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SUMMARY

Christy-Faith discusses the challenges and judgments faced by homeschooling families, especially during family gatherings. Joined by Thrive Mentors Marni Love and Denise Vibbert, they explore strategies for preparing for potentially uncomfortable interactions with family members, addressing skepticism about homeschooling, and setting boundaries with toxic relatives. The conversation emphasizes the importance of confidence in homeschooling choices, understanding socialization, and equipping moms and children with the tools to navigate social situations effectively.

TAKE-AWAYS

• Parents feel judged, especially homeschool families.
• Preparation and boundary setting are key for holiday gatherings.
• Learn how to enjoy family gatherings and understand the difference between curiosity and distrust.

ABOUT TODAY’S GUESTS

Marni Love and Denise Vibbert are veteran homeschoolers who love to encourage other homeschool moms with the wisdom and experience gained from their own journeys.

Christy’s prior episode with Marni: 

• https://youtu.be/C1DfSq7bdH0?si=FcSJG0CjEBtO5Qaa 

Marni’s website: 

• https://www.marnilove.com/

Jake’s Tie Dye (Denise’s son):

• https://jakestiedye.com/

SHOW SPONSORS

TRANSCRIPT

Christy-Faith: I thought, Wow! Parents across the nation are already feeling judged. What about the layer of a homeschool family? We are not making the choice of the majority of our nation in terms of homeschooling our kiddos. On top of that is popular social media articles, popular works of nonfiction and fiction that depict homeschooling in an incredibly negative light.

Welcome to the Christy Faith Show where we share game changing ideas with intentional parents like you. I'm your host, Christy Faith, experienced educational adviser and homeschool enthusiast. Together, we'll explore ways to enrich and transform both your life and the lives of your children. As a homeschool mom who values a family together approach and leans towards the classical and Charlotte Mason styles, I often struggle to bring my educational vision to life with my kids' diverse ages and learning needs. With all our interests and super packed schedule, bridging that gap between the dreamy homeschool I want and reality, I gotta be honest, it's a challenge.

Now, yes, I know perfection isn't the goal. But if you're listening and you could use a little easing of your mental load in your day to day, I found a resource that has become the quiet hero of our routine, and it could be a really great option for you too. BJU Press Homeschool Curriculum. Now, many think that BJU Press Homeschool is solely an all in one option, and though it does excel in that role, did you know you can also opt for specific courses and tailor them to fit your family's needs just as I have? BGU Press Homeschool provides the perfect balance of structure and flexibility, and easily complements my family's mixed age, family together, on the couch learning style.

They are second to none in integrating a biblical worldview, stimulating critical thinking, and offering tons of hands on activities in the lessons. To find out how BJU Press Homeschool can come alongside you in your homeschooling goals too, visit bjupresshomeschool.com or click the link in the show notes. Imagine this, the holiday season is in full swing, and you're brimming with excitement for a delightful day with your extended family. As you enter your in law's house, the atmosphere is alive with the sounds of laughter. The house is adorned with festive decorations that twinkle in the The house is adorned with festive decorations that twinkle in the light and you smell the smell of mouth watering fresh baked cookies.

Your kids, bubbling with energy, dash off to join their cousins cousins in play, and you're enveloped in the warmth of the moment feeling grateful and content and excited about a great day with family. The day seems perfect and things are going great until aunt Sally, known for her insatiable curiosity, slides up with a familiar gleam in her eye. She gently interrupts the kids playing, turning her attention to your children and asking them how their homeschooling is going. Then she proceeds to ask them the dates of the civil war and quizzing them on their times tables. Across the room, uncle Joe, ever the skeptic, is talking to your husband and begins drawing comparisons between your children and the traditionally schooled cousins asking, who makes sure you all are following what they should be learning?

And, oh, well, I raised my kids in the best district in the state and my kids turned out great. When you happen to know that they did not, in fact, turn out all that great. Then there's grandma with her gentle smile asking the age old question about socialization and whether your kids have enough friends. When she is literally watching your children exhibit the social skills of active listening, team problem solving, empathy, and emotional regulation as they are playing with all of the cousins. Then you all about wanna storm out when the retired school teacher neighbor who lives down the street starts small talk and quickly puts on her mandated reporter hat and starts probing you on how often you go to co op, what extracurriculars your kids are in, and what time they are done with their school day every day.

If any of these situations sound familiar to you, you are in the right place. I personally have been in a version of all of these situations and it can make you feel attacked, like you have to be on the defensive, mad that your family and other people are undermining you, and so much more. Well, today, we are here to help you. I have asked Marnie and Denise, 2 ladies who mentor in Thrive Homeschool Community with me. I've asked them here today because we are always supporting you with these exact type of questions and scenarios.

What do I do? What do I say? It's just so awful. Sometimes our families can bring out the worst in us and the last thing we want is for you to feel bad about yourself after a tense holiday gathering. And we know that we can't be there to step in and tell aunt Sally to shut up and leave you alone.

So we are here today to equip you and help you. I have four goals for today's episode. Number 1 is to help you feel confident going into your holiday gatherings. The second goal is to equip you with knowing what to say and how to say it when you are there in those situations. Number 3, I want you to feel like you have prepared your kids well to walk into these situations and to help your kids with knowing what to say.

And number 4, perhaps, is the most important because this is speaking to your heart, and that is after your holiday gatherings, I want you to feel great about yourself. I want you to feel confident that you protected your kids, that you were winsome in explaining your family choices, and that you feel great about how you acted because often when we're dealing with family and past hurts and all sorts of family dynamics, they can often bring out the worst in us as well. But I think that if we go into the holidays well prepared, we can do an amazing job and feel great about it afterwards. So welcome, Marni and Denise. The framework of afterwards.

So welcome, Marni and Denise. The framework of the episode today is, as we were preparing for this episode, we were all talking about there's different scenarios. Right? There's family members who are just outright mentally ill and woah, what do we do? And then there's just kind of mild little remarks that people can say.

And also people's hearts are in all different places. Some people could be asking you about your homeschooling because they're genuinely curious. Other people could be somewhat skeptical because they believe what society tells them about homeschoolers. And so, they are like, I don't know. But I but their heart may not actually be in the wrong place when they're asking you things.

So we're gonna split up today's episode into mild, moderate, and severe. And I'm sure you will relate in some way or another with the scenarios that we're gonna be talking about and what we can do and say. So welcome to the show, Marni and Denise, Thrive Homeschool Mentors. You were the perfect ladies to ask on the show for this today because this is what we are doing every day in Thrive and in the threads. And we are your mama bears.

So part of us is we just wanna get in there and tell them to step off and leave you alone. But we know we can't do that. We have so many women in Thrive. We can't come to your holiday gatherings with you, although we wish we could. So, anyway, Denise, please open up our show today with your thoughts on how to handle family gatherings that could be a little bit rough during the holidays.

Denise Vibbert: A little bit rough or severely rough?

Christy-Faith: Well, your your expertise is severely rough.

Denise Vibbert: Severely rough. We won't start with severe. A little bit rough. What helped me as I grew into the whole realm of homeschooling in a a toxic family was learning to separate myself personally from what people might be saying to me and to my kids so that I wasn't so reactive. And to also prepare myself and my kids for various scenarios that could exist and offer grace until it was proven to me that grace wasn't warranted and that I had to put in much stronger boundaries and actually take action on behalf of my kids.

Christy-Faith: And, Marni, I know that you've expressed to me some scenarios as your kids were growing up. Your kids are a little bit older now. Your oldest one is now grown. But talk to us a little bit about some scenarios that you were in while you were homeschooling your kiddos and how you handled them.

Marni Love: Yeah. I think, you know, I come from perspective that is, you know, a lady, a little different, but I have some sensitive and intense kids. I've got we've got ADHD. We've got lots of things going on. And so I think for me, I was always concerned about their behavior or what things would look like when they went to family gatherings because they could get very dysregulated in those scenarios.

And so I was really focused on kind of, like, my child is my report card and what people were gonna think about my kids

Christy-Faith: Mhmm.

Marni Love: Based on either their behavior, their interaction with cousins, the way that they interacted with me. And so I would kind of always have a little bit of trepidation going into those scenarios. And so I think what I learned over time was that, you know, obviously, my child is not my report card and what's really happening under the surface with my kids so that I could get myself in a good place to enter into those scenarios. Because I would enter in with my own level of anxiety, which then would ramp up my kids' level of anxiety. And that's just not a good place to walk into when there's already probably enough anxiety in the room.

Anyway. And so I think walking in knowing that, okay, there's maybe gonna be some things that I need to do differently, things that I need to adjust so that my kids can have success and that I can feel confident walking into maybe some, you know, tricky scenarios with different family members. And so I think that was my big takeaway from the holiday season, is kind of lower my expectations for my kids a little bit, lower my expectations for myself, and just not be so overly concerned about appearances and more about, like, what's happening inside.

Christy-Faith: That's beautiful. And let's talk about that and dive a little bit deeper there because the number one question that we're gonna get right off the bat from people who are unfamiliar or skeptical is we are going to be asked about socialization. Now this is why I did an entire master class in Thrive on socialization. I also have an entire chapter on this in my book because I have been dissatisfied with how defensive homeschoolers feel and I don't think we should feel super defensive about our choices with socializing our kids. So let me go a little bit deeper here because we're gonna be entering situations with family gatherings and cousins where we have homeschooled children who are not experiencing the disorder of peer orientation.

If this is a new term for you, you can go ahead and look it up. It is so widespread in our nation among children and adults that it's completely normalized. And, actually, it's often viewed as synonymous with socialization. And this is this obsession of fitting in. So when we take our homeschool kiddos who maybe don't have the coolest sneakers, they just I have one little girl who's just one of my I have 3 girls and one of them is just the most adorable little ragamuffin.

I don't care what anyone says. I'm not, you know, and I just let it go and I just stare at her with a glimmer in my eye just loving every second of it because I know she's free from peer orientation. So here's what I wanna say. My first word of encouragement and I wanna hear what you guys have to say about it is, you know what? Our kids might present differently than the cousins.

And isn't that kind of the point? Mhmm. Be a lot of us homeschool because of socialization. What would you guys say to that? How could you encourage the mom who's listening regarding that?

Denise Vibbert: You know, they like to tell us homeschool kids are weird. Somebody told me that just this week. Well, homeschool kids are weird.

Christy-Faith: Mhmm.

Denise Vibbert: And I recently have been reading some things and the thought of, are homeschooled kids weird or our kids weird. Right? Because children are weird. They're weird little creatures because they're all unique and creative and very different from each other. And homeschooled kids don't have the weirdness squeezed out of them, I think is the problem.

And and kids that are put into any type of a system are squeezed into a mold into the norm. And so in our family, we claimed it. We were like, we're weird. Right? We're we might be different but that doesn't make us better and it doesn't make us less and let's find common ground and, helping the kids learn to do that in all different scenarios before the family gathering prepares them when they go to the family gathering.

And we had 2 separate extremes. One side of the family, totally pro homeschooling. One side of the family, totally toxic. Right? And so, when you have those family members that treat your kids like they're just kids that should be loved and accepted as they are, to those family members that do that for us, kudos to you because you're just reinforcing for every child that you do that to that that they belong and that they're part of the family and they're unique.

Christy-Faith: And you mentioned a little bit about preparation. Marnie, I'd love to hear you speak on this. What are ways where depending on the situation and just in general whether we are walking into a mild situation, a moderate situation, or a severe situation, and we'll go into all of these in detail. Denise has some juicy stories about raising her kids. But, Marnie, what are some ways ahead of time we can prepare our kiddos?

Marni Love: Yeah. I think, you know, first, we have to start with ourselves. We need to prepare ourselves for what it is that we want to prepare our kids for and deal with some of our own anxieties first. Because if we're I know oftentimes, like I said, I would try to prepare my kids because I had, you know, relatives whose kids were very, I don't know what the right word is, well behaved. I don't like that word, but just a little more calm, maybe, than my kids.

I have 3 active boys, and so I would often worry about how my kids would do in other people's homes or in those kinds of environments. And whether people would think, like, my kids were wild or not behaved because they just weren't they've just needed to move their bodies. So preparing myself, like, just what's under the surface with me and dealing with those feelings and then really knowing my kids. And so one thing that we did to prepare ahead of time was I always had, like, a backpack filled with things for my kids that I knew no matter what situation we're going to, whether it was a home where that was like we used to call it, like, a no touch house, where you just can't, like, you know, touch the little knickknacks and all the little things. And so I would come prepared with things for my kids in those situations.

And we would talk about it ahead of time. You know? Like, what kind of environment are we going into, and what are the expectations here? And then I would just always make sure that there was an out. So, like, there was something that we could do together.

I could take them outside to eat, climb a tree, or take a walk around the block, or whatever they needed to do to to organize their little nervous system so that they could be successful there. And so I think those are some ways that we prepared ahead of time so that I could make sure my kids had success, that I wasn't feeling anxious about what are they doing and what are they getting into and all of those kinds of things. So that was kind of my issue with holiday times, just the dysregulation that happens because there's more sugar, there's more people, there's more noise, all those kinds of things, and how that would affect my kid. And so just kind of setting that expectation that this is different. The scenario that we're walking into is not like home.

You know? Here's some of the house rules that this person might have. Here's some things that we can do. When you're feeling like you need to move your body, come get me, and we'll go for a walk. Or we have this bag, you're welcome to get anything in there, you know, to to play with to use.

And so just setting us up ahead of time, practicing those things at home first was helpful for us.

Denise Vibbert: And I love that because you not only gave your kids permission to be

Christy-Faith: themselves and a way to be themselves, but you also gave yourself

Denise Vibbert: permission to be the but you also gave yourself permission to be the mom that you are and that your kids needed you to be regardless of the situation that you were in and I think that's difficult for us. To give ourselves permission to be the mom that we know we wanna be for our kids. And so I give you all permission to be the mom that you know you need to be and and that you want to be. That is that is your role and nobody has a right to get in the way of that.

Marni Love: And you know the feedback that I got most often because my kids were regulated, because we took steps to make sure, was that your kids talk to us. Like, they look us in the eye, and they have conversations with us. And they could talk to anybody in the room, and they weren't afraid to engage in conversation, just to walk up to someone and start engaging. And so I think that's the main thing. Right?

If we can make set our kids up for success that way and even teach them some of those skills. Right? How to do that, which we kinda just do all the time in homeschooling anyway.

Denise Vibbert: Yep. And remind them of it before as you're going in, but also afterwards, making sure you remember things that they did during that time that exhibited their strengths and their their character and the positive things that that we try to reinforce with them every day.

Christy-Faith: And that reminds me, yesterday I took my daughter to get a haircut at kind of a nice she she needed to not go to one of those kids places anymore because she likes to wear her hair down and I wanted for the holidays for her just have to have a really beautiful kind of adult haircut that complemented her young age at the same time. And this reminds me because I did this automatically I'm not saying this to praise myself. I'm saying this that that this is a great tip too is I said, what are your 3 curious questions as we walk in? Because it was going to be her, me, and a and a hairdresser she had never met before. And this is SEL learning, you guys.

This is social emotional learning where we're not saying this so that our homeschooled kids are super impressive and that we're supposed to be the pillars of an example of what a homeschool family is and put that pressure on our kids. I did that because I want to teach my kids that social interactions are not about them and it's not about an adult asking them questions incessantly and them answer with yes or no answers. It's reciprocal. It's also thinking outside yourself and how to interact in social situations. Now, Marnie, you sent an article over and in that article was 2 studies.

I want to mention one of the studies. It was that researchers asked 475 mothers of children up to the age of 5 across the United States about feeling judged in their parenting skills and 61% felt that they had been judged with most of the criticism coming from folks within their own family. Immediately, when I thought of that, I thought, wow, parents across the nation are already feeling judged. What about the layer of a homeschool family? On top of that.

So, I want to have a moment, a little deschooling moment here, to talk about there is we just need to acknowledge this. It's just something we need to accept because we are not making the choice of the majority of our nation in terms of homeschooling our kiddos. Layered on top of that is popular social media articles, popular works of nonfiction and fiction that depict homeschooling in an incredibly negative light and that that's false when you actually look at statistics. But what we're faced with across the nation is a general distrust of homeschooling families, particularly in the fact that the assumption that homeschooling families are making this choice because of the parents' principles and what we believe and what we want rather than what is best for our children. Now, we actually know that is not the case at all, but that is what we have to deal with.

We have to go into situations being prepared that, no, there there's probably going to be a lot of people who aren't familiar with homeschooling that are going to be somewhat skeptical or think I'm selfish. Oh, I get this comment a lot on social media. Homeschooling parents are selfish, which is hilarious because it's like we're making so many sacrifices and a lot of us are doing this because we want what is best for our kiddos. So I found that statistic really powerful and just affirming that we're not we're not pulling this thing magically out of our hats. Like, this is actually a pretty big deal that we all have to deal with during the holidays.

I want to talk a minute about Denise. You were in situations where your kids were cornered. You were even in situations where people tried to, behind your back, isolate your children without you. I want you to share some of the stories that you have, and then I wanna go into how we can prepare our kiddos when those types of things happen. Even though we try to prevent those things from happening, that is an incredibly toxic behavior.

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Denise Vibbert: I had some pretty toxic people on one side of the family, and I knew of the toxicity before I had children. So I knew that it wouldn't go away when I did. So I was, you know, prepared. When you have someone who finds fault with everything you do, you know they're gonna find fault with you as a mother. But I had also heard this person speaking to other children and the things she would say to other children about, you know, everybody has dreams but nobody's dreams ever come true.

Let's just face it. You'll never achieve what you wanna do. You'll always end up back at home. Like really, like subtle kind of subtle but not, right? I'd heard her say things about how she preferred boys over girls and say negative things about, you know, another child in the family etcetera and so she had done numerous things to us.

One that I'll tell you about, my rule was never leave my children alone with toxic people. Never leave my children alone in her presence and never underestimate just your quiet authority over your children. And with very toxic people, setting boundaries with words doesn't usually work. You end up having to just take action and do it, you know, politely. But one thing that this this person would do is take the kids and always try to get them off with just her.

So she would wander upstairs and say, come on kids, Let's go up to your room. And I would head upstairs, open the door, and say, girls, come with me. And the children would just stand up and walk out and she would be sitting there, like, what's happening? And I'm like and the kids would follow me. Right?

So then she would try to take them outside. I didn't want her with the children without me there because I needed to know what she was gonna say to them. Right? But she didn't wanna interact with them in front of me and that was a danger sign to me. So she would take them outside.

I would go outside and say, kids, come with me and my kids would quietly come in. She stopped doing it because every time she did it, I simply overruled her in a very respectful but firm way and toxic people, well I knew from experience with her to have a discussion with her, anything I said would be twisted and used against me but also used against the children. And so protecting my children was the most important thing. And another situation that I had with her when my my oldest daughter was about 2a half or 3. This woman got upset with me because her husband had defended me in in some situation and that made her really, really angry.

And so she went storming into the house and my daughter was going with her and was behind her and when this woman got into the house she slammed the door in my 2 year old's face. And I didn't see any of this. I was around, you know, a building and I just hear my daughter screaming and she's running at us like like somebody was chasing her. I thought somebody was chasing her. She was so upset because she didn't understand why this family member that she trusted and loved had slammed a door in her face and wouldn't let her in the house.

And it was at that point that I said to my then husband, we won't be staying here anymore. We we will not stay at this house. When we come to visit from out of state, we will not stay here anymore. And I was in a situation where I was the one always protecting the children. I didn't have a husband that was protecting us.

I was in the position of having to protect the children against members of his family and that's very, very difficult. And I have a lot of of empathy for people in that situation, for moms in that situation. And it was just when she showed me that she truly didn't care about my kids well-being, that she had an agenda against them, she was not well intentioned, then I couldn't care about her feelings anymore. At some point with truly toxic people, you just have to realize you have set up boundaries that may break relationship but then you have to ask yourself, did you really have relationship with that person? And the and this is drastic.

Right? These are drastic measures but those were a couple stories of things that happened with family members, my kids, when they were young.

Christy-Faith: While you were saying that, it reminded me of the term narcissistic abuse. And I wanna talk about this a little bit because I think putting names on behaviors will really help us to when we're in a family dynamic situation, lots of different conversations, we can feel blindsided like, woah, wait, wait, what just happened? Or wait, what did you just ask my kid? And so, I wanna go over a couple of things that would fall under the category of narcissistic abuse. And because I think that we've all experienced these in one way or another.

Like, for example, one of them is called triangulation where you're someone brings in a third party kinda pitting people against one another in competition, often to control or manipulate. We have silent treatment. Anyone experienced that from somebody? Very manipulative, which is, of course, withholding communication to punish or control a victim. Of course, we all know the common one that we associate with narcissism is gaslighting, making the victim doubt their own perceptions, even memories or sanity.

And there this can be subtle and can be very severe. Also, straight up manipulation using deceit or trickery to control or influence the victim's actions or emotions. Also, we have love bombing. That can really confuse us. It can incredibly confuse kids.

This is what you just said. Right? So we have love bombing, which is alternating between excessive praise and all these wonderful things and then abusive behaviors in turn. It's a way to control. And there are a lot more than this.

But I think putting labels and words to these types of behaviors is really important as we're walking into these incredibly nuanced situations to be able to say, that was gaslighting. I'm not okay with that. Okay. What am I going to do next? Because if we're not armed with language to these things, we can often be we're kind of left to our emotion and how we're feeling and jumping on the defensive.

And I've been in situations that I regret where, you know, I can be mouthy. Maybe some of you guys know that. And I can be mouthy to people in real life, too, especially young and immature, Christy, where I would kind of snap back and lower to their level. And I remember being in many situations where afterwards I really felt bad about myself and my own behavior and how I lowered myself to their standards in a way. And I made a decision later in life when I really grew and was in therapy that like, no, I gotta figure out a way where I can, like Marnie often says, like, figure out what's going on in me first so that I can have a conceptualization of, okay, how can I navigate this in a healthy way?

Because ultimately, we want to walk away from these situations proud of ourselves and to be able to see, oh, wow, I could have done this or the old Christy would have done this but I did this instead. Not that we're aiming for perfection, we're really just aiming for growth. But also for our kiddos, too. Like, I really was able to protect my kids in that particular situation. So I absolutely love that.

Let's talk about another aspect of preparing our kiddos because we're not going to be able to control every single interaction in a busy holiday environment. What are some things we can prepare our kids to say to people? Other kids and because other my kids have been said, you know, my mom says you guys are weird because you're homeschooled. My kids actually came to me and they were told that by neighborhood friends. So, what are some things we can equip our kids with saying that would actually help them set boundaries?

Marnie, would you mind chiming in here?

Marni Love: Sure. I think so, again, you know, this starts with us. Right? How confident are we in our choice to homeschool? And when we model that confidence for our kids, that's where it starts.

Right? And so I think, like, you talk about all the time in Thrive, Christy. Like, what's your why? Why are you homeschooling? And so I think when we know our why and we can convey that to our kids, then our kids can stand in confidence with what we're doing and why we're doing it.

And so I think that's kind of where we need to start is just in modeling that in our own interactions because our kids are watching us all the time. So how do we talk about our homeschooling? How do how do they hear us talk about it to other people? And so, like, in your situation, you know, when that comes up, you're not there to to kind of help them through that, but they've already seen you do it, and they've already heard you talk about the why. In our house, we love to talk about the perks of homeschooling a lot.

And so I remember, you know, my boys play football at a Christian school. And so, you know, sometimes there's kids that are curious about what homeschooling looks like. And so sometimes they ask questions that are curious questions, but also sometimes a little pointed. And so I think one time a kiddo said to my son, oh, well, you just do school in your pajamas all the time. Like, that's what homeschooling is.

It's like you do school in your pajamas. And my son said, well, sometimes we get to do that. Yeah. It's pretty cool. And the kid was like, hey.

Wait. I think I might wanna do that. You know? And so it's just kind of those conversations that we have with our kids in that positive light. Like, what's great about home homeschooling?

Like, we get to take, you know, these vacations. That's what one thing that we loved to do. Right? Take vacations when everyone else is in school. And so that's one thing my kids would share when those kind of questions would come up or the perks that we had talked about so many times.

So I think it really comes from our own attitude about it. And I just love in Thryv. Mamas are so just there's so much content in Thryv to help mom build that confidence in themselves and in their homeschooling. And I think that's really where it comes from, and that confidence just pours out to our kids. And so then when our kids are, you know, in those situations, they have something to say.

And also, I just love preparing my kids. Like, if there's something that keeps coming up, if we know that there's a situation that they're walking into where these things have been said in the past, then I love to do a little role play with my kids. And when they, you know, when they would come and say that to me, I'd be like, oh, wow. That's kind of hurtful. Right?

Like, that doesn't feel good. So empathize with how they might be feeling about that. And then we might talk about, like, what are some things that you could say next time that that happened? And then we could role play it a little bit and come up with some scripts together. And so that's you know, for us, it was like, well, this is why we love homeschooling and kind of share some of the perks.

Right? For you, it might be other things depending on your why, which you will learn in Thryv. But I think that's where it comes from. So, Christy, how did you handle that with your kids?

Christy-Faith: Okay. Well, first, I wanna say that when someone joins Thryv, the very first thing I do when I see that someone I got a notification that popped in that so and so just joined Thrive is as soon as I can, I DM them and I say, when you have your first 45 minutes free, 45 minutes, go into the 8 Step Homeschool Success Framework and do step 1 which is the Finding Your Why workshop? What the Finding Your Why workshop is, by the way, you don't need Thrive to find your why. I just worked on a way that a mama could, in within 45 minutes, have a why statement that she can memorize and have her kids memorize and maybe even have her husband memorize that explains why we're homeschooling. Now, this is why a why statement is so powerful.

We all know why we're homeschooling. We're homeschooling because of socialization. We're homeschooling because we want our kids to have a better childhood and and we see that schools are just not doing it right. Or maybe our child has special needs and we're homeschooling because we know that we can meet those needs and the schools completely failed my child. So I need to pull them out and do this myself.

Okay. So here's the thing with the finding your why is, when you truly have your why, it is so personal. Personal to you. And when you have that statement memorized, it's incredibly disarming to the person who hears it. It's almost, controlled pouring out of your heart as to why you're homeschooling.

You know, I'm homeschooling because a very simple is I want to teach my kids how to think not what to think or blah blah blah blah blah or, you know, things like that. And when you have that statement that you can memorize that's so incredibly personal, when someone hears that, they're kind of in a position where they can't be like, well, you're stupid or you're wrong or they kind of can't because it's so personalized to you. And that's one key that I have found is when I am confronted in social situations about homeschooling in general is when I try to read the room and see the intentions of the person asking. I try my best. I try to be intuitive and I'm like, okay, are they curious or are they kind of like judgy?

And where where are they coming from? I've realized that disarming statements are incredibly powerful. Disarming statements can come in that sense of memorizing your why statement. That's, I think, the one takeaway is that one piece is probably the most important because it deals with all of the steps we're about to talk about. Like what Marnie talks about too is what's going on in me and preparing yourself first.

Well, being able to put your mission to words is incredibly empowering and then it's something that your kids can memorize too. But the other piece of advice that has worked really well for me and my therapist gave this to me several years ago. And she said, figure out ways to respond with humor where you're kinda joking about the homeschooling when they ask you questions. Did you ever do that, Denise? Respond with because you're a pretty funny person.

What are some things you said to people?

Denise Vibbert: Well, I mean, I already talked about being weird. I meant that. Like, I would say, well, I really want weird kids. I I just I raise them weird. And, you know, I can't trust anybody else to do that the way I need them to turn out.

They just need to be weird.

Christy-Faith: Yeah. Humor is really funny. Like, well, yeah. Brought the kids out of the basement to come here today. Right?

Just kind of churning those assumptions. You that's the socialization assumption that our kids never get out and they never get exposure. And it's kind of turning that over on its head in the moment, which is really great. Another tip that has worked really well for me is to get people to agree with me. Make statements that I know they would agree with.

So it depends on my audience. So if it's an older person this has happened to me. I was at a birthday party and the grandma was there and I was just sitting and we were watching the kids do the activity and it came up that we were homeschooled. And she was like, oh, okay. And, you know, I could see her mind turning.

And then I looked at her and I said, you know, education nowadays just isn't what it used to be. Because I knew with her her age in the grandma category, there's she would absolutely agree with that. And then I just let her talk. Right? And there's lots of statements we can make that people would agree with.

Like, man, I just love that I'm teaching my kids how to think, not what to think. Who's gonna disagree with that? You know what I mean? And so you can kind of finagle your way in situations where, you know, in a social situation where it's a lot of small talk, you're not going to necessarily go deep on those days. So I think deflating statements like that, that don't ignite, tension but kind of pat it down because you're not going to see this person for another year anyway.

You're not best friends. You don't text every day. You're not going to coffee because she's curious about homeschooling. Those are the situations where you go deep. You go really, really deep.

But in a family gathering type situation, I I think it's really powerful to come armed. And, Marnie, I love what you said about preparing our kids. One thing I make sure to tell my kids a lot is how much I love homeschooling them. How I feel so blessed about the materials that I can choose just for them, and that I'm able to provide them an education I didn't have. And I think just making sure that we're we are portraying our confidence in our homeschooling to our kiddos on a regular basis.

So they walk into situations and they are equipped. Let's talk about some tangibles. Like, what if Aunt Sally comes and starts quizzing on times tables? Does that ever happen to you guys?

Denise Vibbert: What I learned to do when people were questioning my kids is to kinda shift the focus back to the questioner. Right? And I had levels of questions. There are certain questions that your your child can answer easily. What are your favorite subjects in school, right?

What what's something fun you did? And you can let them answer. But again, when you know that you are with people who are possibly gonna challenge, be careful not to let your kids out of your ear, right? So you can manage this without, you know, pulling your kid out of the interaction but you can oversee it and you can manage it. And so a question like that, you let the child answer but you're paying attention.

Right? Questions where your child that your child shouldn't be answering like do you guys do 5 days of school every week? Right? Where they're challenging. I call that, that's adult information.

Right? And be prepared that you're gonna step in and say and answer that question. Right? And and step in front of that child because that's not appropriate for that child. But for quizzing questions, you know, you say you're mouthy.

Christy-Faith: I know. Right? There's someone else in this Zoom room that's mouthy too.

Denise Vibbert: So when, you know, it been years of dealing with a lot of verbal battering on myself. And so I was, like, very protective of my kids. And, you know, if if one of those family members was, you know, what's 4 times 4, right? And I would say, hey, Kate. Why don't you ask this person?

Why don't you ask grandpa to explain the pathogen theremer? However, I can't even say it. Right? Why don't you ask him to explain that to you? Or why don't you ask grandpa to talk to you about his coin collection.

Right? And just shift it over to how about you nicely, how about you play the adult role in this child's life? You know? And and not challenge them on certain questions. But Marnie's probably gonna have a better answer that's not as mouthy.

Christy-Faith: What did you do, Marnie, when your kids were quizzed?

Marni Love: Yeah. I didn't really have people quiz my kids, but I would take a a more preemptive strike strategy

Christy-Faith: Mhmm.

Marni Love: Where we would talk about, like, what we are doing. And so, you know, we would end you know, now with our phones, like, in our pockets, we have, like, pictures of fun things that we've done. And so I would show like, I knew when I would go to a certain family gathering that there was an educator there. And so I would just kind of be intentional about getting in there early and showing him some of the fun things that we had done and talking about some of the fun things that we had done. And then then he would talk to my kids about what I had shared with him.

Christy-Faith: Mhmm.

Marni Love: And so I think that's one way that we can kind of be proactive in showing them, well, this is what we're doing, and here's something you can talk to the kids about. You know? And, hey. Why don't you ask, you know, my kiddo what they enjoyed about that activity? So I think those kinds of things were helpful.

And then, also, I think it's okay to tell our kids, hey. If somebody's asking you about our homeschool, just to help them come talk to me. You know? Like, hey. That's a mom question.

Right? Like, you about how many days we do school or whatever. You know? And just letting giving our kids that script That if if somebody asks you about our homeschooling, just say, hey. You could talk to my mom about that.

You know? And then run off and go play or come over to me so that they don't get cornered.

Christy-Faith: Yes. And give them permission to make the statement and run to you. You know, it's so funny because I don't know what you guys would think. It's just thought of, I've never done this, but it's like you this is terrible. Oh, man.

I'm gonna regret saying this. But you could tell your kid, depending on age, like, oh, are we lining up all the kids and asking them the same question? Let's do it.

Denise Vibbert: You know, I with Marnie, with being preemptive, that was a a strategy going in. Right? Where Yeah. You kind of you keep for lack of a better phrase, you control the narrative in the room. You control the discussion.

Yeah. Control's probably a strong word but you do get ahead of it and if they're asking questions of your child, you can help that child answer and then you can ask another child a question about their learning and what they loved that they learned about right before break. Or you know what's something fun that you did. But helping my kids also to deflect to outside of academics, right? So and just lead the discussion in that area for the whole group where you're like, you know, has anybody, have any of you guys gone on any fun field trips?

You know, and we went to this and then the conversation just starts. Now with really toxic people, getting them to talk about themselves is like when you can start breathing, right? And so turning it around and turning the focus to them as quickly as you can, paying them a compliment, asking them a question about something that they wanna talk about and then they're just off and running and but really trying to stay ahead of it and being prepared and being prepared in yourself to have your own your own topics of conversation that you're gonna bring up. But I would also prep my kids with like maybe on the way there. What are three things that you love about homeschooling?

What's something interesting you learned recently that you might wanna tell people about? Right? So they're already thinking of things. So when you're trying to have that conversation shift to let's just have a discussion, your kids are ready to contribute.

Christy-Faith: Whether you're newer to homeschooling or you've been homeschooling over a decade, the fact is creating a streamlined successful homeschool is hard. The pressure is high, and the weight of responsibility often leads to self doubt, second guessing, and feeling completely overwhelmed with the excessive amounts of opinions and curricula options out there. We love our kids, and at the same time, the stakes are high. We don't wanna mess this up. So how do we build a homeschool that our kids will thank us for when they're adults, and one that you have a 100% confidence in?

The first step to pulling all of that off is joining Thrive homeschool community. Thrive homeschool community is where you learn the 8 step homeschool success framework to build an undeniably successful homeschool. Each year and each kid presents us with uncharted territory. But when you have a good plan, the right plan, you can rest in the security and confidence that you are doing a great job. The path is easy.

Join Thrive, say a quick hello to your new friends, start the 8 step homeschool success framework, and kiss anxiety goodbye. It's risk free, no contracts. You can cancel any time, no questions asked. Go to christy-faith.com. That's christy-faith.com.

Enter promo code podcast for $10 off your 1st month. See you inside. The show will resume in just a minute, but first, I wanna share with you an incredible resource that is totally free to homeschooling families everywhere. Have you ever felt like you were on trial for your homeschooling choice when visiting a doctor or another service provider? It's unsettling, especially when someone misinformed has the power to threaten your family.

Unfortunately, we have heard countless stories of parents who have felt trapped in offices and met with suspicion rather than support simply because they were homeschoolers. I've been profiled and interrogated myself and I'm sure many of you have as well. Enough is enough. It's time we proactively vet service providers before giving them our business and our money. Enter Christy Faith's List.

A directory 100% free to homeschooling families, connecting you with homeschool friendly service providers who promise to support you in your homeschooling choice. We want every homeschooler in America to know about and be using this list. So here's how to make Christy Faith's List a household name. 1, tell all your friends about it. Let's show the market just how powerful the homeschool movement is.

Number 2, check Christy Faith's List website before stepping foot into any service provider's office to make sure they are on there. And number 3, if your favorite service provider isn't on the list, make sure to refer them. There's a button on the homepage of the website. It takes only 30 seconds. And that way we can send them a lovely invite.

If you're listening and you are a homeschool friendly professional, we want you on the list. We're eager to connect homeschooling families with you, shout your name from the rooftops, and bring you tons and tons of business. We have plans for every type of business, both small, local, nationwide, and worldwide. Check out christy-faiths-list.com today. Well, and here's the thing is it's really unfair to corner a kid and ask them a piece of knowledge that maybe they weren't taught yet.

That we have to take the standardized tests every other year in Colorado. And I remember looking at the standardized test that we gave in early spring, and semicolons and, like, commas list in a series were there. And I remember looking at that, and then I looked at my daughter's curriculum and I realized, oh, that's coming up in 3 weeks. So they're probably not going to get these questions right. It's actually pretty abusive and toxic to corner a kid and to quiz them based on random knowledge that you think they should know when we're not even following state standards anyway, to be honest.

And so that is I think that arming our kids with a response when they helping them know what's happening with them, like, when they feel cornered. Like, if you feel uncomfortable, you know, I love that, Marnie. Oh, homeschooling questions you can ask my mom. Or you can always this is terrible, but it's not a bad strategy. It's the politician strategy.

Answer their question with a question or answer their question with you can ask your kiddos before at engagement. What are 3 things you've learned in the last month that you've really thought was fun in homeschooling? So when they ask you 5 times 5, you can say, you know what I really enjoy they they literally just don't answer it. You can train your kids not to answer it. And you can tell them to, you know what I really enjoyed learning?

This last month was blardy blardy blardy blar, then run away and tell mom. So a big thing for me is I want to know. I want to know because often we're in situations where there's new people in the environment or people we haven't seen for 5 years. So I gotta be able to read the room to protect my kids. So I really wanna know if anyone asks them about their homeschooling when I'm not around, I wanna know who that adult is.

And it's really just to protect my kiddos because it's incredibly manipulative to use children as pawns. And that's essentially what it is. Now, our society seems to feel like everyone but the homeschool parent is the judge and jury of homeschooling. And they put on the hat of mandated reporter just because because because we need to be watched. And I just want to say that those are the people that we need to watch out for because we we have to protect our kids from those people.

What I want to talk about next is, what about the rather innocent people? They're just, you know, they're curious, they're they're not coming from a place of distrust or trying to undermine you, but maybe they just have it's so foreign to them. Why would someone choose this? These are when you get at the party like, man, that just seems like so much work. Right?

Like, that's not a question that is necessarily coming from a bad place. I want to open it up to you guys. But first, I want to say that when we are asked about our homeschooling in social environments, we have to step back for a second and see the reality of the situation. That actually it's more about them than us. It really is.

Often people for example, there is an older gentleman in my life and every time the people listening to this who know him are gonna know exactly who I'm talking about. And if he's listening today, it'd be great if he would pick up the book that was on that is on his coffee table currently and maybe read it because it was put on his coffee table. A certain book on homeschooling that is behind me that he refuses to open and read. But I know for a fact. But anyway, that's beyond the point.

It's that every single time I am in the same room with this gentleman, I have to hear how amazing his district was. It's the number one district in the state and my kids turned out great and this and that and the other. But what I realize is that's more about him wanting to validate the choices he made for his children. It's not really about me. And that's that piece of reading the room.

And when we realize that a lot of these questions like a mom who's like, that's just so much work, She wants to hear that it's a lot of work so that she's validated in not doing it. Do you guys have to say about this? What wisdom can you give in these situations?

Denise Vibbert: When I would be faced with that and that insecurity and almost where they were thinking I was judging them as an inferior mother because they weren't homeschooling. I just took the approach of encouraging her as a mom and that I know how much she loves her kids and that it's up to her if she wants to homeschool or not to homeschool and that I'm gonna believe that she's making the best choice for her kids based on how she knows them. You know, giving her these words of affirmation and building her up And then conversation would would go forward into more legitimate questions about homeschooling where where they're asking to really understand and they are curious. And oftentimes with people like this, they'll start going, maybe I could do that someday. You know, and you're like maybe someday you can.

You know, no pressure. But I was gonna say earlier when we were talking about people quizzing our kids. Sometimes when we're talking about the mild level here, they just don't know what questions to ask and so because they don't know what homeschooling looks like, they they assume these kids never leave the house. So of course there's not field trips. There's not gonna be sports.

There's not gonna be theater. There's not gonna be play groups. There's not gonna be It's all gonna be cloistered in the house looking at books and so they're trying to think of academic questions. And so, you know, helping them, easing them into those conversations and teaching them how to ask questions of the kids that that can lead into conversation. It's just this block that people have with homeschooling.

You know, when they struggle to start a conversation with a homeschooled kid because they think it has to start with, you know, what did what did you do in math kind of a thing but I'll let you go, Marnie.

Marni Love: Yeah. So, I think, you know, again, like, what's going on in me when this person is interacting with me and more importantly, what's going on in them? And so I think for, you know, that scenario, Christy, like, is this person someone that I need to spend time with to have this conversation? Or is this a person that I see once a year or see a few times a year that I can just say, oh, I'm so glad, you know, that you have that experience. That's really great.

And leave it at that. Like, we have to know who are the people that we really wanna invest in and bring into our our homeschool and our family. Is this a safe person to do that with? And who are people that we just need to okay. Let it roll off us.

It's not about us. We have our why. We're confident in what we're doing. Things are going well for us. We have hard days, of course.

Everyone does. I'm not saying perfectly, but we're happy with how things are going. This person just doesn't understand. They're probably not going to understand, and that's okay. So that's that internal work that I think we really need to do so that we don't get pulled in because that's exhausting to get pulled in every time someone says something.

They wanna engage with you. Some people just like to start a a little debate. Like, that's just how some people operate. Right? And so we don't have to we don't have to do that.

I we say in our house, like, drop the rope. Like, we don't have to engage in that activity. And so I think just knowing for the people that are more important, you know, in our family that maybe we see more often that maybe are concerned about socialization because they don't know. They're just not informed. Right?

Like, then that's a different conversation. That's someone that I wanna say, you know, also, like, we also have to remember, like, if it's a grandparent, this happens sometimes. Right? Where it's almost an indictment on how they raised you, that it was that you were dissatisfied in some way in the way that that you were educated. And so I think it's just great to, you know, go into that conversation with empathy and say, you know what?

I really love the way that, you know, you were you raised me, and we're making these choices now with our kids. I would love to talk to you about that sometime if you wanna know more about that. And then invite them in to your world. You know? Whether that's inviting them to go on a field trip with you or inviting them over for a tea time.

We used to love to do that with, you know, our Mimi. She would come over and and have poetry tea time with us. She would go on field trips with us. She was always a supporter. I think she was a little unsure and a little she was getting voices from people that she knew that she would it would make her wonder.

Is this the right thing, you know, for them? She trusted me, but there was also voices coming into her world. And that's the other thing we have to think about. Like, what what is the context that they're asking? It's probably curiosity, concern.

Now I'm talking about safe people. I'm not talking about, like, super toxic people. And how can we bring them in? You know? Can they come over and get a little glimpse into our world?

We have, mini Fridays. And so my mom comes over every Friday, and she makes lunch for the boys. She helps with schoolwork. When they were little, she would do puzzles and play games with them. And she was just part of our Friday rhythm, and she had so much joy in doing that.

And the neat thing about that is then she would share that with the people that were giving her negative feedback. And then they would kind of have a different perspective too. So I think it's just knowing who is this person, what role do they play in my life, how much investment do I need to give this, and then making the choice going forward.

Christy-Faith: That's incredible. Wow. Boom. That was a recognition right there, Marnie. That was awesome.

Denise Vibbert: It's so important to to do that, Marnie. What you're saying to identify the intention of the person. Right? And to and sense the energy. What helps us with that is to look at their relationship with our children as a whole.

What kind of a person are they in our children's lives? Are they striving to be in our children's lives? And that helps us recognize to what level we'll actually go. And also never underestimate the power of just quietly walking away. Right?

When you're recognizing that this is somebody that does wanna debate with you that is looking for negative interaction, you can be like, oh gosh, I think I hear, you know, the old trick. I think I hear my kid. And and just separate yourself from the situation because it's a family gathering and somebody else is gonna start talking to them.

Christy-Faith: Yes. And I think that when you walk into a situation having a why statement memorized, number 1, that's gonna take care of any instance where you feel cornered. Any instance at all. And then if you've just shared with someone your why statement and they literally didn't even listen and they start saying, but what about socialization? That will really help you.

That will help you kind of categorize the person as to where they land on the spectrum. You know, one thing that I really have a heart for nationwide is if we want to change the way people view homeschooling, and Marnie touched on this, they have to get to know us. So are there some families that you can invite over so they experience what it's like to be around a homeschooled family? You know, of course, a safe person, but it's really hard to hate somebody up close. And when we are on a national level here so this is something to think about.

On a national level, knew us, if they actually knew us personally and we made some efforts to that end on changing public perception of homeschooling, a great way to do that is exposure. Exposure to us because there is a natural aversion to things that you don't understand. And then, layered on top of that with homeschooling is people will often feel judged for their own choices because they do see the sacrifice that we are making, that we are making a different decision. A lot of us are giving up careers, double income to do this. And it really makes people uncomfortable to see us making a decision that if they're in a really insecure place, they could take it personally and be very uncomfortable with it.

I want to ask you, Denise, because there are gonna be a lot of women listening today where it's not mild. Do we know to set the boundary and remove ourselves? And how do we do it? Hi there, podcast family. If our episodes bring a smile to your face, challenge you, or spark your thoughts, tap that like and subscribe button to stay connected with us.

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Denise Vibbert: That that can be generally answered but always remember that it's gonna be specific to you as well. Mhmm. Right? And and the proximity that you live to these people. And, you know, Christy shared some of the language of abusive, behaviors and I wanna share some of the feelings that we have when those behaviors are happening towards us.

Because initially we feel the feelings and we wanna be able to connect them to the thought, right? And so who is a toxic person? Somebody that makes you feel like you're being manipulated. That you're constantly confused by their behavior. You feel like you deserve an apology for this situation but it never comes.

You start to question yourself. You always have to defend yourself to this person. You never feel fully comfortable around them and you feel bad about yourself in their presence, right? People who are inconsistent play the victim, invalidate your feelings, find the fault with you for objecting to their bad behavior. They make you the bad guy because you're objecting to their bad behavior.

You know, these are little feeling markers that you can start saying, 'Hey, I don't feel like that around these other people. And and validate yourself in recognizing this or if they're doing this to your kids. But some of the things that can help prepare you going into situations when you know you have to go into a toxic situation. And in my situation, I had to continue relationship with people far longer than I should have because my husband was not with me, right? He was with them when it came to protecting our family.

So knowing the value of what you have in your family with your children and your right to protect it, remind yourself of these things. No one has a right to come to come against your children and you have a right to protect them. No matter what these people are telling you, have established standards and boundaries already in your heart and mind. Someone can go this far and I will like with the questions we were talking about, these are questions I will allow my kids to answer. This is when I'm gonna have to step in.

And prepare yourself going forward and separate yourself from the feelings so that you can have the proper thought. Prepare yourself to be hit out of nowhere because these people bring chaos. But keep in mind that we can't see the the super toxic. We can't see them as we see ourselves. We have to see them as they have shown us who they are.

So let what they have to show for themselves believe it. Okay? We are people of hope. We're always looking for the best in someone and this time it's going to be better. Don't go in with that foot.

Go in with I have seen consistently who this person is to me and my children and therefore I will put up these these boundaries and be prepared for that. And preparing yourself, I will do what needs to be done. It was not comfortable to open up that bedroom door and say to my kids, come with me. Right? I'm like, I don't know what's gonna happen here.

I don't know what she's gonna do but I will protect my kids and you you gotta be ready to go the distance and that's that can be hard. And she didn't give me pushback in that situation but she had given me pushback in other situations and I had stood my ground. So by that point she was like, I better not fight right now. Right? Because but having a plan going in if you have these things in place and you know your boundaries and you know like, I had standards if things escalate to this degree in ways that I had seen things escalate in the past.

Let the past inform you. So if things escalate to this degree, I am now at this place. We will not stay. We will leave. And there can be a gracious way to leave.

Sometimes they'll let you out graciously where you're like, you know what? We've really gotta go. You know? And they may object. You haven't been here very long.

I know. But, you know, the kids are really tired and we've just gotta go. And then you just have to stop explaining why you need to go. There were also situations where I simply got up and took my kids and left. There is no graceful way sometimes if they're pushing you that far and so you have the instinct to know what is best for your kids and when that is being disruptive, when you are you are being thrown into a blender and they flip it on high, you really don't have to explain yourself because you're not the one who's doing the wrong here.

You're simply leaving what is a dangerous situation psychologically, etcetera.

Christy-Faith: Powerful words of encouragement, Denise. And what was coming to mind too is in a lot of these situations in our homes, we and we're going to other people's homes. We think about what are what is she thinking? What is he thinking? What do other people think?

And I will say, you know, part of one thing I am thankful for in becoming a public person and being on the internet and being on TikTok and Instagram and all of those things is I had, you know, they call it thick skin. I don't think it's thick skin. I don't think that's the right term. Right? I mean, but I will say that I things do bounce off me now.

Here's what I want to say and this is gonna sound really weird. If you're worried about what other people are thinking about you and what other people are saying about you and what gossip is happening about you and what gossip is happening about your kids, I want you to know it's happening. Yeah. It absolutely is happening. Lots of people are talking about you.

Lots of people are talking about your kids and there's nothing you can actually do about it. More than that, you can't control. You are not in charge of changing their perception of you. Yeah. That's not that's not your job.

Man, we aren't we busy? We're busy. We gotta raise these kids. We gotta homeschool these kids. And I think, at least in my life, one of the anecdotes to not you know, there's trolls that come after me.

Very rare if I ever lose any sleep over what people people that don't even know me say. And it was a piece of advice that I heard from an extremely famous person who gets attacked a lot. This is a political persona. I don't mean to mention because it has nothing to do with that, like, which side this person is on because it has to do with this person said that he has an inner circle of people who know him very well, who he trusts. They know him inside and out.

They know his flaws. They know his strengths. They believe in his mission. That very small circle is who he listens to. Everyone else does not have a say.

And I just want you to remember who in your life, who in that inner circle are the people that actually have earned the place to come to you with something. Because that circle should be small. It should be the people who know you really, really well and they know the good, bad, and the ugly about you and they love you and they love you deeply and they love you fiercely and they love you anyway. Those are the people that have a voice in your life and everyone else honestly does not, even if that's your own mother. Maybe your own mother is not in that circle and that is completely okay.

So we don't need to walk into these situations prepping our kids with all of their math facts and all of their history sentences that they can rattle off to impress the relatives. Our job there is to try to enjoy the holidays with our families. And we don't need to feel like we are on trial. They might put us on trial but we don't have to participate in the trial. We're busy mamas.

We're trying to raise our kids. We are doing our best homeschooling and if we just focus on being the best moms that we can be, being the best homeschoolers, being the best wives and all of that. That is enough and those are worthy things to work on, work with, and grow in. Not worrying about what someone might be thinking, what they might be saying. So, that was really freeing and it took a while for me.

I would say it took a year becoming Christy Faith for me to I mean, it was so bad in the beginning that I had to see a therapist every single week just to figure out how to handle all of the critics and just all of the voices and also it was all these people coming after me wanting a piece of me, wanting a piece of the pie, wanting my time chunks of me. I felt like Anyway, this doesn't need to turn into an episode about me. But what I'm saying is, I had to learn very quickly through therapy how to not worry about what other people were thinking about me. Because what it was is it was controlling my mission. It was changing my mission.

It was changing the type of content that I was putting out and we don't want to be that. So in your in your family situations, when you're walking into households, we want to enjoy the day and have a great time with our kids. We need to equip them, yes, with things to say, but really the purpose of that is so that they feel safe. A couple tangible takeaways. I just want to review what was said.

So this is what some tangible takeaways of what you can do that probably would take you under a half hour to prepare. I love what Marni said: Make a list of 3 or 4 things. Have your kiddos make a list of things they love about homeschooling. That's one great thing. If you don't have a why statement, have a why statement before you walk in.

Have your kids memorize it. Have your family memorize it. Sing it in the car on the way to the family gathering. Number 3 is you can disengage with, kind of, some strategies. Like, you can make statements that that person will agree with.

You can bring in humor to the situation. And those are really great two little tactics that when you are feeling cornered, you can just make a statement that you know they'll agree with. You can make a little joke. Another nugget of wisdom is if anyone does try to corner your kids without you, instruct your kids to come to you right away and let them know who did that and what they asked. I think that's a really powerful tool as well.

And, let's see. What else was talked about, ladies? Knowing your why, having your kids have a couple statements that they memorize.

Marni Love: Setting boundaries. You know? Knowing who to bring in and who and who we need to just say, yeah. Okay.

Christy-Faith: Yeah.

Marni Love: I I hear you. Great for you. Move on.

Christy-Faith: Yes.

Marni Love: And then, you know, like Denise shared, you need to have strong boundaries with certain people, and don't be afraid, you know, to to stand up for yourself and for your kids in those situations.

Christy-Faith: And then realizing this is more about them than you.

Denise Vibbert: Yep. And letting people's truth speak for themselves and let your truth speak for itself. They are gonna talk behind your back because if they're not blaming you, then they have to accept the blame themselves and it doesn't matter.

Christy-Faith: Right. And you're not in charge of their emotional state or how they react to things. We it's hard enough to take care of our side of the street, which that's a great place to end. The entire purpose of this episode was for four reasons to help you feel confident going into the holidays, to give you some little nuggets of wisdom on what to say and how to say it when you are in some uncomfortable situations. I want you to feel like you have a couple of things to prepare your kids well because though we try to protect our kids, it's it there's gonna be situations where we can't, where things are gonna slip by.

And then after, and most importantly, I want you to feel really great about your interactions after the holidays. I want you to enjoy them as best as possible and maybe that does mean leaving halfway through and then creating a really great family memory with just your own little family. That's great, too. But I want you to feel really great about how you acted. I want you to feel good about yourself and I want you to feel confident that you did what you could to protect your kiddos.

Denise Vibbert: Any last words? It's okay to be different. We're all different. And that's something I really wanted my kids to believe and to understand, not just about being homeschoolers, but as human beings. We're different from each other and that doesn't mean that we're wrong.

And so accepting that you're different and that they're different and they're different makes you a better global citizen. Right? When we don't let our differences divide us but we find them interesting and we find ways to make them connectors for us and and teaching your kids to find ways to connect with somebody's difference.

Christy-Faith: I absolutely love that. It's okay to be different and we are in a society where fitting in is paramount and that makes people extremely uncomfortable when someone is different. And so those are great parting words. Thank you so much, ladies, for joining me today. I can't wait for our next office hours.

If you enjoyed the 3 of us sharing today, I encourage you to look into Thrive Homeschool Community. This is the type of thing we do on office hours. We help mamas through their personal predicaments whether that is with family dynamics, academics, problem solving, homeschooling issues that we're having, and also parenting issues. And, so if you are feeling like you need some more support in your homeschooling, both academically, Honestly, emotionally too. There's a large component of Thrive that's just a really healthy support group.

And also, you know, if you have kiddos that maybe have interesting learning profiles and you're kinda hitting some roadblocks and you're not quite sure what to do or maybe if your child needs some extra help, we do that. We help you, and we advise you to that end as well and can point you to amazing resources where you can get the help that you need to be the most successful homeschooler possible. Thank you so much for joining me today, ladies.

Marni Love: Thank you. Thank you.