sat on top of my
refrigerator so that no one could use anything in the basket unless it was family reading time. So,
I would bring down the basket family reading time and it was full of special things like play-doh
or special little things to keep your hands busy during the time while mom read to the family. The
toddlers loved this. In fact, the big kids loved it too. Everyone had something to keep their hands
busy while they were learning from the story and discussing with mom about the lesson for the day.
When I first started homeschooling, I think my parents were a little concerned
at first that I didn't know what I was doing. But I promised them I was going to do my very best.
Well, they immediately started helping me with things. Well, one year, I think it was maybe for
a mother's day right at the very beginning of my homeschooling journey, they bought me these books.
So, one of them is called the Toddler's Busy Book. It's by Trish Cuffner and then this one is
the Preschooler's Busy Book also by Trish Kuffner. Now, you can see they are well worn and used all
the time. In fact, my children use these books now when they go babysitting to other people. So, when
my girls or my boys are watching other people's children, they're like, "Oh, we need a fun idea."
Well, here's your golden nugget. These fun ideas give tons of ideas for how to train your children.
They're broken into sections like there's a whole section on teaching music and teaching letters and
language and stuff for holidays. And I mean, you just name It. It's in these books. So, anyway...
And one of the coolest things about these books is be sure to read the beginning because it gives you
a list of all of the craft supplies that you will need. So, you could basically take a big
tote or a closet and put all the supplies that you would need to do anything in the whole book.
That's awesome because then at any minute, you are prepared for an activity or a learning lesson.
You don't have to go to the store. You don't have to go, "Oh, we'll have to do that next
week". Or you can just do anything right now which is usually how toddlers work. When it's time to
do something, it's time to do it right now. So, anyway, use these books. They're fun. Every night,
I used to open them up and plan what I was going to do for my toddlers that day so that I would
know that I would take that little bit of time that was dedicated just to them. So, most the
time, I'm bringing the toddlers along with me. They follow me around but sometimes, it's best
to have a minute that is just theirs. And that's what I used these books for. Here's probably one
of my favorite tips. And that is allow yourself to be interrupted. It's super important.
You have to decide ahead of time that they will interrupt you that's how it is when you have
toddlers and that when they interrupt you, you will allow the interruptions. Now, what does that
mean allow? Allowing interruptions means that you don't get frustrated when somebody interrupts you.
Or gets in the way of you doing something that you really wanted to do. You don't get emotionally
invested in somebody else's behavior. Instead, you say, "Oh, yeah. That's right." I told myself when
they interrupt me that I was going to smile and be okay and happily help them with something. So,
even if they're interrupting you in another aspect of homeschool when you're trying to help another
person, tell yourself you're okay with being interrupted. Now, that doesn't mean you don't
teach them how to interrupt you properly. That's a skill for another video. But you definitely should
do that. But allow those interruptions to occur because they need your attention and everyone
else needs to see you putting your priorities in the right place so that they will put their
priorities in the right place too. Remember that bonus I promised for the end of the video? Well,
here it is. This is something that makes the whole family more fun and happy and homeschooling. In
our family, we decided that Friday was field trip Friday. So, I always had a mentor call that I
had to do Friday mornings where I would mentor other parents about things that are happening
in their home. You can join those support group calls on my website teachingselfgovernment.com
if you want any parenting or homeschool help. Anyway, I would do those in the morning and I
would be done in the morning by about 9:30. And at that point, my family was ready to hit the road.
We were going to do a field trip somewhere whether it was seeing petroglyphs or going to see bald
eagles in their migration patterns or whether it was a museum or just going to do something
outrageous. Like you know, bowling in the dark or something like that. We came up with as many ideas
as we could. And in fact, I even joined groups that would throw out different field trip ideas
just so that I had ideas to grab from at any particular moment. I made a list every year of
the places we wanted to go and the experiences we wanted to have. And Friday was our day. So,
they knew we worked hard on school for 4 days but come Friday, school meant the best time of the
week. It was going to be fun, everyone together. And you know what? The toddlers love it. They love
that time where they can get out of the house, run around, see something new. Now, I know it seems
like chasing a toddler somewhere else is not your idea of fun. But trust me, they will come alive.
They see the world in a new way. And the family gets to experience something happy and exciting
within the view of the toddler, that toddler will learn to love learning by having those
experiences with the family every Friday. So, how do you homeschool with a toddler in the house? Do
great stuff and you schedule your time and you make sure not to take any of those interruptions
personally. If you've enjoyed this video, you'll probably enjoy my next video which is "Does
Homeschooling Affect Getting into College?" No matter where you're at with homeschooling,
no matter the ages of your children, it's good to prepare now for what they're going to do
after the schooling in your home. And this next video is going to be just the one you need. So,
click on it now and let's start talking about what you need to prepare for for college.