A Peek Into The Life Of A Full-Time Work At Home Homeschooling Mom

Have you ever wondered what that “working and homeschool mom life” might look like?

Can you really work at home full time for someone else, work on your own side hustles (businesses) and homeschool your kids?

What if you had to look after elderly family members in your own home? Adopting a child?

Can you really do all of THAT?

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The Truth About Working Full Time Homeschool Moms

I was recently told that moms who work full-time and who homeschool their kids are a special kind of supermom. The truth is: You don’t have to be supermom to work full time and homeschool.

Today I am catching up with Amie L. I had the privilege of connecting with Amie back in 2017 when she was a brand new working homeschool mom. 

Since then, Amie and I have been hanging out online in our community helping to support working moms. 

I’m excited that she was willing to buy time out of her crazy busy life to catch us up on her journey and fill us in on what working full-time at home and homeschooling looks like for her and her family now. 

Before we dig in, I encourage you to check out the story she shared here, Interview Feature with…Amie from Go Be Faithful

Meet Amie, Work At Home Full Time Homeschool Mom

Thanks, Amie so much for taking some time to talk with me today, please give us a little back story and catch us up! I know this past year has included many changes and you have more to come!

“I’m a work from home online high school teacher for Connections Academy. I homeschool our 13 and I0 year old girls with a combo of resources. My 13 year old is gifted and talented. She is in 7th grade and a brilliant artist. She’s doing 9th Biology and Algebra this year. 

Our 10 year old had a traumatic brain injury at 5 and took almost two years to recover fully. She’s the primary reason we started homeschooling. Long term effects of her injury are memory retention issues. It typically takes her a year and a half to master a full year of curriculum, although I just count a year as a year.

She LOVES animals and chemistry and has the biggest heart for helping people and animals. She wants to grow up and work on saving the turtles or whales or work for the ASPCA or something. She struggles with handwriting and attention span and not giving up when things get difficult.

We are also adopting my 7 year old cousin this semester. He moves in and starts homeschooling with us next week. Yay!

He has been bullied at school for his size (he’s bigger and taller than my 10 year old). He is so excited to homeschool and to have sisters. He is in 2nd grade in public school but is actually somewhere on a kindergarten level. Our goal this semester is to teach him to read. He’s closer to grade level for math and does well with oral teaching and explanations. He loves being outdoors, hunting, fishing, and taking care of his chickens. 

My father-in-law moved in with us last semester with a rapid onset of dementia type disease. So things have been a bit crazy lately. My hubby flies regional jets and is gone 3-4 days a week. He handles the high school math and sciences. 

I coach new homeschool families on options that work for them. It’s a relatively new business but something I’ve been doing with my students at my school for a while. An online set curriculum doesn’t work for everyone and that’s ok. 

I also run a health and wellness business with Young Living and teach once a week online or in person. I write and publish devotionals and will be branching into historical fiction this year. For fun, I make quilts to donate to shelters and pregnancy centers.”

In case you missed it, Amie will be homeschooling 3 kids this coming year, works full time at home for someone else, runs 2 businesses and that doesn’t include being a published author, creating quilts for fun, and looking after her elderly father in law while her husband works away several days a week…whew!

A Peek At Her Current Work Schedule:

Amie is a full time working at home mom, I asked her what her work schedule looks like right now.

“I work 8-4 Monday -Friday. I get half an hour for lunch and sometimes cut out early to go to Co-op one day a week 2-4 pm. But it means working late which takes away from my other businesses. 

For my other businesses, I work primarily an hour or three per night, more when my husband is gone on a trip than when he’s home.”

How Do You Fit Homeschooling Into Your Life? 

One of my favorite parts of connecting with working moms is seeing how each family makes working and homeschooling work for them.

It is always different which is a great way to get creative ideas on how you might make it work for your family.

Here is an inside peek at Amie’s full-time work at home homeschooling life looks like:

“Our homeschooling takes place everywhere. The kitchen table, the coffee table, the kitchen island, the backyard, the park, our beds. We travel a lot so we work from the car too.

On Sundays, I pull all the worksheets and work and books each kid needs for the week and put them into a binder or file folder. This makes it easier to grab and go wherever we need to go. If my 13 year old finishes all the weeks work in three days, then she works on the book she’s writing or on her comics she’s drawing.

I have to teach live classes three times a week and have live meetings three times a week. During those times, I turn on Blue Planet or something like that to entertain my father-in-law (sometimes he has a nurse come in to sit with him.) 

The kids have video courses in study.com and in teaching textbooks that they’re expected to complete.

I’m not sure how that is going to work with my new son. He has a learning disability and a short attention span. My 10 and 13 year olds know the rules to not knock or come in the room when the door is closed but he’ll still need to be trained. 

If they don’t do anything but eat and watch a science documentary, that’s ok with me too. I have learned to let go of the things I can’t control and I can’t control my kids when I’m doing live events. Sometimes that means we work late for school stuff. Sometimes I’m exhausted and we don’t get as much done as we want. That’s ok too. “

What Does Your Homeschool Routine Look Like?

“My kids don’t typically wake up until 9-10, sometimes almost noon. We struggle to get it all done by 4 but on live teaching days, sometimes we don’t get started until 4. Some days I get them up early on live teaching days to get as much done as possible before I go into my work cave. My live teaching days are mostly Tuesday and Thursday so those days are the roughest. 

We have a shower board that I took washi tape to so every subject has a box for each kid. When they complete a lesson (worksheets, reading, video, etc), they put a checkmark on it.

The four primary subjects are the daily expectations. It also has chores and quality time on it. Each checkmark gets $.10 which is paid out at the end of the week onto a Greenlight card, which they can use anywhere.

I struggled to let them be responsible for it. I don’t like yelling and nagging. We usually do school August-May. If they don’t finish their curriculum or workbooks by the end of May, then we usually have them take the final exams and call it done if they pass. If they don’t, then we do a week, two, or three randomly around our summer traveling schedule. “

I had to look up what a Greenlight Card was, it sounds pretty cool. You can learn more here.

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• Working Full Time At Home Moms Can Homeschool: Learn How

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What Was A Big Challenge You Had To Overcome?

Working moms can face a lot of unique challenges. Amie is sharing how she is working hard to overcome the ones that are unique to her family.

Keep an eye open for how she involves her husband, I love the tips she shares!!

“Letting go of the things I can’t change was the biggest challenge.

Comparison is the thief of joy and I can get sucked into comparing myself to all the non-working mamas who can take their kids on all the field trips and fun Co-ops that I can’t. But I need to work. And I love my jobs. I have to relax my perfectionist tendencies in regard to my homeschooling because it will drive my kids and myself into panic attacks if I don’t. 

This can pose a challenge when my hubby comes home from a trip and sees the checklist board and there’s not a lot on there. He struggled with feeling like he doesn’t contribute.

When he comes home, he is either hands-on or plays video games, which distracts us. When he’s hands-on, his military training seeps in and we struggle with communicating with the kids in a non-military tone of voice. It’s a work in progress, especially with a new kid in the mix this semester.

Communicating clearly if our expectations tends to help. When I ask my hubby what his plans are while home, it helps a lot. We have a parent meeting within a few hours of his homecoming to discuss what we’ve got going on, what our focus is for the next week, etc. Kids show him projects or ask for his help with math. I make a point to ask each kid to show something or ask something about what we’ve been working on. It helps him feel engaged and opens up lines of communication between them.“

Are There Any Benefits To Working And Homeschooling?

A mom recently said that if working and homeschooling were easy, everyone would do it. Therefore, we might ask if there is any benefits to doing both?

Let’s see what Amie said about juggling her full-time work at home while homeschooling life.

“I can see my kids grow up. I can laugh with them on the hammock at random times of the day. If my teen is having an emotional breakdown, I can be there to hold her hand and let her talk through it. 

Our first year homeschooling, my then 6 year old was having panic attacks every day for an hour at a time, 3-5x a day. She had apparently been doing that in public school but would come home in trouble for not listening. I had no idea and massive mom guilt when I realized this was happening as an effect of her head injury. 

It took almost two years of therapies (aroma, exercises, nutrition changes, etc) for her to stop panicking all the time over little things like writing her name. Seeing her overcome these challenges has been one of the most fulfilling parts of homeschooling. Seeing her face light up when she is excited about learning something brings me such joy. 

She likes to research and learn all about one thing in depth. For example, she has been researching snakes for weeks, watching video after video. I printed out a front and back worksheet for her to tell me typical things: habitat, food, life span, descriptions, etc then a paragraph of why a snake makes a perfect pet. She didn’t argue or whine about it at all and it was the most writing I’ve gotten out of her in a while. Homeschooling gives her the ability to do that. 

My oldest tends to not ask for help on things. She will struggle through it and end up crying or giving up because she doesn’t want to “bother me” while at work. I have to set my timer to go check on her regularly and get her talking. Once she starts talking, we can figure it out together. 

If I weren’t working and homeschooling, both of them would fall through the cracks of the public school system. Working while homeschooling allows me to contribute to the family income. With two more people in the house, we need to buy a new house this year with land for the kids to roam. We wouldn’t be able to do that without me working. 

What Is Your Best Piece of Advice For Other Work At Home Full Time Moms?

“Don’t listen to the nay-sayers and doubters. They will always try to talk you out of it. But you are the gatekeeper of your own home and in charge of what you expose your kids to. You can totally do this working and homeschooling thing. If it’s what’s best for your family, then do it. 

Throw out all expectations for the first year. Nothing will go right the first year and that is perfectly normal. My goal this first semester of homeschooling my new son is for him to learn to read better than he is now. The first year (semester as a minimum) is for a kid to recover and grow.”

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Thank you so much Amie, for sharing your story with us. I, personally, really appreciated the update and see how your journey has changed over the years. 

If you’d like to connect with Amie online you can find her here:

Facebook for health coaching biz: Go Be Faithful and Instagram: @gobedaithful

She also has a book on Amazon: The Oily Devo and her second book will be available by end of February on Amazon. Keep an eye open for that! 

Amie also provides personalized help with getting started homeschooling, just private message her on Facebook. She says, “Homeschool coaching is a passion of mine. I don’t have all the answers, but I love researching and helping people.” 

I can attest to how Amie goes above and beyond when it comes to helping others. 

Working Full Time At Home Moms Can Homeschool

As you can see, you can homeschool your children and work full time at home.

Sure, it looks different for each person and each family and it should! But with a little creativity and a lot of determination you can make it work for you.

I encourage you to read the other ways working moms are able to homeschool here: How Working Moms Homeschool Their Kids

Take your time and figure out what schedule, routine or mix of both works for you. Don’t be afraid to try new things. And if something isn’t working, step back and reevaluate.

There are going to be days where you wonder if you should quit. That’s normal.

If you are looking for more working moms to get inspired, see if our online community is right for you.

Do you work full time at home and homeschool? I’d love to hear how you are making that work for you. Leave me a comment below.

Take care,

Jen

PS. One thing that is vital as a working mom is creating a simple schedule. Sign up below to learn how to do that!

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