Brave Writer

I have been asked the same question repeatedly over the past 10 years: How do I know if I should get a divorce? And this question has a friend: I am getting a divorce, so what do I do about my children? These two questions presuppose a third question, a bigger question: What’s a healthy home life for children?  That’s what we’re going to address, including your marriage, reasons to divorce, r...

Is it possible to work from home while doing homeschooling? This school year is different from any other. We are not going into it with the same sense of confidence or the same tools, resources, and experiences that we rely on to be good homeschoolers. Instead, we’re coming in with a lot of uncertainty amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This has caused parents to think about the fall in a new way, and...

Millions of families have been forced to educate at home due to the pandemic of COVID-19. Millions of families also educate their kids this way by choice. Whether you are the former or the latter, all are welcome here. In the midst of this pandemic, Harvard Magazine published an article titled “The Risks of Homeschooling,” and I certainly have some thoughts about this. These are my own personal vi...

Let’s address this global, unique moment where homeschooling is suddenly center-stage and millions of families are experiencing a lifestyle change that is in some ways similar and in some ways different than the choice many of us made to do this homeschooling project. The move from having kids in school to having their education thrust upon you is creating a serious amount of anxiety, confusion, a...

Today’s question comes from an encounter I had at a homeschool conference several years ago. It echoed a feeling I’ve experienced myself in the homeschool space as both homeschooler and homeschool speaker/business owner. And then, as we ramped up to this new podcast season, and I asked for your current questions, the same wish resurfaced. See if you relate to this fundamental heart cry of so many...

What do you do when your child has no clear passion? When we exhaust the value of the planned learning model, and we pivot to our children’s passions — at least for a season — what do we do when our kids pick passions that look pointless? We say that our kids have no passions, but the truth is they will find things to do. It’s just you may not approve of what that is. It may not look like the educ...

In this season of the podcast, my goal is to give you a chance to pause and consider ways to improve the experience of learning in your home and in your family by answering questions you’ve sent to me via Instagram, email, and through our customer help desk.  One theme is clear as I glance through the list of growing topics: parenting! You want to know how to get your kids to cooperate with t...

Today’s question will likely feel very familiar to pretty much any parent:  “What if you just don’t have the energy to do all the stuff? The magic-making, the planning, the execution of all the tasks? I know what needs to get done, but I just can’t get myself to do it all. Help.” I get it. There are seasons of life that make the ordinary tasks feel like bench pressing a truck. When you’re in...

Our goal with this season is to focus on your questions, both the questions you’ve been asking Julie throughout this podcasting journey and the questions you haven’t asked yet. Instagram , Twitter , Facebook groups — wherever you have the opportunity to reach out, please send a message to Julie about what you’d like to learn during season six of Brave Writer. Today’s question: How do you bala...

Welcome back, Brave friends! We want to start this season with a big thank you to all of you for helping us achieve an incredible milestone: over one million downloads of the show! We couldn’t be more proud or more grateful. Our goal with this season is to focus on your questions, both the questions you’ve been asking Julie throughout this podcasting journey and the questions you haven’t asked yet...

We want to share some exciting news: Brave Writer just turned 20!  To celebrate, we will have a slew of wonderful offers throughout the year. You will find all of these deals in our newsletter, which you can sign up for at this link . Our goal with this season is to focus on your questions, both the questions you’ve been asking Julie throughout this podcasting journey and the questions you ha...

Julie is getting ready to go down to Texas to present at the Wild + Free conference, so today we talk with someone who’s been getting Wild + Free since the inception of this beautiful gem of a community. Greta Eskridge is a go-getter creative entrepreneur with enough projects to keep a team busy! Greta runs a website, a blog, a podcast, is an avid Instagrammer, and has written for and spoken at ne...

We are so excited because it is the Book Birthday of Julie’s brand new book, The Brave Learner: Finding Everyday Magic in Homeschool, Learning, and Life ! We’ve heard from a lot of brave homeschooling parents throughout this season of the show, and looking forward, we want to hear from more of you Brave Learners out there: How are you rethinking curiosity, online gaming, or the role of collaborati...

Today we’re joined by five wonderful moms from the CO Springs Homeschool Mamas Group. So instead of focusing on just one question, we’ll tackle one from each of them, representing the wide variety of problems that every homeschooling parent has to tackle throughout their home education journey. You can download show notes for the podcast here: http://blog.bravewriter.com/category/podcasts/ Resourc...

Courtney Moyer, a homeschooling mother of four (plus a young niece), wrote to Julie saying, “The consistent homeschool challenge that has confronted me is homeschooling multiple children at multiple levels, lacking expertise to multitask... It seems that chaos overrides my agenda on most days... I know if I could understand a way to multitask, anxiety would be minimal, creating a hospitable atmosp...

Our guest Myah St. John homeschools three children (plus a newborn), and her oldest child, 14, is on the verge of high school. Myah’s always embraced a one-room schoolhouse model for her family, but she finds herself floundering trying to balance high school with elementary school... and as her teenage daughter starts to become a young woman. Why do our children become these people we don’t unders...

Jessica Hammond is a homeschooling mother of two who feels conflicted as she tries to spin half a dozen plates. She has a laundry list of passion projects and hobbies, and she wants to be able to devote time and energy on those passions without feeling guilty. “I want to be present and engaged with my kids during our days. But I also want to accomplish interesting projects of my own. And right now...

Jardel Manalo is a homeschooling mother of five, ranging from the ages of two to 12, who also opened her school doors to a wonderful 12-year-old young woman named Samantha. That’s a lot of children at a lot of different stages in life – a situation we know many of you can relate to – and that can create a lot of pressure for us to perform, both as parents and teachers. Jardel says, “I don't feel l...

Karen Goldstein and her son Elijah are struggling with the difficult transition into high school. It can be a challenge to fit in the oftentimes-rigorous high school work while still allowing breathing room for a laid-back, enjoyable lifestyle – and holding on to the love of learning throughout it all! “More subjects leaves less time for in-depth exploration, field trips, time in nature, rabbit tr...

Today’s guest, Jennifer Hunter, is a mother struggling with a problem that afflicts many homeschooling parents. Jennifer says, “My homeschool challenge is that I am lonely! My kids are all young, and while I am honoured to be spending my days helping them learn, it isn’t always stimulating for me.” We expect this is something that every homeschooling parent experiences at one point or another. We...

There’s a dilemma that plagues every homeschooling parent’s mind at some point in their journey, filling threads online and conversations in person: How can we make learning fun? And then the natural follow up question comes up: Do we have to make learning fun? Because the truth is that education won’t be fun 100 percent of the time. This is the dilemma brought to us by our guest Anne Trott, who a...

Jenniver Vetter is a brave mother of six who has been homeschooling for nine years. She has embraced the emphasis on relationship and freedom in learning that homeschooling offers, but she worries that her children also need to learn skills that don’t lend themselves as easily to fort building and play. Jennifer asked, “How do I balance the love and creative side of learning with the nuts, bolts a...

In this day and age, we are so connected to technology. We carry these magic little screens with us everywhere – and if you’re anything like us, it can start to feel like a third arm! We use them for work and for entertainment, and when our kids see us using these tools, they want to use them too. But what is too much screen time for our children, and what is an appropriate use of that time? Today...

Today we’re going to talk to a brave mother who wants to support her children’s dreams, is inspired by everything she’s learned about on Brave Writer... but feels stumped. She wants her family to be immersed in a culture of learning, without always being in “school mode,” but she’s struggling to figure out how. That brave mother is Christa Gregg, a homeschool mother of three children with a Master...

Over the past four seasons, our help inbox has been flooded with What Abouts: What about the kid who won’t work hard? What about college? What about chores? There are vexing dilemmas that come up in a lot of our home education journeys, and they can lead to a lot of questions and self-doubt. Homeschooling is hard! We get it, and we’re here to help. So we’re calling this season Ask Julie because Ju...