Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - “Your Kid Doesn’t Need Preschool…Or Kindergarten.” - With Claire Denault

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

She didn’t start reading until 12 – yet was in college by 15! An extraordinary story of a homeschooling mom who trusted her daughter’s abilities more than “the system." Now that little girl is all grown up and is a homeschooling mom herself. She speaks against the educational industrial complex that creates rule followers, not learners. This thought-provoking episode explores the pitfalls in American education, why parents are the best teachers, and why the world is the best classroom.Follow ...

This month in Oklahoma, there was a video of kids at school, sucking toes. Can't believe I am reading this sentence. In Australia, teachers made a sex-themed calendar on school grounds in the last few weeks. These are the people teaching your kids. We have a broken world because we have elevated degeneracy for so long. How are you supposed to raise them to be strong enough to resist indoctrination like that? This is the sort of encouragement that you will get at Turning Point USA's Young Women's Leadership Summit this June, San Antonio, Texas, June 7th through 9th, you will hear from incredible conservative and Christian experts in crimes against children, biblical parenting, homeschool, health and wellness, and more. YWLS is for all ages.

If you're 26 or under, regardless of school status, you are eligible for a student price ticket. If you're over 26, you are eligible for an adult ticket. This is a two-day event that introduces you to like-minded students, moms, networking and job opportunities, conservative-owned brands and speakers that have changed your life on shows like the spillover. Spots are already very limited. Go to YWLS24.com with code Alex for 25% off. That's YWLS24.com with code Alex for 25% off or find the link in the description. Today's guest was enrolled in traditional school as a child, and things seemed to be going well until they weren't. After only a few months, her mother realized that her daughter met the criteria

for ADHD, was exceptionally high energy, was a delayed reader, and had a lot of trouble concentrating. Instead of bribing her kids to sit still longer at school or work with teachers on discipline, I guess mom pulled her kids out of school completely and began homeschooling. It was upstate New York in the 90s. The neighbors thought they joined a cult. My guest actually even continued to struggle with reading. In fact, did not read until she was 12 years old. One might assume that that led to tons of struggles in her life,

that she wasn't as intelligent as her peers, that she never would lead a successful life. But here's the kicker. Despite not reading until she was 12, she started college at 15. She graduated and went on to co-establish, manage, and eventually sell a groundbreaking medical device company, currently in clinical trials on the verge of market sales. She believes that if her mother hadn't foreseen the need to pull her from public school,

ironically, that would have led her to a life full of medication, setbacks, and depression. Now, my guest is a homeschooling mom herself. She doesn't think that we need to pressure kids to read before they're ready. She believes that a traditional school model, public or not, is about forcing square pegs into round holes. And if the peg doesn't fit, the response is often to use a big, bigger hammer. She says homeschooling fosters critical behaviors such as creativity, problem solving, and group learning, essential traits for thriving adults, and that a successful education doesn't have to occur within traditional whitewashed walls. Her goal with this interview is to raise

awareness of the shortcomings in our current education system that urgently need reform. And while she is an advocate for homeschooling, her primary goal is to just better our current education system. Her Instagram is live.leaf.learn. And you can watch. this interview on the real Alex Clark YouTube channel, just a reminder that the show is only able to continue based off your tax deductible donations because we are produced by a 501c3 nonprofit. If you would like to become a financial contributor of the show, helping us with guest travel so that we can film in person like we did today and set equipment, find the link in the show notes. If you're not able to do that, but you still want a way to support, the best way to do it is by leaving

a five-star review wherever you listen to that prospective listeners will want to check out the show. please welcome Claire Denalt, homeschooling mom and education reform activist to the spillover. Just to set the stage, what is your elevator pitch to a public school mom on why she should yank her kid out of public education? If you want your kid to thrive socially, physiologically, and academically, school is definitely not the place where you want to have them do that. There are reasons from what they're being taught to how they're being taught, to who they're being taught. to who they were being taught by for why you don't want to have them in the classroom for eight hours a day. There are far better ways for them to learn what they need to learn outside of the classroom. I was as hyperactive as you could possibly get. One of the things that

my brother had was inability to pay attention after a while and getting very stressed. So, and mind you, this is years ago when the signs for ADD and ADHD seem to be a little different than they are now. I think the diagnoses for those conditions have changed pretty dry. dramatically over the years because it seems like everyone I know has ADD and ADHD. But we were definitely the kids who were running around crazy, not able to sit still in a classroom, not able to sit still in a house. I mean, really just simply not able to sit still. So you would, I think anyone who knew us would think we were, but we were never diagnosed. Why did your mom think that pulling you and your brother out of public school was going to be the right solution for the attention problems and

learning gaps. Well, back then, mind you, this is, I'm a little older, so this is quite a few years ago. There wasn't a lot of support for homeschooling. So I don't think she knew that it was 100% the right idea, but what she definitely knew and was adamant about was that having a school system tell her what her child needs was not okay. And she knew for a fact that my brother, and he's the primary reason we started, myself and him, I guess. My sister kind of came along as a tag along. We're already doing it. but she knew that he could not handle more than half a day of school. And the school system fought her on that. But she knew her child and said, no, this child can't handle more than half a day.

So at the end of that school year, his school teacher, and I think he was in first grade, first or second grade, his school teacher said, you're right. And his name was Mr. Dickey. He said, you're right. There are a lot of kids who can't handle being in school for more than half a day. And I think her having confirmation from a teacher saying, what you're doing is not wrong. I think that gave her confidence to say, okay, I'm going headfirst, diving in on this journey of homeschooling and going to see where it leads. But there was no plan of action for her.

It was just, I know my kids better than you know my kids, and I'm going to do what I feel is right for them. How likely is it that a mother today who is being told by her kid's teacher, your kid can't sit still, he is trouble paying attention, he's very ornery, how many of those kids would benefit from, really only a few hours of learning a day versus trying to sit for six, seven hours a day in a desk. I mean, can any of us sit for six, seven, eight hours a day behind a desk? My opinion on that is almost all those kids should at least try a different method of education. Because it is not natural for us to learn that way. It is not natural for us to sit, like you said, for hours on end, listening to someone dictate educational experiences to us. It is natural for us to be outdoors with our hands in the dirt.

learning, hands-on, exploring our environment. And I think the majority of kids who are diagnosed, and I believe there are kids that actually have diagnoses that are appropriate for them, but I think a lot of them is just a band-aid to cover up the fact that they are bored out of their minds and they are looking for an escape or some sort of challenging environment that they can thrive in. Yeah, I think that's one of the most interesting things is that your kid acting out or not being able to sit still at school isn't necessarily indicative of a learning disorder. It actually might be that they're so smart in a head that they're getting bored. Exactly. I think that would have 100% happened to me. I mean, I literally could not sit still. I went outside. I think the majority of

my young adolescent life, I spent outdoors playing. We had a lot of animals, a lot of land. I spent the whole time outdoors playing because I didn't have the ability to sit still, but I went to college when I was 15. So had I been in school in that traditional environment, I am sure I would have had many learning problems, been diagnosed with all sorts of issues, and ended up probably feeling horrible about myself, having bad self-esteem. And gosh knows where I would have been. But, you know, the choice my mom made was really, you know, life-changing for all of us. What did that transition look like? You and your brother are in traditional school setting. Your mom pulls you out to homeschool. What did the day-to-day look like at first? Well, so I was only in kindergarten at a

Waldorf school. So we went to a private school, one that is a pretty great school and teaches on an alternative method, but it still didn't work for us. So even, I just want to be clear that even schools that are different and teaching a different method aren't right for everyone. That's shocking because I love Waldorf schools. I love them too. So that wasn't working for you. You couldn't even pay attention just for that. No, I mean, it's a beautiful school. Like, they had a farm across the street. I ate like biscuits in the morning. Although they like to delay formal learning and they have a great background, I think. Not all kids thrive in that environment. And we were simply children that didn't thrive in it. It wasn't meant for us because we needed to be outdoors. We needed

to be active. We needed to be running around like little wild heathens being crazy. Okay. So that's interesting that you say that because I'm picturing, okay, well, if you, you can't pay attention for something that's so lax like Waldorf school, which is really just play, then your mom taking you out, then how was she homeschooling you? Because obviously it wouldn't have been workbooks. No, I'm pretty sure my brother shot hoops for the first two years of our life homeschooling.

Now, if you say that your brother just played basketball for two years homeschooling, immediately people that are used to traditional school settings are like, you're not learning. 100%. I mean, even me who homeschools, I'm like, how is that even possible? But the reality is,

and studies have shown that when you are ready to learn on a topic that you're mentally incapable of learning, at that moment, it takes you far less time to learn that specific topic than it would if you're forced to learn it more early on. So a lot of examples of this are reading. Reading is pushed early on in the U.S. And it's to a detriment of the children a lot of times because in other countries, Finland, for example, they don't even start teaching kids to learn until seven because they've shown they don't have the capacity to start learning. So if you push a topic, whatever that topic is, math, reading, writing early on, although kids can conform and they can learn to do what's being asked to them,

it may take longer and it might be harder and they have trauma around trying to learn something that's taking them X amount of years. So yeah, when it came to our education as kids, I learned to build forts. I learned to cook. I learned to use knives, axes. That might sound crazy, but I was playing with my brother who's a year older than me. So I was darn sure going to get involved in whatever nonsense he was doing and we built things with our hands. We created things. This is before we had, you know, toys, social media, Instagram, any sort of television. We weren't allowed television when we were younger. And we spent our days being creative. So we weren't given any formal education until we were older. I know that's crazy. Well, I don't think it's crazy. To people that have never heard

this before, it is crazy and it's radical. But one of the juiciest things about your story to me is that your mom pulls you out of public school, starts homeschooling. You don't start reading until you're 11 or 12 after homeschooling, but then you end up going to college by 15. Yeah. How is that possible? So honest to God, like when I look at this story, when I think of this, because I see it as my, my perspective, which is the kid, right? When I think of myself in this, I think that my mom had tried to teach me to read in the sense she would give me books and every book she put in front of me. because now, mind you, I'm older. I can remember this pretty well. Every book she put in front of me was the cat, the hat was fat, sat, whatever. It was boring. Every book I was handed was boring. It meant

nothing to me. I didn't connect with what she was showing me. I didn't care. Simply did not care. And for my mom, bless her heart, how she managed to stay strong in her conviction to homeschool is beyond me. Because can you imagine having an 11-year-old or 12? I still like to think it's 10, but she corrects me and says 12 now, not reading and not even know whether they're capable of reading. But if you are a parent and your homeschooling and your kid is not reading until 12 years old, aren't you thinking what I'm doing is not working? I have to put them back in public school. How did your mom hold out? So my mom read a bunch of books.

And what she read was she knew that there wasn't anything developmentally wrong with me at the time. She knew that I was capable because I also at that time had a really great. aptitude for math. And I was doing phenomenally well in math. And it's interesting how that happens. Usually a kid is excelling in one or the other, reading, writing, or math. Well, that's a tangent that I think is a consequence of school system. The math, because math is predominantly something people dislike and have, you know, they say that it was a horrible experience. They have trauma around their experience learning math. You're taught math so that you can regurgitate and memorize and put down the information, but math builds upon itself. So if you don't learn,

foundations of math in the beginning, then the next year or the next semester when you're learning more and you don't have the basics, you are behind, but you're just learning to memorize. So you can pass a test and learning to memorize, pass a test, but you don't get the foundations. So you're really in a very stressful environment of, I don't understand math, but I need to pass to get an A. And you're nowhere in the realm of really understanding what you're doing. So reading doesn't build upon itself. It's like riding a bike. Once you learn it, you learn it. You don't really have to become a better reader once you've got it down. Math, you need to know the basics, spend as long as it takes before you move to the next level.

So what were the books that your mom was reading telling her about the fact that her daughter she was homeschooling was still not reading at 12? She's not ready. When she is ready, she will learn as long as you provide, and this is key because I think in today's environment, it's much harder to do this. As long as you provide a literature-rich environment, they will learn. And what does that mean, a literature-rich environment? So right now, we could possibly get through life not learning how to read because we have Siri, Google, and every device out there that can read for us. That's probably what's happening because so many kids can't read. Right.

So I don't need to know how to spell to Google something. I can just say, hey, Siri, look up X, Y, and Z. But then she would bring me to the library every day. I wouldn't do anything with books, but look at the pretty pictures and go probably terrorize someone. But she'd bring us to the library every single day. and we would spend an hour there and we'd look around and eventually my interest in life corresponded with my interest in reading. And that was her key because at some point in my life, I became very horse-obsessed. I wanted to be an equestrian. I was going to go to the Olympics,

you name it. All I wanted was to live, breathe, and exist around horses. So I found novels. And the first books, everybody remembers me reading. So you have a kid who's read absolutely nothing. I mean, nothing. I don't even know if I read a road sign at this point, point. I read nothing and I went from reading zero books, zero signs to picking up, I think they were called young, young adults. Remember YAA novels? A young adult novel called The Saddle Club Girls. Pre-teen, little book about horses and drama and I think I was 12, so I was all in. I was like, this is great. It's got horses and I'm a pre-teen. I can learn about drama. So that might be the key. The key might be, what are you teaching your child to read with? Is it a subject that they're

actually interested in? Oh, absolutely. If you're not, educating them with something they care about. I mean, how hard is it to teach someone about something they have no investment in? So that is part of it. You weren't reading until you were 12. By 15, you're in college. How can somebody prepare for college in less than three years? Well, so I read.

The minute I read, the minute I picked up a book, I was like, oh, this is actually cool. You can actually find out a lot of information once you learn to read. And from that day, I read everything. There was no progressive learning part to my reading. There was no progression. I just went from not reading to reading novels and everything I could find. I went on to sci-fi. I went on to all the great classics.

I think I read the Bible then. I mean, I read everything I could find. So at that point, I was proficient in math, proficient in writing, and proficient in reading. I mean, there's nothing more you need in life to learn everything you need to learn than those three things and have full mastery of them. So at that point, I went into doing math classes in college. I started with a small, I didn't do full time. I started when I was 15 because I had exceeded my mom and my dad's level, even though my dad's a mathematician, to teach me math.

So at that point, they enrolled me in a small private college, union college, it's in upstate New York, and I started taking calculus, Calc 1, Calc 2. And I was the youngest kid in the class, and I thought I was coolest could be because I was 15 and in college. And the teachers knew, like it was a very nice experience because some people might be worried, oh, you have a young kid in college. Teachers knew I was a kid, knew I was younger than everyone else. And honestly, all the college kids were really nice to me. Oh, I'm sure they were. They loved me. Yeah, they looked at you as like the little sister to look out for. Oh, 100%. And the one that they wanted the info from because I knew the answers. So, I mean, I absolutely loved it. I had a blast. And I started

with math classes. And then I think my parents were like, well, let the college teacher. Why do we need to her in classes. Just let her go. She loves doing that. Have at it. And so how old were you when you were done with everything, all school? So I took a little bit of time in between. I traveled. So I didn't do it continuously. I think I finished college graduated when I was 19 or 20. Okay. But because I took time, I transferred those credits to a different school. I went to Sweden, Germany, Denmark. I spent when I was like 16. I spent some time overseas. You know, I spent time living life learning about myself, learning about my interests and then to come back and finish my studies to move on. Don't you think if more people did that with their kids, we would have a lot less kids in their

20s being like, I don't know what I want to do? Of course. But more so than that, I mean, not being in a school system where you're told what to think, what to do, how to dress, you have peer pressure, where if you're an environment where you can be yourself and truthfully yourself, exploring who you are without these outside influences telling you who to be, then maybe we wouldn't have so many people trying to find themselves later on in life because they never lost who they were in the beginning. Like, wouldn't that be an exciting thing versus let's go find ourselves in college and spend, you know, X amount of dollars trying to figure out who I am before I know.

Just let's not lose it in the beginning. Shout out to Taryn! Got a DM from a woman named Taryn. She's a cute servative. She loves the show. She said I just got my Nimi order a week ago. My skin hasn't been this soft in years. From the mouth of babes, I tell you.

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I struggled with for years. It really is an added bonus to all of that, that I've found a skincare company that works so well and also shares my values as a Christian and conservative. All products are made in the USA. The price point is fantastic. Honestly, you probably spend more at the drugstore on drugstore skincare. And those companies, by the way,

are donating a large portion of your money to political candidates that you don't support. Stop throwing your money away. Opt for Nimi Skincare instead and get the best skin of your life, plus support conservative values that are important to you, especially during an election year. Go to Nemeyskinkare.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off. That's NimiSkinkare.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off or find the link in the show notes. If you're not reading for so much of life because you were so delayed, how were you learning? What am we learning about?

I was in dance classes from the time I could walk. I learned how to behave, how to respond to people, how to be. respectful. I learned morals, ethics, values. I learned, definitely started art when I was young. I'm a terrible artist, but I started young. I did a lot of architecture classes because that's more my brain. Yeah, that makes sense. I was in, we did a lot of farming. I learned about farming. I learned about planting, growing seeds. My dad built a house. I learned how to build houses. I'm phenomenally good with plumbing. Wow. Why? I don't know. Like, I was a ballerina girl, but I actually do know how to do plumbing. I know how to like lay siding on a house. Now, I know that's not traditional education,

but I know how to bake, cook. I know spices. But here's the thing. You say, well, I know that's not traditional education, but how often in your adult life have you had to use that information on a day-to-day basis versus the stuff that you would have learned in public school, elementary school? I use all that to this day far more than what I learned, you know, in the classroom. Although I did love astronomy and I'm really good at astronomy and I just thought it was fascinating. But, for things like financial literacy, my brother took accounting when he was 14. He had to take it with my mom because they wouldn't let a 14 year old take it. But like he was in accounting classes. So you say like, how did I learn? Well, what I needed to learn academically or scholastically that

equated to, you know, having a well-rounded education as far as the public school is concerned, I compressed that learning into a few short years because it doesn't take me a million years to learn it. I knew what I needed to learn. I have, although I was very hyperactive and a busy kid, I knew that if I focused, one thing I think, and I'm not diagnosed, but one thing I think about people who are ADD and ADHD, they have a hyperactive ability to focus on something. So I can focus for an extremely long time on something that I care about or deem valuable. So you're saying a kid will start reading when they are ready and you don't have to be concerned about how smart they are or the quality of the life that they have or the ability to have a career one day

if they are a significantly delayed reader. So if that is the case, why do so many teachers tell parents your kid is significantly delayed if they're not reading by six or seven? Because they have statistics standards that they have to meet in the public school system. Their schools are based off of tests and how well children perform on these tests. If I'm a teacher and my children are not meeting those standards, it looks poorly. upon the schools. So how are the schools going to get the financial backings if their kids aren't making these benchmarks? It's not about learning. It's not about having a love of learning. It's about meeting these standards. And it even shows, there are studies that show children who start

earlier on in pre-K, it shows that these children are actually behind the children who start later on. This is a common thread that other countries have learned is don't push formal education early on. In the U.S., it feels like we're in a rat race. Like the first, the first of the first. faster, the earlier you put your kid into preschool, the sooner they get started with writing, the better off they'll be. But if we actually look at the research, it shows it's the opposite. They're not ready. They need creative play. They need the outdoors environment. They need time to thrive, find who they are before they're sitting, listening, and being taught by instructors. I think there's an assumption, and I hear it all the time, that homeschool kids are not as smart as

traditionally schooled kids? If that's an assumption, then that's probably one that has been refuted more than any assumption I've ever heard. Because if you look at the scores of homeschooled children versus your traditional schooled children, homeschooled kids outperform traditional schooled kids every single time. And it's documented across multiple peer reviewed studies. So you can look at their test scores, their SAT scores, whatever scores you want to pull, and they are always outperforming. So for anybody who says that, I mean, look at any homeschool kid you know and then see how they perform and guaranteed the majority have performed very well. But furthermore, colleges such as Stanford, MIT, Duke, are all actively recruiting homeschool kids because of their ability to perform well, not just academically, but they are entrepreneurs. They have a spirit that those colleges seek out because they know they'll go on to make a good name for that school. Are homeschool kids weird socially? Are they behind socially? Well, you meant me.

So that's an odd concept. And it has been one that I've heard since I was a kid. And yeah, I grew up in the time where probably homeschool kids and anybody who lived in a rural area was weird. Yeah, how were you making friends? Basically, I lived in an area that was rural and there weren't a lot of people around school, homeschooled, unschooled. First of all, there were no homeschoolers anywhere near me. There was no homeschool meetups. So I was just friends with the local school kids. Home school co-ops, homeschool groups are everywhere. Even the smallest towns, you are going to find huge groups of like-minded families that share your values.

You're going to make friends as a mom. Your kid is going to make friends with other kids. My homeschool friends who have multiple kids are busier than my friends that have kids in traditional school. Yeah. It is insane. So I sit on the board of one of the homeschool groups in Dallas. and they have, I haven't checked lately, but last time I checked, it was over 12,000 members in their group. And I can tell you, if I'd allowed myself, I would be booked with homeschool events, meetups, groups, field trips, special field trips every single day, hour of the week.

What are some of the homeschool activity options? One of the cooler ones, we used to go out and scout for cool opportunities, go find cool places to go for field trips. I mean, so in Dallas, the group sets up a field trip every single day of the week. Okay, so you can go anywhere. So there was a field trip to this place called Eden Green, and it's a hydroponic vertical farm. So cool. See, I want to go. Seriously cool.

So it is literally a farm that is vertical, and they're growing lettuce and all sorts of things, and they're super innovative, and they're looking for young minds to join their team. So not only are these kids going on a field trip, and this field trip was geared specifically towards teens, they're giving them a future opportunity there to potentially get employed or have an internship and be a part of it. And they're looking to really innovate, bring that sort of vertical farming to other countries, to places that need more food. Urban areas. Urban areas. Absolutely. They're building them on top of parking lots in other countries. So, I mean, that was one that was really, really cool. And we actually found that by driving by.

And I was like, oh, look, it's a cool farm. I wonder if we can go in. There's a big old gate. The guy comes up to the gate and says, nobody's allowed. I was like, can I get a number? I just want to call. We ended up calling. It turns out the CEO, he homeschools his child too.

I think this is what's very interesting. When you talk to the biggest CEOs of companies like Apple, Amazon, these huge tech companies that live in Silicon Valley, none of them are putting their kid in traditional public school. It's alternative learning like Montessori, Waldorf, those types. of things or their homeschooling. Why do you think that is? Because the school system is not offering what we need to thrive and survive and really grow. And the biggest concern for a parent is, I want my child to be successful. I want them to have a happy life. I want them to not want

for anything when they get older. I don't want them to have to struggle. So if I'm putting my child in the school system that isn't innovative, that's not challenging them creatively, that's actually there to really teach them how to follow rules, walk and structure. lines and follow directions versus teaching them how to be entrepreneurs. I mean, you look at Grant Cardone. He recently came out and said school is the worst place to put your children if you want them to have a successful life. And how old is your son? He's seven. Okay, so your seven-year-old son who's homeschooled, what is like the one thing that he's super interested in that homeschooled that homeschool homeschool allows the time for him to dive in deeper because it's a passion for him?

One of the things I think is really great about homeschooling is exactly what you said. If you have a passion, there's no limit to that time which you can spend on that passion. In traditional schools, you probably had a semester or part of the year that they studied something that you loved, and you're like, wow, this has been so cool. I wish we could study more of it. Well, we get to study more of it all the time, like whatever it is. For as long as you want. For as long as we want. I mean, heck, he could study reptiles until he's like 30 for all I know. But for instance, Last year, we were doing a big study on pioneers in early America. So we visited a lot of farms and learned a bunch of information, but we also stayed in like a Conestoga wagon. We spent a night

being pioneers in a wagon, building a fire. Granted, I had to use gas because I don't know how to light a fire I learned. I don't even know how to use it with lighter fluid and everything. But, you know, we spent time and he loved that. My son has a huge passion for animals, particularly reptiles. And we spend time visiting pretty much any animal rescue, particularly conservation rehabilitation places, because that's his interests. And when we read or we look at books, we're looking at reptile books. My son's reading is about reptiles. We read about the Texas horn lizard. A lot of people would not expect this, I think.

But most of the people that work behind the scenes of my show are all homeschool kids. They had the time when they were younger to dive into videography. how do cameras work, professional photography, all of these different creative jobs that require a lot of skill to do. They have the time to explore that and really learn and focus on it because it was something that they enjoyed. If they would have been in traditional school, they probably wouldn't at their age be able to work on a show the size of mind. Right, because real life experience has value. People say, and I've heard this before, that you can learn from books, but what employers really value is real life experience. So I think that holds a lot of

value, but also they have the ability to figure out what they want to do, what they're interested in, what their passions are. When you're in school and you're just churning out tests and learning to tests, then you don't really have a lot of time to explore different options for what you love, what you're passionate about, what you want to dive deeper into. Yeah, they're learning to test, but they're not learning to learn. Right, exactly. And that's what we really want to create is a love of learning. And I feel like as someone who was homeschooled, I can tell you I love learning right along with my son, even if it's about things that I never thought I would even care about. I mean, I know more about snakes than I ever thought I would. I learned ants don't have lungs. I don't even know if that's true, but he told me it the other day. So, I mean, you learn to love to learn things. And I think we've lost that in our society. I don't think anybody loves learning anymore. I think it's more just the system of what can we get next. What's the next step we can get to the next milestone to take the next milestone leap?

Well, I don't even know how much learning is actually happening in public school because how much of the day is spent correcting kids' behavior that are acting out, especially in your inner city schools. Yeah, that is a big concern and really sad, honestly, because my mom used to be a substitute teacher at inner city schools in Albany. And she's a phenomenal teacher. She has the patience of a saint. But she'd go and she'd come home in tears because those children don't know how to read in high school. They don't know how to write in high school. And they loved my mother because she spent time with them, listened to them. And she said that's one of the horrible things is these kids act up because they feel pressure. They feel embarrassed. I mean, you're a teenager and you're not at the right reading level. And they're not getting the support or the help. I mean, a lot of. of these schools, teachers do mean well some of them, or a lot of them can mean well, but they're not provided support to teach or even to teach in an environment that's conducive to learning. They have all these external rules and criteria put upon them to reach milestones for that school, none of which is in the best interest of the child. A lot of parents are scared to pull their kids out of public school because they don't want to remove them from their friends. They think that that's really going

to harm them. What are your thoughts? Life's hard. People. People move. Things change. Just because your homeschooling doesn't mean you don't have to be friends with people, but if you think about it, military families move all the time. If I feel that it is in my child's best interest for them not to be in the school system, I'm going to remove my child from the school system because that is not in their best interest. I am not going to make a judgment about what's good for my child because they want their friends. And I think friends are the greatest influence in a child's life if they're in school. And I really need to know what those friends are teaching them because a lot of times kids learn things from friends that I'm not comfortable with. So I want to really make sure that the values and the support system that my child has is one that I agree with. Not one that's necessarily away from me in a building where I don't get to see what those interactions are and be active in that life every single day. I need to be involved. in my child's social life, so I know exactly what's going on because a lot of what's going on in public, even private schools are things that I am definitely not comfortable with my child being involved with. And it's not about even the academic. It's the social aspect, as we all know.

There are things that I am simply uncomfortable with my son being exposed to at seven. Baby steps. It's the phrase I have to keep telling myself as I try to phase out products contributing to my toxic load. Instead of throwing away everything I own it wants, I have slowly, over the course of a year, began replacing products I run out of with cleaner versions. It doesn't have to be all this hardcore spending, you know, $15,000 or something. No, it's like a little, it's $20 here, it's $20 there. Very quickly, I was able to transition from body washes with cancer-causing ingredients like B.HT or allergy-causing ingredients like DMDM, hide-in toin, and replace them with skin healing ingredients like dead sea salt,

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that 67 Illinois public schools, all public schools were evaluated. a couple weeks ago and found that not one child in the entire state tested proficiently for math. I question a parent's ability to critically think, how can you hear that information and still worry, homeschooling, my kid's not going to turn out okay. Right, because they were raised in a system that told them, don't think for yourself, think based on what we tell you is right for your child. They've been raised in a system where the right thing to do is put the kid in school. And regardless of what their reading levels are, they need to continue along their path,

formal education, public schooling. They don't see the other option because they were never taught to critically think and think outside the box, which is, I think, the major thing that school teaches is to conform to the standards that they're teaching versus homeschool, which says, think outside the box, learn creatively, come up with your own solutions, your own conclusions, and you'll have a better outcome that way. Do you believe that public school is a viable option for any American families? I think formal education is a great option if it was implemented correctly or implemented in a more child-centric manner.

Unfortunately, I think where our public education system is going is generally not beneficial for a significant amount of families. But there are variations on that scale, and I'm not going to say it's harmful to everyone. there may be some families that they need the out of public school to use as babysitting, or they need public school to take care of their children when they can't, for whatever reasons, because I can't go into all the reasons that may be not ones that I even want to consider. Do I think that most families have the capability of homeschooling their children? Absolutely. I think a lot of people don't want to be uncomfortable with the idea of homeschooling.

I think a lot of people don't want to think about, hey, we might need to have a single-income household. in order to homeschool. And honestly, depending on where you are, a lot of people just don't want to be uncomfortable with the idea of I'm going to take on my child's education solely. They'd rather outsource that because if something goes wrong, they don't have the responsibility of their child's education. The parents that are adamant, I cannot homeschool because I'm a single parent or my husband and I both work. So we can't homeschool. We're out. You have to be rich and one parent has to stay home. The people that say that, I don't think that they have a true understanding of how much time a day you have to spend homeschooling. Also, the thing about that that's crazy is there's over 57% of all homeschool families make under 50,000 a year.

They make under 50,000. How are they doing it? And I have people tell me every day with their two-income, six-figure households, I could never homeschool. I have a friend. I have a friend who is a single mother in California, in Orange County, who is homeschooling. her kids. Yeah, exactly. And she works full time and she lives in California alone with her kids and she still homeschools them. Exactly. Because she's prioritizing it. So she's figuring it out. If that means she is to do it two hours after dinner, they do it two hours after dinner. If that means doing it Saturday mornings, they do Saturday mornings. I just feel like if a parent, if it's truly important to you, you will make it happen. Am I wrong? No, you're 100% correct.

I say this all the time. I have been a single mom. And I have been a single mom. And I I have done the working. I was going to homeschool my child, regardless of what anyone said. I was not going to put them in daycare, anything. What was your plan to make it happen? I was going to make it happen. There is no plan that's needed. If that is my highest priority and I am convicted and I am going to make that my central priority, then I will find a way because I'm capable of finding a way. And I think that's where people like to use excuses and make up other concerns about it versus actually saying, you know, you're right. If we wanted to, we could. We could downsize our house. We could not drive Teslas. We don't need to drive a range rover. We could use a smaller

income. We could live off of it and move somewhere cheaper. There is a way, but do we want to be uncomfortable enough? Is our child's education valuable enough to us that we're okay with a little bit of discomfort in order to make him get there? Part of the reason why I started my Instagram was because in Dallas, where I live, just around my central location. I'm not talking about Texas. There's nobody homeschooling their kid right by me because there's a ton of very nice private schools that everyone goes to for status. I am the only person I know in a three-mile radius who homeschools our kids. But because of that, I was homeschooled. I hear and heard, until I started my Instagram, I heard so much grief about when am I going to put my child in one of the private schools.

When is he going to go to school? Which for someone who was homeschooled to hear, hey, when are you putting your kid in school is, one, a sideways slap on me because I actually went without school and did fairly well, I'd like to say. And I had everyone asking me on a regular basis, well, don't you think he needs to be in school? Don't you think so? It's almost like when a mother chooses to be a stay-at-home mom and the number one question that she always gets is, so when are you going back to work? Right, exactly. It's assumed. Why do we have to live our life? Why do we have to parent our kids, why do we have to run our households based on the assumptions of what society tells us it's normal and tells us that we're supposed to be doing? To me, it was crazy. And

it was hard to deal with hearing that all the time. Well, you know, he's with you all the time. And I'm thinking, well, I had a child. I wanted to have a kid. He's with you all the time. How dare you actually want to parrot your kid? How dare you not want to just let the iPad raise them? I just think it's fascinating because I now surround myself with a lot of homeschool mom. whose children are with them all the time, and we love it. Like, we have a great time. Us moms hang out, we chat, and the kids go off and do whatever they do. And I mean, it's just a funny society that we live in where even if I am an outcome, I'm a product of exactly what I preach about, of exactly what I did, I am the product, which most of my friends love. I have great friends and they think

I'm cool. So far, I haven't been told them too weird. I'm fun. They can still look at me and say, ooh, but when are you going to put your kid in school? It just seems so hypocritical. I literally was raised going to museums, exploring the world. I mean, I cannot imagine being in school. And I got to participate on all the sports teams. So not only did I get to not go to a classroom, I got to be team captain on my crew team. I traveled. I was state champion. I went to prom, homecoming. Yeah, wait a minute. How did you go to prom and homecoming and join sports teams if you were homeschooled. You can. I mean, you literally can. It's like, you know how you can go to a different prom if you're from the school district. Well, you can go to any prom that you're invited to. And I was a very outgoing

kid who had tons of friends. So I got to go to proms and homecomings. And I mean, I had a blast. Kids always told me that I was like the international cool kid. I didn't actually go to school, but I was super mysterious and cool because they saw me outside of school all the time. And I mean, in their senior year, kids would come to my house because they got out early and I'd go pick them up and bring them over to hang out at our house. So, I mean, we had a blast growing up. Why is homeschooling the fastest growing form of education in the United States? In my opinion, there is just so much dissatisfaction with the education system. What's being taught, how it's being taught. I think across all sides, no matter what your political views are even, people are not happy with the education system right now. And they see the reading

scores, the literacy scores, the mass scores declining. I mean, if you have a coach of a basketball team, And year after year, that team doesn't make it to the finals, isn't winning. What do we do with the coach? We get rid of the coach and replace them. So why aren't we doing that with our schools and our teachers in America? Because I think our school system is politicized to the point where we can't focus on a child's education. All we can really focus on is the political agenda of the school system or the people in power. We're not really focusing on, hey, our world has rapidly changed.

We have AI now. We have all these tools at our disposal where we can create a more child-centric, organic learning environment. But we're not in a place where we can do that. I mean, we could simply look at other countries that are doing a far better job of educating their children than we are. But we're not doing that either. So you've got to think, this isn't about the kids. There's nothing to do with the kids as education. This is about a political warfare on children and learning.

Does every parent that homeschools need a teaching degree? No, absolutely not. It's funny because I heard the other day that we're in such need of teachers in the education system that anybody with any bachelor's degree, even associates, I believe, can go be a teacher in pretty much any topic, which I think is fascinating. I know in Texas right now they are looking for teachers. If you've got a bachelor degree, sign you up. You can teach. You can teach elementary school.

Okay. So the parents that are anti-homeschool because your kid isn't being taught by a real teacher and are appropriate. public school are okay then with now the standard of public schools, anyone can be a teacher. So how is that any different than the homeschool model? You know what I mean? It's crazy. It really is. Because even in homeschooling, I was showing actually a good friend of mine this the other day, the curriculums have come so far. So when my mom homeschooled us, like I have to say like multiple times, bless my mom, I don't know how she did it. Because there weren't this abundance of curriculums. We didn't have co-ops. There was one homeschool kid like two hours away. But there was no

meetups. There was no co-ops. There were no curriculums. She tried. There was Saxon math. There were some, but we weren't looking at the abundance there is now. And when I say curriculums, I could literally hand you my son's reading book and you could do it first glance because it says in red, teacher reads this and you read verbatim, points to this, asks child to say. It's It's so easy to read these curriculum books now as someone who may not have a formal education in teaching. But beyond that, they have resources set up from formal teachers, professors, you name it. You can go to online resources and find just about any teacher in any subject and sign up for it. So how much of your son's day is spent homeschooling altogether?

And what portion of it is like working out of workbooks or things like that? And what portion is spent like out in the world doing these like field trips and excursions? So we spend about an hour a day on workbooks, maybe three times a week, not even five. That's a good day. The rest of the time, he is outside. If he is not on a workbook or playing using Legos or doing something indoors, he is outside. Or we're on a field trip because children don't need copious amounts of hours to learn a topic. I mean, I have one student.

I'm not in a classroom with multiple kids. I have one. If I sit there and go over things with him, then he can get it done very quick. He did 60 math problems in five minutes the other day. I was like, okay, cool, you got it. Let's go outside. I know my whole argument with him is like, can you just get this done really fast so we can do something cool? Yeah.

I'm bored and I don't want to wait. So let's speed it up. So is there a routine like he wakes up and he knows you eat breakfast and then you always do school? Or is every day different and you just see where the day takes you and when you can fit workbooks in? So homeschooling comes in a huge range. You can do it however you want. I am not very good with routines. My sister-law is fabulous with her homeschooling routine. She has it listed out on a whiteboard every day. The kids check it off. I mean, they're phenomenal at the way they do it. I have three books, three or four books that we go through every three days or every other day, depends on what our schedule is. And we don't have a solid routine. I let him sleep as long as he wants because I think sleep is important. And he gets up and he eats breakfast. And whenever he his breakfast, we'll go on through our schoolwork. We don't need to hit any time frame, unless we have a class in the afternoon we need to get to. But even so, we squeezed in a homeschool nature study yesterday when I wasn't here. And in order to get there, he had to finish reading

and writing, and we're supposed to do math, but we need to get to the nature study. So we skipped doing math and did it in the evening. I mean, we're flexible. We don't need to force X topics if we're going to go see something. We make a priority about going and learning. We make a priority about going and learning. And if we're going to learn in the evening, learn in the evening. We don't need to do it nine to ten every day. Now, some people are probably wondering, do you work? And if you do, is it part-time, is a full-time? Or do you just stay home or what? Yeah, I work part-time. I have worked full-time. I'm transitioning now to some other business ventures. But I've also worked in careers that have done fairly well. So I've had that ability. But yeah, I have worked full-time

before and homeschooled, completely full-time. I actually brought him to work with me. I worked in a medical device startup company. And as a baby, he was with me. As a baby, I had an office, luckily, so I could shut the door, but he was coming with me all the time. The education environment is constant. I mean, if I'm going to Trader Joe's, then I'm telling him how to use the credit card, read the screen. If you're going to give a tip, here's how you give a tip. We have X amount of dollars to spend. Here's how much money I want you to spend. What are you going to spend it on? your learning environment is your world. So although there's formal books, we're also using every experience we come across to talk. I mean, simply driving yesterday, there was a weird cloud

formation, and we were curious what the cloud was. So we used chat GPT to say, what's that cloud? And we learned it's a cumulus congestus. I'm saying that right. I don't know. But it was really cool. And then we started getting into that. So you're never not learning, so to speak. What I try to really limit is screen time. I think the only time you're not. learning is when you're sitting in front of your iPad or mindlessly scrolling. Yep. So if we're using screen time, it's going to be for something educational. What is the rule of 100 when it comes to homeschooling? So there's a theory. If you spend 18 minutes a day on a topic that you're interested in,

you will become phenomenally successful in that one topic. So if you were to spend 18 minutes a day on piano lessons or 18 minutes a day on harp, I use instruments because it just seems to relate to me more, then you will be far more successful than anyone else who's studying it if you do that 18 minutes a day, 365 days a year, which to me makes a lot of sense for education. Because even if I don't hit 18 minutes, we can hit 10 minutes of reading. We can hit 10 minutes of math. And even if we do that, we will be far ahead of people who are studying for hours on end. Because in those 10 minutes, you can be more focused, more present, and more involved in what you're learning. I just took a food allergy test for the first time. I'm allergic to 15 pretty major things,

including milk, eggs, and garlic. And when I say allergic to this food, I mean, it's not anaphylactic shock where I'm going to break out in hives or my throat's going to close up as soon as I take a bite. Obviously, I've been eating this stuff every day, basically, for years. But the infection and the thing that it's irritating is my gut on the inside. And it's leaking through my gut into my bloodstream. and it's probably contributing significantly to my autoimmune disorder. So, yeah, needless to say, I'm a little bit limited on what I can cook as I figure this out. My goal is to work towards getting my gut healed so that then I can reintroduce these foods because I love things like garlic and milk and cinnamon that was on there.

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Find the link in the show notes. Good Ranchers, American Meat delivered. If you're homeschooling and there's no standardized testing and there's no milestones that you know by seven years old they should be reading, by eight years old they should be doing this, by nine years old they should be doing this. How do you know that your child is actually learning? I was talking to a friend about this literally yesterday. We were on a hike. And you know your kids learning. because their educational base comes through in everything you do. I was in an astronomy class. We actually stopped into an astronomy class with public school kids at the Arboretum where we live.

We just happened by and they said we could join. So we sat in there. And they were talking about the planets and the earth and the rotation, half the stuff I didn't know. But they were talking all about it. And at the end of the class, my son chirped up and said, well, they didn't talk about the 10th planet. Pluto? Which one are you talking about? He's like, no, the 10th hypothetical planet called X. I was like, we got to ask the teacher. I don't know. We literally had to go up and ask the teacher who was proficient in astronomy about the hypothetical 10th planet. She didn't know. We googled it in that moment. And she said, oh, my God, I did not realize they were researching a hypothetical 10th planet. So your son was right. Your son knew something that she didn't know. Yeah, my son does this on a regular basis.

And I was talking to my friend whose son is homeschooled the same age as mind. And he did the same thing. He said to her the other day, I really want to use tetrapods to create an alternative fuel source so we can use that in the future. I mean, these kids are sponges. Yeah. And they hear things. They learn about an environment and they mold these concepts into new ideas.

And they just gravitate toward them. Although there may not be benchmarks, which there are tests you can use. And they do take SATs or ACTTs to get. into college and different states have different requirements, testing, reporting. You can report on what they're learning. When it comes to knowing if your child's learning, it is almost abundantly obvious when they are learning new topics and really loving what they're finding out. If you're forced to sit in a class where someone dictates to you because you need to learn that info and memorize it, your capacity for actually caring about what people are saying, it's almost like

you're hearing white noise after a while. So I feel like when children are in an environment that involves sitting still behind a desk, listen to someone, teach, they just want to escape at the end of the day and go mind-numb themselves on iPads and screens like adults do after a long work week. I mean, I see it all the time too. I really truly think screens are a huge detriment at young ages. We need to know how to use them, et cetera, but I do think it is very harmful. So and also not only that, but homeschool kids interact with people of all ages. We're not looking at one-room, one-age classrooms here. My son is interacting with people who are professors, adults, babies. And that's really important. This idea that your kid can only be friends with or interacting with or speaking to

kids their own age, I feel like they learn more when they do have the opportunity to sit down at a dinner table and ask questions of adults. Yeah, absolutely. Adults, but they also learn from children, from babies too because my son's friends are all based around his interests. So he can be friends with eight-year-olds, nine-year-olds, because they have similar interests, not their age. Nowhere in public do I say, hey, I'm ex-age. I don't want to say my age. Nowhere in real life do we say, hey, you're 20, you're 20, go be friends. Yes, that's so true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my favorite parenting books is called Take Back Your Family by Jefferson Bethke. And I interviewed him a few months ago. And I loved

what they do with their kids, they will invite some adult over, like a family friend or whatever, for dinner. They're always opening up their home to people that are new. And they prepare the kids. This is who's coming over. Each of you needs to have three questions. And even if they're very little kids, their question might be, what is your favorite color? But, you know, that's what they think of. But they're like, we want three questions. And sometimes they give them themes. We want three serious questions. Or we want three funny questions, each of you. And so, when they're at the table with this new person, any age, old person, young person, college age, these kids will go around and learn how to have conversation and ask questions and listen.

And I think that that's so beneficial. Why are toys a scam? Well, I mean, I'm going to say this with the fact that I have toys for my son, but I despise the toys. I think our children are being raised to be consumers and not just consumers who appreciate and enjoy these toys. they are literally just consuming to consume to buy the latest thing. And when I think about the toys I had growing up, I don't know about you, but I had some Legos, some Lincoln logs, a bike, definitely bikes. But I didn't get all these toys that are being pitched to me every other day.

I mean, ads for toys were on, I think the TV, on cartoons, and then I got like a Sears Roebuck's catalog. It's probably before your time. But I got like a Sears Robux catalog that had toys listed in them. But other than that, they weren't in front of me 24-7. Kids now, they are seeing toys pitch to them all the time. And these toys are just plastic and cheap. And I don't think it's conducive towards a kid's learning and development.

I think what they need are creative toys. Waldorf has great toys. Montessori has great toys. They're like the small, simple, wooden toys that allow for creative learning. They allow for imaginative learning, imaginative play. versus the plastic things that we see, even Legos now. You know, Legos never used to come with a defined object that you're supposed to build using X, Y, and Z steps.

Legos used to come in a bin. Oh, yeah, it's open-ended. It's just bricks and figure out what you want to build. Yeah, but it's an ingenious thing on LEGO's design for marketing to say, hey, these Legos build this, because now to build each item, you buy a different Lego box. This is taking away a child's ability to create and imagine and create beautiful structures, develop that sort of critical thinking and imaginative play aspect.

What we're doing is saying, here's a toy, it does this, you do X, Y, and Z with it, versus saying, here are objects, do with them what you will, make something beautiful for me. Why is it important for kids to be bored? When you're bored, there's so much opportunity for learning and reflection. As a society, I think what we don't do much of is sit in silence. I remember as a kid laying in bed before the sun came. came up and just waiting to see the colors develop on the walls and thinking, what am I going to do when I get up? Where's grandma going to be? Am I going to go bother her? What am I going to eat? What did we talk about yesterday?

All that time that you spent processing and really going over life, thinking about deeper thoughts, we don't have anymore because our society is so focused on instant gratification. So in boredom, you provide kids with an opportunity again to create things, to have an imagination, to dream. I mean, where's your space to dream if you're constantly receiving input from devices? If you sit in boredom and really just sit and exist in that moment, just follow where your mind will take you. Follow where a kid's mind takes them. That's where children lay and look at the clouds and see objects and see animals. I mean, we just don't do that anymore. And I think to really process and learn, we need that quiet space. What advice do you have for the mom who, sees the benefit of homeschooling and she's doing it, but she's not enjoying it. And she's really

considering giving up and putting her kids back in public school. So my advice to that is what aren't you enjoying? You really need to think about what part of the homeschooling is hard. Is it your child's behavior? Because I've heard from parents, sometimes their behavior they don't know how to manage. Or is it that you're trying to create a public school environment at home? A lot of times when you start homeschooling, and it does take some time to figure this out, find your network, find your people to understand your method of homeschooling, a lot of times homeschooling parents will literally try to recreate school at home, which is exactly what you don't want to do. You want to create an environment for your child where they thrive, and that takes learning as a parent. You need to learn

what interests your child, what suits them, and it takes trial and error. And that's where I think finding a real community that supports you, whether it be online, Facebook is a phenomenal place to find homeschool parents. There are groups out there for beginning homeschool moms. There are groups for different religions. There are groups for non-religious. There are groups for working homeschool parents. I mean, you can find any group on Facebook that is geared towards your style of homeschooling to learn from. And then furthermore, if you're missing that interaction with your mom friends or you're missing going to the gym hour. One of the things that's hard when I have my son with me is I like to go to the gym and it's hard when I have a little tyke with me. But,

I mean, I bring him everywhere so he's learned to come to the gym. But one of the things that's hard for moms is they might miss that one-on-one time to hang out with other parents or other moms. A lot of times once you find your network of parents, you can say, hey, can I drop my kid off? They can learn, say they're studying nature like we did the other day. We're doing a nature study. hey, can my son come join you? I want to go run to the store. I want to go shopping without him for a second. Absolutely. Drop them off. And there's an opportunity. Really, as homeschool parents, you become more networked with your family and your friends who are doing the same sort of activities. So you have more of a community to raise your children, sort of like how things used to be when

communities helped in raising your child. So I find for a mom that's feeling burnt out or unsure and just wanting to give up, you got to really look at why. What are those reasons? If you feel like what you're teaching is beyond you or say a lot of people have all this trauma from math and you just don't want to get into math with them, there are programs where children can learn online. My son takes a class through a program called OutSchool where he's on a Zoom class and learning at the exact same time. You don't need to teach it. You can have a, you know, a professor teach it. My dad's a math teacher and he's happy to teach kids math as well. There are things you can do, I think you just need to search and say, why am I having these feelings? What's wrong?

If you've joined a homeschool co-op in your community, you can ask those other parents, hey, you know, if history isn't your strength, science, math, whatever, you can, there will be a parent in that co-op that's like, oh, history is my jam. And then have your kid go to their house for history. I mean, couldn't you do that for a few lessons or they come to your house for math because you're stronger in math as a teacher? I mean, I think when you have these homeschool co-op communities, there's probably some fluctuation there, too. It doesn't have to be only you doing the teaching. Oh, absolutely. I mean, when we talk about homeschooling, too, there's a scale of it. There's not just the one parent homeschooling their kid in a little bubble

at their house. I mean, you can go to classes. There's a group called classical conversations that gives a curriculum, teaches them things one day a week. There's a whole classroom setting for them that they go to. They take home homework and the parent implements it later and you meet every week. But there's these co-ops. There's forest schools. There's nature schools. There's all types types of homeschooling communities that you can join and you can find in all over the place in different areas. So yeah, you can go to different parents' houses and learn. We have we have we have study groups that meet at different homes and we rotate. You want to see education reform happen. How do we accomplish that? I think massive change needs to happen to the overall system.

I don't know how we're going to get there. And I think us speaking up and being more vocal about it, I think for a long time, homeschoolers didn't talk about it that much because it was looked at as a cult sort of education system, you know. It wasn't as popular, but we've seen since COVID that homeschool rates have skyrocketed and they're not decreasing. And I think COVID taught people that homeschooling is more possible than we thought. Yeah. If it was really so terrible and really less than ideal for your kid, all of these parents who had to temporarily homeschool after COVID would have sent their kids back, but they're not going back. Exactly. And they also saw what was being taught and where the big gaps were in their child's education.

I think as the homeschooling community continues to grow and it's growing exponentially and across all demographics and all income brackets, this isn't just one person's thing. This is going throughout the entire culture of our country. Schools eventually are going to have to change because we're removing their income. They're not going to have these children there to educate anymore. So something's going to give. the more people who do this. And also, I've learned recently that homeschooling parents are starting their own private schools that are growing. There's one right outside of Austin that I've learned about that I think sounds phenomenal. And they're growing these alternative schools outside of private schools, outside of your traditional Catholic private schools, outside of your public schools,

they're starting homeschooled education centers in their own view, in their own vision that is centered around what they believe is absolutely paramount to a child's education. How can a parent be sure that they're raising warriors? I think when it comes to raising a warrior, and I say that as I want my child to be strong and convicted in his values, in his beliefs, in who he is and courageous, I think you need to constantly challenge children. And I think they want that. And I think that's one of the issues I would have had growing up in the school system because

I needed challenges. I was a kid that you really needed to challenge. You needed to give me something that I could fail at so that I could go after it again and accomplish it. I think we need to constantly challenge children. I think Jordan Peterson once said that you need to allow kids to do dangerous things carefully. And I love that because we need to allow them to. I allow my son to go pick up a snapping turtle because he knows where it can hurt him and how. But he's doing something dangerous carefully and I'm right there to watch him.

I give him space to be courageous, to be brave while being there as a support system if needed. And I think raising him in an environment where he's constantly experiencing new things, new environments, new people, gives him more strength and conviction in his own beliefs and own sense of self. What sorts of resources do you offer parents and where can they follow you on social media? So you can follow me at live.leaf.learn. I simply love to answer questions. I don't have a platform where I promote anything or sell anything, but people ask me questions all the time. I try to share how I homeschool, why I homeschooled. I was homeschooled. So I can tell you what it's like being homeschool. I can tell you if I'm weird. I can tell you if I didn't get social interaction. I mean, I am someone, I think, who you can ask any questions if you're worried. And I usually get back to everybody I can. I don't promise them because I'm not sure. But no, I try to answer everybody's questions. and really just try to support parents. I direct them to other great homeschooling influencers. I direct them to groups.

It's just there's so many resources out there. I think anybody who can really do it. I hear a lot from people who've graduated, man, I wish I was homeschooled. I wish I was raised like that. I hated school. I just never felt like I fit in. It just wasn't my place. And when they get out of it, they think, you know, how do I figure out who I am?

And I think that's one of the big things we lose in school is if you don't have the opportunity to go find adventure and find out what passions you have, how can you go on to college? How can you go on to a four-year degree that you pay for in something that you're not even sure if you're going to love it? So I am a big proponent and fan of follow your passions. If you don't know what they are, let me tell you how to find some because I can list you out about 17 things that you can do tomorrow and you can tell me if you like or not, go visit animal rescues, go stop by podcast studios, I mean, go anywhere and don't let any doors tell you can't find out more information. So one of the things I do, which people always think is odd, which I don't understand why,

but if I'm interested in a topic, any topic, whatever it is, I will go find out more information on it, whether it be online in person. The other day my son saw a really cool artwork figurine made out of steel, and we thought it was awesome. So we got the guy's card and we said, hey, can we come visit your studio because this looks cool? and I want to learn how to make steel artwork like you do. Amazing. And he said, yeah, go ahead. Come on any day.

Come visit me. I'd love to have you. I mean, so if there's something you like and you have to be open to, like, chasing down your dreams, like, what do you like? What do you love? What gives you passion? If you're out and you see artwork or there's a 3D model cement building, my son thought was cool. Apparently 3D printers could make buildings now. I don't know.

Buildings we live in. He said, Ma, can we really go visit that? I want to go see that. Absolutely. Let me find out. I emailed them. They haven't answered, but I'm going to go drop in and stop by their place and say, hey, I got a kid who wants to see this. If you're interested in architecture, don't look it up online. Go to a building site. The other day I looked up mechanical engineering. You want to know how cups like Stanley are made, how they test colors. Go to a mechanical engineering studio where they teach that. You're not going to learn this in school. You need to physically be out in the world finding out what you. you love. And even if you're a teen and you've graduated high school, nobody says you can't do it. And most people who love what they do for a job, they are happy to show you. They love talking about it. It's like, it's like your grandma. I'll tell you about anything forever. You know, but so just go ask questions. Go find what you loved. Claire, you speak beautifully. This was, I believe, so encouraging for parents that are either in the dark on homeschooling, they have misconceptions. Maybe they are homeschooling. Maybe they are homeschooling parents that are struggling or reconsidering, like, was this worth it? These days are so hard.

You know, should I keep it up? I hope that this conversation will reignite that spark for them. Thank you so much for coming on this spillover. Thank you for having me. This month is such a fun variety of episodes, relationships, education, and coming up next week, I'm speaking to a holistic dentist. And then we have a roadmap episode for young women on how to prioritize having a family and making it happen. or for those who are ready to leave corporate America to prioritize a family, but need a little help. They need a little advice. That's coming up on the spillover.

The spillover is produced by Turning Point USA, a 501C3 nonprofit. It means interviews like this are only possible through donations from cute servatives like you. You can make a tax-deductible donation to support the show through the link in the description. If you can't contribute financially, that's okay. Don't forget a five-star review. Sharing a way that the show has encouraged you or helped you is great to. We're back with a holistic, Dennis next Thursday, 9 p.m. Pacific, midnight Eastern, anywhere you get your podcast, or real Alex

Clark on YouTube. I'm Alex Clark, and this is the spillover. Love you, mean it. Bye.