Healthy Marriage While Homeschooling: It Can Be Done! December 3, 2016 By Bekki 4 Comments This content may contain affiliate links.Inside: How to avoid damaging your marriage while parenting. Four habits you can begin today to put your marriage first plus “Ways to Say Yes” {printable} “Not now,” I told my husband for the fifth time today. That’s right. Five times I pushed him off, shoved him aside, ignored his advances. Five times. You love them so much that you miss it when they wedge themselves between you and your husband. Why Did I Ignore My Man? Oh, my excuses were rock solid. I am homeschooing the youngest three of our five sons. These three sons of ours are expert escape artists, procrastinators, and wiggle worms. If I look away for even a split second, they slide from their chairs and disappear into a Lego coma. This is a problem for any homeschooler, but what about you? Do your kids wiggle away from their responsibilities the second you glance away? Does your husband seem to be blind to the fact that you have 2.5 children crawling over you all day, so maybe you would like a little personal space at the end of the day? It’s not personal. Just a little space is all you need. Just a wonderful, small, empty patch of space where no one touches you or asks you a question. And maybe a bag of Oreos. Don’t we all find ourselves pushing our husbands away at times? As homeschoolers, we tell ourselves it’s for the “good of the kids”. As moms, we believe we simply cannot survive one more person needing something from us right now. Lingerie? Lingerie is what moms of young children use to clean the toilet in the middle of the night. But you cannot neglect your husband. You are a team. You are parents together, regardless of who cleans the toilet and feeds the kids. We wives forget how much power we have over our husbands, our children, and our homes. We are not looking ways to sabotage our marriages, but we can neglect the one thing that will protect it as well. We can catch ourselves justifying our actions as we whine to ourselves (and each other) that “he just doesn’t understand”. What do we want our husbands to understand? You are needed 24/7. You feel overwhelmed and exhausted. You feel the pressure of being are the only one teaching reading, writing, and ‘rithematic to your children if you homeschool. What if you mess up? Your delayed reader needs you to be present; to ensure that he reads the words that are actually on the page, not the ones he sees in his mind. Your day-dreamer needs you to walk by and place your hands on her shoulders so that the dream bubble pops and she spends minutes on an assignment, not hours, days, or years. Your high schooler needs you to stand at your white board with an odorless dry erase marker and enthusiastically explain the chemical processes of photosynthesis, even though you have no idea what a ‘carrier protein’ is at the moment. You are tired from trying to be “all things” for all the kids and you struggle with the fear of failure. The last thing on your mind is your husband. You’re too busy to even notice. And your betting on, hoping that, clinging to the belief that when the kids are grown, he will still be there smiling and offering you his love. The needs of our kids cause us to block out or even avoid connecting with our husbands. We become overwhelmed by being needed on so many levels that we develop ‘expert reflexes’ to avoid being needed MORE. Do you allow the kids and their needs to push your man to the end of the line? Yea. Me too. My love, my husband, my best friend sees me walk by his desk and sees an opportunity to: Reach for my hand, ask me to make him some coffee, or to let me know now is a sweet time to take advantage of me. My loving response? “Not now, babe”. Maybe my mouth says “sure honey”, but my eyes, my body, my tone of voice say, “not now”. I know I am not the only one losing the battle of keeping my Husband as the center of my life, after Jesus of course. You believe in the priority of God, husband, children too. Right? Do you allow the kids and homeschooling to push your man to the end of the line? It’s easy to overlook your husband. The kids need you. They cannot change their own diapers, understand their lessons, edit their own essays, or remember that clean socks need to be applied to clean feet: Every. Single. Day. You are still the one who is in the middle of all their activities. You thought it would get easier as they became more independent, but the scary truth is that older kids are so much more challenging. You use to be able to cook lunch, fold laundry, and simultaneously teach history and math to multiple kids. Homeschooling was much, much, much simpler then. You feel the pressure. You are trying to keep your baby on her schedule and entertain your toddler while not skipping a beat with your school age kids. Who are you kidding? Homeschooling is hard. Homeschooling with babies and toddlers can feel like trying to push Jello uphill. You feel the pressure. You have to study in order to teach your freshman. You feel extra pressure to understand the concepts so you can properly explain them. Today you find yourself studying the exact biology concepts that made you make the life choice of dropping biology in high school. You cannot escape. You feel the pressure. If you do not keep the kids on track, teach them the right concepts, choose the correct curriculum and manage their schedule, days will slip by without measurable learning. You might ruin their education and they might not be able to go to college and move out and take care of their own socks. (These are the thoughts that keep me awake at night) You feel the pressure. You have to be purposeful and present in every moment. But life runs you over. Laundry suddenly develops the ability to regenerate and self-produce, lessons transform from wonderful hands-on learning experiences to the hellish “Do problems 1-43, odd” assignments you swore you would never include in your homeschool. So What can I do? What can you do? What can we do? Breathe. You are not doomed to be a failure as a teacher, mom, homeschooler, or wife. Put First things First: Focus on your marriage. When the dejected look from your husband nails your hearts, you have to take a step back and get your ducks in order. While it is perfectly acceptable to be busy with caring for and even homeschooling your sons and daughters, it is not acceptable to always possess a “Not Now” attitude. In truth, sometimes life, sometimes school, sometimes laundry trumps everything. It has to. It’s an adulting thing. But an honest look into your heart may reveal that your “not now” attitude stems from being overwhelmed and underprepared for our day, like me. What does successful homeschooling look like anyway? What does an effective bedtime routine look like anyway? What does a laundry room without dirty laundry look like anyway? FIVE Ways to Reconnect When Life Crowds Your Marriage 1. Be Organized. You are less approachable, less able to be present with your husband, and more willing to shove him aside when you are overwhelmed by school. When you take the time to get organized, grasp your homeschooling goals for the week (or better yet month) and plan out basics like laundry and meals then you are better equipped for the school day. If you are unprepared, life suddenly grows fangs and ambush you. As kids grow, school gets harder. You simply will not remember everything you need to teach: the order of operations, how to structure an argumentative essay, how to format a resume, or how to balance chemical equations. You will long for the days of “this is how to hold a pencil” and “let’s count to 100 using barbie shoes or Legos”. Homeschooling is hard. Parenting is harder. You need a plan. 2. Get in Sync with Your Hubby. When school presses in like a crowd of 12-year old girls at a Justin Beiber concert, You need to be honest with your husband.If he doesn’t know what is pressing in on your day, then he simply sees his lovely woman walk by. He cannot help himself. This yoga pants wearing, mom bun sporting, He cannot help himself. You yoga pants wearing, mom bun sporting, woman are too irresistible to him. As you should be. On the other hand, if he knows what you are doing, he sees the kids’ teacher walk through the room and smiles. Oh, he’ll still try to grab you, but it will become a playful game rather than another rejection. 3. Say yes. I struggle with this. I think we all do.You need to say yes to your husbands a lot more. Not just to his intimate advances, but to his need for a minute of your focused attention, his need to share an idea, his desire to breathe the same square yard of air for just a minute. Yes, honey, I have time for you. Yes, honey, I would love to hug you. Yes, Honey… The problem with being so involved with teaching your children is that all you can see is the next lesson, the next chore, the next box on your to-do list. You can easily neglect the love of your life if you are not careful. 4. Meet him Half Way. This is my newest experiment.When my husband enters a room I try to stop what I am doing and meet him half way with a kiss. You know one of those deep look in the eyes kind of kisses. While the experiment is still in the early stages, I can tell you the preliminary data is astounding. The man melts. I told you. Women have power. You have power. It should never be abused but rather harnessed and focused toward those who need it most: our husbands and children. 5. Challenge him to a game of HUGS. The game is simple. Each of you begins your day with a set of 12 markers of some sort. I chose Pink and Blue hair-ties. Throughout the day, be the first to walk up and hug your spouse. If you are the hug giver, you get to hand them one of your markers. At the end of the day, she who has given the most markers wins! Get creative with the “prize”. I invented this game on a day where my husband and I weren’t speaking. We had been struggling to communicate and had decided that no mixing and mingling was healthier for the both of us. And then I saw that quote about the hugs in a day. I almost burst into tears. NO WONDER! I hadn’t hugged the poor man in a long time. So I invented the game. The effect was immediate. Trust me with this one. If your hubby is a physical touch man, he’s gonna love this game! Life is wonderful when we have our glasses on straight, our weekly planner is penciled in for the next few weeks and our husbands are loved and appreciated. We can justify and “excusify” all day why we need to give all of our attention to scheduling and feeding our babies, homeschooling our children, and creating healthy balanced meals. But to what end? Does it matter if your house is spotless, but you sleep on the edge of your bed each night. Does it matter if your kids read, write and communicate while you allow your highest marriage to fall between the cracks? Does it matter if they graduate with honors but have to attend graduation parties in tow separate homes? How successful will our kids really be …if their mom and dad allow their marriage to crumble while proclaiming to “do good by throwing everything into parenting and homeschooling” and saving nothing for each other? We need to remember that our husbands are not meant to be “after-thoughts” in our days or lives. We need to work hard to remind them that they are seen, appreciated, respected and loved. We need to remember that we have the power to melt their hearts like chocolate and we need to wield that power responsibly and purposefully. Tomorrow your kids will be finished with homeschooling and will be stepping happily into their future lives. If you, if I, if we do not purposefully invest our best into our marriages today, then our husbands may be the ones telling us “Not now” tomorrow. Today, let’s say “yes.” Freebie: “Ways to say “YES” {Printable} Download your FREE “Marriage Lie Detector” {Printable} Go ahead and grab a copy of my e-book, Homeschooling from the Inside Out. It’s completely FREE. Just click over and fill in your first name and primary email below and we will send you a digital copy immediately!!
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