Episode 10: How do we help our homeschoolers build resilience?

The world is not easy right now, y’all. In this episode, we’re talking about how to raise resilient, hopeful kids when it feels like everything is on fire.

CW: Mentions of self-harm, abusive childhood (not described)

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Transcript:

We use an automatic transcription app for our podcast, which makes it possible for us to include transcripts for our podcast episodes — but it does sometimes make weird errors! We do edit it, but I’m sure we miss things sometimes.

[00:00:02] Amy: Hello and welcome to Secular Homeschooling with Blair and Amy, brought to you by SEA Homeschoolers and  home.school.life. We are recording this episode on Saturday, May 4th, so may the force be with you, Blair.

Blair: Got my Star Wars gear on.

Amy: Excellent. I still have my pajamas on, just for full disclosure. Today we are talking about a topic that feels really important in the world today: Resilience and how to teach it. 

[00:00:37] Blair: Yeah it just feels like there's a lot going on right now. This is something that Is really personal for me. I think about it a lot and I care a lot about helping people to help their children have the trait of resilience so I'm going to share a personal story to start this off.

I grew up in a very toxic family with a mother who was mentally ill. I've given a lot of thought to what it was. She committed suicide when she was 39, so I really don't know. I never knew her with me as an adult. I think she might have been bipolar. She self medicated. She was an alcoholic and she also took prescription pills.

She was both physically and verbally abusive. I was primarily the target and my father stayed married to her, but he was not there, wasn't present emotionally often physically, because that was how he escaped it. I have given a lot of thought to, I turned out okay, I turned out to be okay. 

[00:01:51] Amy: You turned out pretty good.

[00:01:53] Blair: How do you survive that? I remember being fairly young and thinking to myself that I wasn't going to be like my mom. That was what I really thought. And how do you get to be an okay adult without carrying a lot of negative feelings and being a negative person?

And how do you be resilient through that? It's really the trait. That's what I think about it. I think that I just must have had the trait of being resilient and I figured it out on my own. My late teens and my early twenties I was a hot mess for a lot of those and I didn't want to be, and so I worked very hard and to today, one of the things that makes me be able to be successful is I'm still resilient because the bigger SEA gets, the bigger the target is on my back . And how do you deal with that? And the way I deal with it is the way I dealt with what happened with my mom. And it is, I just let it go. If I've done something, I will work very hard at making things right.

But if I haven't done anything, I let it go. I walk away from it. It is completely out of my control. If somebody says something online that isn't true, I don't have control of that. And I actually don't do anything about it. Part of the reason I don't do anything about it is if I start going there, then all of the time I'm spending being positive is all of the sudden being spent being negative. 

My son, by the way, can struggle sometimes with being resilient. He had two complex concussions from accidents when he used to ski competitively. And something else a lot of people might not know is that he was almost murdered in a park. He had an African American girlfriend. He is white and someone made some racial slurs. He then defended his girlfriend and they stabbed him, missed his ,heart by less than a centimeter away from his left ventricle, about half an inch away from the base of his spine. So he bears the scars of that event that happened when he was 17. And so he has had to be resilient to — Oh, this is a very lot of personal things that I shared in this episode. 

And so how do you be resilient through those? I hope nobody ever has to go through what I went through or what my son went through. But I can tell you that as traits go, the ability to be resilient is incredibly valuable for your mental health.

[00:04:55] Amy: I have always admired the way that you are able to let things go. I am definitely the wake-up-at-three-o'clock-in-the-morning-and-think-about-everything-stupid-you-ever-did-and-everything-mean-anyone-ever-said-to-you kind of person. And it has taken me a lot of therapy, a lot of medication to get to a place where I can let things go.

It has been for me, resilience has been really hard work, and I am not necessarily coming from a place where I had a lot to overcome. Did I? It's funny because I was saying to Blair before we started, we grew up in a time where people let their kids ride in the backseat of a car without a car seat or a seatbelt.

But I think they also did that with our emotional health. They were just like, it'll be fine. Just throw it in there. I think most of us who are parents now are recovering from our own childhoods, even if they weren't actively horrible, even if there wasn't actual abuse. Things that happened to us when we were kids, we look back and we're like, Oh. No, that's bad. And we never want those things to happen to our kids.

And so I think that one instinct that we have is to protect our kids from trauma and sadness and hurt and loss. And that is lovely. And I'm glad that we do that. But also sometimes we can do that to an extent where our kids miss out on becoming resilient.

Because they never have anything that they have to be resilient from. 

[00:06:39] Blair: Part of the reason that I think this is important, after my mother committed suicide, I kept getting ill. I was having to be hospitalized for things and I remember overhearing a conversation my dad had with our family doctor and he said, what is wrong with her? Is she medically crashing or something? And the doctor said these are psychosomatic. She is stressed. She's so upset about her mother committing suicide. I really think she needs to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist. My dad said, my daughter is fine. Don't ever suggest that again. And to Amy's point, that is actually the sort of things that our parents felt. And so we had to figure it out and took me years to figure it out. I also want to point out that if you think that your child needs to see someone, or if you do yourself, please do.

[00:07:37] Amy: Yes. I really hope that we have destigmatized this enough. And, the last 20 years where people feel totally comfortable seeking mental health care. I have a therapist, my husband has a therapist, both my kids have therapists, my dog needs a therapist. 

[00:07:54] Blair: My son is okay today because of a wonderful therapist. He had PTSD actually really bad.

Amy: Oh, I can imagine.

Blair: After the incident. And so the therapy it can save your life, really. And by that, I don't mean save you from suicide, which it can do that too. It can give you, save your life so that it — my mother in her lucid moments certainly didn't want to be who she was at other times. 

[00:08:31] Amy: Which is why health care mental health care should be part of health care and available to every person, and there are a lot of low cost resources sliding scale therapists so there are affordable ways to get it —

[00:08:45] Blair: But there aren’t enough therapists, part of the problem is the wait list and time for therapy. I don't want to get into an area where Amy and I aren't experts. I don't want to trivialize anything, if you're dealing with something or going through something. It's why I'm very open about sharing what happened for me and my son is because I want people who are going through something to feel like there's somebody else who's dealt with some of the things that they're dealing with. It's the entire reason I share these sorts of things.

Yeah, so let's define resilience. I'm going to give it to you, Amy. And then we actually did some research and then added our own little spins on it to how you can teach resilience because I do believe that this is something that many of you hope for your children that they grow up to be resilient. I can tell you a little Teflon on the back is not the worst thing ever, especially as the world moves online. 

[00:09:52] Amy: So Blair and I looked up some definitions. I say Blair and I, Blair actually looked up these definitions for me because she's the best. So when we talk about resilience in this episode, what we're talking about is the ability to maintain or regain emotional balance during and after experiencing disruptive or challenging life events.

Specifically, it's the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or adapt in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress. When we talk about resilient people, we're talking about people who are able to manage stress effectively and emerge from challenges strengthened and more resourceful.

[00:10:36] Blair: I can tell you that is definitely something that I want for my child now, and I want for all my grandchildren. 

[00:10:44] Amy: Yes. And for all children. I think that's what, that's what makes the world a better place. It's people who can survive hard times and grow through them.

[00:10:53] Blair: The idea for having this episode came about because of the challenges that kids are facing. It's a challenging time for kids. The wars, the news, the political landscape. The climate. It just seems relentless. It's such a challenge to educate kids around this information in a way that's honest and have them maintain their mental health. I think that makes teaching resilience really important right now. And yeah, there's economic volatility, social polarization, political polarization. 

[00:11:40] Amy: And it is different from when we were growing up because kids have access to all this information all the time. Whether they're actively following news updates or not, their peers are, their friends are, they're seeing them on people's social media. I don't think that the world is inherently worse than it has been in the past, but I think that we are confronted with the terribleness of the terrible things in a way that is really harmful to kids' mental health.

It's harmful to my mental health too, but I have the context to know, okay, I'm gonna step away from social media for a while. 

[00:12:18] Blair: And the other thing is that the way people treat other people online. Oh. I encourage you, if you follow some people and if any of them are negative, I encourage you to think about why they might be being negative toward others. And then look to see if those other people are being negative in return because if they're not, the person that's not being negative probably isn't an ostrich. They are probably practicing resilience because it's like , one of my defining definitions for myself is that I am a nice person. Not because of how you treat me, but because I am a nice person. And that's actually a resilient trait. It is a resilient trait to be able to hold that line for yourself.

[00:13:11] Amy: I think the online world has spawned a really unique kind of negativity. And I have been really sad in recent years to see that negativity spilling over into real life social interactions. Thank you. I, of course, there are always people who are rude to their waitress at the restaurant, to their server at the restaurant. There are always people who are rude. But I see more of it and I see the rudeness. It's not about the speed with which your french fries are delivered, but about the way that the waitress looks, or her ethnic background, or her accent.

And yeah, it feels like we are now moving into a generation of people who have grown up with this kind of behavior online, and now think that is also an okay way to treat people in real life. And that is hard. If you are a kid and someone is yelling mean things at you, that really disproportionately because you stopped at the light, is it with turning red? And so that the person has to wait behind you for a whole extra three minutes, they come and knock on your window and yell at you.

That's not okay. What do you do with that? I feel like there is a real culture of meanness and violence happening in the real world that comes from that online world right now. 

[00:14:29] Blair: Do you think it's because social media makes it so you're not connected to others directly in an emotional way? 

[00:14:37] Amy: I think some of it is that The anonymity of the internet made it possible for some people who have bad intentions or want to experiment with being mean, which is actually a really normal thing. For middle schoolers and teenagers to want to do you practice being sarcastic, you practice making rude comebacks that, that is a very normal kid behavior, but I think the anonymity gave them a place to do it where there were no real consequences or repercussions, and so it became a socially accepted thing, they felt like that was socially acceptable behavior, and so they've turned, I would call it trolling, into their whole personality, and I think we see this with a lot of these like flat earther people who don't actually believe in flat earth, just enjoy arguing with people about it to because they can, or, like this whole crazy incel movement and all these I do, I think that a lot of these people — They just, they're entertained by it, they see it as like a kind of performance art and if someone that they loved told them that they were a terrible person, this was hurting them. I think a lot of them would be really hurt, but I don't think there's anybody telling them that. 

[00:15:55] Blair: I will tell you that that practicing to be sarcastic or that sort of normal behavior some people might think that's funny, but as a child who grew up in an abusive household, that was very toxic. I never found that funny. In fact, my husband and Sean sometimes teased me for not having much of a sense of humor. And I do have a sense of humor, but I don't like any kind of mean humor. If I think that in order to be funny, someone is targeting another individual, I do not find that funny at all, in any situation. The reason I'm bringing it up is because there are people who that is never going to be appropriate humor to. So you might want to be mindful if your child is practicing being sarcastic and everyone in the family finds it funny. There are going to be people out there and they might have a really good reason for not finding that funny. 

[00:16:58] Amy: I think that's part of the point is that when you are doing, when you are, when I was in sixth grade, if I was going to say something sarcastic and mean, people around me would have a reaction to it.

I'd be doing it in real life, in real time, and people wouldn't just be typing LOL back at me. I would see someone's face fall if they got hurt, and that would be like a consequence that would make me want to change my behavior. Or maybe my friend would say, hey, that was mean, and that would make me want to change my behavior.

Or maybe people who I thought weren't very nice people would laugh at it and I would be like, Oh I don't know that I want to say things that would make these people like think it's funny. So I think that we have lost a little bit of that with online interaction, the real life kind of social repercussions of those kinds of experiments.

I think it is very normal for for kids to start to realize that they can be sarcastic. Irony is like one of the first stages of humor for kids. And it is a long and annoying stage, a little better than the poop jokes, but…

[00:18:01] Blair: So one of the things that I wrote down as you were talking was trust. I think part of the problem with the online, Can you trust? I just happened to see an article that Russia has operatives right now putting out things on TikTok just to muck with the United States election. Their goal is to make, political and social groups more polarized. 

[00:18:36] Amy: I think that trust is a piece of it. I think that there's so many layers of human connection that don't happen online, and trust is one of them, and accountability is one of them. And consequences are one of them. When we start to pull those threads away, kids are left without a lot. With no real like protection from — kind of, oh that's the wrong word, but you know what I'm saying. I think when we pull those things away, like one thread at a time, we create an environment where, I'm gonna say meanness, where meanness can flourish. 

[00:19:20] Blair: So, let's talk about how to teach resilience. So how can you help your child be more resilient?

[00:19:29] Amy: So I am always gonna say the best thing that you can do for your kid, you know what I'm gonna say? The absolute best thing that you can do for your kid is number one, critical thinking and number two, let them fail. Do not protect them from every failure. 

[00:19:51] Blair: That is challenging. Are you going to give us a personal example? 

[00:19:57] Amy: So yeah. Many years ago, when we started home schooling, one of the things that I was really excited to do was the History Fair that I organized for our local homeschool group, and so many kids were excited about this history fair. I don't know if you remember, like, history fairs from when you were a kid. But, like, I had this great vision and everyone was so excited.

We were going to have the trifold boards! Some people would have digital displays. They all had really ambitious project ideas that they were so excited about And the night before the history fair was supposed to happen, I started to get these really upset texts and emails from parents whose kids were not going to be ready and were not going to be able to participate because they hadn't been able to finish their projects, and I was devastated.

I'm so sorry, but we've booked the space, and they just won't get to participate this year. And I felt really bad for them. And then, it turned out that my own daughter also had not finished everything that she needed to do. We had been checking in, she had written the report, she had done the research, but she had this very ambitious idea of designing this very complicated timeline. And she wanted to do it herself, she did not want my help, which I respect. And she didn't finish it, and she didn't get to display her project at the history fair. And it was really disappointing to her. It was so disappointing. She took the parts of the project that she had, and I think it was actually pretty good, like I was very proud of her and the good work that she did on it.

But she — the project did not turn out the way that she wanted, and I did not jump in and save the day for her. I did not cushion her from that. I let her experience what it was like to get too close to a deadline and not finish. Because she was, she never did that again. She never procrastinated again.

But even if she had, she would have learned that she could mess up and the world didn't end, that it was fine. She didn't turn in the project, and it was disappointing. But I still loved her. The sun still rose and set. She was still a good student. She still did good work. Nobody hated her. And I think that if we don't give our kids the opportunity to see that, the opportunity to see that they can totally screw up and mess something up — and it's fine. It's fine. You want to do better next time, but the world doesn't end. 

[00:22:12] Blair: There's a important aspect, If you're going to turn that into a teaching moment, let them fail, but then talk to them about how to make a project more manageable. Maybe you can't have 10 moving pieces, maybe only 6 can happen, because you do have other things that you're responsible for. We're really talking about executive functioning in that case. And executive functioning can be very important when it comes to academic work. In the tie in to that and resilience, you've got to be careful because your child might not be as skilled at them as you hope. Parents often think their children has mastered an executive functioning skill when it's just a work in progress.

[00:23:00] Amy: It is one of the I think it's one of the hardest things to do as a parent is to watch your kid not succeed a few years ago. Gosh, a few years ago, I guess it's been more than several years ago. I had a student in my high school writing class. He was a great writer, a really strong writer.

And I actually offered them an internship at the magazine that I was editing at the time over the summer. And I said, all you have to do is edit this and send me a copy of it, and I'll, I'll make you an intern. And I need it by this date. I'm just making up a date, like May 8th, or something.

And the student, who was, again, a great writer, a really talented writer, didn't do it. Couldn't do it. I gave an extension. They didn't do it. And then they sent it a month and a half late, and I was like, no, I'm sorry, I already have an intern. And it was — the student was really disappointed, and the student's mom called and was really upset with me because I should have followed up with the student and made sure that he was getting it in and and she was really upset because her student was so her student was upset, right?

Her kid was so upset and so disappointed. And this had been a really good opportunity that he had missed out on. But. Isn't it better to miss out on an internship with your high school writing teacher than to lose a job or fail out of college? I think when we let our kids fail we give them an opportunity to be better prepared for the rest of their lives.

I just want to be clear like i'm not knocking the student who is a very I’m sure still talented writer and it just it wasn't the right fit at the time, but I think it's an example of how if you try, if I had given the student the internship after all that I just don't feel like it would have been a great experience for either one of us. No, and it definitely would not have taught them anything that they needed to know about how to, you know, cope in a business world. 

[00:25:09] Blair: You know that's interesting. They didn't learn the skills they hoped they did, but they learned one of the most valuable skills in life that you could have. 

[00:25:19] Amy: And I think that a lot of times we think that when we're helping kids with all these executive function skills, like holding their hand through every step, that we are really helping them build those skills, that's not always the case.

Sometimes kids can become overly reliant on that scaffolding and when it's not there, they don't know how to do it. So I think part of building kids who can fail better every time is taking out pieces of the scaffolding bit by bit. And sometimes that means that they'll fall, but this is the time to do it, when they're kids and there are no major repercussions.

[00:25:55] Blair: So resilience is not just failing or falling, it's recovering from it. My number one thing that I would say it's that you model the trait of resilience. How do you recover from things? 

[00:26:12] Amy: So Blair, give us an example of how you model resilience. 

[00:26:17] Blair: Okay. Actually, I said it earlier. I am nice because I'm a nice person. And if somebody does or says something that isn't nice, what do I do about it? I run SEA homeschoolers, the target on the back just keeps getting bigger. People say things all the time about me or about SEA that just aren't true. How do I handle those things? I don't do anything about them, for the most part. They're trying to get people to like things or to interact or whatever because I am never ever not nice online 

[00:27:00] Amy: I've never seen you be not nice.

[00:27:01] Blair: That's not energy that I want in my soul or in me. And I let it go. Water off a duck's back. That's resilience. One of the things that I practice I stay within my circle. Can I control this situation? and if the answer is No, or the answer is, Not without a lot of negativity. I walk away from it I don't even interact. That is actually one of the skills that you are going to need to be resilient If you're online and you start to feel yourself get upset about something, do you have any control over that situation? And if the answer is no I recommend that you don't spend a lot of time focused on that.

If somebody's being personally negative maybe you need to address that but for me as somebody who has a social media presence, I just don't. Spend any time online looking at who I am and listening to what I have to say. I am absolutely a person that stays in positivity. The world is too full of people that are trying to tear it and every other person in it down. Let's talk about that a minute. There's this culture of tearing others down. 

[00:28:22] Amy: And I think that what you're touching on is another of the ways that we can help our kids grow into resilient people is by helping them understand what they're feeling. What are their feelings? Like how to identify and deal with your feelings.

So like my daughter. With her history project, it turned out that she had done like a hundred drafts of this very fancy timeline that she was doing, but she wasn't happy with any of them. None of them were perfect. And so it was like this perfectionist unhappiness that was driving her. And once we figured that out, like that was something that we could work on together, but we had to find the words.

Sometimes things happen and they make you angry. Sometimes they make you sad. Sometimes they make your stomach hurt. Like really helping kids name and identify and process the feelings that they're having, I think is a big part of resilience because I don't know about you, but like when I was a kid, I guess my parents idea of like feelings were like, okay, but just don't wear them out in public.

Don't do that outside the house. No feelings. 

[00:29:30] Blair: What you're talking about is important. Being able to identify your emotions, recognizing that your feelings are valid and important.

[00:29:39] Amy: And the physical reactions that they cause, right? Because when you're angry, you may get hot and sweaty and want to move. And when you're sad, you may want to go lay down. 

[00:29:48] Blair: But then also understanding that a part of being resilient is a part of recognizing when your emotions are taking you into territory that isn't as rational as might help you to recover from a situation. 

One of the books that in my life made the hugest difference was — I think his name is Bradshaw, and it is The Shame Based Family. If you grew up in a shame based family, that sort of shame where you can't forgive yourself and in part, it's because the people around you weren't very forgiving, that is something that therapy can help with that.

[00:30:41] Amy: Internalized shame is really hard to let go of. And that is, like for people who aren't resilient, that is sometimes what can happen. Because you cannot let go of things that you've done wrong or messed up or been hurt by. And so you internalize them. You internalize shame. You internalize anger.

You internalize self loathing. Because you're not letting it out. 

[00:31:06] Blair: So we want to model it. We want to develop and discuss for emotional awareness. Be honest with your children. My son brought up something just this morning that I had done once a long time ago. The one way that my mother showed love was through gifts. And so I have had to work really hard, not attaching all this crazy amount of significance to gifts. My son said, it's always so stressful, Mom finding a gift for you. And to this day, I have to work on that trait. My son said, I know it's a love language, and I know that's part of your love language. And I told him that is not how I feel. I work at it. I know that is a ridiculous thing that unfortunately is probably going to be a part of me, but I don't have any more emotional attachment to what people give me. But, when he was younger, I wasn't as with it. Twenty years later, I'm much better at it. 

[00:32:15] Amy: And this is it, right? Because I think one of the things that's really helpful with building resilience, and one of the reasons that I mentioned critical thinking early on at the beginning, is because I think it's really helpful when you're afraid or, nervous, or upset, or angry, or sad, to figure out why you're feeling that.

And a lot of times, the obvious why is not the why, right? I'm nervous about giving my talk at the SEA Conference. Every. Single time. Oh my gosh, I get butterflies. I'm convinced. I'm convinced that nobody's gonna come to my talk It's just gonna be empty and it's just gonna be me standing there and they're gonna be like, oh, sorry Nobody really wanted to hear you or that like people are just gonna leave in mass during my talk because it's so terrible.

But it's not because i'm afraid of giving a talk and it's not because I don't know my subject — it's because, deep down, I am still, there's still a part of me that is a little girl whose parents were always too busy to pay attention to her.

Who would get bored, like I could see their eyes glaze over when I started explaining what I was reading or the story I was writing. And so for me, like when I stand up in front of people, I automatically assume that I am going to bore them and I just I'm trying to get out of there as quickly as I can.

And it's something I've worked on in my adult life, but knowing that's what causes it helps a lot. It doesn't make me less nervous, but it means that I can say this nervousness is silly and I'm going to go do it. I'm going to go do the hard thing anyway. 

[00:33:56] Blair: It is hard putting yourself out there.

So one of the things that is on the list of teaching resilience is encouraging positive relationships. What Amy has done is she's gone out and found a bunch of people who are just as into the things that she is. Who recognize her brilliance and work as hard to build her up as she does to build them up. And that is a really important. I hope all of you have those sorts of people in your life. Because when we model things for our children, we're also modeling the sort of relationships that are essential for us. 

Personally, unless they're a direct family member, I put up with very little negativity from anyone who I'm close to.

That doesn't mean I won't be there for someone, but that means that if there's a lot of negativity directed at me. Look, I've got people who are like no and that's fine. I won't spend a lot of time there, because life's short. As long as I live, and I hope it's a long time, it's not going to be long enough. Make sure that you surround yourself with positive relationships, if you can. 

[00:35:18] Amy: As your kids get into middle and high school, this is really important for them to have a supportive, affirming community. That doesn't mean a community where every single person agrees about everything all the time. In fact, like respectful dissent is a really important part of a healthy community. But but kids really do need that. And it is. It is more work to do it as a homeschooler.

Socialization is not what people think it is. And it is not hard to socialize your children, but as kids get older, it can be hard to build a social network for them. And that is something that you are probably as a parent going to have to actively participate in, and it is worth doing. 

[00:35:59] Blair: Yeah. One of the things my son, as a young adult, the friends that he has around him, this is the most positive inclusive loving friend group. It just it's really awesome to see. 

One of the things we touched on, but didn't really talk about that I think is important is if you care about something, get involved with solving it. Resilience doesn't mean that you only exist in a space that is rainbows and fairy tales. Resilient individuals get involved with a focus on what they can control So that they don't spend too much time on what they can't. Those two things together I think are very important.

My son was telling me something that upset him that he finds upsetting and I said, what are you going to do to solve it? And he said there's nothing I can do to solve it. And I said, I'm going to recommend that you stop putting a lot of mental energy into this. And he goes then he took my advice. 

[00:37:06] Amy: Which is smart, because a lot of times, like you are a 16-year-old kid. You cannot solve homelessness. You cannot solve hunger, but you can volunteer and solve homelessness for one night for one person.

You can solve hunger for one meal for one kid. And being able to do that really does help you build a sense that the world can change for the better. That bad things don't have to stay bad if people are willing to work together to make them better. And I think that is the kind of hope and resilience that kids really need in a world that can feel hard.

[00:37:44] Blair: I like that too. We did a lot of service work and one of the things that happens is that your children start to meet people who are trying to be the change they want in the world. It really shows a goal of working further to make things better for the individuals who you can help. 

[00:38:13] Amy: Yeah, it can definitely be perspective building and not in a sort of grief tourism kind of way which I always, I've never heard of that, but in the way where where it is. It is really perspective giving to see how you have the ability to make the world better for other people. And by the same token, to see some of the better things about your world that you probably take for granted a lot.

I hope that my kids often take for granted that they have a roof over their head and clean water. I you want your kids to be able to take that for granted. But sometimes it's nice to remember that you are living a life that lets you take it for granted. And that's, there's a lot of privilege in that. A lot of people in the world don't have that. 

[00:39:01] Blair: They do not. It's important that we don't minimize what kids might be going through because the brains are developing. They don't have the same emotional tools that we do as adults. And so we need to recognize that. 

[00:39:14] Amy: So before we wrap up I want to say one thing and then I want to ask you if you have anything to add. What I want to say is that for me one of the benefits of doing this kind of thoughtful, loving work on resilience with my kids is that I have also gotten to do it with myself.

I feel like being the parent I wish I had, has healed a lot of things for me, for the person that I am. And that has been a lovely and unexpected benefit. I can now look at myself and my life and say, like the great Leonard Cohen, there's a crack in everything. That's where the light gets in.

[00:40:05] Blair: What it did for me is it got me to a place where I could, I didn't even know I needed to do it, but it got me to a place where I could truly and honestly forgive my mom. For a few years I wasn't as forgiving as, with her as I would have been for any other person. But in part it was because it was a I didn't have an escape.

[00:40:29] Amy: I was gonna say, it's in part because instead of having a safe place, you had a dangerous place and that's hard. That's hard. 

[00:40:38] Blair: It was hard. There is a lot of putting you down all the time. And in overcoming that, I might now overcompensate, but I did overcome it. 

[00:40:50] Amy: I've met your son, and I will say that he is a happy, confident, adjusted human being in the world. And whatever you have had to recover from you have not passed that trauma onto him. T

his is a very personal episode, but I feel like that's how we talk about resilience, right?

Resilience is personal. 

[00:41:10] Blair: Yeah, if anybody just needs to ever quietly reach out to somebody that they feel has had a shared experience and you have shared any of my experiences, the door is never closed to you, ever. Those of us who have survived things, it's important that we always know that we have other people who have survived those too. 

[00:41:38] Amy: So Blair is blair@seahomeschoolers.com. You can always reach me at amy@homeschoollifenow,com and you can reach both of us at podcast@homeschoollifenow.com.

I always drop the new podcast on instagram first, so you can always find the link to the episodes there. But if you're subscribed to our rss feed you always get it immediately, or if you follow us on Apple podcasts, it should show up in your feed there as soon as we upload it.

We’d love if you want to leave us a review or a comment or let us know your ideas for a future episode. Sometimes it's very weird talking into the void this way and it can feel a little bit like you're all alone out there. So we really love to hear from you so that it's — you know, I've just confessed to you my fear of nobody showing up to my conference talk 

[00:42:27] Blair: Amy, let's wrap up with a teaser.

So we, I know we normally go to what we're reading and I have been reading, and I think Amy's going to start reading it, climate change in human history, prehistory to present. And the reason we are both reading this has to do with the fact that Amy and are about to start working on curriculum, a multi subject curriculum, and we are going to build the curriculum around The Writing Revolution. We will be doing an episode on the writing revolution in the future if you haven't heard of the writing revolution, it's also known as the Hochman method. Look it up.

It's amazing writing method. And it's one of the important pieces of it is that it is content driven. And so we are reading this book, or the history piece of it. Want to tell them a little bit about it, Amy? 

[00:43:34] Amy: I was going to say just since we're talking about it that Blair and I are envisioning doing something really different with history, with the idea that we will follow the flow of humans across the geographical landscape of the globe. 

[00:43:58] Blair: Starting with when humans evolved. Starting, yes. When they went places and so the changing climate has a lot to do with that human homo evolved during a warm period, about 3 million years ago.

And that is where prehistory starts or it is with us. 

[00:44:21] Amy: So what we're hoping to do is create a history that actually decenters the white patriarchy and do that by telling the story of people. So we're really excited about it.

So now that we've told people, I actually have to hit all my deadlines, Blair. 

[00:44:41] Blair: So we're collaborating on all of this. We will use some existing materials. So it's not just going to be history. There's going to be science, history, literature, writing.

[00:44:52] Amy: And we'll make recommendations for math and how to use The Writing Revolution in math. We're super excited about building this multi modal, writing based, thinking centered way of exploring the world for kids from elementary through high school. We are, you're very excited about it. And now I'm going to have a panic attack because deadlines, so many deadlines. 

[00:45:20] Blair: And whether anybody's going to show up, Amy's going to be worried about that, whether they'll love it. You know what, Amy, here's a little resilience for you, everybody. Some people will love it, and some people won't, and that's okay. Nothing is for everybody. 

[00:45:38] Amy: All right, on that note, we'll call this a wrap for this episode of Secular Homeschooling with Blair and Amy, brought to you by that very resilient Blair of SEA Homeschoolers and the slightly less resilient Amy of  home.school.life. We will be back soon to talk about more topics around secular homeschooling.

In the meantime, you can catch up with us on Instagram and on the SEA homeschool boards on Facebook. Have a great week! 

[00:46:05] Blair: So much love, everyone. We are in your corner. Alrighty, bye.