Six Smart Questions to Ask Before You Buy Curriculum

You spent the summer planning your homeschool year. You chose the curriculum, mapped out the schedule, and pictured how everything would work. But now that you're living the plan, you're realizing that something isn't working quite the way you expected. So what do you do? Push through and hope things eventually click, or admit that it might be time to make a change? In this episode, Laney shares why having a plan is valuable—but being unwilling to change that plan can keep us from meeting our children's needs. She talks about how to recognize when a homeschool approach isn't working, how to decide whether to persevere or pivot, and how to make thoughtful adjustments without throwing out your entire plan. Drawing from her own experience homeschooling children with different strengths, interests, and learning needs, Laney shares practical examples of adapting assignments, separating subjects when necessary, and letting go of expectations about what homeschooling should look like. You'll also hear why flexibility doesn't mean abandoning consistency or lowering expectations. It's about paying attention to what your children need, identifying your learning goals, and choosing an approach that helps them grow. In this episode, you'll learn: How to recognize when your homeschool plan isn't working in real life. How to decide whether your child needs to persevere through a challenge or whether your approach needs to change. Why teaching multiple ages together doesn't mean every child needs identical assignments or expectations. How to make adjustments for different learning needs, including learning disabilities. What questions to ask before changing your curriculum, schedule, or routine. Why it's important to notice progress instead of focusing only on what's not working. How to let go of your original plan while remaining intentional about your children's education.

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, “I just need to fix this homeschool,” this conversation might make you pause before you change another curriculum, schedule, chore chart, or routine. In this episode, Laney sits down with Emily Brown to talk about a question we’ve been hearing more and more around Homeschool Better Together: What exactly is mindset coaching, and what does it have to do with homeschooling? Emily explains what a mindset coach actually does—and why it has very little to do with someone telling you how to live your life. Instead, mindset coaching helps you become more aware of your thoughts, emotions, and reactions so you can understand what is really happening underneath the problem you’re experiencing. And that matters in homeschool because the way we think about our kids, our time, our curriculum, our calling, and ourselves directly affects how we show up each day. Mindset isn't pretending everything is fine Emily is very clear about this. Mindset work isn't about sprinkling “positive thinking” over a difficult situation and pretending reality isn't hard. It's about separating the facts from the interpretation we've added to those facts. How faith fits into mindset coaching This is an especially meaningful part of the conversation for the HBT community. Emily explains how her faith undergirds the way she approaches mindset coaching. She believes our brains and bodies were designed by God and that understanding how they work doesn't compete with faith—it can actually point us back toward the Creator.

Have you ever found yourself reminding your kids about the same things over and over again? Finish your math. Stay focused. Check your schedule. Get back to work. Why aren’t you doing the thing we already talked about? Sometimes what looks like a behavior problem is actually a skill that hasn’t been developed yet. In today’s episode, I’m giving you a sneak peek inside one of Emily Brown’s recent Elevate mindset classes: School and Home Skill Building. Emily walks through five skills she believes kids need to practice in order to become more capable and independent—and five skills moms need to practice in order to create a healthier, more functional homeschool. And even after more than 20 years of homeschooling, I walked away with practical things I could use in my own home. In this episode: Why self-confidence is the belief that “I can do it or I can figure it out” Helping kids discover their own reasons for doing difficult things Using goals to build independence Emily's whiteboard system for helping her kids plan their day How to practice focus with small, achievable wins Why kids need to know what “done” actually looks like The three-question evaluation Emily uses with her kids How moms can build belief in their children Setting reasonable and age-appropriate expectations Why constantly moving the finish line can break trust Keeping shame out of skill-building Taking responsibility for our own emotions Celebrating our own wins as homeschool moms

What if the thing making you feel overwhelmed isn't that you're bad at managing your time? What if you just have too much on your plate? I know. Revolutionary. In this episode, I'm talking with Kayse Pratt of Anchored Women about something both of us have had to wrestle with: simplification. Kayse recently made a pretty dramatic change in her business. After 16 years of creating digital products, she found herself with 223 different products. And here's the kicker: the business whose entire mission was to help people simplify had created a product line that was actually making things more complicated. So Kayse did something that is not easy to do. She cut it down to four. And that decision got us talking about what happens when we look at our own lives and realize we've done the exact same thing. We've added good thing after good thing until our lives are completely packed. And then we wonder why we're exhausted. As homeschool moms, this can happen especially easily. We aren't just educating our kids. We're managing the house, feeding everybody, running people to activities, keeping up with relationships, serving at church, working jobs, and trying to maintain some semblance of spiritual life somewhere in the middle of all of it. So how do we know what needs to stay? And what are we actually allowed to let go? Kayse and I talk honestly about the difficulty of simplifying, why we sometimes have to "hit the wall" before we're willing to change, and what it looks like to trust God with the things we can't control. We also get very practical. We're talking about making decisions once instead of over and over again, using a Top Three list, simplifying meals, creating family rhythms, and recognizing that homeschool absolutely counts as one of the things taking up your time and energy. Because simplifying isn't about becoming more efficient so you can cram even MORE into your day. It's about making room for the things that actually matter. In this episode, you'll learn: Why adding good things can still leave you with an unsustainable life How Kayse decided to cut Anchored Women from 223 products down to just four Why simplifying can be painful before it becomes life-giving How to recognize when you're approaching the point where something needs to change Why homeschool belongs on your list of actual time and energy commitments How making decisions once can dramatically reduce daily decision fatigue How to use a simple Top Three system without pretending you have unlimited capacity Why simple family rhythms can actually help your kids feel more secure How to simplify meals without creating another complicated system Why we sometimes need to let go of good things to make room for better things How pride and our desire for control can keep us from simplifying What Psalm 23 has taught Kayse about trusting God instead of trying to make everything happen ourselves Why simplification isn't necessarily permanent—sometimes we're in a season of cutting back, and sometimes we're in a season of growth

Are you doing everything “right” in your homeschool… and still wondering if you’re doing it right enough? In this episode, I’m talking with Jeanette Pascua, a longtime homeschool mom of five, former high school theology teacher, and the editor behind much of what we create at Homeschool Better Together. Jeanette has been homeschooling for about a decade, and her oldest is now in high school. That means she has something I think every homeschool mom desperately needs: perspective from the other side of the elementary years. Her homeschool looks pretty different today than it did when she started. Her kids are scattered around the house doing different things, her older children have significant control over their schedules, and the whole day feels much more relaxed. But it didn't start that way. We talk about what it actually takes to help our kids grow into independent learners, why independence looks different for every child, and how Jeanette gradually handed over pieces of her children's education instead of throwing them into the deep end. And then we get into something I think almost every homeschool mom has wrestled with: the pressure to do homeschooling “the right way.” Jeanette is a Charlotte Mason homeschooler, and she talks honestly about the pressure that she puts on herself to follow this method the way others prescribe that it "should" be done. Sound familiar? We also talk about letting go of the perfect plan, what happens when subjects or books fall off the schedule, and the surprising reassurance that comes from watching an older child move toward high school. Because sometimes you don't realize your homeschool is working until you get far enough down the road to look back. What You'll Learn How Jeanette gradually transferred responsibility for school from herself to her kids Why independence doesn't look the same for every child How to invite your kids into homeschool planning without handing them the whole steering wheel The pressure to follow an educational philosophy “correctly” Why you need to homeschool the kids actually standing in front of you What happens when a book, subject, or entire chunk of your beautiful plan gets dropped How reaching the high school years can give you a completely different perspective on your earlier homeschool worries Why a homeschool that looks relaxed from the outside may actually have a lot happening underneath How homeschooling has shaped Jeanette into a gentler, more patient mom And, naturally, whether iced coffee counts as a homeschool snack