When I was growing up I had a friend whose mother allowed her to occasionally take a “mental health day” from school. Because she went to the public school this was technically considered ditching school but in her mother’s mind it was a necessity.
You see what this mother knew is that sometimes kids need a day off. Not because it’s snowing too hard, because it’s a holiday or even because it’s Saturday… but because their child is too overwhelmed at the moment with all the “responsibilities” that come with being a kid.
I saw with my friend that sometimes missing a day at school (she had to have no tests that day nor anything else that was a required participation type thing) did her good. She seemed to be more relaxed than many other kids in her class, she seemed to really enjoy school and she seemed to want to go to school. Knowing that occasionally (and by occasionally I mean she only got 2 days a year like this) she could stay home to rest and rejuvenate helped her get through the other days much better than many other kids.
I think this is an important thing to do in our homeschooling life. Many people ask me how I school so many kids and so many levels. I tell them that I am flexible… there are some days we get a lot of work done and other days we take a mental health day. It’s easy to see when we need those days… kids are not paying attention, they may be arguing, they may be lolly-gagging around or kids may just be super tired and not motivated. Those days I know that we need to put the books aside and rest.
One of the amazing joys of homeschooling is that we have an entire year to get our schoolwork done. If we want to take a day off or do less work, we can. If we want to do work on Saturday, we can. If we want to take our work to the park, we can. There is so much freedom in working around the needs of our children. Taking a day off sometimes helps to keep them motivated and excited about learning.
So when should you take a “mental health day”? Here are a few times when it might be a great idea to take the day off…
- You watch your children and they are completely unmotivated to learn
- You are sick or the kids are sick
- The kids are arguing more than getting along
- You find that you are getting upset more than you are staying calm
- You look at they kids and say, “We are homeschooling why?”
- It’s been raining for a week and the sun is finally out
- It’s one of the kid’s birthdays
Of course there are so many reasons you might want to take a mental health day but the main objective when you take one is to help you recenter and reignite that desire to learn (and to teach)! If taking a day off every now and again will help you do that then it is in the best interest of your homeschooling journey to do so. As long as you are not making a habit of it and having more days off than on you should be just fine. Of course the days you “take off” don’t necessarily have to be completely off but maybe you just do school in a different manner. We are blessed as homeschoolers to be able to teach in the manner we feel is the most appropriate for our families. For our family, taking a day off every now and again is a definite way to help keep us motivated and excited for school.
Michelle writes about her adventures in homeschooling and about her family’s days off at her blog Pass The Flu Bug Please.
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When I was growing up I had a friend whose mother allowed her to occasionally take a “mental health day” from school. Because she went to the public school this was technically considered ditching school but in her mother’s mind it was a necessity.
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Excellent post! I completely agree that sometimes we just need a mental break. As a matter of fact, we’re taking one of those days tomorrow. We have a membership to a local children’s museum that is almost as educational as it is fun, so we’re heading there. I usually count that as a school day, as long as we really take advantage of the educational benefits of the museum and don’t just play (and, if we just play, that’s okay, too…I just won’t count it as a school day).
We take all of our birthdays off. Three of us have summer birthdays, so it’s not that hard, but everyone enjoys the birthday holidays.
Thank you for making mental health days okay!!!! I’ve been finding that we both need this every now and then and I’m trying to stop feeling guilty about it.