Letter to the Overwhelmed Homeschool Mom at Christmas

Dear Overwhelmed Homeschool Mom at Christmas,

Christmas can be a wonderful, fun, and festive time of year, but it can also be stressful and overwhelming. There are so many fun activities both at home and outside of the house, family obligations, schoolwork, and life, and all combined, it can leave us stressed, overwhelmed, and burning the candle at both ends.

You might feel like you aren’t getting enough school amidst all of the activities. On the flip side, you might feel like you aren’t doing all of the Christmas activities you wanted to do amidst regular life and school.

Does It Have to Be That Way?

I want to spend a few minutes today encouraging you that you don’t have to feel overwhelmed. It is okay to take a step back and prioritize. I can’t tell you which activities to prioritize because that will be different for each family.

Take a few minutes and think about the future. When you look back on this season 5 years or 10 years from now, what are you going to wish you had done?

For some, that may mean putting aside some activities and choosing just one or two Christmas things that are important to your family. For others, that may mean setting aside the school books for a few weeks and focusing on the Christmas activities.

Our Christmas Plan

For our family, it looked different for different children. My high schooler did a Christmas unit for literature but continued with his other regular studies before our two-week break. We decided to keep moving forward in math and phonics (elementary) but focus on Christmas for everything else with my middle school daughter and elementary-aged son.

We did Christmas art and music lessons, an Advent reading and a family study of Luke for Bible, and lots of Christmas read-alouds.

We made a plan before Thanksgiving that I thought was workable, but the further into December we got, the more I realized it was still a bit much, so we adapted.

Adapting

We were behind on my middle school daughter’s Christmas literature, So, I found the audiobook on Hoopla (a free app from our library), and she listened to the book while she worked in the kitchen getting some treats ready.

It is so easy this time of year to over plan and over-commit and then not enjoy any activities. Every year I have to work at finding the balance, and I am still a work in progress. I do not write this letter from a position of perfection, but as someone who needs this reminder.

So I pray this year that you can step back and decide what will be important years from now and make that the priority during this season. That may change from year to year and is certainly different for each family.

I pray that you can have a fun and peaceful season without overwhelm and guilt.

Merry Christmas!