Well welcome everybody. This is exciting. We were talking today in Nashville. We're visiting Bitcoin park. And it's really nice. It's a beautiful fall time of the year. And one of the things that's interesting at Bitcoin park is. We're seeing people come with their kids, really young kids. Um, infants and it's just inspiring. And it reminds us of what we're doing with this podcast. If you're new, the show husband and wife team we're Bitcoiners. We spent 20 years homeschooling our four kids. And the purpose of this, this podcast is to share our stories or lessons learned and to share any resources we can. On self casting education. And today we're going to deep dive. Something that was a question or maybe really, really a comment that was made to Talia at a recent event. So Tali, why don't you tell them? Yeah. I was talking to a young mom and she knew that we were homeschoolers and she approached us and said, I would love to homeschool, but I'm afraid that if I choose to do that, I'm going to lose myself completely. They get it. It. I mean, homeschooling is a. Huge undertaking. If you're choosing to do a full time. I think there is a spectrum of homeschooling. You can do it even if your kids are going to public school, but she was specifically referencing. If she were to dive in full time. Homeschooling her three kids. So today we want to just talk a little bit about our thoughts on that question. A very valid question. And. Based on not only our personal experience, but things that we have observed over the last two decades. We'll share with you and hope that you will find it helpful. All right. Well, so. Tell us about this conversation you had then. How did the, how did you answer her? And we would start there. Well, I, I acknowledged her concern because it is really easy when you start as mothers. You start to put your children's needs and wants and. Um, Basically, well, just needs a ones above your own. And if you, on top of being a young mom, And chasing after your kids and trying to take care of the house and. Grocery shop and make the healthiest food choices that you can. Oh, that's seven. And on top of that, having to think about schooling, your kids, it does sound very, very overwhelming. And truthfully it is going to take a lot of mental energy. But it does. It's not necessarily as hard as you think it might be because today there are so many resources out there. Making homeschooling, you have very, very flexible, very, um, What's it called? Not the opposite of one size fits all. Personal, it can be. It can be very, very approached, personalized. You can, you can tailor, you can tailor your homeschooling according to your resources in time. And money and energy and still do a fabulous job, uh, far superior to. What a public school can do. Yeah. So in my mind, I see kind of three steps. The first step that I recall is you. You need to, you need to have alignment with your partner. On what you're trying to do. So you need to. At least have a conversation about what it is, what are those. Homeschooling is proof of work. You're going to invest your energy. That's what you're, you're making a decision to do. But you need to have that and it's okay to disagree. Like don't, I don't think. That has to be 100%. I think it's actually a feature, not a bug. Uh, for parents too, to work things out. And the second thing is. Take a, uh, Take a look at what your options are, because as you just said, it's very personal. You can do anything from look, we're going to put them in the public school system. We're just going to teach them at night and on weekends with our, with extra stuff, it could be. Uh, private school. It could be one of these schools that does does one or two days of. A week. It could be dropping them off at a family member. You have a lot of options. Two. To decide. How much time you need for yourself. So if this person that came to you is worried about losing herself. And being overwhelmed. To me, there's this whole second step of like, you have this menu of options. And then the third step is. You start, you, you commit to it. You start it. And then, you know, you can adjust. This is not, Hey, I made a decision and we have to stay this way forever. You go on. And you learn. So the first thing is you, you get aligned. Second thing is you. You look at your options. And the third thing is you. You test them out and, and then if you say, I want to go deeper on this, I want to spend more time. Okay. Fine. You. Go more to you. Get you get more involved. If you say I am feeling overwhelmed. I do feel like I'm losing myself. You say. Let me look at those options. That gives me more time. You have. You have a lot of. Opportunity. To adjust you don't you're not locked into it. Forever. You know, that's, that's kind of like, that's what I see is the kind of from a process standpoint. Of what it looks like. Well, a lot of homeschooling families would do this. So they start praying. If you're a praying kind of person, they start praying about the school. Year over the summer and they make a decision for that school year. And they summer, they try it for a year and then they always then. Pray about the following year. So they take it really one school year at a time. It is, it seems so overwhelming to think K to 12. Oh my God. I gotta have, I gotta have this whole long-term plan. You don't, you're really planning about nine months at a time. So for example, one year. Uh, for our youngest, he was eight years old at the time. And we up until then had been primarily doing all of the subjects ourselves. And I decided if for. For, um, just for the sake of making friends. There are his own age. Cause he tended to be he's our youngest. He's going to, to. To be exposed to older kids through his siblings activity. So for his own sake, I wanted to put him in a situation where he was exposed to other homeschoolers. He's all age. And I was already running around. All the all different places because of the older siblings. And I just felt like I wanted to give him something that was his own. And with kids his own age, Within the social parameter of other homeschooling families. So I put him in a, what I will call it a private, a part-time private school. So there's two days a week. It covered all the subjects. It was Tuesday, Thursday, and then Monday was a Friday. He had homework to do, and I just supervised his homework. But Tuesday, Thursday, it was a drop off situation. Right. So he was there for, uh, I think he, we dropped him off at nine and we picked him up at three. So about six hours included laundry size and all the different subjects. I recovered. So he was there for one year and every day I, when I picked him up, we will go over his day as a whole. What did you learn? Who did you hang out with? How was it? What was it like with your friends on the playground? What was your teacher like? And then of course, I was also just, uh, overseeing his projects and his homework and things. And towards the end of the year, actually, like, it wasn't even towards the end of the year, it was halfway through the year and the school was already preparing to do registration for the following year. I had to sit down with my then eight year old. Uh, sun and Isaiah, what do you think, is this something that you would like to continue with? Are you making. Friends. And do you feel good there? And he said, I don't like it there because you've put me in a room full of babies. And I said, they're not babies. They're your age. And some of them are older, but he's so used to being exposed to. His oldest siblings and his older siblings, friends. That he felt uncomfortable there and together we made the decision to not continue, but he had that the nine months there. So it's a, it's a process that you can continue to tweak as you, your life circumstances, change. And. In that case, if he was my oldest, right. If I yell, if he had younger siblings and he was my oldest. I could have done the same thing. I could have dropped him off Tuesday, Thursday, and then just knew that all the subjects were covered and then just had to help him with homework Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And that would give me free time to take care of the younger kids. So this situation could be reversed in that case, it would work for. The family, according to what their need. Gotcha. So two things come to mind. One is that. There's other things we can go down and. The list of options to choose and what we either witnessed, or you, you tried. And then the other thing is, are we. We are answering the question of what this person asked you in that. So did that help you? Or would that help the person who's worried about? Being overwhelmed and not, or didn't want to lose themselves. Yes. In this case for that particular family who was asking me this question. Her kids were, um, I think kindergarten and younger. And she was pregnant in the first semester. Uh, first trimester. So in her case, if she wanted to go that route, She had a newborn, assuming, uh, when, when she decides you there's the baby's born. She has a newborn and then she has a five-year-old I think it might've been a three-year-old. Five-year-old three-year-old and a newborn, then she could have dropped off. The failure and the three-year-old every Tuesday, Thursday, and new that a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, she didn't have to worry about coming up with curriculum or coming up with material. All she had to do was to supervise and the rest of the time they can just enjoy today and just know the schooling is taken care of. Okay. So in that case was she necessarily lose herself. I would say no, as long as the tuition is something that you can manage. And you're okay with them going into a traditional classrooms situation because that's, you always make a pros and cons list. Right? So in the case of the example that I'm giving, which is a part-time. Private school situation where you, you drop off part of the week. They are sitting in a traditional classroom and they, it is a lecture lecture based teaching style. They, it is texts textbook based. So if you don't mind that, then this is a really great option. Okay. Cool. All right. So let's what we'll do is we'll just go through the list of different options. And then we'll just try to come back to the original question and see where we're at rates on the scale. So the next one. Co-ops and maybe explain what, what co-ops are. And then, and then we tie it back to the same question of how does it help or not help with. Your time to yourself to not lose yourself. Yeah, so you can join a homeschool at co-op and a co-op usually is once a week and it's PA it's families coming together. So it's not, definitely not a drop off situation. Families come together, parents either. Volunteer, uh, as just admin people or they've volunteered to teach, or they volunteer to watch the younger kids who are not old enough to go into a classroom. Then the parents who teach, they teach based on their own interests and backgrounds. So you're not going to necessarily get the academic exposure there because you don't from one. Year to another. You're not sure what classes would be available. Right. It would be like one pair and maybe really loves knitting. So she provides a knitting class. One parent maybe is really great at math. And so he does a math games class. One parent may be really good at cooking or gardening. So they do a gardening class. So it's more like electives, mostly what I have seen in homeschooling co-ops. The classes are offered by the parents are mostly more like electives. So you're still going to have to teach the core math and English at home yourself. Uh, less there's a parent in the co-op specifically offering something for that. But the benefit of it is the whole family is together. When you have, when lunchtime comes around. All the families are sitting together. The kids are playing. It's a very family oriented thing, but you don't get free time in terms of walking away, but you do get the friendship with other homeschooling moms and dads. Well, I, I would say the other thing in context of not losing yourself, what you do get is you could volunteer to teach something you like. So if your hobby is ceramics or painting or whatever your hobby is. You volunteered to teach your subject. And so now instead of losing. You time. On something that is part of who you are. You actually get to share that with other other people. And while you're doing that, it's sort of like specialization in a free market. You're going to specialize in your area. You're really good at. Uh, just take a painting. If that was your hobby. Or maybe it's photography or programming. Maybe you can get into robotics with your kids. It doesn't matter. Whatever your subject is that you like to teach about? Do you like to spend time on you? Go spend time. It could be sports too. The kids could go play. You really like sports. So you teach your kids, flag football or something. Kickball the little square game with the bonk downs, whatever it is. And it gives you a little bit of time to focus on what you like while somebody else is going deep on something they like. So. Maybe you speak Chinese and you can speak Chinese. So that persons over teaching a language and someone else is doing chemistry. So to me, Co-ops. You're still spending time, but I think the benefit on the question of how not to lose yourself is. You, you also get this, this opportunity to be who you are and yeah. And you can share your passion, which is, uh, which is a beautiful thing in and of itself because yeah, we're all looking for people who share. Our hobby and passion and common interest. And you get to teach that to the younger generation. And I think that can be NSL, very fulfilling. And another pro about doing the homeschooling co-op is your kids are also learning from other people who are passionate about this subject. Versus going to a school, maybe being taught by a teacher who is forced to teach something that they literally have no interest in. All right, let's go to the next one. The list. And this one you may not be able to do all the time, depending on. If you have extended family nearby. So we may have to use an example of what else you've witnessed, but the next one on the list is. Time with family. So for example, you, every whatever day is the day that someone's going to be with grandma. That kind of thing. I don't think we'll call it this. That like an extended family. Plan. That's the next, that's the next one? Yeah, so. I knew a family where the grandparents were really active in the children's lives and they would have grandma days. And, um, the Gramma day, literally the mom would drop off the kids, our grandma's house, and then she'll have the day to herself, whether she wanted to pursue something that she's interested in, or just have a quiet house to do what she needs to do around the house. So that's another way if you wanted to just school full time yourself, but just have one day free to take care of other things, to still have your own space, your own mental space. That would really work. If you don't have. Parents are nearby, or if you don't have that kind of relationship. Or opportunity then perhaps you can, um, partner with another homeschooling family because everybody really needs that. Every homeschooling mom, no matter how devoted needs time. To herself to recoup and regenerate. We recharge. And so if you join a homeschooling co-op of any kind, or if you join. Um, they're always homeschooling playgroups, especially if your kids are young. Homeschooling playgroups is a very, very big thing and they take a lots of field trips together. You'll get to know other families and hopefully you make a couple close friends and then you can partner up and share time off. You know, and, and that could really, that can really alleviate that feeling of heavy burden when you're homeschooling. And you're you feel like you have to be on all the time. Right. But playgroups are very, very big thing. Moms groups, you can find them everywhere if you're a part of a church, for sure. They have connections to the moms groups. There's. If you even just Google mom group in your area, um, they're not necessarily necessarily going to also be homeschooling moms, but. You never know what people are able to. Work together to create. Okay. Then I did. Just two more quick and then we can get into the. Where do you start to find out for your own area? Um, on one end of the spectrum. And the furthest end might be, uh, you max out how much time somebody else is doing it. Like some places you can go. And there you're called homeschoolers, but. Like they're basically gone. Most of them. Yeah. Time let's cover that one. First. I was going to call it a hundred percent private, but that's not really what that is. Let's what do you call the most extreme? Keys. Where. You're still homeschooling, but you're spending the least amount of time. Actually doing the schooling. Well, you. Uh, okay. So that's a little bit different from physical separation, like your ability to drop them off and not be worried about them in that other people are responsible for your child during that time. And you're completely freed. Freed up to do other things, but if you're, if you're not talking about physical separation, you're just talking about. Delegating the task of teaching. You can buy these curriculums either online. Where they say, it's almost like what they did during coven, which is all the, all the classes are online. You sign them up and they sign into a life teacher. They get taught and they do their homework and they. They get feedback from the teacher. They take tests where the teacher and you're literally just providing space in a computer. Right. And maybe a little bit of supervision. Most of the time the kids would be home. But you are not responsible for the teaching of a, you just choose the classes that you want them to to learn. That's the most extreme, like hands off thing where you're just not part of that. All. So my point in bringing that up is that. There are some parents who say they are homeschoolers. If you asked them that those other homeschoolers. But they have tried to outsource to the max. Yeah, they don't teach at all. Right. Yeah. Then. Then you have the other side of spectrum, which is the last one I wanted to talk about. And that was where you just, this is your you've decided this is your passion and your, you actually want it to be a hundred percent. Right. So maybe we talk about. The other end of the spectrum. You have people who. Enjoy it so much. They, they want to go deep on everything and be involved with literally teaching everything. So if they're teaching everything, how do they still keep a part of themselves? Well, I think it's almost, it almost is it answers itself. You've already decided that what makes you happy is the teaching. So you are doing what you like. And that sense, right? Yeah. Um, I just bring it up as it, on the spectrum of options available. That some people will go to the, go to the other side of this. And they enjoy it. Like they actually choose to make the, they say I have a choice that I want to make. I want to, I want to take on that level of responsibility. Okay. So if you. The method that I think that comes to mind is Charlotte Mason, which is a very, very hands-on you're involved in everything. You prepare the curriculum. You gathered the books. You do everything. And in those cases for. I mean, that's basically what I did in the beginning. And it is very overwhelming because while you're teaching the kids, you are thinking about what to cook for dinner. And while you're eating dinner, you thinking about what lesson plan to prepare for the next day kind of thing. So it is, it can be very overwhelming and those cases, I will just say on the weekend, Um, just make sure that your partner or your friends or your family can give you a couple of ours off just to. Have yourself a day. Just to recharge any way that you want. If that means you go to the gym. If he goes in the sauna, if you. They'll take a walk outside though. In those cases, I think you just need to have very deliberate agreements and it doesn't even have to be some large chunk of time either. It can just be a short, like, okay, for the next 45 minutes, I'm taking a walk and. I'm by myself and it's okay for the kids to watch blue, not blues clues. So you can't watch that now. It's a weird, it's like woke now. Um, to watch something educational while you with dad or grandma, and then you go off for a walk and I think that's okay too. Yeah. All right. So those are five general buckets. You can. Make up your own and mix mix any way. Let's let's I think the next question that would be on my mind. So I'm imagining this, this person. I didn't talk to her, but. She's she wants to, if she asked you, how do I not lose myself? I think this might be overwhelming. You said here's here's here are these different examples of buckets of options. We just went through. And the next question would be well in my area. How do I start? Like we're so let's maybe let's cover. Two or three recommendations on. If you're, if you're that person. And you now know, okay, I've got these options, but how do I figure out what program is actually available near me? The best place to go for a homeschooler is going to be the Facebook. So go into Facebook type in homeschool and type in your city name. If you are not in a big city, then you might have to use Google and, and do a dig a little deeper, but honestly, any homeschooling group that that's active. Close to your area, even if it's not right in your area. There will be people there who can direct you, different places, different resources. If you go in there and ask. Just say, can, will you please direct me to a homeschool? Co-op understand that that is going to be that sort of the elective classes that you can go and network with. Networking connect with other homeschooling families as units. If you ask about a drop-off kind of program. I'm not sure there's a specific term for, I've heard it all different ways, but you might just, it might just be some kind of homeschool academy or homeschool Christian academy or. Then you're going to have to ask. Specifically in your area, but there they will be drop-off situations. And I personally call it part-time private school, but homeschoolers might be offended if you set that, but just say like some kind of drop off program. And they should be able to direct you. To what's available in your area. Right? But the way. I'll in my mind. What I hear is you're saying. Go talk to them in person though. Right? Go out. You know, you find them on Facebook, but go talk to them. Right and find out what they are before you just, you're not gonna just like sign up for something. No, you always do a tour first. Always, no matter what you do, you can, the co-ops will give you yours for. The, um, something like classical conversation, which is. Combination co-op N private school. Um, part-time private school. Like they would, there's always gonna be somebody who's willing to give you a tour. And you can observe first before making a decision, but if your kids are very young star with just a playgroup, That's the best place to go and make connections and ask questions. Okay. So then you have. You mentioned Facebook. So you're finding them online. Go and talk to them. You also have. You mentioned churches. So. There are a lot of churches where. They're there. There's a big homeschooling community within. Whatever. Denomination that is. It's very popular in churches. Yeah. So that's the second one. I guess you'd go to meetups. You can go to a Bitcoin meetup and it's probably less likely you're going to find someone who's already doing. Um, And you're the only other, other options. The other thing I thought of that I did not know about when our kids were young. Was there are actually conventions. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes, absolutely homeschool conventions. There are many, many, many of them. It starts, they start in the late spring and go all the way into early fall. And they differ by. Um, the approaches. So maybe we'll do an episode on just the different approaches of homeschooling. So they can take different. Can't understand the difference because you have the Charlotte Mason, people who do their conventions, you have the Costco conversation. People will do the conventions. You have, um, Christian homeschool conventions. And I know that there are secular homeschool conventions. A lot of conventions, a lot of them that a lot of conventions. Yeah. And also, I just want to say. Homeschoolers are very much like Bitcoiners. They're very, very friendly and they are, everybody's more than happy to share experience. And, um, they're very open. They're open people. So. Gotcha. Okay. So. Again, this is all inspired by a question that was, and this question's come up in different ways. The same type of questions come up to you multiple times is how do you. Not be overwhelmed. How do you keep yourself? I think one of the, one of the more extreme version of that question or statement is, oh, I can't possibly homeschool. I'm going to kill my children. And. Okay. Yeah. That you don't want to get to, you don't get that far. Um, alone, but I mean, kids are, that's part of, to me, the joy of parenting is you're, you're going to learn a lot about yourself because you're, you're going to be in this. You're going to be. Uh, pushed in ways you didn't know you could be, be pushed, but I, I think that's a good. A good thing. And again, from my point of view, We're just saying, listen, where we homeschooled for 20 years. We understand the Bitcoin point of view. Here are some of the stories and ideas to help and resources to help. And other people. So I think we've. Hopefully we've covered that. And then I guess the, I would leave it as we're pretty open. If, if somebody. Doesn't feel comfortable or still is it still has something that they're questioning on that reach out to us? If we didn't answer that question? Well, enough. Reach out to Tali or myself on Twitter or our email or the website, whatever, whatever way you're comfortable reaching out. And we're happy to help try to. Try to get you through the process of thinking through or how to reach out and see what the options are. So that's, that's all I had on the list for days or anything at any other final thoughts that you had Tali for before we wrap up? I just want to say that it is, is, seems really overwhelming, but it is very doable because it is. Like I mentioned earlier. It's not something where it's such a giant project. You have to plan many years ahead. You can plan a few months at a time. And you can continue to adjust because you don't know. What your true capacity is for these kinds of challenges. Uh, in homeschooling until you're in the thick of it. And then maybe you realize that you can actually tolerate a lot more than you realized, or you can tell me less, but either way. Once you find out where your limit is, you start to look for solutions like working with your family and friends for time off or looking for these part-time private school situation where you. Get a few days off because that's why you need. And, you know, don't feel guilty. It's completely fine. Homeschooling is going to be. A pause. Kind of, yeah, it's constant adjustment and kind of things. So don't feel bad either way, stay flexible and know that it's going to be okay. One step in front of the other. Yeah. That's really good advice. You're going to be okay. Your kids are going to be okay. And we didn't, at least I didn't have the confidence to start. We just needed to get moving. And then later on, after you've looked back, you'd be like, oh yeah, I'm capable of doing that. I can do that. I need you. You realize you actually, you already have what you need to do this, but you don't start with that. You, you feel overwhelmed maybe. But, um, But yeah, you, you, you're going to be fine. I think that's great advice. All right, everybody. Well, we'll we, uh, we're doing this to try to help folks. If people have questions you want us to, to address, let us know what they are. And we'll catch you next week. Bye have a good week.