The Lazy Genius Podcast - #470 - How I’m Making My Summer Plans Happen

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Every summer, I go into the season with big plans. As my kids grow and as our season of life changes, my approach to the summer feels a little different each time. It can even occasionally feel like starting over. That’s why I love using The Lazy Genius Method to think through the summer and make those plans happen in the most Lazy Genius way possible. I’m sharing what I’m doing in hopes this season and maybe you’ll hear an idea or two you want to try, too. Helpful Companion Links Order my book The PLAN or ask your library to consider carrying a copy. Check out The Playbooks here Episode #409: How to Parent When Your Kid Is Annoying Sign up for our every-other-week podcast recap email called Latest Lazy Listens. Sign up for my once-a-month newsletter, The Latest Lazy Letter. Get the Book List here Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius KitchenorThe Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode. Want to share your Lazy Genius of the Week idea with us? Use this form to tell us about it or record your idea and share your voice on the show. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, bear, you're listening to The Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi. This show is not about hacking the system to find more time or hacking your energy to get more done. Hustling to be the best or to make the most out of every opportunity is exhausting and unsustainable. So here we do things differently. On this show, we value contentment, compassion, and living in our season. We favor small steps over big systems. Here we are lazy geniuses.

being a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. And I am so glad you're here. Today is episode 470, how I'm making my summer plans happen. Every summer I go into the season, honestly, with big plans. The plans have gotten smaller and smaller each year as I've grown as a person and become even more of a lazy genius, but it's still a learning curve every year. As my kids grow and as our season of life changes, my approach to the summer, makes sense for it to feel a little different each time.

And it can even occasionally feel like I'm starting over. That is why I love using the lazy genius method to think through the summer and make those plans happen in the most lazy genius way possible. I'm going to share with you our personal approach for our family. My family is actually going on our summer family dinner this very weekend to talk about all the things I'm going to share in this episode. and then I'm going to tell you how it went in next week's edition of the latest lazy letter. So if you want to hear about that, you can sign up for the letter.

The method always works, but sometimes I'm kind of surprised at the results. So I'll be just as excited to hear about how this dinner goes as you are. After that, we'll have a little extra something where I share some thoughts on my experience homeschooling. We get a number of episode requests about lazy genius and homeschooling. And to be honest with you, I feel like pretty ill-equaling. wept to do that. I have never homeschooled my own kids, but I was homeschooled for a number of years as a kid. So I'll share a little bit about the kind of homeschool kid I was and a short bit on

lazy geniusing that as an adult. I can't give you a whole episode, but I will definitely give you a little extra something. After that, we're going to celebrate the lazy genius of the week with a great decide once for gift giving. And we will finish with a mini pep talk for when your kid is getting on your nerves. Before we do that, quick rundown of the latest lazy letter. Okay, I think a solid number of you listening already get my monthly newsletter. And you might also get the book list. So if you are one of the people who doesn't get either of those, here's the rundown. Because I really think you'll enjoy being on our mailing list. We are weirdly vigilant about helpful emails and not sending them very often. So I think we're

worth the risk to try us out. So I send two main newsletters per month, both on the same day. It's the first Wednesday of the month. So one of the newsletters is the latest lazy letter, which includes like two or three personal stories from me. This month I'm going to share about our summer family planning dinner. I am going to talk about my daughter's cheering section at her three school musical performances. And I'm also going to share about my son conducting his own high school band in a piece that he wrote. So many good things happening for this newsletter. the newsletter is also where we ask for your ideas and even like voice memos when we're working on new episodes. So if you have ever listened to an episode with someone else's idea or voice,

the newsletter is probably where they learned to share those words. We also have a new segment in the latest lazy letter called Reply All, where I answer questions that you all asked from the newsletter the month before. So those range from like updates on my album listening project to how I feel about sharing the mental load in a home. I also share my favorite book of the month because I read too much to put all the book reviews in that one email. You all gave us that idea, actually, from a survey a while back to separate the book reviews into a separate email, which was so smart and we love that we have done that. So now all the book talk happens in the other monthly newsletter that we sent out, which is called The Book List. I read on average about 10 books a

month. And so that email is where I share the reviews of all those books. I share like reading experiments I'm trying, how I'm getting out of reading rats, all kinds of things. Like for this month, I'm going to share my thoughts on the narrator who took over the Inspector Gamash series after Ralph Kosham, the original narrator passed away. I have some thoughts about that. I'm going to share about an author with a new book out who has written like five star bangers for me every single time. and some thoughts on the full cast audio Harry Potter series since I finished that this month as well. I also read Dungeon Crawler Carl, a book that is all over the place right now. If you want my thoughts on any of those things and you just like love to hear about books and reading,

you can sign up for the book list at the lazy genius collective.com slash booklist. If you want the monthly newsletter, so you can read about how our summer planning family dinner went, you can sign up at the lazy genius collective.com slash join. Okay, so before we get into how I'm making my summer plans happen, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, which makes this show free for you to listen to. And if you'd like the podcast recap email that we send out every other Friday, called the latest lazy listens, complete with an episode summary, the lazy genius of the week, as well as other segments we have on the show. You can head to the lazy genius collective.com slash listens. All right, let's jump into how I'm making my summer plans happen. I always need to pump the brakes.

We'll start there, like every summer. I have a lot of angst around the summer, around chores and screen time and taking advantage of, like, teaching my kids new things. I also still have a job to do. You know, my husband, he, like is home for part of the summer, but not all in the summer. We have camps and other things that just make every single week feel fairly inconsistent. It really is like trying to solve a new puzzle every couple of weeks in the summer. So it's a season that has helped me hold things loosely. Like summer has taught me a lot about softness and relaxing and starting small. That said, I think it's okay to have like desires and even expectations about the summer. Now, of course, you want to match your expectations with the energy you're willing and able to give, right? But it's okay to have expectations. It's actually really important to speak those out loud so that they don't stay inside you unmet and they just like fester and turn into anger and resentment. And that is why we start this whole process of figuring out our summer plans with the first step in the lazy genius method, which is to prioritize. You have to name what matters.

What matters to you this summer? What matters to each individual member of your family this summer? What matters to you as a unit this summer? expectations are a huge part of that. If something matters to you, but it doesn't happen and you expected it to, that is not going to lead to a very happy you. So you must start by naming what matters. Now, you probably have a long list. So do I. But it's so important to know what matters the most. You can have several things that matter a lot. But I think the key here is narrowing down that long list into what like really matters like top tier but then actually what matters the most for you

as a person individually for each kid if you've got more than one kid for the family for your partner if you don't truly prioritize and name what matters the most as you make your summer plans your attention it will get divided and you might not tend to the important thing as much as you would like. So how do you figure that out? Well, I'll share what I did and you can tweak it to work for you. I essentially, like, did a brain dump, but verbally out loud to my husband, Koss. So, but you could do this on paper. You could talk it out. You could write it out. It doesn't matter. But I think it's helpful to sort of get all the things that are swirling around in your brain out so that you can discern what actually makes sense as you move forward. So Koss and I have started going on walks after dinner now that it's like lighter for longer. And most of the

time it's just the two of us. Sometimes the kid will come, but mostly it's just us. So on one of these walks, I just like verbally processed all the things I was feeling about our upcoming summer. I thought about our season of life, how we're like about to have two high schoolers and a fifth grader, which is crazy. We're at a season where our kids are becoming more and more independent, but also still need guidance and encouragement in life skills and in healthy boundaries. I also thought about my fears of which there are a lot, and I was surprised by that. Like, I'm afraid that they're going to have too much screen time and just rot every single day if we don't put parameters on things. I'm afraid that their attitudes are going to be annoying and that I will deal with them unkindly day after

day after day. I'm afraid that my kids have no discernible life skills, and they will leave here, barely knowing anything about how to keep themselves clean or alive. I'm afraid that I will always be the one in charge, the one to keep things going in the summer. So I just shared all those fears with cause as we walked. And a couple of things happened. So first, I realize that some of the things I'm afraid of don't need to be as big as they are. Saying them out loud sort of took the power away a little bit. My kids have life skills. They don't have all of them, but nobody does. Like, nobody does. But like, my kids can do laundry. They can clean a kitchen and a toilet. They know how to use a vacuum cleaner. They each know how to cook a meal on the stove. Like, things are happening.

Life skills are being learned. But in my own head and in my own fears, like, everything just felt too general and too extreme. You know how I've talked about extreme words, like those dramatic words, words like always, everything, never, everyone, forever. Those words usually come from a place of fear. and they distract us from the truth of the situation. So like if you say to your partner, you never help me. That likely is not true. Never is a pretty extreme word. Now, you might feel like your partner never helps you. But extreme language doesn't help us grow or change or move towards each other at all. So for example, on this walk, I was like super honest with cause. I said something like, I know this isn't true, but I do worry that I'm going to be the only one

to help remind the kids of whatever it is we're expecting from them. I don't want to be the default bad guy because I'm the main one in forcing chores or screen time rules. I know I won't be, but I also need you to know that I feel like I might be. So if we're going to do this, I need us to do this together. That's what I told him. So I was honest about my extreme feelings, you know, acknowledged that there was more space and softness in the reality of things than I currently felt. And I also express my expectations for help, for partnering. We have to remind ourselves of that every single summer, Kaz and I do that we're partners because he isn't home most of the time during the school year because he's at work,

you know? And it makes sense that I is the one who takes care of the schedule and who is home the most. I work from home. I get the kids from school. I'm here in the afternoons. I do their morning stuff. You know, like I'm sort of part of their daily rhythm more than causes just because of like logistics. So it makes sense that I would be sort of the captain of things more often than he is. But that energy changes every summer. We have to sort of recalibrate our expectations and our partnership because the logistics have changed. And it's good to be honest. honest about that. When we're honest about that, it actually leads to a better partnership and more realistic, softer expectations towards each other when we talk about it at the start of each season.

Okay, so we're still talking here about step one, about priorities, about naming what matters most. So this conversation, brain dump. It was helpful to me in naming our season, naming my fears, and also my hopes. You know, I shared with cause and frankly myself. because like talking about things out loud, it helps me find what I'm thinking. And I like, I want our family to have fun together this summer. I want us to laugh together, do things together on purpose on a decent, regular basis. So the season, fears and hopes, all three of those things play a role in what matters most. And obviously, like, what's on the calendar.

But you can see that pretty easily. the other three you've got to think about a little bit more. Now, I don't know what matters to my kids yet because we haven't had our dinner to ask them. But I do know that what matters the most to cause is that we have fun as a family at least once a a week on purpose. And what matters the most to me is that we each spend time every day doing something that shows care for someone else in the family. We're all pretty good at caring for ourselves, like selfishness, even entitlement.

are not hard to find at our house. So caring for each other on a regular basis is a little harder to come by. And therefore, something I personally want us all to prioritize. So we want to have fun together as a family on a regular basis. And we also want to do things every day that show care for each other. So we'll see what the kids add to that. So that's step one. Prioritize.

Name what matters. Find that out however you want to. You can verbally talk it out like I did. So you can find where you land. You can write it all out. You can make a list of like every possible option and then just start eliminating what matters less. Well, I know this doesn't matter the most. And just cross that out. For this season at this time, what matters the most? It's so much easier to make summer plans happen when you know that. It helps you know what to say yes and no to, which is a welcome site during an

unusual season. So step two of the lazy genius method is to essentialize. This is a where you have what you need and get rid of what you don't. What are the essentials needed to support what matters most? Your answer to step one will obviously determine your answer to step two, right? So if our two main priorities right now are like regular family fun and regular family contributions and care, let's say, then we need to eliminate a couple of things out of the gate and most of them, for real, are just like within myself. I want to get rid of my fear that my kids are going to have too much screen time. Guess what? If we are prioritizing family fun and family contributions this summer, screen time will naturally be impacted by that. I don't need to

make as many screen time rules or really make screen time rules like the focus. That's not the primary focus of this. And also that's going to cause the kids to like shut down and it distracts from what actually matters the most. Right. Plus the fear. and frustration, it's going to cause more harm than good. I also want to get rid of my generalizing and making things too big. I'm going to catch myself when I do that. So if we have a specific priority of like family fun and family care, I don't need to have big plans for summer meals and schedules and whatever else. Like let's get rid of that big stuff. Big systems don't work anyway, but they also don't really contribute to the priorities for the summer. Now, what do we need?

What essentials do we need to prioritize family fund and family contributions? Well, we need their input and we need their management. We'll get their input at the family dinner. And then we will empower them to manage things in a way that aligns with their growing independence, which is part of our season right now, right? We also need to add some specific ideas of things to do together for fun and things that help care for other people in the family. And that can come from our conversation, right? Like, okay, what are some things that would be fun for us to do? Do we want to do a game night? Do we want to do a movie night? Do we want to go to, you know, whatever it is? Or what are ways that you can care for your family members or for the house that we all live in, you know? I also think something we need

specifically as a family is like regular check-ins to see how this is going. It's really important to have a very fair approach to this and empower everybody to hold up their end of the expectations, you know, not just towards us as parents, but towards their siblings too. And we'll figure that out a little bit. We'll talk through that during our dinner about how to think about these check-ins through the summer. But it feels really important to me that we don't just like slip back into like a summer of Saturdays, you know, that we really stay sort of locked in on what matters the most and that we have some regular check-ins to make sure that everybody's sort of pulling their weight and nobody's feeling like things are unfair and that we're also still like having

fun together and caring for each other, that we're checking in on those main priorities. Now we might have a few other things, of course, to, like, add to this list when we talk about as a family. But that's the essentialized list for now. And really, notice how so many of those things that need to go away are just like my, it's my own attitude. Like, if I'm not careful, I can be the thing that keeps summer plans from happening in a kind way because of my own generalized lofty expectations and fears that we have to make the summer count. Guys, we need to relax. It's going to be okay. And it's good to name that now at the

start so that we don't get carried away by it. It's not just good for us. It's good for our families as well. Okay, so that's step two of the lazy genius method to essentialize. What do you need? What do you need to get rid of? Step three of the lazy genius method is to organize or put everything in its place. So this is sort of where like the chore charts, the specific systems, might live, but we're not actually doing those. Like, maybe that can work a little bit for your younger kids. But I think implementing, like, full seasonal systems with lots of steps and pieces, it's just tough. If you don't already have some kind of system that has grown and taken root in your regular life, like in your non-summer life. So instead, here's how we are going to

organize what we need for family fun and family care. We're going to organize by using have to and hope to. There are things that have to get done this summer, like getting Samma driver's license and getting Ben a permit wild times. There are also things we hope to do this summer, like that each kid learns one new meal to cook to help contribute to the care of the family. So once we have those summer tasks or projects or activities organized by have to and hope to, then it's easier. to organize by when they can happen. So both of our boys are going to be at music camp the second half of July, and they're going to start marching band camp at school in the beginning of August.

So really, we'll have to make some like family rhythm adjustments during that time. And that also means anything that's like a bigger project or a higher priority, it should probably happen in June or early July, right? Like mid-July is a good marker for us on getting. getting those have-toes done and really investing in our priorities of family fund and family care. So organizing this summer, it really just might include making a list of things we hope happen in June or like numbering them according to like priority, you know, just for that one-off stuff, like the most important thing that we're going to do in June is number one, this.

And once we get that done, we'll move on to number two. That may be how we do it. Again, we'll see how it flushes out when we have our planning dinner. But then there's also the rhythmic stuff, like the organized family fun, organized family care that happen on a regular basis on like a daily or a weekly basis. And so we will also talk about that as a group about how to put those things in place in a very reasonable kind way. So it would be like, you know, do we want to choose one night a week that's like our planned family fun night? You know, we can change it to another night that week if something comes up, but at least we have something in

place. You know, I don't know if that's where we're going to land, but that is a good place to start and an idea of just how to put that priority in its place. Give it a day, right? We'll also talk about how to organize family care. Right now in our like school year life, everyone mostly tends to their own needs on a regular basis without a lot of prompting, like your own rooms and their own laundry, but not really to the family as a whole. So we'll talk about how best to organize. that. I am going to propose. I don't know that this will fly, that I'm going to propose that everyone has like one daily caring task for the home and one weekly caring task. And we'll talk as a group about how each kid wants to organize that for themselves. If we want to keep the same tasks all summer or

if we want to rotate them, we'll just talk it out and see where it lands. But I think it feels like a reasonable expectation to have one daily thing and one weekly thing added to the stuff that they already have since they're going to be home more in the summer than they are during the school year. But that's step three, organize or put everything in its place. And that might feel a little like, well, I'm not really sure what that's going to look like for me. That's why this is the third step. It's so important that you do this after the first two steps. It's going to make a lot more sense once you get there if you have already prioritized and named what matters and thought through what's in the way of that and what you still need to make it happen. You know, step three in many ways is the summer

plan. And if you start making it before you know what matters, before you get rid of lofty expectations, before you name that you need a list of movies that you can watch for movie night so that you don't lose the momentum of family movie night or whatever, like you're really going to have a hard time making that plan work. You're just putting things in place that don't actually matter yet, they don't have a structure to exist with it. They don't have a purpose, right? So the order here, it really does matter. All right. So we have prioritized, essentialized, organized. Step four is to personalize. So you've got to feel like yourself, and so does everybody else. All right? Now, personalize is crucial because not every family is going to plan some are the same.

And not every person in your family is going to need the same things. For example, one of my kids loves organization, order, routine. Like he's built to love it. He executes things on his own. If he cares, he's going to do it. He needs zero prompting. So my job is to help him name how he wants to support the priorities of family fun, family care, and whatever else he personally wants this summer.

I'm not worried about him accomplishing those things on his own. Now, the other kids, they're likely going to need different approaches than that. They'll need to have more fun added to things. things. They're going to need variety. They're going to need like that spinning wheel, you know, they're going to need spontaneity. They'll need varying levels of helpful managing, not micromanaging, from me and cause to help remind them of things. Personalize summer plans by letting people say what they need and work within what works for them. You know, let people choose what chore they want to do. Don't just assign things. Let kids pick for themselves.

For example, something I'm hoping will happen is that every kid learns how to cook a new meal. That's a priority for me. And I'm going to let them pick what that meal is. Ben already has decided because we talked about it. He wants to learn how to make tick a masala because it's his favorite meal of all time. He says he would eat it every day if he could. Kind of same. And he wants to be able to make it when he moves out of the house.

I'm like, all right, man, let's do it. Now, I'm not going to tell him to pick something more suited to a dorm room first because he's not going to live somewhere where he can cook, take a masala for a long time. I'm going to let him pick. Like, pick what he wants to cook. He could also cook it now while he's still home, which is kind of fun. But the point is he can personalize that choice, right? You can personalize summer plans by having a bucket list, by having a hope to list of just

fun things, you know, make a list to stick on the fridge, or you can write one thing that we really love to do is write individual ideas of fun, hope to, is like, you. bucket list things on tiny post-its or like those little circle post-its, the essential calendar folks sell them. And we put them like on the side of our summer calendar, our paper calendar on the wall. And then we kind of move those sticky notes to dates where we think that that thing will work, right? The point is this summer, it is yours. It is your families. It's unique because it is in this particular season of life and time. So personalize it. Don't just like copy someone else is work. Make it work for you. Let your kids make things work for themselves. Even if those ways

fail. Like, let them learn. Empower them to choose and support them as they figure out what they like and what they need. And then finally, step five is to systemize or to keep things in a flow. Honestly, again, I don't know what we're going to do with this yet. This will come from our family summer planning dinner. But our family and yours will almost certainly use. use at least one lazy genius principle to keep that summer plan flowing. So here's my guess is of things that will probably work for us that we've done similar things in the past. So we will likely decide once on what day of the week or the time of the day is for family fun. We will likely have house rules. That's another lazy genius principle around family connection. Things like eat breakfast

in the kitchen, not in your room. Sometimes in the summer, my kids just sort of like take their breakfast into their room because they're either like too tired still or they're let's let's stay in the living room guys you know that might be a house rule that we have we'll likely ask the magic question often and figure out what can we do now to make family game night easier later you know like we pick a game or we spin a wheel to decide the game or spin the wheel to decide who gets to pick we might do the same thing for chores like we might just use that digital spinning well for everything I have no idea. But here's what I do know. For my family and for yours, you must start a small. Planning an entire season isn't about putting everything in its place so that it will run like a

machine. It's about naming what matters, putting things in place that support that happening, and then choosing lazy genus principles that make it flow more easily. But that's not going to happen all at once. It happens one small choice at a time. So it's just really important to remember as you try and make your summer plans happen, just hold them loosely, start small each day with what you do and with your expectations around what you're doing. You don't have to build a big machine that's going to run all summer. Start small today. See how today goes and adjust a little bit tomorrow. You make the plans not so that they will all happen exactly the way that you plan them. But you're just putting them in place so that you have somewhere to start, but you continue to

start small each and every day. I also know that we're all going to need to embrace kindness. Kindness to ourselves and each other is paramount in surviving a season where everyone is always around. So the smaller you start and the kinder you stay, the more you're going to enjoy whatever matters the most to you this summer. So as you systemize, don't overdo it, you know, start small by deciding one thing, not 17. Name one routine on ramp. Not 17. You know, schedule rest in one

particular way and try it just for the next few days and see if it works before saying, declaring that that's what's going to happen all summer long. The smaller you start, the more your system will naturally find its legs anyway. Start small and be kind. Okay. So let's review the lazy genius method once more so that you can use this to make your own summer plans happen. All right, you're going to prioritize. Name what matters about this season. It's helpful to know what matters most because it lets the other steps work even better. Step two is to essentialize.

Have what you need and get rid of what you don't. You'll probably need to get some expectations and some micromanaging and some big chore charts out of the way. That's just a guess. But you'll see once you go through it. step three is to organize or put everything in its place you know differentiate between half-toes and hope twos you can decide certain things are better suited for june versus july put things in their place as much as you're able even doing it by category if you like knowing that you can totally adjust

things if you need to step four is to personalize so make this work for you what are the things that you and your family specifically want to do this summer? How does each family member specifically need to approach responsibilities? What does rest and fun look like specifically for each person? We never assume that one way works for everyone. So personalize these plans and how they might happen for you and your crew. And then finally, systemize. Use the lazy genus principles to stay in a flow, start small, decide once, schedule rest, and be kind. Those are probably going to be your heavy hitters. Now, if you want a place to put all of this summer planning, you can check out the summer playbook. It has blank weeks where you can organize your lists. It has questions to help

you name what matters. It's a great little keepsake after the summer is done to sort of capture your summer plans and notes. So you can check that out at the lazy genius collector. dot com slash playbooks. And that's how I'm making my summer plans happen. Remember, I will let you know how the summer planning family dinner goes in the next latest lazy letter. And you can sign up for that at the lazy genius collective.com slash join. All right, for today's a little extra something.

I'm going to give you a quick rundown of my journey as a homeschool kid, ready. Also why I've never been a homeschool mom. And then a couple of lazy genius principles I think would be really great for homeschooling families. So first, I didn't have like consistent schooling. I mean, I had consistent schooling in the sense that I was always educated, but it was always different places. So like I did, let's see if I think this is right. I think memory serves correctly. It's like private school for kindergarten and first grade, public for the first part of second grade, then back to private school for the rest of second and third. It was homeschooled in

fourth grade, private for fifth and sixth, home schooled eighth, ninth and ninth and then public for my junior and senior years of high school. Like lots of reasons why there were all of those changes, but it was definitely like a wild journey and not a lot of consistency in one place. So I homeschooled in fourth grade, but I don't remember much of that. And then again, in eighth, ninth and tenth grades, which I do remember. I remember going to, for those of you who were homeschool kids and like the Carolinas, I remember going to the homeschool conference in Winston-Salem and buying my curriculum.

my mom told me what subjects I needed, but I pretty much got to pick like whatever setup I wanted for those subjects. I was a really independent learner, mostly taught myself those three years. I'd get up. I'd have my list of what subjects I needed to do. I would do my work. I would sometimes be done before our one hour lunch break where my sister and I would watch like black and white Alfred Hitchcock movies that we got from the library. If I did any school past that lunch break, for just like maybe another hour or so. I think I really liked being in charge of my own education and my own time and have always been a good student. So it was sort of a natural fit for me. Now my mom like definitely oversaw things. It's not like she was absent, but she was also teaching my little sister.

She was dealing with mental illness at the time. It was just sort of easier, I think, to just let me like mostly take the reins for my own staff, I think. And I liked being homeschooled for the most part. I liked the independence. I liked not having like social drama to deal with. And since I had a good community of friends at my church and even a little bit with some other homeschoolers, I didn't feel like I was like running solo all the time. I didn't feel alone. Now, starting my junior year at a public high school, I definitely felt alone. That was like a tough transition socially. It was not academically. It turns out I was harder on myself than some of my high school teachers were. on me. Now, I know that there are a number, a high number of homeschooling moms and families

who listen to this show. And we get requests pretty often for a homeschooling episode. Now, the reason I haven't made one before is that I don't personally know the challenges of being a homeschooling parent. Like, I feel pretty poorly qualified to talk about it. There are so many other homeschooling experts out there who can offer way better help than I can. Part of that is because I've never, you know, done it, obviously, nor have I ever had the desire to. I think schooling at home is great. I have friends who do it. I have friends who do hybrid school where it's like in-person school part of the week and then homeschool the other days. Like I think it's, I think it's great. I think you could be super helpful for certain kids' personalities and learning styles, especially.

For me, I knew pretty quickly that I was not made to be a homeschool mom. If my experience as the mom sitting in the passenger seat of a car with a new driver driving has taught me anything. It is that I have a tendency to micromanage in a big way. I'm like constantly wanting to tweak a situation and show the person how to make something better and not always with a lot of patience. So I've had to learn when to disengage from something entirely so that my kid can actually learn something. I did that with having a permitted driver. I continued to do that by like letting my kids go to school where I am not their teacher. If I was their teacher, our relationships would struggle big time. Like I'm just not wired to do that well. And I like the fact that I have good relationships with

my kids. I kind of don't want to mess that up by muddying the waters and becoming a version of myself that is not great to be around every single day. So all that to say, my experience. as a homeschool kid was unique and that I like pretty much ran my own show. And then my experience as a homeschooling parent is zilch to the point where I have like run away from it a little bit. However, like anything, lazy deaness principals work in every situation. And I think a couple would likely help in a homeschooling home. So the first suggestion is build the right routines. When you do school at home, I think routine is really nice, especially to create a distinction between school days and weekends or even summer days.

Like having a specific routine for a day of school, especially for younger kids, I think that feels like a wise choice. Remember, a lazy genius routine isn't so much about like doing a certain list of things in a particular order. It's naming where you're trying to go and letting your routine, however it looks, be your on ramp to that goal. So if on school days you want your kids. kids to be energetic and ready for a day of school, then your routine is going to be more active

and look different than if you're wanting your kids to come to school peaceful and attentive, you know? Another lazy genius principal to think about for homeschooling is decide once. I know that when you're home all the time and when you're all eating there constantly, everyone is making all kinds of messes. Decision fatigue is overwhelming. You're like, I have to decide what to eat again. We have to clean up this room again. So decide once. Decide that lunch is always sandwiches and fruit. Decide once that cleaning up the school table does not happen until 2 p.m. when the day is done. Decide once that you'll tidy after each subject.

Like whatever. Just pay attention to where you're feeling overwhelmed and stressed out by whether or not you should do something. And then just make one decision, one time and let it ride for a while. And finally, for the homeschooling parent, I would highly recommend using the principal schedule rest. When you're home and always teaching, parenting, cooking, cleaning, tending, I think it can feel impossible to find a time to rest. And guess what? You won't find it.

You won't. Because there's always something to do. So you won't find it unless you schedule it. So do that. Schedule rest for just you, for your whole crew. When it was all of us, we used to call that room time just in the summer. It's like, okay, it's room time. Everybody, everybody go to your room and be quiet for a little while.

Whatever you do, schedule rest for yourself. so that you can continue doing this lovely challenging thing of teaching your kids every day. If you want some ideas on how to schedule rest, you can check out the episode from just a few weeks ago, episode 458, simple and meaningful ways to rest. It is an episode full of ideas on how to rest and all the ideas are from you guys. It's so many great ideas if you need like a creative take on rest. So that is today's a little extra something. And yes, I did. wear overalls and dresses with daisies on them when I was homeschooled. All right, for this week's Lacey Genius of the Week, we have an audio clip from Joy

about kids' birthday presents. Let's listen to Joy's tip. Hi, Kendra, this is Joy. I have kids who are five and seven, and we spend a lot of time going to their friends' birthday parties on the weekends. And this is something that really matters to our family. We value showing up for people. We value building community, especially with their school friends.

And so we want to be there. but getting gifts for their friends was becoming stressful to think of something every time. So I came up with a birthday gift for friends formula where every single time we get their friends, at least in this stage, a set of our favorite gel crayons that we love to use at home for art and a coloring book or a book about how to draw something that they're interested in. And so every single birthday, I reorder the same crayons and together we pick out a coloring book or drawing book that we know their friend will like. And it just takes the guesswork out of it,

Both things are easy to wrap. They look cute together. And so far it's been a hit. So we're going to keep that going. Listen, there is nothing I love more than to decide once for gifts. It's like so great. It's one of the best uses of everyone's favorite workhorse of a lazy genius principle. So just pick something that works for now, just like Joy said, and then go with it.

Now, I bet that once Joy's kids' friends get older, that gift might not work quite the same. but something else will or it can be adjusted a little bit. Like maybe the gel crayons turn into like cool pens or something, you know. But I also love that using this principle now with young kids, it's teaching them the value of this principle of just a single decision. So maybe when the kid gets older, they might have their own decide once for gifts for their friends, like how much money they're going to spend or that they always do a food gift or something like that.

It's like long-term gains for everybody. I love this joy. Thank you so much for sending in your idea and your voice memo. Congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. And now for a mini pep talk for when your kid is getting on your nerves. All right, if you want more than a mini pep talk on this, you should listen to episode 409 how to parent when your kid is annoying. But I want to remind you of two things today. The first is that we are annoying too.

Parents are just as annoying as kids are, like for real. Now, we might not feel like we are, a beau we are. I think that reframe has helped my parenting in ways I don't even understand yet. If I find my kids lack of interest in what I'm saying, if I find that annoying, if I'm frustrated by their disengagement or their lack of enthusiasm or whatever, it is pretty hypocritical of me because do you know how many times a kid calls mom and I answer with a begrudging, what? I can be just as annoying to my kid as I am annoyed.

by them. We're not like better because we're parents. We might know more. We definitely have more responsibility towards them, authority over them, whatever. But we're not better people just because we're older. We can also be annoying. So remember that the next time you find your kid is getting on your nerves. I think you just really levels the playing field a lot. The second thing I want to remind you of is that so often whatever is getting on our nerves is honestly just the kid having fun. The problem is that they're having fun in a way that is annoying to us. That's like loud or messy or whatever. My daughter was doing waterplay with some neighbor friends the other day at their house.

I walked over to like check on her to let her know what time to come home. And she accidentally sprayed me with a hose. Now I was joking a little, but I was like, Annie Hadashi. But I was also like a little annoyed that she got me wet. I did not want to get wet. I did not come over for waterplay myself. but she was just having fun. Now, of course, it's good to like be considerate of other people when we're doing an

activity, of course, especially when that activity involves a hose. But the point is I was totally annoyed by something that she was just having fun with. So later I apologized. I acknowledged the sharpness in my voice. Like, I didn't mean to sound sharp, but it didn't matter that I didn't mean it. Remembering that she was having fun, it helped me soften those edges a little bit and release something that wasn't actually a big deal. I think the more we remember those two things, the less annoyed we will be by our kids and the more kindness and patience that we will have.

When we do need to talk to them about something that's like legit annoying. But remember, we're annoying to and they're probably just having fun. So the softer we stay, the less snappy we will be. And that's a really lovely thing. And that is a mini pep talk for when your kids are getting on your nerves. If this episode was helpful to you or if you've been looking for a way to support the show, please share this episode with someone you know or you can leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts. Every mention and share, it makes a difference in turning more people into lazy geniuses. So thank you so much for your support. This podcast is part of the Odyssey family and the Office Ladies Network. This episode is hosted by me, Kendra Adachi, and executive produced

by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey. Special thanks to Leah Jarvis for weekly production. If you'd like a podcast recap every other week, be sure to sign up for the latest LazyLisendsEmail that goes out every other Friday. Head to the lazy genius collective.com slash listens to get it. Thanks y'all for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra. I'll see you next week.