Kelly Rigg (00:02.494)
Hey, lovely. Thank you so much for coming and joining this workshop. Now, if you don't know who I am already, my name is Kelly, and essentially I run these workshops live on TikTok to my following, usually around about once or twice a month, sometimes with a bit of a different spin on them. But this is the core of it. This is what I am super passionate about helping you to grasp and understand. And essentially...
It's usually quite interactive, so grab a pen and paper if you can. If you're driving and you can't, just really try and make some mental notes. Pause me and ruminate on the questions that I'm going to be asking you so that you can really make the most of this time. I'm going to be trying to do this a little bit faster than I would a live one, simply because usually there's a lot of kind of back and forth and interacting and answering questions. So I'm hoping that I can whittle through this a little bit faster so that you can obviously get all the content and enjoy it.
Nice and cleanly without me getting distracted by other people all the time. So I've done this as an audio so that you can listen to it whilst you're doing other things. I will not mind if you are multitasking. So do not worry at all. Just try and give me enough of your head space to be really thinking about the questions I'm going to be asking you. Now, if you don't know me very well already, you might not know that I am a home educating mum myself. I've got two children who are very nearly eight and five.
and are basically have been electively home educated since my son would have started reception. So both have been in nursery settings, childcare settings and stuff previously, but we decided to home educate from when they would have started school. So essentially we found home education through COVID. We absolutely relished lockdown. It was so, so, so peaceful.
all of the needs and demands of the world had been stripped away. And what we hadn't realized at the time was that my son wasn't actually coping very well with nursery, that the behaviors that we were getting around it that were very challenging were actually related to his experience at nursery. He was extremely overstimulated. And we didn't realize that we were actually a multiply neurodivergent family. So I have since found out that I have got ADHD, that my son is also very likely autistic ADHD as well.
Kelly Rigg (02:17.214)
as is my husband, my daughter, et cetera. So we have kind of realized through the process that actually we have all been having our struggles and things which actually don't feel good in the world around us. A lot of it has stemmed from our schooling and the ways that society expects us to behave and be. And I just couldn't bring myself to put my kids in the same system and have them feel the way that I was feeling, which is ultimately quite let down and...
like I'd been basically encouraged to be a people pleaser and to do everything that everybody else wanted me to do at very much a big cost to me and my mental health. I've spent an awful lot of my adult life depressed, very anxious and having kids really pushed me over the edge. I was really struggling with post -natal depression, just the lack of control in my environment, how overstimulating it was and I obviously had absolutely no idea that...
the reason why I wasn't coping and was finding it so hard to really find the joy in it when I really genuinely enjoy being a parent, like I absolutely love kids, I've always loved kids and I'm a very maternal and loving person and I found it very, very hard that I was feeling constantly quite so angry and panicked even. I've realized now that it's not actually anger a lot of the time for me, it's actually panic, typically caused by like massive overstimulation of noise, chaos, mess.
All those things tend to just sort of push me over the edge. And so I had to learn all of this for myself. And I felt quite sad really in the process of doing that, that actually nobody had ever realised what was going on for me and was able to help reflect that back to me. And it was only once I'd had some CBT therapy and coaching that I was able to actually make those shifts and start to feel like I could actually embrace who I was.
And by embracing who I was, I was able to make accommodations for myself, which have taken a lot of the stress off my shoulders, stopped me from just trying to please everybody else all the time, and has essentially allowed me to actually not feel so panicked and angry all the time. It's hilarious how that works, hey? So I know that if you are experiencing burnout and you're actually struggling day to day, losing creativity, not enjoying the process as much, and actually sometimes even worrying if you've made a huge mistake by deciding to home educate.
Kelly Rigg (04:40.51)
that ultimately I want you to know that a mindset shift is possible with the right support and I'm hoping that this workshop will be a good step in the right direction. So we'll buckle in and we'll get started. So very quick disclaimer. I'm not a therapist, but I am a trained coach. So I've had training and a qualification in coaching. So facilitating conversations with people who are struggling and who are having a difficult time with their parenting process. So...
I've typically been supporting mothers with basically re -accessing their joy, so rewilding themselves, helping them to feel more connected to their human nature, the world around them, all those sorts of things. But essentially, I've been doing that for a couple of years and kind of stepped out on my own. I've been working with Courage and Come Am I Up until recently, and I've now stepped out on my own to support specifically parents who are interested in home educating or who are already home educating.
because I'm just so very passionate about that side of things and I just feel like there's a real lack of coaching support in this space and I really wanted to be that for you guys. So I wanted to stress that I am not a therapist which means that I am not trained in that way which means that if you are having a really really hard time right now and you feel like you could do with speaking to your GP, speaking to a doctor, getting medication, any of those kinds of things then please please please do not.
avoid doing that. Please go and reach out to the people who can help you in those capacities. Coaching is one of those things where it is absolutely incredible and will help to break down so many barriers, will help to challenge you and will help you to look deeper at the way you're feeling about the world around you and what your kind of beliefs are and the stuff that's holding you back. But if you are in a very, very, very fragile space right now, you need to make sure you're supporting yourself in other ways as well.
So I wanted to talk to you today. So like, why are we here? So I wanted to talk to you today about home education, but ultimately we're not actually here to talk about things like your curriculum, how you're going to serve your kids better, how you're going to treat them better. What we're actually going to do is talk about you. So essentially when we start home educating, quite often our brains go straight into how are we going to provide the best education for our kids? And that might include.
Kelly Rigg (07:08.158)
signing them up for loads of classes and groups and clubs. That might mean making sure that you're downloading all the best resources. It might mean you're giving up your career. It might mean you not getting a lot of time to yourself. It might mean you not actually resting enough and staying up really late researching stuff every night to get stuff ready or planning stuff for the next day. It might mean you're constantly cleaning and tidying and making snacks. I mean, the snacks, right? Like, just how many snacks a day can one child eat? So you may find yourself...
not actually spending an awful lot of time considering your own headspace. Now, I don't think that this is something which happens entirely in home ed. I feel like actually a lot of us do spend an awful lot of time thinking about the de -schooling, questioning our beliefs, thinking about why we actually believe certain things about education. But for those of us who maybe haven't got a lot of point of reference on that and haven't had any therapy or coaching in the past, may not be as capable of spotting.
where those beliefs are lurking and how they're actually affecting our day -to -day life because there are thousands of them and some of them are so, so simple that we don't even question them. Like for example, having three meals a day. This is a belief that's been perpetuated in society based on working days and making us as convenient to our employers as possible.
Kelly Rigg (00:06.128)
So I'm going to read out some statements and just have a think about whether or not these resonate with you. So we've got things like number one, I struggle to let go of my own schooled beliefs. So if you know that there are things which you've got hangups from school, but you find yourself perpetuating them, even if you like really don't want to be. Number two, I feel selfish.
if I want to cancel plans that my kids are looking forward to because I just really don't want to go.
Number three, I feel like I'm a bad parent if I put my own needs above my kids.
Kelly Rigg (00:49.104)
Number four, I often feel like I'm not good enough or doing enough.
Kelly Rigg (00:59.376)
Number five, I don't know what I enjoy. I have very little interest or time for them.
Kelly Rigg (01:09.2)
Number six, I always feel like anything that doesn't create a benefit, so money, better health, etc. isn't something that I should be prioritising. Heaven forbid we should just chill and play a game, read a book.
Number seven. I often find myself disengaged, lacking ideas, wanting them to sod off and leave me alone for a day or a week or a month or maybe just move to Hawaii in the night.
Kelly Rigg (01:40.72)
And number eight, I often wonder if I've made a mistake.
Kelly Rigg (01:48.592)
So usually when I do this workshop live, we get an awful lot of agreeing with those. And I know that I'm not alone in having felt these things and thought these things myself. And I know that there's going to be an awful lot more swimming around in your head as well. So ultimately what we're actually trying to address today is home -ed burnout. So this burnout in itself is fundamentally created by hustle culture.
it's schooled beliefs that despite knowing that rest is productive, like I don't know about you, but I have all of my best ideas when I'm out just walking the dog or having a shower or lying in bed when I'm about to go to sleep at night, that we know that if we actually give ourselves time and space to exist, then we will actually have the biggest brainwaves. But we can't let ourselves feel that way. And we feel guilty and restless whenever...
we dedicate time to rest. Now this isn't just from school, this is society's messaging in general. Quite often you probably would have got it from your parents as well. But I know that when I started home educating, a lot of my reasons why were linked to COVID and the experience of massively de -stressing and not having all the demands and not having all the drop -offs and pickups and stuff to do and family to visit and friends to make plans with and all the rest of it that actually we actually had a free pass to just.
be at home and to just do whatever made sense for us. And I realised through that, that I was more creative, I was calmer, I enjoyed my kids a lot more, I was better rested, despite having a five month old and a three year old. Like, I was better rested, I was calm, way more regulated. And actually, although it was a very anxious and scary time for many other reasons, it was much, much easier for me to cope. And...
So I chose to home educate partly to opt out of so many of the societal expectations that we have on ourselves and on our children. But it was very, very hard to stop their tendrils sneaking back in. And ultimately, I wanted to create this workshop to help you start to recognize where they're coming from. So we're making some assumptions in that.
Kelly Rigg (04:10.544)
So we're making some assumptions that you decided to home educate because you wanted to offer your family more freedom, more expansiveness, just a chance to do what they needed to do when they needed to do it. Maybe you wanted to ensure your kids didn't get the same limiting beliefs and the messaging that you did at school or from your parents or from society at large.
So maybe you wanted to foster a more authentic lifestyle, so one that met your kids' needs fully, but yours too, like maybe you were hoping to actually meet some more of your actual needs, but you wanted to really make sure they met theirs, so they could learn how to have a career and a life and relationships as adults that didn't burn them out and make them miserable. Maybe you wanted to slow down yourself because hustle culture was just driving you absolutely nuts.
Maybe you wanted more bodily autonomy, maybe to reconnect with yourself, your human nature, your own inner child or innate interests and desires. Maybe you really felt like you couldn't access those anymore. You didn't really know who you were and who you wanted to be. And maybe you wanted to actually try and get some of that back. So I want to say here as well that I do also completely understand that those of you listening to this may not have actually chosen to home educate.
You may have actually found yourself here under duress. You may have had to pull your children out of school because they were being relentlessly bullied or were not coping because of said needs or because you yourself are having a really hard time keeping up with all of the demands of kind of getting our kids to a school that is really far away or whatever the case might be. And you may have had to find yourself in a situation where home education was the only option.
to protect health and wellbeing and that that in itself can be incredibly stressful. And as I say, those of us who even electively home educate sometimes we'll find ourselves saying to each other, honestly, sometimes we kind of feel a little bit like home education was just the best of a bad bunch of choices. That private education was a ridiculously expensive and likely to create an incredible amount of pressure for our kids. That a typical school...
Kelly Rigg (06:28.816)
is poorly resourced with overburdened teachers and not enough support and love and acceptance and individuality and far too much testing. And home education was almost like the best of a bad bunch that is actually very, very, very stressful. It means that you can't earn another income sometimes. Of course you can, you can definitely earn another income if you have got the ability to work online or you can be flexible about your hours and things. It's not impossible.
but it is harder and it's that you have to find the time and give yourself permission for that time as well which is really tricky and obviously you've got to do all the work yourself, you've got to find the resources, support your kids and help them to do everything they want to do so it's not an easy choice and it is quite stressful and so we have to give ourselves grace for that basically. We have to just, I want to just acknowledge that choosing to home educate isn't always about easefulness.
But I personally believe that choosing to home educate has provided a huge amount of easefulness in our life and is helping us to foster that authentic individual lifestyle that actually makes sense for us and our needs, which is something which I know we just wouldn't have achieved if we sent our kids to school. So, sending love, if you are finding all of this a bit intense, because actually you might.
not resonate hugely with the idea of this being easeful just now. So I wanted to just acknowledge that. Okay, so initially when I first put this workshop out there I called it Planting the Seed, which I realized in reality was really vague. So it has obviously evolved to be Banish Home Ed Burnout. But the concept of planting the seed was actually found when I was out in the spring with my son weeding in the garden.
and he was asking me why we were pulling out other plants to make way for other plants. And I said, well, it's all about wanting the right things to be growing. And it just dawned on me as a really great analogy as an avid gardener myself that I wanted to use it to help explain what we need to do in order to actually transform our home -ed journey and make it feel really good. So we need to know how.
Kelly Rigg (08:50.608)
to transition out of the chaos that causes burnout to the flourishing flowers, vegetables, whatever that we want to be actually growing. So first of all, we need to know how to do a few things. So we need to observe and recognize what is actually going wrong in the first place. So a lot of the time we're in the thick of it, you can't see the wood for the trees and stepping away and actually being able to see what is actually going on.
and why we're feeling so stressed about things can be really hard. So for example, the constant, so I'll take a really random example. One of these, it's quite a simple one. You may have spotted this one already yourself, but there's a possibility that your child as a home -educated child eats constantly. And this can sometimes be really triggering because we would often have been brought up to be very conscious of eating too much, eating the wrong foods, eating at the wrong times of day.
not actually moving enough and burning that food off. Like we've had an awful lot of body hang ups that go with eating food. So we can sometimes micromanage and over manage our children's intake and worry relentlessly about them eating too much of the same thing or at the wrong times of day, et cetera. So we have to be really mindful that a lot of the messaging that we've received about food is all to do with a visual image.
that society seems to have for what the human race should be. A lot of that has roots in white supremacy and in how society, like the top nobles of society, would have made everybody else feel about themselves. It's actually quite racist in some ways too. There's an awful lot of different tendrils that have kind of snuck into the societal belief that bodies should look a certain way.
And what that can do is it can create an awful lot of stress for us as parents. It actually gets tied up in are we good parents? Are we conscious enough? Are we lazy, et cetera? But equally, eating three meals a day is linked to the idea of the industrial revolution. It's actually making yourself convenient to your employers. So not snacking in between is all to do with eating at breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the appropriate times that your employer would have told you was suitable for you to do that around your working hours.
Kelly Rigg (11:05.644)
So realistically, there's an awful lot of messaging that comes in around food that we maybe wouldn't even be particularly aware of because we just kind of think it's just the way it is. Like you have breakfast, lunch and dinner. You shouldn't eat too many calories or you shouldn't eat too many of these types of foods. Like that should be limited. That shouldn't be limited. We should give them all this. I'm a bad parent if they don't eat more vegetables, right? We think these things are literal fact. There is no, like people think there's no argument to them whatsoever.
But what's quite interesting is if we can break down those barriers and actually start to question where they came from, who decided that, what science is there to show this, what do we believe? And we actually allow our children to eat quite intuitively. And I mean, our role at our house is we try not to have the same thing more than twice. So more than once, typically, depending on what it is. But literally, my concept is as long as if you want to eat and graze all day long.
and eat as much as you want at any meal time. I don't force, I don't expect them to necessarily eat at the meal times that we set. But we do ask them to keep eating different things. So for example, my daughter is a grazer. She really doesn't like meal time. She doesn't like the demand of meal times. She doesn't like eating a lot at one go. But she will over the course of say like from about 10 .30 till about two, will eat a sandwich or like half a sandwich. She'll have a bit of pita bread and some hummus.
She'll have some carrots, she'll have some grapes, she'll have some biscuits, she'll, you know what I mean, like she'll eat little bits that all would have made up a lunch, but she won't eat a lunch, she won't sit and eat a lunch. And that, for a long time, really infuriated me and stressed me out and made me worry that she wasn't going to get the programme, pay attention, eat at the right times. And it was difficult for me because it meant that I was constantly fetching more snacks.
And so all of these things tend to get tied up in beliefs and feelings that we have about a certain thing. So we need to observe them first. We need to actually notice them and start to say, hey, OK, right, why do I feel so irritated by this? What is going on here? And why do I believe this? Whose belief is this that's come down to me? Then we need to start weeding those bits out. So obviously, you can see from that example, I had to start really recognizing that actually.
Kelly Rigg (13:25.584)
Does it really matter if she doesn't sit and eat it all at once? Not really. I could still make it all at once and then just put it on a plate in the fridge and she could just go and help herself to the bits of it when she's ready. So that's a really great simple example of how I was finding it really hard, but actually I found a way to work around it that meant that I didn't have to keep getting up and down making snacks, but she could eat it as she wanted. And we actually found a way of her actually eating a lot more and being a lot happier and calmer in the process. Then we need to nourish the soil.
so that it's ready to receive our intentions. So once we know what the problem is, once we need to start taking out the bits that aren't good, we then start to put the good bits in, hence making a new solution, putting the plate of food in the fridge for her to help herself. Then we need to set the right intentions and goals for our family, because truly at the moment, we are working on some of the school goals. So we may be thinking to ourselves that we still have to make sure our kids achieve amazing exam results one day.
or we want them to go off and have really high paying successful jobs, whatever the thoughts might be. And we actually have to start thinking to ourselves, no wait, what do I really care about? What do I really want for them? What do I wish that I'd had people kind of pushing, like fighting for me when I was little? Like what would I have loved for them to have done? So that radical acceptance, loving you for who you are, encouraging whatever interests you were into. So try and think about what are our actual intentions here?
What does our family really want? And not just in the future, but now, like what do we want it to look like day to day? Okay. But then also we need to start to do some other things like knowing when to stop. Okay. So when we have meddled enough, so that we know how it plays out. Like, so we have got to let go of our expectations sometimes and actually just watch things happen and just see how things evolve. A great example of this was my son and reading.
I really felt like I had to, like I was very much in a schooled mindset. I was very academic in school, very much a people pleaser, have grown up wanting to please others and have everybody be really impressed by me. And I was really fearful as a parent, especially choosing to home educate when I was getting pushback from my family, that I wasn't going to necessarily, that I had to keep up with what he would have been doing in school. And then we could just do other stuff as well.
Kelly Rigg (15:50.544)
but we had to make sure we were meeting the same milestones as they would expect him to have in school. And so initially I started off very much trying to teach him to read, making time for it daily, sitting down, reading a book together, helping him to recognize his letters, et cetera. And this is not necessarily a bad thing, but what I did find was that the forced expectation of it was making him not want to do it. And...
I was reading up on an awful lot of stuff around unschooling and giving children a chance to kind of grow into things when they're ready. Understanding, like finding out that actually fluent reading is typically between the ages of seven and 11. And I'm there sat with my five year old kind of worrying that he's not picking it up quickly enough. And I did an awful lot of work on that kind of the belief system that was going into that. And I started to just sort of like.
pluck out some of the things I was doing. I wasn't doing them as often anymore as giving him some space to do what he needs to do. And slowly but surely giving him some room, just giving him the right environment, making sure that I was around to talk about it if he wanted to, that if he asked me a question about it, I helped him doing the odd game and activity and fun thing that was encouraging him to use his brain to use his letters and stuff like that.
and making it far more relaxed and far less pressure and not getting annoyed with him if he didn't want to participate in it and just letting it be. I actually encouraged him, I sort of shifted my goal and my intention for it, just simply to allow him to enjoy the process of reading and to see that it could be really, really fun. And so I'd read books to him that were a little bit ahead of what he was able to read so that he could enjoy the process of like listening to the story and...
understanding that one day he'll be able to read books like that and it will be like playing a movie in your head, like it's so much fun and just being really positive about it. And ultimately within a year, he was actively seeking out reading for himself. And now at the age of sort of seven and a half, nearly eight, he's fluently reading. And this isn't going to be the case for every child. It's not kind of saying that it's going to be guaranteed to give them the outcome. It's more of an example of how...
Kelly Rigg (18:02.416)
If we know when to let go and to just be like, okay, I'm just going to trust that giving him some space and still supporting and structuring things a little bit, but not forcing and not making it happen a certain way, actually we can allow things to happen by themselves and they will. So we need to understand that our expectations sometimes of what it needs to look like is flawed. It's based on...
outside perspectives, other people's experiences and the way that society in general views things and it's not necessarily the truth for us. Okay? So we also have to be mindful that we can do all the things, okay? And we can do them all exactly right, but there is never any promise that the seeds that we plant will turn into the perfect flower, nor that flower will produce the perfect fruit. So we have to ensure our expectations aren't just more perfection.
nor our kids unending happiness or their perfect relationships or their careers and futures. We have to be really mindful of the fact that we cannot actually control those outcomes. We can provide support and structure and facilitate various things for them to help them to take steps that they want to take in those directions, but we cannot ensure those things. Okay. So we just have to find a way to fall in love with the here and now.
watching it grow, enjoying the journey, the efforts that we're putting in, the adventures we'll have, and just really not be focused on how amazing the fruit is going to be, but enjoying the process of helping it grow and just supporting the very best that we can by also supporting ourselves. Okay. So hopefully this is resonating and you guys are understanding what I'm getting at here, but I wanted you to...
kind of start at this point to think about really where a lot of your beliefs are coming from. So as home educators, we are bombarded with ideas, okay, literally daily about curriculums, apps we can use, places to go. I mean, the FOMO, like fear of missing out, it's so real. There are moments when I quite literally have to...
Kelly Rigg (20:25.808)
like not go on Facebook into the groups I'm in and not pay attention to the WhatsApp group I'm in with a bunch of my friends because they're all like, we're doing this today, are we going this place, are we doing that place? And I actually just really need a day at home and I just need to chill and not worry about it right now. And whoever you talk to, so whatever groups or forums you're in, you are going to get messaging really like daily that earworms in and makes you worry. So like, man, like we don't ever go camping.
Like everyone else seems to want to go camping all the time, but I absolutely hate it. And I think it's just going to like, does that mean my kids are missing out on or, we follow a math curriculum. no. Will that make them hate maths? Like, no. Like if they're enjoying it and everything's going great with it and then they're eager and excited to do it, then no, of course they're not going to learn to hate it. Right. But you're going to get these little kind of like earworms and doubts and worries that kind of come from so many different things.
You'll also have a dozen limiting beliefs from your school days. Like, for example, extracurricular activities are essential for creating a successful, well -rounded person, like learning an instrument or a language or whatever. Then what success is. So success equals, I don't know, wealth, a nice house, a car, easefulness, being able to be neat and tidy, well -fed, et cetera. Without success, you yourself are judged.
So people think that you're not a good parent. They'll think that you're an untidy person, that you don't take care of your kids, whatever, right? So there's all these beliefs that we feel are in society that that's what people will think about us. And that's what we maybe think about others as well. Because if we've been in this kind of belief system for a long time, we actually have kind of taught that it's our job to judge others and to criticize and to fix people who are less successful than us or not doing enough.
and that they're supposed to be a certain way and if they're not then there's something wrong with them. And it's all complete nonsense really when you look at it that this, when you actually think back to the ideals created with the people who were in parliament back when they started compulsory schooling, they looked at the masses and just saw a bunch of rural farmers who were constantly revolting and...
Kelly Rigg (22:46.)
pushing back on the government's rules and demanding more respect, demanding more freedom, being paid fairly. They saw a bunch of people who were scruffy, didn't know how to read, didn't know how to better themselves, and they decided that rural work, hard labour was not fulfilling enough, that wasn't a full enough life, and that surely they must want to have
the knowledge of the world in their heads and to go on and be really academic and to do really amazing things. And of course, for some that was true. But it's very, very short -sighted in the sense that actually human beings in and of our own right are supposed to be active, hands in the dirt. It actually improves our health in a huge way to be out with mud on our hands, physically participating in nature as creatures that live on this planet.
and that this kind of constant aim to separate human beings from our human nature and to better and better and better ourselves based on our brain and kind of forgetting our bodies and not necessarily kind of we don't listen to them, we don't drink enough, eat enough, rest enough. But yeah, anyway, I've gone off on a massive tangent now. But the point is that you need to be looking at essentially what these words mean to you and why we're worried about them and why we're worried about what other people think.
And there's a lot of fun reading that you can get into with all of this, where you can start to really understand the concepts behind these. And yeah, there's just so many great books and things out there, but it's ultimately you kind of looking at the specific things that are going on in your head. And right now, just like starting to get to the point where you're scribbling them down. If you notice them, scribble them down, I believe this, and then just write that down. Don't necessarily even go anywhere with it yet, but just...
observe the thoughts running through your head. So if you've thought of one, as I've been talking, that you feel you can have a look at, I want you to just have a think for a second. I just want you to scribble it in the middle of your paper and then I want you to have a think first and foremost, all the different people, places and things that have influenced that thought. So an example might be that success looks like...
Kelly Rigg (25:13.456)
having like a good relationship, money in the bank, a nice house, a car, et cetera. So pop that in the middle and then think who has influenced that decision. So that might be your mum and dad, that might be friends, it might be the internet, it might be social media, magazines, TV, all the different things. And then go a little bit further and actually think, okay, well, what influenced my parents to believe that? So they would have obviously grown up in a situation where,
maybe their parents had to work very, very, very, very hard their entire life and never managed to own a car. And so they worked harder and managed to get a car. And so that was really important to your parents. They actually managed to have a decent car. You know what I mean? It's like that would have been a really big deal to them. And you would have picked up that having a car meant that life was more easeful, that you had more success, that that meant that it was a sign that you were doing really well.
And then you might have also got the message from somebody else that having a nice car that's really clean and beautiful all the time meant that you were very wealthy. And you know what I mean? So like, and then wealth meant that you were successful and people therefore thought better of you. So it's trying to kind of go back and back and back through it and see if you can actually start to see where the idea is flawed. So why is the concept of having a nice car considered to be a sign of somebody's
general life success. I mean, money is one thing, but what about their happiness? What about their relationships? What about, like, do they give to charity? Do they contribute to their community in any way? Do they, you know, you see what I mean? So there's an awful lot to success in terms of what we can believe that it is for us, but wealth is not the number one pinnacle of it. And that that in itself doesn't necessarily prove that somebody is actually happy and successful. And so start to question it and break it down.
And what you might find as you do that is you actually start to unpick and realise that you don't agree with it, that actually you don't believe that having a nice car means that you're really successful. We might find that actually we find ourselves thinking, actually, I believe that success is when somebody is content, when they're actually looking forward to their future, when they're not constantly feeling really depressed.
Kelly Rigg (27:38.288)
and anxious and upset all the time when they actually can wake up every day and not instantly feel really stressed, that that might be what your idea of success is. So start to think about whether or not you agree and then start to think about actually, well, it doesn't matter whether I agree, like that I don't think that having a house and a car and stuff is like the pinnacle of success, but other people will still judge me for that.
and then start to think about the fears that come up from you off the back of that. So the truth is that yes, choosing not to adhere to a certain expectation that's been drilled into you may cause you to be judged. But the more important truth is that in the right circle of people who believe what you do in your own home, in your own life, in your career that you've chosen, what matters is that you can live with that belief. So you don't actually exist to please the world around you, none of us do. You actually exist to please yourself.
and those who you choose to please. But sadly, we have been taught, especially as women, that we need to please as many people as possible. We're not supposed to be an inconvenience or take up space or annoy anyone. So we feel like being different is going to cause an inconvenience to someone else. So I was like, for example, have you ever felt like it might upset someone else that you decided to home educate? Like a friend who's got...
kids in school is going to judge you for it or feel judged by you because they've got their kids in school and has that necessarily might have even actually caused rifts in relationships that you've got. Or you might have your, like, I don't know, like your parents might get irritated with you because you need help from them to be able to go to an appointment during the week. And like, well, if you'd put them in school, then you'd be able to go to these appointments, right? So we feel like we've then got to...
like inconvenience other people to allow us to enjoy our truth and our decision to do something our own way. But the point is that every single person on this planet has been raised in a different house. So they have different beliefs and different experiences and expectations put on them will have a different idea of what makes the perfect person, the perfect friend, the perfect partner, the perfect child. And so unfortunately,
Kelly Rigg (30:01.2)
with the limiting beliefs that we tend to all pick up around feeling like it's okay to judge other people for their decisions, what they look like, for their behaviors, for how they exist on this planet. The truth is that we will have judgment around us and we essentially have got to learn in our own strength how to not let it divert us from our own path.
So 90 % of the time, we are literally just imagining what they might be thinking as well, because we've had our thoughts in our head from what our parents have said to us, our influence has come to us. And so we might also be imagining other people are thinking mean things about us too. So we've really got to correct that inner voice. We've really got to correct that urge to judge others. And a lot of that, it does take work, but it's something which can be done.
and actually sounds quite impossible initially, but it is possible, I promise you. So once we know what we're looking at, okay, and we started to see what's going on in our head, we then start to do the weeding. So...
We need to address something really important right now. And that is the fact that as a home educating person, there is somebody else in your life right now that you maybe haven't considered very much. You chose to home educate your children and you wanted to have them home and you wanted to give them this freedom and these opportunities. But if you yourself were schooled and you have grown up in a society maybe with parents or friends or...
jobs etc that have not met your needs and have let you feel let down and judged and unable to meet your own desires then there's actually a little person inside of you, your inner child who is currently feeling all the feels okay they are so excited they are elated proud of you at your decision to give your kids more freedom so more autonomy more mutual respect
Kelly Rigg (32:13.328)
to play and be outside more and not get stuck in situations that led them, you're in a child, to feeling helpless, unimportant, not valuable, et cetera. Like you're literally doing so many things for your kids that you yourself did not experience or not enough anyway. So they're gonna be also feeling grief for the childhood that they didn't get to have.
And that grief, as we know, grief can cause anger, sadness, it can be very, very emotive. Fear, so for the uncertainty and, but you're supposed to do what everybody else says, right? Mentality, so you were raised to be a certain way and pushing back against that can feel really hard. So then confusion, because of how blimmin' strange this different lifestyle looks and feels, okay?
You yourself, if you hadn't realised it already, have chosen to home educate for your children based on the experiences you have had yourself as a child and an adult since. So there are reasons why you are freeing your child from the system and trying to give them a different outlook. And that's partly because you're in a child desperately needs it to. And if you're not going to make the time to actually allow you to experience all the freedom,
and opportunity that your children are getting to experience now, then there's a very good chance that you're going to start to feel resentful and stressed and burnt out. Because what ends up happening instead is that we sacrifice our whims and our curiosities and things that we want to do, places we want to go, moments when we need to move our bodies or spend time with friends, times when we need to eat or drink or rest. We sacrifice our love life.
our careers, our mental health, our physical health, because that's just what a good parent does, right? That's just how it is. And it's not, is it? That's not how it should be. Because ultimately, if we don't acknowledge what we need, and we don't actually do what we need to take care of us, and we sacrifice absolutely everything that matters to us,
Kelly Rigg (34:36.176)
aside from our kids and we give everything we've got to our kids that might be enough for you truly it might that might be absolutely enough but if you find yourself feeling sad and burnt out and lethargic and lacking ideas and feeling a bit like you want everyone to leave you be chances are it's not enough and that's okay we don't have to feel bad about that we're allowed to want to take that back okay now
Whether we call our home -ed journey a journey or career or vocation or lifestyle, dedication, whatever, ultimately we are taking it on as an extra responsibility as something else that we want to be doing. So that responsibility sees us imagining our children's future and then not wanting to let them down. So we envision them happy, thriving, in a loving relationship with a job they love, meeting their own needs, doing all the things that...
Well, and I make another assumption here in thinking that they are things that you like, you don't feel you are doing right now, but maybe you don't feel like you made those right choices for yourself because you didn't really understand what you needed, what you wanted, who you are. So maybe not all of them, but there is some truth in there, right? So we consider the home life and parenting that we do, we consider the type of schooling and the education we offer, we consider the environment they're in.
the independence and connection that we're fostering, the language we're using, the self -awareness that we're building, the acceptance that we nurtured. But we're working our arses off because we care about making sure our kids don't feel like we do now. Disconnected, unloved, unnourished, overworked, undervalued, disengaged, bored, restless, tired, sad.
Okay, so why are we here? We're working hard on that already, aren't we? Well, because if you're experiencing home -ed burnout, chances are you don't fully understand that you want the life that you're creating for your kids to. So you also maybe don't realise that you can actually have it.
Kelly Rigg (36:54.704)
I really want to pause on that just for a moment to think into it. Do you believe that you can actually have the incredible life that you're creating for your kids? Do you think there's still time? Do you feel like you deserve it?
or that you're actually ready to embrace it fully.
because I think the little person inside of you might be jumping up and down at the thought. Let me just keep asking them to sit back down and let us get on with what we need to get on with. So when I say that we aren't here to talk about your kids, I mean it. You're here because you know deep down that you need more, more creativity, more outlets, movement, fun, vitality, curiosity, and acceptance.
So when I say we need to start weeding, I mean start thinking about how you feel about a club that you take your kids to. Does it over stimulate you? Does it make you want to rage for the rest of the day?
Kelly Rigg (37:57.264)
Do you feel like maybe there's ways that you could make that thing in that day easier, more joyful? It doesn't need to go.
Kelly Rigg (38:11.664)
Is it a part of your day, like maybe in the morning, with your kids wake you up every day before you're ready to be woken up? Are there simple boundaries that can be put into place? Do you wish that you could just have 10 minutes for a coffee in the morning before you have to do anything?
Are you sick of having the same dinners? Simple stuff. Are you bored of going to the same park? Okay. Look, notice what is it that's doing your head in right now? What can change? What actually wouldn't be the end of the world to change? What wouldn't actually bother them that much at all? What are you just going through the motions with? So now we need to start nourishing the soil.
Essentially what you're looking for here is things aren't serving you, so we're going to cut them out. We're going to weed them out. Things like your schedule, your habits, your lifestyle, that kind of stuff. But then we're going to start placing in new things instead. But now we pay attention to us too. So I don't know, your kids want to start doing hockey. So you find a time in your week where that will work for you too. So where it won't overtax you. It doesn't stop you being able to get through, get enough work done or...
It doesn't mean you have to cancel your Tuesday night chat with your friend that you do every week with a coffee. Okay, if your gut says, gosh, that just sounds awful. Like I'm never going to make that happen. Right. Listen to it. Stop. Don't just think, well, okay, I'll just have to do it anyway. But think, is this going to work? Should I schedule it for then? Am I actually being insane? Maybe that's not a good idea. Right.
We're going to actually figure out what makes, like what we can do to make room for you and your stuff. Okay, we need to really think about it. We need to actually stop and pause and go, wait, okay, the idea of squeezing in hockey practice on that day sounds horrendous. Why is that? it's because I know that I'm not going to have had a chance to have a cup of tea or have anything to eat.
Kelly Rigg (40:22.256)
and I'm not gonna have time, I'm gonna have to literally make a packed lunch and a packed tea in order for everyone to have eaten at a time that's sensible. And actually, I don't think that we can make it back before so -and -so is gonna fall asleep in the car and then I'm not gonna be able to get anyone to bed. And no, this is not gonna work. And unless that means that you divide and conquer, if you have a partner you can share some load with, if you can find a way to make it a drop -off, like there are ways to work around it. Potentially, it's as simple as saying, do you know what?
that's gonna be a takeaway night then. Like I'm not gonna worry about making a pack tea, we're gonna grab a macadies on the way there so that we can do both. Right, you can do whatever makes sense for you in that process but I'm just saying just be conscious of if you feel a hard pass in your body, don't ignore it, okay? Now, you deserve time alone, you deserve downtime, you deserve a cup of tea, you deserve time to read books.
to get ready alone in the morning without somebody poking your hairy bits. You need time for fun and you need time to follow your own interests and to move your career forward if that's what you want, to just yeah have a relationship with someone, spend time with your friends like you deserve all of that. But I know this may sound insane or maybe it just sounds so obvious but I promise you...
actually starting to do some of this is going to actually see some radical shifts and so I'm just going to tell you what some of them actually are going to be. People will actually start to respect your boundaries. I know, scary right? Because you're actually setting some. Simple. You are going to say I need this and they're going to go yeah do you know what fair enough you probably do deserve that right? Even your kids. I know it sounds absolutely insane.
but I promise you it is possible with enough repetition. You will slowly stop feeling guilty about asking for time for yourself. Now, this is a really hard one and is going to take a lot of work and I'm not telling you it's going to happen overnight, but eventually you will get to the point where you will actually take some time for yourself and you won't feel guilty the whole time for doing it. You will start to find things fun again and notice your curiosity gets piqued more easily. You might actually enjoy.
Kelly Rigg (42:39.44)
learning about random crap with your kids again. You'll enjoy the things you do with your kids that much more and actually want to engage with them. You'll start to find friends that feel more aligned with who you actually are, so you actually feel like you can be yourself around them. And you'll start to enjoy home education again, because your general life around it will be feeling better.
and you may actually finally start to experience the inspiration that allows you to make other shifts in areas that have been lost to you for a while, like your health or your career or whatever else you want to do. Because when you actually start to properly nourish yourself in all the ways that you deserve to be nourished, funnily enough, your body can shift out of its survival mode that it's stuck in right now, just going through the motions, and it'll actually start to want to do things. Now, I know it's all easily said.
and it does take work and that's where getting support with coaching, getting support with somebody to actually break some of these barriers down is super, super important. And we do need to be serious about certain things and that we want to make stuff happen, but we're so used to the hustle culture mentality of scheduling it all in and setting up routines and making it all happen, but we need to actually be conscious of our body's needs.
and not just doing things that are productive or feel like they're working towards an end goal. Not every day of your life is meant to be working towards a goal of some sort. Okay? We know there's consequences if we're not getting support for ourselves, okay? And if we don't actually fully address what we believe success looks like and therefore what you want your kids to believe.
If we never properly address what stresses you out, whether that's sensory stuff, tiredness, work, relationships, lack of boundaries, or if we care more about what other people think than what we care about ourselves and what we care about what we think, then we are just going to continue to lock ourselves in to burn out because that simply looks like becoming disengaged, a lack of emotion or feeling quiet.
Kelly Rigg (44:57.936)
leaning on screens and other things to keep your kids busy and numbed and just away from you. Losing creativity, avoiding social situations and then ultimately feeling like you've made a mistake. And if you find yourself here a lot, chances are eventually you're going to want to throw in the towel. You're going to feel resentment, grief, frustration, confusion. And only the most self -aware person can stop that from leaking out all over their family.
and their life in general. And I say all this as someone who's experienced all of this, that overwhelming crippling sense that I can't cope, that I shouldn't continue and that I've made a huge mistake. The truth is in these moments, the core values, the freedoms and joys and intentions were good. Like I wanted to do these things, I wanted to make great things happen for my kids or for our lives. But the way that I set about it, doing it all for my kids and doing far too much,
and not factoring me into the equation, like not letting myself drink enough, eat enough, rest enough, was all wrong. So I've spent years refining a way of home educating in a gentle method that works for all of us as a healing parent and overcoming childhood trauma and needing to radically de -school, so really trying to get rid of my academic mindset and one that takes into account my need for freedom, flexibility, reassurance.
So one that doesn't lock me in to relentless structures, one that takes seasons and cycles into account. And obviously one that makes us all, makes all the same considerations for my kids as they evolve and change as well. And essentially through that, I've created a couple of things. So I've got the good enough home -ed method, which quite literally helps to transform your week. So it kind of really helps to break down what it has done for me. So basically the point is my method is,
essentially something that constantly tells me, yep, that's good enough, that'll do. Like, it's a real kind of like, yep, you're fine, like you've done enough in that. To help me to not spend the whole week going, what have we actually done this week? And have I actually done well? And should I do any more? And am I letting them down? And that constant feeling like I've never done enough. And it really has helped me to really shift an awful lot. And I've...
Kelly Rigg (47:25.168)
As somebody who has ADHD and hates structure and routines, I'm absolutely shocked that I'm still sticking to it. Like it has genuinely changed my whole perspective on our home education experience that I actually genuinely feel completely on top of it. Which just helps me to just take a breather. And then ultimately it's led into banished home -ed burnout. So this is where my coaching love for supporting other parents to really make a shift comes in.
So this is where we'll do all the work to actually support ourselves. So we'll have a workbook that's gonna have some really great questions and activities and things in it, but it's mostly about the Facebook group. So we're gonna be coming together in that group so that we can do some workshops together live, so you'll be able to assess them live, we can catch up on them later. And we're going to be...
really tackling things like our limiting beliefs and our hangups from our childhood. So we're going to really try and find some more examples. We're going to look for all the different things that are going on in your head. We're really going to sit there and try and dig out as many of them as we can so that you've got some stuff that you can start working on and actually start to question. We're going to look into judgment and difficult conversations. So how we tackle these with grace and how we stop people from earworming us and constantly filling our heads with doubt. And also how we like, where we tend to be judging.
and why that is. And we're going to look at obviously how we can start to detach from that inner voice that's telling us that these people are thinking what we think they're thinking. And we're going to really break all of that down. Then we're going to look into figuring out what your intentions should actually be. So making sure they come from a place of joy, not fear. So what do we actually want our family's lifestyle to look like? What do we want it to be? Then we're going to completely reimagine the journey. We're going to dream big.
And we're going to figure out what you want your life to look like. And we're going to obviously figure out what shifts and things that we need to make and change to make that happen. Then we're going to have a Q and a session. So just a chance for you to ask any other burning questions you have as you're getting started with it all. And obviously we have a group coaching session within that as well, where you'll be able to just get some support on the challenges and the bits that are coming up for you. So every single one of those will have an element of coaching.
Kelly Rigg (49:47.312)
where you'll get a chance to speak and be heard and to have that back and forth conversation with me. Now, at the moment, it's still on pre -sale. I'm finishing it all off and my intention is for it to start at the end of June. If you're listening to this after the end of June, then essentially it's going to already be running. So you'll be able to just jump straight on in. So do make sure that you go and grab the pre -sale if you're still in time to do that.
And if you're not, then don't panic. By listening to this workshop, you will have accessed a discount code. So that will be coming up below in a moment. And you will be able to jump in and join Banish Home and Burnout. Now that discount code will disappear after you leave this page. So it will not be available to you afterwards. So do make sure that you grab it, jump on and do it now. And obviously,
Listen to the call to action in your head. If you're finding listening to this that actually you would love to work with me and you know that you want to make these shifts, then don't ignore it. Banished Homeward Burnout is designed to be incredibly affordable and a space which is going to allow you to actually get that support quickly in a community surrounded by people who get it, who are going to make you feel amazing, who are going to make you feel loved and held and allow you to actually see the shifts that you want to see. But I don't want you to let this feeling go.
because I know from my perspective that when I get that, like, yes, I want to make a change feeling, if I let it sit for a few days, it disappears. So reach out to me if you have any questions at all. There'll be a link below for you to reach out to me and DM me on WhatsApp. So do that, come and talk to me. But also just feel into your body. What is your body telling you to do? And if this sounds great, but actually you would love...
to match a one -to -one support, you really want to work with me as a coach. I usually have a couple of slots open. So let me know and I can obviously let you know what my availability is right now. But regardless, I really hope to see you in my community. I hope to see you making some more of these shifts and thank you so much for listening to this workshop. I hope that it has been helpful and has helped you to realize that so much joy is literally waiting there in the wings, ready for you to take and you have got the power.
Kelly Rigg (52:11.312)
to do it yourself if you want to. You have got the power to choose to be happy and to take those things for yourself. And it does just take a little bit of observation and noticing what's going on for you and questioning the fabric of your reality just a little bit. All right, lovely. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and I hope to see you maybe one of my lives sometime soon. Take care, bye -bye.
