Welcome to the Feast Life, where we empower you, the modern homeschool mom, to create a life and homeschool you love, one founded on faith, family, freedom, and fun. I'm your host, Julie Ross, creator of the award winning homeschool curriculum, A Gentle Feast, and a certified Christian life coach. For more information on today's episode and to access my free gift for you, check out thefeastlife. me. Charlotte Mason once said, life should be all living, not a mere tedious passing of time. So on this show, we seek to help you. To savor the feast of life. Girl, grab your favorite beverage and pull up a chair. You are welcome at this table.
Julie Ross: Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Feast Life. I am so glad you're here. Today I am talking to my friend, Christy Faith. Welcome to the table, girl.
Christy Faith: Hello. I'm so happy to be here. Just an excuse to spend time with you. I know.
Julie Ross: We've already been talking for an hour, but that's okay. So now we're actually going to hit record and share our conversation with everybody and I'm so excited to introduce my audience to you. You to my audience. I was on your podcast and so I got to meet some of your people, message me on Instagram and stuff, which was super fun. And so I'm so excited for my audience to get to know you. So girl. Fill us in of your journey and how you are at this point where you just wrote a book and we're gonna talk about that too.
Christy Faith: I know. It's so crazy. Yes. I do have a book coming out and probably by the time this airs, it'll be out, right? Yeah. Okay. You can get the book on Amazon. It's called Homeschool Rising. But it's a crazy story. I am, do you guys know I'm a TikToker? That's how I started.
Julie Ross: Yeah, I'm really bad at that. My daughter explained to me today how you had a TikTok and I can duet it or something. Yes.
Christy Faith: I don't know anything about it. And I will say it was the golden day of the TikTok. Now I feel like I get on that app and every other video is like Home Shopping Network, which I refuse to schlep product for you, TikTok.
Thank you very much. So you might need to find me on Instagram now. I'm still posting on TikTok, but I'm just falling out of love right at this particular moment. But yeah, so I was, I got on TikTok not on purpose. I initially, I happened to have been in makeup that day and my hair was done because I happened to go to church that morning and I was like, I am really mad.
I feel like everybody, cause I got on TikTok and I searched for homeschoolers. And I, it was either people coming out of COVID who were just complaining about having their kids home. Okay, I get it. We all know that's not homeschooling. Even they know it's not homeschooling. That was crisis schooling. But it was negativity.
So it was a lot of negativity around being around your kids all day and trying to educate them. Total grace for these parents who had full time jobs, and then this was thrown on them overnight Absolutely, okay, and then there was the homeschoolers, and I felt like everyone was playing defense constantly in all of our space everyone feels cornered all the time like no my kid is socialized or No, we're gonna go to college my kid is getting a good education, and I just Because I had done the research, because Scott and I chose to homeschool our kids based on valid evidence and data, I was like, we don't really need to be in this defensive, cowering stance when it comes to us explaining why we are homeschooling our kids.
We have the data. We have the data that proves this is an amazing choice, a valid choice, better prepares our kids for college. And so one day I was like, I'm gonna Someone needs to be playing offense. So I did. And it happened to be, I think it was just the right timing for everything because it happened to be, back in that day, you could be wild on TikTok and say whatever you wanted.
And things are a lot different now, but that's my very first video that I posted it went viral overnight. I could not eat for six weeks I was like what just happened. I talked to my friends like this is nuts and everyone in my life was like you should have an open mind regarding is this an opportunity?
Is this something you're supposed to be doing with? Chapter two of your life. So previously, Scott and I've been in education for over 20 years, Scott and I ran a boutique learning center and consulting firm in Los Angeles. We taught the kids of the rich and famous. We got them into IVs. We did test prep, reading interventions.
We did all of that. We even ran a homeschool in the mornings. And but I wasn't, we had sold our company and moved to Colorado and I was loving this stay at home mom homeschool life. And so I wasn't really planning to do a second career, but I think that God had a different plan for me. It was very clear.
And then, fast forward, 9 months into that, around 9 months, 10 months, 11 months, I don't even remember a publisher came to me and they said, We want to, we want more books in the homeschooling space and we want you to write it. And I could not believe that, people were, I, it's like, what?
What? Can I even write a book? Do I know how? The answer is no, I did not know how. That is if you're wondering. So it was I think that's what everybody says. Yes. Yeah, a graduate paper. Yes, I can do that. So I fumbled through the whole process, but I never gave up. I never gave up because I cannot tell you how many drafts I thought were just complete crap.
Can I say that on your podcast? Sure. Yes, absolutely. Okay, throw it in the trash. Okay, and but I'm happy with the product now. I feel like it's doing what I initially like, what my heart wanted the book to do, and I'm really proud of it now. But it was a journey getting there. Anybody who's going through something hard or trying to do something really hard right now.
I just don't want you to feel alone. Like hard things are really hard and you don't know how to do them. And I was at the point where I felt like how a lot of our kids feel who maybe have ADHD were like, this task is so huge and I don't even know how to break it down. Like how do professionals do this?
I was able, I actually had to get some help from professionals that knew how to. Organize. This is a great computer program to use. Christie. Oh, this is a computer program that authors use. Okay. . . Anyway, it got done many drafts, many tears, and it's here. So thank you. Yeah.
Julie Ross: And I'm so proud of you.
It is fantastic. One of the things I really appreciate about it is it has such a unique perspective of, it applies to all homeschoolers, so it's not. Just Charlotte Mason or just classical or just whatever. There's a lot of mom encouragement books out there regarding homeschooling, which I'm so grateful for.
Those were like my lifeline in moments where I was like on the bathroom floor, like I can't leave the bathroom kids, and so I'm so grateful for those mom encouragement type books, but yours is like a homeschooling like manifesto. And I don't feel like there are books like that on the market, especially.
Written by actual homeschool mops and not like educational theorists and like things that like, or you read them and you're like, okay, this is as boring as sawdust. Like you're real, you're funny, you're engaging, you have real life stories and it's oh, I could totally relate to this lady.
And for me, even being in this 20 years. It's like fuel for the fire. And I feel like so many moms, especially recording this in February, this time of year are like, why am I doing this? This is so hard. I'm totally screwing up my kids. Let me start planning next school year, because that sounds fun and exciting.
And, totally neglect what I'm supposed to be doing right now. And I always tell people. You have to go back to your why and find your purpose and your passion and that will ignite you and motivate you on those really hard days like you're talking about on the hard day when you don't want to write the book.
Why am I writing this? What am I doing? And so I feel like your book is like that fuel to the flame. So I don't know if you realize that. It was like, what was your intention where this is what I'm going to be writing about. This is the topics here.
Christy Faith: Okay, so I went the route of what you shouldn't do when you're writing a book.
They always say narrow your audience, right? So are you writing directly to homeschool mothers? Are you writing to the professional field, the pediatric field? Are you writing to naysayers? Who are you actually writing to? But I kept coming back to I'm writing to all of them. Because what I know is the worst naysayer Is in our own minds.
Yes. We are our worst naysayers. We are, we tell toxic lies to ourselves all the time. And so I was like how do I write a book that someone can hand their mother in law who is criticizing their homeschooling, she can hand it to her pediatrician who's grilling her about socialization at a regular monthly regular yearly visit, but also read herself and be like, Why would I choose anything else?
Why would I, so the fact that I have, and in my first chapter, I address those three audiences and why, what I hope to get out of the, them to get out of the book. Is that bad writing? It might be, but I'm a new book writer, no, I think. But that's what I hope, I hoped to achieve, and it was a big nut to crack, and maybe I didn't do it well, maybe I did some parts of it well. And it's funny because my favorite chapter always changes de schooling, I was like, I love this de schooling chapter, I wish, I want everyone to read my de schooling chapter, and then then it's another chapter about, yeah. And there's a chapter I had to delete, which is sad because I was over word count, yeah,
Julie Ross: it's hard for sure. I think what makes, You such a person who should be talking about this, right? Is your background in your experience? Can you talk a little bit about the kind of learning center and the work that you were doing there and how that led you and your husband to decide to homeschool?
Because you bring that up in the book a lot, but I think it's so important because even Those of us who homeschool saying, I want to homeschool because I want to provide my children a different kind of education than the one I received. We so easily fall into the trap of making our school homeschool look exactly like the school that we didn't want to have our children be in.
Christy Faith: Yes, we do. Yeah. We were running I'll start here. We were running a homeschool out of our center for a very long time. However, that homeschool was utilitarian. So we were in Los Angeles. It was pre pro athletes, quite a few actors kids who were expelled in between schools for a season.
We loved those kids. They're just all misunderstood. And so they were great kids. But when I started to read up on homeschooling to make my homeschool better at my center. At the time we were hiring certified teachers and using certified curriculum because heaven forbid if we ever have to matriculate this kid back they need to be ready, right?
Keep in mind I'm not deconstructed yet. That was Pandora's box because when you start reading homeschooling books then you're like, what? There's different pedagogies. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What? Why are these kids learning Latin? Like that makes no sense. And I actually remember going to a homeschool conference and walking up to one of the big, classical guys and saying, really?
Latin? I live in California. At the time, I lived in California. Shouldn't my kids be learning Spanish? It was so just, I wasn't disrespectful, but now I'm super embarrassed that I did anything like
Julie Ross: that. So I think that's a very legit question.
Christy Faith: Actually. Yeah. And I was not deschooled.
I was not deschooled. I was completely a product of the environment. I went through the public schools myself. So what we started to see and this goes to why we chose homeschooling for our own family. We worked with the kids of the. very wealthy. There were unlimited resources. We're talking, we had a lot of our clients.
These kids never even stepped foot on a commercial jet. They only flew private. These were A list celebrities, the producers, the people even more powerful than the A list celebrities where you don't know their names, but they're actually more powerful. Those were the kids that we taught. It was just the area that we were in and the type of service we provided.
It attracted those because it was an extremely like very concierge type service. Those kids still struggle. They still need reading intervention. They still have dyslexia. They still have ADHD, anxiety disorders. So every single day I was reading IEPs and most of these kids were, of course, their needs were not being met in either the public or private school that they were in, and we were hired to solve the problems that these schools could not solve.
And so that gets you start to think wow, these parents are having to go private to get these kids to learn. To read. It's not happening in the reading interventions. This is just an example with reading. It's not happening with those interventions. This and that. But here's the deal. We worked with kids all the way through 12th grade.
You would think that if you had unlimited resources to all the tutoring in the world, all the intervention, all the vision therapy, all this, all that, wouldn't you think outcomes would be better? Wouldn't you think kids would be happier? They weren't. And it really It just got under my skin because the outcomes aren't better.
These kids were suffering from depression. They were fail. I want to say like college failure to thrive, which we see a lot of going off to a college and coming back by Thanksgiving and all these things. After these parents spent thousands upon thousands of dollars to get them the test prep, they needed the college counselor to get them into that Ivy league school.
And it just cracked the glass a little bit for me. What's going on here? You got to see behind the curtain. Yeah. I did. And it's cause we often think, think about it. I often use different analogies to explain because it helps for me. It's like dieting. Like we'll say if I could hire a professional chef like Oprah can, of course, I'd be skinny, right?
It's the same scenario. No, you wouldn't be, you wouldn't necessarily be skinny. It's the same thing. Like we think, Oh, if my, if I can afford the quarterback coach, my kid might be able to get a college scholarship for sports. Or we do that. We do that to ourselves. Anyway, I can tell you here right now.
That the outcomes aren't better. These kids are equally as miserable. And I'm not using that word flippantly. There is a crisis in mental health, especially with teenagers in our country. The majority of the teenagers that we worked with were incredibly troubled, engaging in very dangerous behaviors, self sabotage, needing therapy, concerning highly concerning.
So I'm looking at this saying, do I want this for my kids? We had a history of infertility, so I was able to be in the workspace running our center for a lot of years before we had our first child. I'm an older mother and it required, infertility treatments and things like that to have our, the kids that we have now.
But, so I had time to really, in my adult life, to observe and think about. What is an education? And that was the question that made it all come tumbling down. It led us to selling our center. It led us to homeschooling our kids and doing what I do now because I truly believe in the bottom of my heart that there is no better place to educate a child than in a loving home with a motivated parent.
And no, not everyone can homeschool. No, not everyone should homeschool. That shouldn't stop us. Yeah.
Julie Ross: And it doesn't mean that's not. An ideal situation. Exactly. And I think a lot of parents view it as maybe this isn't ideal. Maybe this isn't real. And so I feel like your book was really just so motivating of showing no.
And talking about those studies, and talking about your experience of, we think the be all end all is getting like a good SAT score and a college scholarship. And that's not like these children are suffering and that so much pressure and everything is put on them. And it reminded me, I actually was a tutor outside of DC and For foreign ambassadors and someone hired me to come and tutor their five year old for reading and I had been a kindergarten teacher.
I was like, great. I was one of four tutors this five year old had, he was so stressed, he was on medication for anxiety already, so stressed because of all the academic pressure that was put on him and I'd be like, okay if we can get all of this done, and I was playing reading games, if we can get all done in 15 minutes, then for the last 15 minutes we'll play.
Let me tell you how long I lasted about three weeks, right? My mom's I didn't hire you to play. And I was like, he's missing out on his childhood, which is, and I feel like we're able to see that as homeschool moms, right? Of the gift that we've given our children of letting them have a slow childhood and having play.
And that's not a distraction from education. That is where they're learning so many different things. I love in the book, you said that you're pro homeschooling because children. Our persons, which is what Charlotte Mason says. And then you listed three things I want to dive into. You said homeschooling allows for tailored academics.
It instills a love of learning and it promotes social and emotional wellbeing, which is what you've already hit on. So let's talk about that tailored academic.
Christy Faith: Yes. Yeah and your listeners already know this because of the amazing work you do in the Charlotte Mason world as a thought leader and that there is, there are different ways to educate a child and and even within, I know you would agree with this too, is even within the Charlotte Mason world, we still want to be students of our own children and we want to modify what we are doing.
That's what I love about your curriculum is you've made it really easy for us to adapt on a daily basis. We can change things up so easily without Messing up everything else and which is often how curriculum is written poorly. But yeah, I think that all kids learn differently.
They learn at different paces and for some reason, we have been indoctrinated in our society to believe that by the age of five, Developmental inconsistencies for lack of a better word, no longer exist. Meaning it was okay if your kid walked at seven months or didn't walk till 15 months. No one was concerned.
But all of a sudden, and I used to give these reading tests, when I would give a reading test to assess where a child was, it actually assesses them by year and month. Month, yep. Month , and then compares them to everybody else. Yep. Just think that. Why have we done this as a society? And the answer is standardized education.
The answer is there's no other way to mass educate children without putting them within a system that regulates what they're learning any given year. There's just no other way. So make no mistake. That system was not created in the best interest of children. The compulsory education system in America, and I am including private schools in this, if you are mass educating children, how could that possibly be in the best interest of your own child?
It's not. They have to get the job done. A lot of kids do just fine with that, but a lot of us say, no I want something better. I want something different. I want something better. I want something more custom. I have a co op three minutes from my door. And they, but it's like one of those academic, it's a homeschool one, but they're too restrictive with the curriculum we have to use.
So I'm not, we're not a part of it because I want to always have the opportunity to look at what learner I have right in front of me. What is going to be the best course of action? All the way through high school is this, Child college bound or are we looking more at art schools or degree free, which is also amazing.
I'm about to interview somebody on my podcast who is in the multiple six figures degree free, homeschool graduate. So that's right. Yeah. So anyway, It's just it's it's exciting to me how and I feel like you were a teacher So as I feel like If anything, we have to deconstruct even harder because we were in it and we taught it and we're like, ah, standards.
And so I feel like it's if you are a mom listening and you're like, but I don't have a teaching credential. Just know from my perspective, you probably have to do less work than I did. Yes.
Julie Ross: Yes. No, I totally agree. And I totally see that. And it took me. Probably just like a year or two of homeschooling for me to get out of that mindset of be this way and fall this way.
I think because I, when I last drew of teaching, I was so disenchanted with everything and I was so heartbreaking, heartbroken. I was teaching fifth grade and I had no students in my class who were reading at grade level when they came into it. Most of them were third and below and I had some that were on first grade, and it broke my heart to see these kids and just.
There's only so much I could do. I have to teach this test and I have to teach them these five things on the history test that they have to know these facts about World War II.
Christy Faith: And I'm like, they can't read! It's who cares? Who cares? It's so funny because someone, I get grilled a lot on social media about all this.
We can go there and not go there. We don't need to go there, but I'm gonna go there for a second. All this gender ethics stuff. This gender ethics asking a five year old what their pronouns are. And I'm just like, you know what hill I die on? Before we talk about those things, let's figure out if this kid's reading.
What is your job school system? Because I just want my kid to read.
Julie Ross: And more important than that, I want them to be able to think about what they're reading. It's one thing just to learn the mechanics of can they actually read, can they answer comprehension questions, can they pass the standardized tests, but at the end of the day, they actually care about anything that they read?
Christy Faith: Probably not, because those texts were so awful and boring. Yes. And what I love about the Charlotte Mason philosophy, which I incorporate in my homeschool, is this deep love of reading and literature and living books. When I was going through the system, I were reading, assigned reading, what we would call in California, core books.
I think they're probably called that in other states as well. Core books, it was work. It was work, and I just had to pass the quiz on Friday, and I never had a profound, and by the way, the literature that was given to me was not bad literature. We were reading Where the Red Fern Grows, and we were reading beautiful stuff, but because of that all the ick around it, around schooling, it killed it for me.
It killed any enjoyment of reading and I didn't capture that until my adult life. And I just think that's one thing is with homeschooling, a goal is I want, I just want my kids to love reading. And if they do, then I've done a good job. Yeah,
Julie Ross: I think that's, I want to talk about this concept a little bit, but I wanted to read a quote.
So the concept is, what is the actual purpose of education, and you talk about this a lot in your book. And I know Charlotte Mason has a lot to say about it. So I wanted to read a quote from her, but it relates to what you just said. So I think it's really cool. This is from school education. She said, Perhaps the chief function of a teacher is to distinguish information from knowledge and the acquisitions of his pupils, because knowledge is power.
The child who has got knowledge will certainly show power in dealing with it. He will recast, condense, illustrate, or narrate with vividness and with freedom in the arrangement of his words. The child who has only got information Will write and speak in the stereotyped phrases of his textbook, or will mangle in his notes the words of his teacher.
And to me, that's because you're only given information, you don't have any ideas. You have to just regurgitate what the textbook said or what your teacher said. But a child who has received knowledge, they can take it and change it and illustrate it and talk about it and make it all these different things because it's actually.
Becomes part of their personhood. So I'm talking about this in the book, but I think it's so important for parents when they're reading this to get this or think about this for themselves. It's one of the things I tell parents before you decide any curriculum, you have to answer this question for yourself.
What is the purpose of education? What do you think the purpose is? Cause that will dictate all
your decisions.
Christy Faith: Absolutely and our society, and the reason why we need time to really think about this question as parents is because we believe that education is vocation training. Yes, that's what it was designed to be.
That's what we now believe that it is, and we believe a good education is the one that best prepares the kid for their future vocation. And the ancients and Charlotte Mason and everyone super duper smart, if you look in history, they did not believe that is what an education is. This idea is in the last 150 years.
It came with the Industrial Revolution. It's new. No one in our, in the, in Colonial America, no one believed in education was first someone else's responsibility. No one believed that. It was just ludicrous to think that it wasn't the parents responsibility to educate their kids. And it wasn't really for vocation.
That's why you have these our amazing thought leaders all throughout history, they were reading You know, the Iliad, the Odyssey, today people would consider those works to be irrelevant or not productive or whatever, my kid needs to know the water cycle instead, it's no, your kid needs to ponder big ideas instead.
Who cares about the water cycle? Do I don't even know if my kids know the water cycle. I think I have a picture I think I have a picture book downstairs. I'll pull it up for next week's morning time. Okay. We'll talk about the water cycle.
Julie Ross: A Drop of Water is a really great book. I'll just read through it all later.
Today's episode is brought to you by A Gentle Feast. A Gentle Feast offers a complete living books curriculum, an award winning early reading program, and more tools to equip you to apply Charlotte Mason's timeless philosophy into your modern homeschool. Go to agentlefeast. com to check it out. Smooth and easy days are closer than you think.
Christy Faith: I think I think that's the one I have downstairs. I gotta tell you, okay, this is you can edit this part out or not, but I, when I first So I started homeschooling in a super embarrassing way that we can talk about. I really regret how I started homeschooling. But when I started to change the way that I, when I was exposed to like Charlotte Mason, Classical, I became obsessed with building a picture book nature study library.
That's awesome. I spent so much money and I would get stuff used and I would just, it became this obsession. I have a pretty kick butt picture book library, and I was thinking, I was, my oldest one is in junior high now, but still if he was to read a textbook of something with science or whatever what would he really get?
He'd probably, it would be all boiled down to what's in this stinkin picture book right here.
Yes,
Julie Ross: yeah, right? Yeah, we could boil it down.
Christy Faith: And yes, he's reading a direct translation of the Iliad right now, so it's not, we're not sacrificing academics here.
Yeah yeah. Yeah. No, that's really great.
How would how would you answer that for you? How have you answered that for your family? Like, why do we go to school? Why are we educating these people? If it's not to get a job, be part of this utilitarian vocation system? Why? Yeah.
My, my answer that is not fully complete, because I could spend my lifetime thinking about this is For me, I keep going back to that an education is the cultivation of a human being and that we have a responsibility.
For me, I believe that responsibility has been given to me by God to raise my children and to grow and trust in Him, learn to grow and trust in Him. Although my platform is non sectarian, everyone knows who's in Thrive Homeschool Community and who knows me personally. They know that I am a, I have a very deep Christian faith and I am a faith based homeschooler.
And when I say that I think an education is the cultivation of a human being, all of it. I mean they're spiritual, I mean they're academic, social emotional, all of it. And I think it can. What I love about that isn't that freeing? Because that allows me to do it how I feel is best for each of my kids.
I juggle a lot. Some days I'm in tears over it. But overall, I think that what I love about Charlotte Mason is how much she emphasized that these are people. These kids are precious human beings. And this is a big responsibility that we have. And I just don't believe the schools are doing it right. I just, deep in my heart, I don't.
Julie Ross: I love that, You mentioned, why do we do it for the tailored academics? We talked about that, right? You get to make it be what your kid needs at this thing. We're not going to all fit into this cog in a wheel on big machine, right? And that you can instill this love for learning by the literature and the big ideas instead of just stuffing them with a bunch of information, right?
And then. What I feel like you're talking about now is that this social emotional health that you get from being with your parent and working through these things together. Is that kind of one of the other three pillars that you're touching?
Christy Faith: Oh, a thousand percent. A thousand percent. It's an I am not happy with what I know based on the research that I had to do for Homeschool Rising on the mental health and emotional health of children in America.
And there is no way to say, there is No way anyone can say that the public school environment is a healthy place for a child. You can't say it. When you look at what a healthy socialized child is, in my book I go over 13 characteristics of a healthy socialized child. Not a single one of those items does a school, is a school required to achieve that.
Can you give an example? Yeah for example with I could go with bullying I could go with grades what grades do to children in terms of pressure and anxiety. We can talk about academic anxiety, because that hits home for me. I grew up with that. If you have a kid who and I do have one of those in my own home And I was certainly bent towards this way where I had a tremendous amount of academic anxiety.
I was very worried about failing the only reason why I was worried about failing was because I was given this thing called grades And the grades were not put in the proper perspective and in the proper place Now don't mistake what I'm saying My kids are in my son is in an online class where he is given a grade But because it's one class And I have the time to have conversations that I don't really care about the grade.
I care about you and your effort and your character with it. He knows that the grade is not important, but that's not how society, that's not the message they're going to get from the schools, from the teachers, and honestly, most parents. I can't tell you how many parties I've been to where when a mom is talking about her kids.
Not a homeschool family. Oh, my kid's a great kid. She has straight A's. She gets straight A's. She's a great kid. And my heart breaks. Yeah. Because that's not what makes a great kid. At, by any stretch. There's a lot of other adjectives that I would use. I would say your kid's a great rule follower.
Yeah. He probably has great reading comprehension. Your kid is great at following directions. There's a lot of other things I would say. But and I think that part of this is because I grew up with a sister, I have an older sister and she has profound learning disabilities. And in the 1980s, First off, girls were rarely diagnosed with anything back then.
Even the concept of dyslexia was very new. Many of her teachers would not even accept her dyslexia diagnosis and refused to make accommodations in the school for her and would shame her and things like that. So I grew up with the one benefit is my parents never put a huge They never put a huge emphasis for her on grades.
They did on me, but not for her. But I was hearing that language, right? I was hearing and also, just with family, is this a therapy session, but with family dynamics, I didn't want to cause academic problems. Yes, for my family, for my parents, but we can totally, this can absolutely turn into a therapy session.
That's okay, girl. I'm a life coach. Let's bring it. There you go. You get what you get with me, ladies.
Julie Ross: I love it.
Christy Faith: Did I even answer your question?
Julie Ross: Yes, and I feel like that's what one of the beautiful things actually about homeschooling and it's funny because that's why I just love talking to you because we just go on these rapid trails and like my ADHD will kick in and we'll be talking about yeah, in five minutes, but that, we are healing ourselves.
Yes, homeschooling and we're healing our own educational past so much so in the gift that we're giving to our children something completely different.
Christy Faith: Have you done a podcast on that?
Julie Ross: No, but I need to. Thank you. I wrote myself a note.
Christy Faith: Wait, write it down right now before we forget because you have ADHD so you'll forget.
I will. Yes. I'll remind you. I want that episode. Can you do a whole episode on that? How homeschooling heals? Could we have a quick moment? Because I talk about this a little bit in my book. I know for a fact I am a better mother because I homeschool because there's certain behaviors and things that maybe I could would have not addressed or, but I am faced with them.
Yes. More consistently. And but I, when I've done the work, I have, Scott and I have gone through. Like you guys don't think that because we're like people that have podcasts that we're perfect like we're not. Scott and I have gone through parenting courses. We really want to do we are constantly learning how to do this.
And so I think that I am so thankful For because of homeschooling, it has spurned wow, my daily life right now is pretty chaotic and I'm noticing myself getting really dysregulated and this isn't the homeschool dreamy life that I see on Instagram. What's wrong? That's led us to parent coaching and things like that, that otherwise, honestly, if I was If my kids were off and I was busy with my career and all of that, I think that there's a lot that I would overlook.
I'm not saying that because your kids are in school, you're a bad parent. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that I'm thankful that to make to, I'm thankful for the opportunity to cultivate the atmosphere. That I want in my home. Yeah. Yeah. It's all about that atmosphere.
Julie Ross: Yeah. And it's such a gift.
And I so appreciate your honesty and your vulnerability. And that's something I really strive for on this podcast of telling people like it is and being like, yeah, I struggle with this. I do that. Yeah. Because we can get this idealized version and we, when we have this idealized version of what our homeschooling should be and then we have our reality, it's that gap that leads to our disappointment and discouragement.
And so it's no, we are all in this together, but that's the beauty of it. And I wouldn't have it any other way because I'm working on myself,
Christy Faith: but
Julie Ross: I'm also helping my kids work on themselves. And that wouldn't be the case. Like you're saying it's, we get to see it all the time. Your kids are going to, people are like my kid resists school.
My kid doesn't like to do X, Y, Z. And your kid's going to do that, whether they're home with you or whether they're in a school, but you get to be the one that helps to coach and walk them through that resistance and get them to the other side. rather than having them just sit there all day and being miserable and turning it in on themselves a lot of the time or they turn it out on other kids who Yeah, their behavior and whatnot.
Christy Faith: Yeah and here's a perfect example of what is an education. So yesterday in morning time, okay, in today's morning time, I actually fell asleep while we were listening to a book on tape. Okay, but yesterday I didn't fall asleep, but no, we were, we're reading the Greek myths and we got to the part about Narcissus and Echo.
And here's the difference between what your kid would get in school and the opportunity for social emotional learning when you homeschool that your kid, schools are now moving into this SEL stuff, social, emotional, it's not like what a parent can do. Like it's not. So we were talking about the story of narcissists and how he was, obviously that's where the word narcissist comes from.
And he would look, he looked in the water and fell in love with himself and this. Echo girl was pining after him and we had this whole discussion and I went there with my kids. I said, this is this, there's a term for these people and they exist today and it's sad and these are some things that we have to do to manage and we want to, you want to always try to not be in a relationship like whoever you choose to marry one day, you really want to look for signs for this cause it can be a really Sad life, I just went there.
It's appropriate for their age But if they were going through even at a Christian school a unit on Greek myths Would there be that discussion like that a mob that only a mom can have with their her daughters? There wouldn't and so yeah, we learned the thing We learn, I want them to know the Greek myths and the reading comprehension and all of that and the application for lots of things.
And also there, it opened the door for an amazing discussion. And that's not the only time I have talked to my daughters about narcissists and narcissism. That was one of the times. And we drip, it's like a, I call it a drip. Like we drip this social, emotional learning with everything we read, everything we do.
There was one time where a neighborhood kid came to our I actually have a piece of content in my drafts on this. Came to our door, sweet kid, and my son was super excited to get his video game time and it was right at that time where the kid came to the door and my son said Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm not going to play right now because I just got my video game time and I'm really looking forward to, I forget if it was a new game he got or something.
And but the kid started to gaslight. The kid started to say, you don't like me and going into some manipulative language and no one knew I could hear. I was around in the other room, but I heard it now as soon as my son closed the door. I said, Hey, when you're, I wanted to honor his video game time because it's within a time limit.
So I said, I want to talk about that conversation. I was able to talk about that conversation and I, he's older. So I actually said the word gaslight, what this means, that type of a thing. I did not throw that other kid under the bus. I did not do that. Why would I do that? He's a little kid, but I wanted, I'm like these are unhealthy things that people do in conversations, right?
So you don't get that kind of in the moment. Thing when your kid is in school and they experience those conversations But parents never know about them and then often kids forget about to even ask about them after so forget. Yeah Anyway, no, that's great. I think that is That's beautiful.
Julie Ross: And people ask me all the time do you offer discussion questions to go with each of the books? And I'm, and I said, I always say no. And the key is your child narrates, they're going to put it in their own words, make it their own. They're going to, every kid is different, so you'll get a million different things from each kid.
I said, but their discussion has to happen and be led by the spirit. I don't want to give you a discussion question of, so what do you think about people that look at themselves in the mirror too much, it has to be led in this by the parent. And that's why the parent is involved or the kid comes to you and they're like, mom, I read this and it reminded me of, this new story we saw about so and you have this natural discussion because that's.
Real life. I don't need to give you questions that you ask at the end of every reading because that's not natural. That's not real life. And again, everyone has their own views of how they, what tools they need and what they want in their education. I'm not saying that, but I think it's a beautiful gift that we have that we can have those discussions and to see that as a gift, not as a waste of time, or this is the purpose of it.
These discussions, that is the education.
Christy Faith: Like those discussions. Okay, so when I was a teacher, kids would ask me questions and I would have to say let's hold off on that because I have to cover this. Yes. And with homeschooling, we have that gift of, wait a minute, this is way more important than what I was going to cover.
This is an opportunity where a life skill is applicable. Because they've done studies that we remember what we have an emotional attachment to. That's why Charlotte Mason loved those living books. That's why reading The Hiding Place is like an amazing way to learn about the Holocaust. It's it, rather than through a textbook that just says what was done.
And so we have that opportunity to drop everything and realize what is the most important thing. Let's prioritize what is most important. And balancing that with. I know the pressure but Christy, I'll always be behind. I do think that there are some subjects where we can't, I do like my kids on track with their math.
I like my kids on track with their reading. But other than math and literacy, the R's do want my kids to have rhetoric. I want them to know how to write really well. If I can teach them those things the rest is just icing. It's just, it's not as important as those other pieces.
And it's very freeing. But I fight every day. I fight every day. Do you? Still? Or are you totally free? Are you so advanced that you're like No, I'm like, yeah,
Julie Ross: my kids are all older now.
Christy Faith: You guys, I don't know if you're watching this. She's no, I've totally arrived.
Julie Ross: No, that is not true. I have not arrived at all.
Christy Faith: I know. I'm giving you a hard time. But we, I think having all teenagers now. Yes. There is just a flow and ease and that is probably me being 20 years in and going it's going to be okay.
You also have the proof in the pudding, which a lot of mamas who are starting out don't.
Yeah. You actually know they're going to be.
Julie Ross: This point is, has been through the trenches to get to that point.
Christy Faith: You know they're gonna be okay.
Julie Ross: Yeah, and so we could go off on this tangent and, do whatever, and it's gonna be okay. Yes. And yes, but it takes trust to get there. I wanna close, and I love you so much, I could just talk to you forever, but I just, I'm reading this page from your book, because I want everyone to hear this.
I'm not gonna read all of whole page! I'm not gonna read the whole page, I'm just gonna read parts of it. Because, like I said, I know, I'm scared. It's like a homeschool manifesto. One of the things I tell parents is very important. To write out what you believe about yourself and how you are showing up in your homeschool.
Because again, that negative thinking is so programmed into us. And so I love how you worded this on this page. Who is the best person to impart your family values to your child? You are. Who can tailor instruction to fit your child's exact learning style? You can. Who can encourage a lifelong love of learning and foster their creativity?
You can. Who has the freedom to choose the exact method by which you educate your child? You do. Who has the patience, deep understanding of the precise factors and influences and knows exactly how to best accommodate your child's special needs? You do. Who is the most interested in your child avoiding a seven hour school day and homework because you value precious time?
You are. I think people need to hear that. And I love the way that you worded that. Aw, thank you. Alright, so how can people get your book and how can people connect with you?
Christy Faith: My book is on Amazon. It is called Homeschool Rising by Christy Faith. That's me. And grab it on Amazon. My website is christy faith.
com. People don't realize, that is, I have a hyphen. There's, it's christy faith. And you can access everything there. And of course I'm Christy faith on all the socials as well. So if you just put in, I think on Instagram, I'm Christy faith, homeschooling on Tik TOK, I'm just Christy faith. So you'll find me and yeah.
Julie Ross: And we'll follow this in the, in, in the show notes. So if they are TikTokers, they might already know you, but they should go follow your account.
Christy Faith: I'm so excited for my TikTok tribe to hear this and then learn more about you because I love what you're doing in this space. We use your morning time.
It's precious. I love that you've done the work for me. Thank you. And and I'm able to,
Julie Ross: I love that you've done all this research and have all these talks because it worked out really well.
Christy Faith: So anyway, yeah, this was so fun to be on your podcast. Thanks for inviting me. Of course.
Julie Ross: Thank you.
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