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    More is Caught than Taught - 2022-11-09 08:00:00-05

How do we practice gratitude when we routinely succumb to our own big emotions, like doubt, frustration, or anger? How do we implement more is caught than taught?

We are grateful for our freedoms. Freedom to learn in a way that works for us, freedom to learn what we want to learn, freedom to surround our children with people we value, and freedom to enable our children’s vision for their lives too.

The reality is we navigate kids’ conflict and complaints daily. We discover that our kids don’t always enjoy our educational plans. And sometimes we don’t have kids that experience homeschool the same way we do.

Since we’re human, we won’t be grateful every moment of every waking day, of course.
But we choose to orient ourselves toward gratitude because we want to make the most of this life and help our kids make the most of theirs.

We could teach gratitude with a daily gratitude journal, or by sharing our blessings at the dinner table, and yet our kids learn how to live their lives by witnessing the lives we lead.

More is caught than taught, they say. What, indeed, are our children catching from our lives? We can’t be certain we know until after we’ve raised them, after they’ve processed their own childhoods, and returned to tell us.

But we can routinely step back, assess, and observe how we might be influencing them.
We can assess our responses to our own big emotions, assess how we frame the stories of our lives, and acknowledge truthfully whether we’re living in a space of gratitude or not.

We are all familiar with the full gamut of feelings, whether we learned about feelings through emoticons, a schoolteacher, or television programs like Sesame Street. We were taught mad, glad, happy, sad as early as we learned primary colors, like red, blue, and yellow.

It’s human to have emotions and I knew that in theory.

Yet, I don’t know about you, but there were a few big emotions I aspired to not experiencing, because they appeared messy, unloving, and could manifest in unhealthy ways.

I would come to learn I didn’t have a choice, I was indeed human, and humans experience the full rainbow of emotions, from angry red to placid blue to envious green to vibrant purple and every shade in between.

I assumed that these big emotions would be a challenge in someone else’s house. I was homeschooling, so I could create homeschool utopia for ours. Turns out, I was wrong.

There would be all sorts of big emotions, like temper tantrums, boredom, and unhappiness. And the kids would have them too.

I assumed the kids would experience these big emotions, occasionally, not nearly as frequently as they occurred. I assumed that I shouldn’t get upset over spilled milk, but who knew that spilled milk might happen twice a day for twelve years.

Who knew that when I signed up to homeschool, I was signing up to learn about me: my big emotions, how I experienced other people’s big emotions, and how I framed the stories of my life?

I certainly did not.
I thought I was going to…

• Relearn math (I did, thank you Steve Demme)
• Read a bajillion books (indeed I did!)
• Explore historical periods and memorize dates of significant moments
• Explore classic languages, like Latin, French, and Spanish
• Dissect crayfish and owl pellets, explode mentos in bottles of Coke, blood type my kids and bacterial swab my home to discover the kitchen sink was the dirtiest place in the house.

And I did learn so many interesting things.

Yet, to my surprise, these things were the fun learning things, all of them interesting, and none of them the most difficult learning, not even Algebra.

The most difficult work was addressing my big emotions, understanding my triggers, and acknowledging that I had a whole lot of internal work to do.

I learned:

• That my big emotions weren’t conveniently timed, weren’t scheduled in my Daytimer, and almost always interfered with many of my plans.
• I was a human being experiencing big emotions and I couldn’t pretend them away. I had to accept them all: anger, disappointment, sadness, frustration, confusion, every single emotion.
• I would learn that I could allow myself to feel my feels fully. (And they wouldn’t overwhelm me if I did).
• I would learn to intentionally breathe through them.
• I would learn to practice a pause and not react to them instinctively. Just because I’d been triggered, didn’t mean I had to react. I certainly wanted to, I certainly was accustomed to, but I could learn not to.
• I learned to speak truth & kindness to myself so I could intentionally respond, even after I unkindly reacted to a child accidentally breaking a chrysalid from a twig.
• I learned to include self-awareness strategies, like journaling, talking to a coach, or observing myself in the mirror and speaking kindly to myself: “I’m sorry, you’re frustrated, sad, angry, disappointed, or any other feeling. I see you. Your feelings matter.” And sometimes I’d tell myself, “I forgive you.”
• I’d figure out so many self-awareness strategies, that I’d create my own Big Emotions Journaling Workbook to help other homeschool mamas address their big emotions.
• And I’d relish and reuse the three questions I’d learn from Dr. Daniel Amen, author of Change your Brain, Change your Life:

1. What are you feeling?
2. What is the thought behind your feeling?
3. What is the story behind your thoughts?

And I’d make sure to schedule those three questions as a mindful moment in my phone every single day. I’d set an alarm at the most triggering time of my day. When the alarm pinged, I would BREATHE, ask myself those three questions and begin to clarify why I was triggered in the first place.

(Eventually, I would turn that practice into a Big Emotions Audit for homeschool mamas everywhere).

And I’d speak these words of encouragement to so many homeschool mamas that I’d eventually write a book about nurturing the nurturer and even begin life coaching.

Even after all the learning that homeschool taught me, I still can’t be certain what my children might have caught from my life.

However, I am grateful to have learned how to address my big emotions. For this I am grateful, and I am certain my kids are grateful too! Remember: more is caught than taught.

(Eventually, I would turn that practice into a Big Emotions Audit for homeschool mamas everywhere).

And I’d speak these words of encouragement to so many homeschool mamas that I’d eventually write a book about nurturing the nurturer and even begin life coaching.

Even after all the learning that homeschool taught me, I still can’t be certain what my children might have caught from my life.

However, I am grateful to have learned how to address my big emotions. For this I am grateful, and I am certain my kids are grateful too! Remember: more is caught than taught.

You can get the Big Emotions Audit by leaving your name & email. We’ll zip it on over to your inbox.

Teresa serves the homeschool community as a Homeschool Life Coach, helping overwhelmed homeschool mamas shed what’s not working so they can show up in their homeschools (and lives) authentically, confidently, and purposefully.

She writes and offers coaching & courses on big emotions, boundaries, overwhelm and self-compassion for the homeschool mama.

Her book, “Homeschool Mama Self-Care: Nurturing the Nurturer” is a must-read for the discouraged homeschool mama. Teresa can be found at www.capturingthecharmedlife.com, her podcast Homeschool Mama Self-Care , Facebook, and Instagram .

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