So if you’re experiencing that kind of guilt or those kinds of thoughts, I’ll link that episode in the show notes, and you can listen to it. But this episode is really gonna be about our thoughts about schooling in general, and it doesn’t matter what kind of schooling you’ve chosen for your kids. And it really doesn’t matter if you haven’t done school with your kids yet.

You’re rocking those ages like two, three, four, and school is coming up, you still have thoughts about schooling. And then, of course, there are those of you that are dealing with high schoolers, and maybe even kids in college, and you still have thoughts about schooling even when you’re toward the end of the schooling journey.

So what’s important to know is that your feelings about things come from your thinking, and your thinking isn’t always true. Really just sit with that for a second. Your feelings about school come from your thinking, and your thoughts about school are not always true. I’m gonna actually argue that most of the time they are not. Most of the time they are opinions. They are not based in facts. And they are creating stress and anxiety in your bodies. That is a common experience.

So let’s first start by acknowledging that what we want for these kids is for them to be well-educated. That’s the most common thing I hear is that we want them to be well-educated, and yet very few people can define that for me. Very few people could tell me, “Okay, like if we get these kids and they’re 24, what does well-educated mean?”

It’s really difficult to make that list. And we know that education has changed drastically in the last two hundred years, no matter where they’re being educated. And we also know that the world is about to dramatically change because of technology and AI.

The internet did it a little bit, right? Because we went from having to go to the library and to get physical books in order to learn information. That was the way that we learned information. And then the internet opened up the ability to get so much more information faster. We didn’t know necessarily if the information we were getting was true, right? So it created some problems too.

But there was that kind of shift, and then there was the shift to computers where you could now write your research paper on the computer. But AI is going to change the job scene, and so it’s going to change how we educate people to prepare them for this kind of new type of working system where they’re gonna have jobs.

And we don’t know. We actually have no idea how that’s going to change things. So we can’t even really say how we should be educating a person to be prepared for that. We’ve got some good guesses, right? One of the best guesses is a general enough information education about things that they can ask good questions, and then the ability to ask good questions. Those are two different skill sets.

So the example I like to use is if you don’t know anything about the Roman Empire, you wouldn’t go to AI and ask the question, how are the political things that we’re seeing in the United States similar to what was happening in the Roman Empire before the fall of the Roman Empire? Like are there any similarities to our culture right now that could be foretelling that America has risen as a superpower but is about to collapse?

I don’t think it’s about to collapse, but I’m just saying that’s such an interesting question. But you would have to even know that the Roman Empire existed, that they grew, that they were a superpower, and then they collapsed, in order to be able to ask that question. So you both need some general amount of knowledge and the ability to ask good questions.

Beyond that, a lot of us are just guessing based on what feels good. So right now, I’ll tell you, it feels good to think my child speaks another language, and there’s value in that. I’m not challenging that there isn’t value in that. Opening up the brain to different cultures and to learning a different language, it’s a good thing. I’m not saying that any of these things are bad.

But particularly, it’s a feel-good thing because it makes you think, “Oh, I’m doing a good job.” Your child being fluent in Spanish, let’s just pick that, may not really affect their life. I’m not fluent in Spanish. I took a lot of Spanish, by the way. I did in middle school and in high school. I can’t really speak Spanish now, and it doesn’t really affect my life.

But I bet when I was learning Spanish, my parents felt really good about it. I bet they were proud “Yes, we’ve got this kid. We’re sending her to school, and she’s doing a good job in Spanish.” Those thoughts that they were having made them feel good

But it didn’t really have anything to do with my being well-educated or not. And in general, when I look back, I had a probably a pretty mediocre public school education. So I want you to begin to notice what thoughts about school make you feel good and what thoughts about school make you feel bad. And I want you to start examining whether those thoughts are true.

Now, I’m Team Educate the Kids, but I don’t allow it to steal my peace, and I don’t pretend to know the future. I just do not pretend to know what my kids need to be doing in the future. So my husband and I, we always choose what the kids are gonna be doing for school for the year, and we do it with detachment. We do it with, “Hey, let’s see how this works.”

We do it knowing that all of our six children are different, and they’re gonna need different things. We’re doing three different things this year. So the boys are gonna be at the farm school. Two of the girls are gonna be at a two-and-a-half day homeschool hybrid that we’ve started at our parish, and my high schooler is kind of cobbling together things online.

I don’t know that she’s doing anything in person. Anyway, she’s got a bunch of things that she’s doing, and she’s excited about it, and that’s important to me as a parent. I want her to enjoy the process of learning.

So one of the classes she’s taking is a cooking class. She took that last year, and she’s doing that again as a sophomore, and she really enjoyed that class, and I like that for her. I want her to enjoy her classes. That’s a thought that I have, and it makes me feel good when I think she’s enjoying her classes.

Now, that’s not my bar for every class that she takes. And she’s in that weird place where we don’t know if we’re preparing her for college or not. So some of the classes she’s taking are just part of the regular. These are the high school requirements if you wanna go to college. I don’t feel strongly about her taking those. My husband kind of wants her to take those, and she has said, “Yeah, okay, I’ll take them.” Like an English 101 kind of class

But I know that my thoughts about school are all made up Pretty much all of them. I think all of us can agree that everyone should know how to read and write. But what we couldn’t agree is to what degree. We would not agree with how proficient they should be at reading or at writing, and does writing include their handwriting? Does it include grammar and spelling?

We live in a world now where almost everything has a spellchecker in it, or in some of the things automatically change the spelling as you’re going. Is it still important to spend hours drilling and practicing spelling skills? I don’t know the answer. But I do know that a lot of you are stressed out about school. And I really want you to examine why.

So let’s say we’ve got a nine-year-old boy, he’s in public school, and he’s not doing well in math. What are you making that mean? What are the thoughts that you’re having about this kid? And if they are making you feel stressed, I want you to ask yourself, “Is this helping me or the kid?” So if you have the thought- We’re gonna figure this out. That’s a thought that creates kind of a fun, determined, fight energy in your body.

And then from that feeling, you would maybe figure out different ways to teach math, maybe get him a tutor, maybe you’re gonna spend some time with him. And you’re gonna work on helping this kid with his math skills. That would be a positive thought that led to action that’s helpful, that would lead to a good result that you want.

If you think something’s wrong with this kid, something’s wrong with the school that he’s in, something. If he doesn’t figure this out, he’s not gonna get a good job, and he’s not gonna be a successful human.

And we don’t always put words to what we’re scared about happening with these kids in the future. It’s just this general sense of foreboding. “Oh, no, something bad is gonna happen to this kid in the future if we can’t figure this math thing out at age nine.”

And I mean, he’s really struggling, right? We could say factually he’s getting a D in math, and when we sit with him, we see he really doesn’t get it. He really lacks whatever skills he needs. What is the story that you’re telling yourself about this kid, and how does it feel in your body? And when you feel that way, how do you show up as a mom?

This is kind of everything, and what you think about school is completely optional. You can think something else, and in fact, I would highly encourage you to think thoughts that put you in problem-solving energy, encouragement, hopefulness, playfulness, openness. I think we all need to lighten up a bit.

What kind of story could you tell yourself about your kids so that you show up like that? Not stressed, not tight, not full of a lot of pressure, not full of a lot of guilt because you’re telling yourself that you have already failed something. And I just see this no matter what type of schooling people have chosen.

So this really isn’t about sending your kids to school or not. This is about your thoughts about each of your kids and their schooling journey, and then how that is making you show up to walk alongside them for their schooling journey. I just coached somebody the other day about her high-achieving daughter who had signed up for a ton of high school classes and what she listed a bunch of extracurricular sports, choir. It was a bunch of things.

And she was worried that her daughter bit off too much for this next year. So the school year hasn’t even started yet, but the mom is noticing, “I’m having– I’m feeling stressed because I’m having thoughts that she chose too much to do.”

And it was such a great question, and I said, “Let us all sit with this for a minute because right now, on a random day in August before school has even started, you are experiencing stress in your body because you are projecting, you are guessing that she is going to struggle this year, that you are going to watch her feel stress about school, and that is upsetting to you right now.”

And the way that I coached her was we talked about, first, not knowing the future. We’re processing emotions about something that hasn’t happened yet. It hasn’t even happened yet. So one of my favorite things, and one of my biggest tricks with myself, is to just go, “Hey, we will process that if it happens.”

And I just don’t spend time emotionally processing things that haven’t happened yet. For example, our priest said, “Hey, we might not be able to use the parish facilities,” because the diocese all of a sudden is having squirrely thoughts about homeschool co-ops being on a parish grounds.

And he says, “We’re gonna meet in the middle of August.” And we were like, “What are you talking about? We just started this school. We took everyone’s money. You built five classrooms. We just built classrooms for kids at our parish, and school starts on September 9th.”

And when he said that, I just thought, “I’ll emotionally process that if that happens.” I’m not gonna give any of my life force energy right now to something that hasn’t happened. Sometimes I might go, “If that does happen, what would I do?”

And the truth is, I would just go find a Protestant church, and we would put our two-and-a-half day a week co-op at a Protestant church. I don’t wanna do that, but that’s probably what I would do. We wouldn’t close the school before school has even started.

So that’s a really good example of something that I could have gotten really upset about, and I could have stayed up and not slept at night thinking, “Oh no, this is so terrible. This could happen. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe how unsupportive, you know, dioceses are to homeschooling co-ops.” I could have been big mad, and it just doesn’t matter, ’cause it hasn’t happened yet.

Nothing’s happened. All that’s happened is they put a meeting on the calendar to talk about something. Okay, so back to our high-achieving high school kid. Can you watch someone have a hard time? Can you sit in the discomfort of watching your kiddo struggle with something?

So first, we coached on we don’t know if this is gonna be hard, but then I said, “Let’s say that it is. Let’s say you’re totally right, and come end of October, she’s gonna come into the kitchen and she’s gonna be crying, and she’s gonna say, ‘Mom, it’s just too much. I don’t have enough time. I’m behind on these things. I’m not doing well.

But I don’t wanna let it go. I’ve committed to playing,’ I’m just gonna make this up, ‘basketball, and I really love the choir. I wanna do it all, but I’m failing.’ And she’s crying, and you’re watching her. Can you handle watching your children be upset and uncomfortable? It’s actually a pretty normal thing, or in my opinion, a healthy thing for a child to overcommit, to learn how that feels in her body, and then to talk to her about learning the skill of not overcommitting.

And when we have, how do we untangle it? That is a big part of what I do with all of you, and we’re gonna do that in September. We do it every September. I have everybody pull out their calendars. We go over everything for the next 90 days, and we decide if anything needs to come off our calendar so that we’re not running around like crazy ladies.

So to me, if this was my kid and she came in the kitchen, she was upset, I’d be like, “Oh, of course she’s upset. She bit off a little bit more than she can chew. I’m gonna hold her heart right now.” And then probably tomorrow, I might take her out to lunch. I might grab a notebook and sit with her, and I would show her how to solve this.

And I would teach her how to pay attention to her own brain. ‘Cause right now she’s upset in the kitchen. She’s in a stressed state. We can’t talk to her yet. We can’t tell her, “Oh, you’re having a lot of thoughts about yourself and about school that probably aren’t true.” That’s not the moment. So in the moment, I’m just gonna hold her heart, and I’m gonna think, “This is great.

This is such a great teaching opportunity. I’m so glad that I get to teach her this at 17 instead of 36 when I learned how to do it.” And it’s not a problem, and it’s very normal, and I’m so impressed with this kid. I love her generous heart. I love that she’s ambitious.

I would have such positive thoughts about that kid while my kid was crying in the kitchen. Those are those prime mom moments where we get to really step up and be moms. And it’s twofold, right? We’re just holding her heart in the kitchen, and then at some point later, when she’s out of a stress state, we’re gonna do some teaching.

But this mom, who I think is kind of all of us, right? Was seeing, hey, this problem could come up, and then was just dwelling on this made-up future problem that felt very dark and yucky

And I think often our thoughts about school lead us to lose our peace today, and God does not want that. He wants you to have peace. Peace is possible in any moment. We are humans, and we are gonna lose our peace. But my goal is to spend as much time as possible walking around in the peace that says, “Lord, I accept what is happening right now. I receive it. You are good. I trust you. This is what’s supposed to be happening right now.”

I am supposed to deal with this right now. So in the instance of the daughter coming into the kitchen, I’d be like, “great.” I think Mary would have thought, “Great, this is my moment. I’m gonna help this kid right now. Let me show her the love of Christ right now.” But Mary would not have four months prior to that been sitting around worrying, “Oh, no, I think we, we signed Jesus up for too many classes, and he’s gonna be stressed out later in the fall.

What are we gonna do about that?” She would not have emotionally processed that

So the best thing that you can do is to take out a piece of paper, this is the homework I always give you guys, but you need to do it, and write down your thoughts about school. Notice how almost all of them are opinions. Just like almost all of our thoughts about money are opinions, almost all of our thoughts about school are opinions.

For example, what does well-educated mean? You can guess, but it is an opinion. We can’t look it up in a court of law. And then I’m not gonna tell you what to think, but I want you to think thoughts that make you feel the way you want to feel while you’re living your life. How do you wanna feel while you’re living your life?

I know the answer isn’t tight and stressed and full of guilt or pressure. I know that’s not how any of us want to live. I like the feeling of being at peace, but sometimes around a topic like this, I also want to feel determined, playful, open to problem-solving, right? There, and I pick feelings on purpose that I would like to feel around school.

I wanna be the kind of mom that is not tight and stressed around school. I like doing school stuff with my kids. And I don’t wanna be grumpy about it. And the truth is, the more stressed you are about your kids’ education, the worse you’re gonna show up for them. That’s just always the answer

So whatever you’re choosing. This year, I want you to tell yourself a positive story about it. And you might say, “Shirley, you don’t know if it’s gonna turn out positively.” And I would say, “You’re right, but we don’t know that it’s gonna turn out negatively, and your brain is making that up.” So if we’re gonna have a fantasy about the future, we might as well have a positive fantasy that has us connecting with our kids and feeling calm today.

Somebody wrote, I think an email, I think it was an email that somebody wrote me that said, “My kid is going to public school.” And I don’t know the backstory. I don’t know if they were homeschooling before or had them in private school. It just said, “My kids are going to public school, and I’m so sick about it.”

So I don’t know what’s going on in this person’s life that they felt like they didn’t have a choice, but it sounded like that. Sounded like, for whatever life circumstances, the kids are going to public school, and she was very upset about it. So my coaching for her would be, what is the best possible story we could tell ourselves about the kids going to public school this year?

I’d be like, “I’m gonna prepare them so well.” Right? I’m gonna give them really good guidelines to guard their eyes and their hearts. If I was sending them into a non-Christian space, I would say, “You guys, you gotta be the light of Christ because Christ isn’t in a lot of these families.” And I would bring such awe and wonder about that.

I would say, “Isn’t that crazy, you guys, that so many of these families, they don’t even know who Jesus is? But you can go to this place, and you can be like Jesus, and you could talk about Jesus if you wanted to. You could talk about Catholicism and the things that we do. You can be the light of Christ in this school.”

Think about what your family’s experience would be if that’s what you were thinking. “I’ve got to prepare these kids. They’re going into mission territory.” You know? And how proud you could be of them. When we think about sending someone to China to spread the gospel, we’re always proud of those people, right?

We’re like, “Ah.” There’s some awe about that. That’s amazing that you’re taking time out of your life and you’re going to this country that’s very anti-Christian, and you’re gonna spread the good news. But you could think about public school like that. And there are so many wonderful, beautiful families in public school, and I would tell my kids, “Go find them.

Go make friends with the kids that come from good families.” And to me, I wouldn’t even have the bar be that they were Catholic or Christian. I would just say really nice kids. You know what it is to treat people with kindness. Go find the kids to do that. And we don’t have to spend time with the kids that are doing things that we don’t approve of. And we can be charitable to them.

So I would just tell myself a really positive story, and I would say, “If it goes poorly, we’ll take them out of school.” And this mom at that moment may not be, her brain may not be open to thinking about that. It might think, let’s just assume she has to work full time and she just doesn’t even know how she would do it.

I would say, yeah, but it is solvable. It is solvable even if we don’t see the solution right now, if that is what God wants you to do. God never calls us to do something that He then doesn’t give us the ability to do. It might be a matter of timing, right? But I think all of us can have way better thoughts and therefore feelings about school. And we are preparing these kids to love the Lord.

That’s the only thing we really know is that I want them to go to heaven. I want them to love the Lord. And one of the best ways that we can do that is be the kind of moms who make it look good to walk with the Lord. So if you are running around stressed and upset and unhappy, that is the example you’re giving them of a Catholic woman who walks with the Lord

And you have to decide if that’s a good example. Now, I’m not saying that we have to be Mary Poppins all the time. You guys know I’m not like that. But I want them to look at me and see that I am mostly unbothered. I am unbothered by this situation with our priest because I know that God doesn’t want me to lose my peace today, and if it does happen that the diocese says that we can’t be there, I will deal with that and with God’s strength on that day.

So I want them to know that about their own lives, that they can handle anything that happens today. You can model that for them. And this is a great topic to practice with because it can be a very emotionally charged topic, but it is simply because you are having very emotionally charged thoughts, ASABE (2026).

And they are optional. Most of them are not true. Write them down and use a highlighter to highlight any of them that are factually true. Because I bet it’s very few of them, if any, which is the best news ever because it means you can change your thoughts, and then you can change your experience of schooling these kids. The time is going to pass regardless. How do you want to feel this year while parenting these kids through whatever schooling journey they’re going through?

How do you want to feel? And let’s pick thoughts that lead to those feelings. All right, my friends, I’m praying for you. It is a great honor to raise children and to make sure that they get the education that they need to do what God wants them to do. It is a great honor. Let us go forward today thinking about it like that.

Not pressure, that we are special, that it is a special mission that God has given us, and that He will give us everything we need to do it to the degree that He wants it done. It is not the same for all these kids. All right, thank you so much for listening. I’m praying for you. Please pray for me, and have a blessed day. 

All right, my friends. Our fall program is coming up. We’re gonna do something a little different this year. It’s gonna be called Catholic Mom Reset, and it will be similar to Mary’s Heart, Martha’s Order, but a little bit different.