As a new homeschool parent, you may get caught up in the idea of running a perfect classroom and raising perfect little children. When reality meets the dream and it shatters, you may become harsh with yourself and your wards. The idea here is to keep things rolling despite whatever is going wrong around you. If you let your homeschool students believe that you need to be perfect every second of the day, you are doing them a huge disservice.
Teach Them Persistence is Better Than Perfection
Just because they tried something once and failed is no reason for them to give it up. The only way to master anything new is to do it again and again. This means that they will be making mistakes a large number of times before they finally get it right. Teach them that perfection does not come in the first instance, that a whole lot of imperfection needs to come first. What is important is that they don’t give up, but keep trying and keep improving with each try.
A Mistake is Not The End Of The World
A teacher is supposed to point out the mistakes of a student in order for them to understand where they are going wrong. The student must then pay attention to what needs to be changed in order to not commit the same mistake again. As a homechool teacher, you must make sure that your homeschool students understand this concept. They should not feel victimized because you are pointing out a pile of mistakes that they made. The spirit to promote is one where they are happy to know where they can improve.
Don’t be Self Critical and Anxious
The homeschool parent always leads by example. Are you the kind of person who pursues perfectionism? Who feel that they can never make a mistake, because they need to set the standard for everyone else around them to follow? Just take a deep breath and release this belief. You should not be self critical of everything you do, as your homeschool students will pick up on this. They will also pick up on the anxiety that such thinking generates and you don’t want them growing up thinking that is normal behavior.