As a homeschooling mom, it can be easy to get absorbed in the details of preparing for another year. One of the reasons I love thinking about homeschooling through the lens of interior and behavior design is how quickly it helps me get back to the big picture.  

Here’s an open secret: great interior design in your homeschool absolutely starts in the interior heart of mom. Mom’s interior is the key to the home and the homeschools interior, and thus the experience of the children.

So here are a few of my favorite interior/behavior design tips for mom’s interior heart to contemplate this summer for a successful homeschool year. 

1. All good homeschool design (whether it be interior design, decor, or behavior design) begins in the parents’ hearts: so prepare your heart by managing your expectations!

One of the biggest problems I see is homeschooling parents expecting how the homeschooling year will go. I am not talking about parents setting goals for the year (which is good), I’m talking about parents imagining/daydreaming in their heads about *how it will actually look* to achieve those homeschooling goals. They imagine wonderful bonding time, cooperative children, and a whole lot of smooth sailing. The problem is that reality is not like that, and we rarely imagine the storms. That’s why imagination sets us up for disappointment and anger, both of which open us up to spiritual temptations.

Like everything else worth doing, homeschooling has major storms. Things don’t go as expected, and (shocker) other people (those little ones with free will in whom it is sometimes seriously questionable whether the age of reason was really attained) don’t always cooperate with the details of our micro-plans.

When a parent imagines how the year will look, they’re in trouble, because imagination creates emotion, and emotion creates attachment. Attachment is bad! Attachment means you don’t have self-control: you’ve given your control over to a rosy-color expectation. The devil can use your attachment to drag you around with all sorts of discouragements (“See, they hate homeschool, you’re failing! Give up!”).

Here’s some second-gen homeschool mama wisdom: ask God to remove your attachments to anything but serving Him. Then imagine some serious homeschooling storms, because you will go through them! Imagine yourself calling on God for his help in the storm, remaining calm, and steering the ship through by keeping your focus on God and your family’s homeschooling goals (you’ve got to know your goals!).

Internalizing this mantra: we have wonderful, high goals for our homeschool year, but I expect tough times, and that’s OK. We will adjust, keep our focus on our goals, and get through it.

2. Prepare your heart for homeschooling by remembering something you already know: your child is not your product.

Someone else has said this, not me, but I can’t remember where I read it, and it’s so true: we don’t simply create a program, impose it on the child, and get our desired result out of the other side of the process! Your child is not your product! Instead, your child is a mystery that God wants to unfold through your nurturing care. That said, see point 3, because I believe most of us don’t set out standards and goals high enough, and to be happier we have to set better goals for meaningful achievements.

3. Prepare your homeschooling heart by relying on God’s grace to help you set the right amazing, high goals for yourself and your children.

Your children are capable of so much more than you can imagine! What is your biggest dream for your child? Now compare that the fact that God has goals for your child. Our goals and dreams are nothing compared to God’s!

This requires prayer. Don’t be a Martha homeschooling mom! Do not make the mistake of running around hectically serving your children through all your homeschooling agendas that you forget to sit quietly at the feet of our Lord, like Mary, and listen. You have to pray: “God, show me! I beg you to show me what you want me to do for and with this child this year! Help me to hear Your answer! I don’t think any institution’s program is capable of being enough for my child. These programs all have limits, but my child has no limits with Your grace. Show me how to arrange nature (our home, our curricula, our rhythm of routines) so as to be maximally receptive to Your grace. You want this child to be a citizen of Heaven and serve you in specific ways on earth. Show me what to do for my child this year to nurture his maximum capability.”

If you pray that prayer from the bottom of your heart, and really listen, God will lead you. God’s grace always shows up to aid you in forming your children. This is the #1 reason I’m so passionate about homeschooling: you CANNOT outsource the grace to form your child. No matter how prestigious the institution is, grace is the most powerful force in the universe. That means YOU as a homeschooling parent have, through grace and your totally dedicated heart, more qualifications to form your child than anyone else.

So aim BIG, because you have more than all that Harvard offers: you have unlimited Grace! Do meaningful things! Start a crisis pregnancy center. Start a business. Tackle memory work. (Trouble with memory? Read Moonwalking with Einstein. Correspond with someone at NASA about that question your child is so fascinated by.

This, my friends, is how you have a truly unsurpassed adventure right from the hearth of your home. Be If clutter is an issue, join my homeschool decluttering challenge to set your home up for a smooth academic year here.Mary — rely on grace, cut out what keeps you from being truly present to Jesus and your children (join my homeschooling mom decluttering challenge here), and get ready for an adventure.

4. Prepare your environment for developing your family culture.

Homeschooling moms, we all know that moment in the mid-afternoon, when that somewhat desperate thought arises: “What am I going to do with these children until bedtime?” Various escape scenarios arise, and the temptation to turn on the TV gets strong. People are bored. Fighting and bickering arise as a byproduct.

These are all symptoms of one problem: lack of a family culture.

My expertise and focus is homeschool interior design, and what I’ve observed is this: great design, beautiful decor, and authentic behavior design all follow from a great family culture, and the best way to grow a family culture is to homeschool.

So, lean in to those uncomfortable times when you don’t know what to do by trying things on for size as a family! Find out what your whole family can share together to grow and have fun. This will absolutely require trial and error. What prayers are treasured by your family? Always start with prayer, and grow prayer. Beyond prayer, maybe it will be as simple as the time-treasured read-aloud time (everyone should have this as part of their culture). Maybe your family will make music together, or learn folk dancing. Maybe you’ll learn all there is to know about a particular topic. Sometimes the state of the house will require the family to work together before anything fun can happen. Board games, card games, gardening, long walks and bike rides — all of these are options. Over time it will become clear what your whole family enjoys and one day you will realize that you have a family culture that everyone can look back on with nostalgia, and then live out again with their own children (your grandchildren!). So lean in!

One of the things we do is farm, and my kids just dipped their toes into business with “Carmichael Farms, Jr. – 8th Generation Farmers.” It’s like a lemonade stand, except they sell blueberries and herbs. Here are some pictures:

5. Your environment is an extension of you!

One of my friends, who is a third order Carmelite, has a quotation at the bottom of her signature line in all her emails: “Where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love.” It’s from St. John of the Cross, and it used to mystify me, but now I understand it. You know that person or thing you really dislike? If you will see the dislike as an invitation from God to attend to something important by put yourself there with time, prayer, attention, cleaning, decluttering, beautifying, nurturing, etc. — you will develop a love for that person or thing as a byproduct of the attention and care you’re giving.

Your environment is a great way to check the priorities of your heart. Your environment is an extension of you. Is it cluttered and frightful? Doesn’t that mean that there’s neglect of your home for some reason (and there can be several reasons)? Is it perfect and stiff, and does that mean the children’s hearts might be neglected? What story does your home tell? If I walked into your house right now and no one was home, could I tell what your family values are, what you orient your life around? Could I see evidence of a prayer life? Could I see that there are cleaning routines? Could I see creative spaces? What story does your homeschool tell? Or would I just see a sitting room with everything oriented around the TV and a cluttered house?

If you think your care is lacking for your home or your homeschool, put the wisdom from St. John of the Cross to good use: start with that thing that bugs you the most, whatever it is that you put off, delay, or avoid, and lean in to that with prayer and effort. Soon (sooner than you think!) you will care much more, and that new love will be visible.

Often, it’s the unexciting things that make for a smooth, successful homeschool: decluttering the house, especially the kitchen and laundry, having a cleaning routine, having a healthy meal plan, and making these things happen simply so that you’re not cleaning around your children and present to your children. If clutter is an issue, join my homeschool decluttering challenge to set your home up for a smooth academic year here.

We have a few weeks of summer left before the homeschooling year kicks off, and I hope you’re encouraged to look at the design of your heart to set your year up for success and beauty!

Did this article help you? Please consider sharing it with your homeschooling friends on social media.

Cheers,

Mary Carmichael