Your First Year of Homeschooling: What to Prepare—and What to Stop Worrying About

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Your first year of homeschooling does not need to look impressive. It needs to be rooted, realistic, and actually be able to withstand real life.

**Christy Young** (0:08)
Yes, girl, preach. Okay, so what you really need to prepare, you guys, is your mission, your daily rhythms, your core subjects, your shared work or responsibilities, and ladies, you guys, you better prepare your heart.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:20)
Oh, yes.

**Christy Young** (0:23)
All righty, you guys, welcome back. This is Christy Young and Heather Copeland with The Gritty Gospel. Y'all, we love y'all. We're so excited to be with y'all. And we have an epic and cool and fun and one close to our heart podcast to do today. And it's all about, this is for our first year homeschool moms, moms who just now are, you may feel excited and ready for the next adventure. You may have great fear or trepidation about potentially homeschooling this year, but this is your first year. So one, congrats.
And it's gonna be, I bet, a year that's hard in ways you never expected, but more joy-filled in ways that you never saw coming.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:59)
And you will grow in ways that you didn't know, and the Lord will just open up your heart and your children's heart. And man, you'll be able to put in the work. It's a good thing. It's a good thing.

**Christy Young** (1:09)
Yes, and you will build a relationship with your kids that you didn't, that you will become aware of as you spend more and more time together, that you would have missed out on, had you been anywhere else during this time.
Okay, so you guys, your first year of homeschooling can sometimes feel like you're standing on the edge of a great unknown. And I think we all feel that to some degree. Okay, you guys, we have a sweet little doggie that we're watching who is very social and keeps coming in and coming out. Hello. Say hello when she comes in and she may exit and go right back out. But so that's the little intrusion we have. She's really precious though. So can we get frustrated? I know.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:46)
Oh, she's laying down now.

**Christy Young** (1:47)
She's wonderful. Okay. And so here's the deal.
When you're jumping into homeschooling for the first time, you sometimes wonder if you can even feasibly do it. Can you teach your kids math? Did you buy the right history curriculum? Will you ruin your kids? I mean, you really literally, I remember the first year with Maddie, my first child, I was like, I don't even know if I can homeschool. I don't even know if I can teach her how to read.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:09)
That was my, I had most anxious about reading. I'm like, I don't know my findings. Yes.

**Christy Young** (2:15)
I don't know. And then y'all, the Lord gives you manna just for today. He gives you just what you need for today. And then he puts sweet, wise mammas around you. And you guys, before you know it, you take your next step and your next step and your next step. And God is faithfully leading you in your home school. And it's beautiful. And you learn to trust him in that. And then here's the beauty in this, you guys. This is not just a school decision. For a Christian mom, homeschooling really is a discipleship decision. And so we are, so let's talk about what that means, actually means, and then what really matters.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:47)
Basically, you gotta know your why. Why are you doing this, your mission? And if the answer is always, which I go back to this is, I don't want the government raising my children. Well, it needs to be a little bit deeper than that. You know, like, what is it? Is it biblically? Why are you homeschooling? Because you feel convicted and God has called you to do this? What is the why? Do you want to be able to spend as much time with your children?
Figure out what is the Lord led you to do this, but you can't just go off the wind like, I'm just doing this because it's the end thing to do.
You gotta have your why.

**Christy Young** (3:19)
Yes, and the reason I feel like you need a why is because you're going to have to come back to it on the hardest of days. You need to anchor in your why for me.
You guys, for me, this is all about Christian discipleship and raising my kids to have a biblical worldview, and that is my anchor. And on my hardest days, I remember that no one is going to train my children up with a biblical worldview in the way that I will. That God has literally equipped us, called us as parents to raise and disciple and train our kids.