Overcoming Homeschool Challenges With a Growth Mindset

By Rakel LaFave

Homeschooling can be hard — there, we said it. Even when you know homeschooling is the right choice for your learner and love a curriculum, it can feel challenging. The good news is that you and your learner can do hard things. If you’re ever in doubt, building a growth mindset can help you face homeschooling obstacles with confidence.

What Is a Growth Mindset?

A growth mindset is the belief we can improve with effort and practice. It’s the difference between declaring, “Yup, time to throw away the whole workbook!” and going back to review that math problem. 

You and your learner will face some challenges while homeschooling, whether it’s finding the right schedule, maintaining motivation, or navigating coursework. In each situation, a fixed mindset could tempt us to give up and convince us we’ll never solve an issue. But with a growth mindset and belief in our ability to improve with effort, practice, and support, we can unlock endless learning opportunities. 

How To Build a Growth Mindset – For Parents

Now that you know the value of a growth mindset, you can build your own! But the change doesn’t happen overnight — be patient with yourself while you learn. 

Here are some ways to adopt a growth mindset:

• Embrace challenges. “Yay, this is way harder than I expected!” said no one ever. While we might not want to celebrate challenges, recognizing every setback as a learning opportunity can reveal pathways for improvement.
• Harness the power of “yet.”  Instead of saying, “I can’t do it,” start saying, “I can’t do it… yet.” That little “yet” is full of hope, reminding us even if we can’t do something right now, we may in the future!
• Celebrate progress and praise effort. Learning is a lifelong process — we’d be waiting a long, long time to achieve a perfect result! Your and your learner’s everyday progress and efforts are worth praise too.
• Remember what you’ve already achieved. Throughout your homeschooling journey, you’ve accomplished a lot! Recalling obstacles you’ve already overcome, big or small, can help you feel confident in figuring out new situations.

As you develop a growth mindset, go at your own pace! Choose one strategy to implement this week, and then next week, decide whether to keep practicing the first strategy or add another. If you face setbacks and feel discouraged, that’s OK. Learning takes time, and with practice, you’ll be able to nurture your growth mindset.

How To Build a Growth Mindset – For Students

Now that you’re building your growth mindset, it may be more obvious when your learner is struggling with theirs. From time to time, we all experience obstacles to a growth mindset like perfectionism, negative self-talk, or a fear of failure. You may notice these obstacles impacting your learner if they give up when something doesn’t turn out exactly how they imagined, put themselves down for mistakes, or avoid challenges. It can feel hard to know how to support students with these struggles, but modeling and encouraging a growth mindset can help.

You can model a growth mindset by applying the above strategies to your student’s learning. For example, if your learner struggles to read something out loud, celebrate their effort in sounding out difficult words. Or if they feel overwhelmed by a project, remind them of challenging assignments they’ve completed while helping them break down the new task. 

In tricky moments, tell your learner how strongly you believe in their ability to grow — and it doesn’t need to be over the top! Honesty is the best policy here. Make comments about the difficulty of the current situation with reminders that they can grow. A growth mindset statement could sound like, “A whole essay might sound overwhelming, and that’s OK! We build skills step by step, so let’s start with one sentence and go from there.”

However you choose to support your learner’s growth mindset, celebrate the little wins. If a “Forget this, I give up!” turns into an “Ugh, fine, I’ll try again,” that’s worth praising!

Supporting Your Growth Mindset in Homeschool

A growth mindset can help you and your learner navigate homeschooling with confidence, allowing you both to remember you can overcome even the most difficult challenges. To begin building a growth mindset, start practicing growth mindset strategies at your own pace and encourage your learner’s growth mindset, too. 

Also remember that you don’t have to face every challenge alone! With Miacademy, you get our award-winning accredited homeschool curriculum and a rich and supportive community of homeschooling families with plenty of resources and expertise! From helpful blogs to educator webinars and live customer support, we make sure you have what you need to homeschool with confidence.