466 | Consistency is Key (Sean Allen)
Show Notes:
One of the most important things you can do for your children (and yourself) is to help them build good habits. And one of the most important elements of the habit building process is consistency. In this episode we'll discuss some strategies to help encourage your child to become consistent in their daily tasks.
About Sean
Sean Allen is the founder of The Well Ordered Homeschool, husband to his beautiful bride Caroline and a proud father of eight. He has a bachelor of fine arts in graphic design and is passionate about creating materials to assist parents in the incredibly challenging, yet surpassingly beautiful, work of schooling and training their children at home.
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Show Transcript:
Sean Allen Hello. Welcome to the Homeschool Solutions Show. My name is Sean Allen and I am one of the many hosts here on the podcast. Since you're listening to this, I'm guessing you already know that homeschooling is both incredibly challenging and incredibly beautiful. Every week we're here doing a little guidance, some helpful counsel, and a whole lot of encouragement your way as you navigate this busy, yet blessed journey of educating your children at home. Now, even though the show is called Homeschool Solutions, it should come as no surprise to you that we do not have the answer to every homeschool related question. But if you come away with nothing else, our hope is that today's episode will point you to Jesus Christ and that you will seek His counsel as you train your children in the way they should go.
Well, hello to all you homeschoolers out there — homeschool moms, homeschool dads, maybe even homeschool children. I don't know, maybe some of you all are listening too, but hello and thank you for joining me again today. It's nice to be talking with you. Today we're going to be talking about something that is so important. It is a critical issue to the homeschooling parent and that is the issue of consistency. Consistency is Key is the title of this episode. And I don't know that I could put it any more succinctly than that. Consistency with regards to how you do just about everything. And that is so very important yet so difficult to carry out because we're prone to be inconsistent. We're prone to want to throw our hands up and say, "You know what? It's just not working, I can't do this." We're easily discouraged and then we fall off the horse and we go for days or weeks or maybe evenars without tending to the things that we know in our heart that need to be tended to. And for whatever reason we just get kind of downcast and can't get to them.
So I'm hoping that this will pick you up a little bit today. I want to be the voice of encouragement to you, telling you things that you already know but to try to give you just that little boost, that little push to dive in again. And I'm not asking you today to do everything all at once. That's not what we're looking to do. It's very rare when someone can do something like that and don't feel bad if you can't. You should not feel bad. What I'm asking you to do today is to start small and to build courage. So we're going to give you some pointers on the issue of consistency and how to reinvigorate your homeschool and reinvigorate your life. And I'm not talking to you as someone who has this down pat, you know, I don't have this nailed down. I'm like anybody else. You know, you start and you fail and you start again and you fail again and on and on the cycle goes, but you just keep trying. You keep trying.
And here's also the, I think, maybe the most important lesson from anything that I'm going to say today is that habit is so powerful. It is the thing that can potentially carry you across that gulf of discouragement. Those instances in which you don't feel like doing something anymore, you know, and the only thing that you have to fall back on is the habit. And look, our lives are built up of lots of individual habits, good and bad. And so to sit here and to get downcast over the fact that you haven't acquired a particular habit doesn't mean that you don't have another habit in its place. What I mean to say is that you're capable of acquiring and building habits and allowing those habits to take root in your life. The problem is, is that sometimes they're the wrong habits. So I think sometimes we get convinced like, I'm just not... I'm just not that person. I just cannot do this. No, you are capable of building habits. Just unfortunately, oftentimes it's the wrong habits for you and I, isn't it?
So you can do it. We just need to replace bad with good. And we need to model this for our children. So let's talk about starting small. Let's look at some areas in which your children could really benefit from some good habits. And again, we don't want to be too grand with this. We want to start small. Let's start with picking up your toys. I don't know what parents that I'm talking to and what the ages of the children that you have. You know, it's all age appropriate. That might be too young. It might be too old, quite frankly. But obviously you want to pick an age appropriate task. So let's say cleaning your room. That probably stems from, you know, three years on until they leave your house. Probably struggling with keeping their room clean. I know that ours do. There's a good area to start in trying to build some consistency.
OK, so how are we going to do that? Well, a lot of parents will look at that and they'll say, "Well, job one is to instruct them as to what your wishes are, 'I want you to clean your room.'" OK, and then in short order, they discover that the children have no interest in cleaning their room. Step two, scream. I mean, honestly, that's really a two step process and it's bound to fail. And that is not the process that I'm advocating. The first thing would be to do is to instruct, yes. And that could come in the form of, "Well, this is what we're going to do." And again, I want you to start small. You start too big, and particularly if you're someone like me who has started, failed, started, failed... you know who you are, you know what you're capable of, so don't just set yourself up for failure. But you're going to start small, and by golly, we're going to be faithful in this one thing. If there's anything, we're going to be faithful in this.
Let's say clean your child's room. And how wonderful that would be if you walk down the hall and you were able to look through the door into your child's room and discover that it's clean. Wouldn't that be a nice feeling that you would have in that moment? So you start by informing them as to what the objective is, "We're going to keep your room clean. I want your room clean every day." "Oh, Mom, no, what? I can't do that. What are you talking about?" "Well, I understand. We haven't been doing that." See, and that's what you also need to acknowledge. You cannot just march up to this child, this son or this daughter of yours, and say, "You're going to keep your room clean from here on out or else." You have to recognize, (and I'm assuming that this is true of many of you out there) you have to recognize—and if it's not this area, it's probably another area—for the longest time you have not maintained a standard in this area of your child's life or perhaps even in your own life. You haven't modeled this for them. Maybe your room's not clean, right?
And so to enter into the room of your child's heart and think that you're just going to flip a switch, it doesn't work like that. So you can't be all bristly and boiling over when you approach them with this new task. There has to be some kind of humility there. And when they push back, I think that you have to model that in your response in saying, "Look, I understand. I understand. I haven't done a good job in expecting you to do this and I understand also that you don't understand why this is important. But hopefully over time you'll see, but this is just something we're going to do." And you're probably going to still get more pushback. But nevertheless, there's a number of different avenues that are available for you to walk down at this point as to how you're going to approach this task.
So you've laid out the instruction for them or the expectation, "We're going to keep this room clean." Okay well, now you've got to get into some specifics. When do you want the room to be officially cleaned? At what point in the day? Do they do this first thing in the morning? Do they do it before the day's end? Do they do it at some break point in the day, you know, after lunch, maybe before? Whatever. You have to set that expectation. And exactly what do you mean by clean also? Does that mean my bed has to be made? Does that mean that the floor has to be devoid of stuff? What does that mean exactly? Does it mean that I can throw everything into my closet and, you know, push the door as hard as I can until it latches shut? You know. You know what I'm talking about. Shove everything under the bed, shove everything into the closet. Is that clean?
So you're going to have to set those expectations. Now again, if they've never done this before, if they're not acquainted with what a clean room looks like or what it feels like, more importantly, you're going to have to show them, okay? So get off of your high horse. Do not think that the setting of the expectation is sufficient to get them to just immediately comply. That's not enough. That's foolish for you to think that. And so what is the answer for this? Well, you have to go where they are. Go where they are. If they're three, if they're six, if they're ten, if they're whatever. They've got varying levels of understanding there and capability as well. You have to go where they are and show them how this is done. Hopefully you know what a clean room looks like and what it feels like. Feeling is very important, by the way. We're going to get to that here in a little bit.
So I learned this lesson, even though I knew it. Good grief, I knew it. But you kind of have to act it out and really get down into... You have to go where they are. You have to go down to their level. And I learned this when I just was at my wits end with my little daughters. I think there were two of them in one room at this point in time in our house that we lived in before this house that we're in now. And they had a sufficiently large room. They had their two beds, they had a sufficiently large closet, they had various organizational apparatus to help them to put things away. And so I knew that all of the material was there for a clean room, but we just hadn't taught them how to acquire that or to achieve that.
And so I would walk by their room and get disgusted because I'm always in a hurry and going this way, that way, and the other. And all I had time to do, or so I thought, was to issue an order. You know, bark an order. Like, "Girls, get in here and clean this room." I want to say that they were probably seven and eight or nine at the time. These two particular girls. So they're young. They're young girls. And young children at that age, what are they all about? They're all about playing and free time and just having fun. And so is it any wonder that they're not terribly interested in cleaning their room? No, it's not. But again, Dad thinks that he can raise his voice and light a little fire in his eyes and get everybody to do whatever he wants to do and that's just ridiculous. But that's what I tried. That's the first thing I tried. I did the thing that I told you not to do just a few minutes ago: bark an order and think that that's all that it takes.
Well, I kept barking orders and then, you know, the orders get louder and louder and they get more and more... Just my patience is waning thin. Waxing thin, I guess you would say. And so eventually I said, "Girls, that's it. I can't take this anymore. Getting here and clean this room. If you don't clean this room, blah, blah, blah, blah," whatever the consequence was going to be at that time. So, you know, with sunken shoulders and lowered head, they marched into their room and then eventually it did not take long and they got exasperated and they started crying and melting down and that didn't help matters at all with my state of mind. So I walked in there and maybe jumped on them a little harder and then it dawned on me. It dawned on me: they don't know the first thing to do.
And furthermore, the room was, I mean, for their age, was probably irredeemable at that point. Like there literally wasn't a square inch of floor that you could see. There were clothes, there was dolls, there were doll clothes, there were Legos and everything else that you can imagine. I don't think you could see the floor. And the beds were a mess and the closet was a mess and there was boxes stacked on top of boxes and clothes on top of that. And it was daunting. Daunting even for me, an adult walking in the room. It's like, this is going to take a minute. And so, of course they're going to get discouraged by that. Look, number one, let's look at the three things that I can think of the top of my head that discouraged them in this moment. Number one: they didn't really care, obviously, that their room was dirty. So they don't value clean rooms, OK? So there's no motivational factor driving them to engage in the activity of cleaning the room.
OK, number one. Number two: they don't know how to clean the room. They don't know what goes where, they don't know how to fold, they don't know how to organize, they don't know how to put away and all of those sorts of things. And if they do know how to put away, it's you know, it's very rudimentary and it ends up in maybe its own kind of mess. And so that's number two, they don't know how. Number three: now they've got their parent breathing down their neck and making life miserable for them. All three of these things point to one thing, and that is that this is a very disagreeable task. It's not pleasant in the least. So is it any wonder that there were tears and that there was frustration? No, there's not any wonder. So parents, just get real about this, OK? They need help. And that help comes in the form of the help that you can provide.
So, I took pity on them. Imagine that. Just imagine that I took pity on them. I felt sorry for them in that moment as I actually fully entered the room. What an amazing concept that is to actually go where they are and see what they're dealing with. And I said, "You know what, girls?" And this is just wonder upon wonders, what an amazing idea I had in that moment. I'm being sarcastic here, obviously. I said, "You know what, girls? I'm going to help you clean this room." And it was like the heavens parted. You know, the sun came out. It wasn't raining anymore. And it got like 15 degrees warmer in the room. It was pretty chilly before, but now it's like, hey, this is... They were happy. They were excited, actually. Why? What had changed about this? Everything had changed. Those three things that I mentioned to you had changed in a moment, OK? Because the fact that you're by their side suddenly lends an air of value to the task.
Do they understand, inherently understand in that moment why it's important to keep a clean room? No, they don't yet. But the fact that you're there lends an air of importance to it and so therefore, they're more apt to want to engage in it. "Well, if dad's going to help us, that must mean it's like big time important because dad's always doing big time important things. He's always rushing all over the place and he's got things to do, he's got to go. I don't understand all that, but it must be really important. And now he's taking time out of his busy day to be here with us in our room. Our room. Can you believe that?" It's like a celebrity just ascended, you know, into their place of living and is going to help them with a medial task of keeping their room clean.
So, number one, we've taken care of the value thing in a moment. Now, there's more value to be built into it over time, but we'll get to that here in a minute. Number two, you're not upset anymore. So your presence being so unpleasant previously is no longer unpleasant, so therefore, you've relieved them of that terrible burden. And by the way, it is a terrible burden. And when I say go where they are, you can't enter into their little hearts and really feel what it's like. But I mean, maybe you do know. Maybe you can think back to your own childhood and revisit the pain that you felt when your parents were displeased with you. Maybe that would help a little bit. And it is terribly unpleasant, folks. It's painful. And I could go on and on about that.
Now, so you've dealt with number two. Number three. What's the third one? They don't know how to do it. Well, guess what? You're going to show them. So they know in that moment, they know all three of those things. And whether they really know it, I couldn't say. I don't know that they could repeat it back to you, but they know it in their heart. They know you're no longer angry, they know that it's now important because you're important and you're taking time out of your day to help them with this, and number three, they know that you know how to do it. They know that in short order, this room is going to be clean because you're dad, you're mom, you're a superhero, you're amazing. You just clap your hands and stuff appears, you know. And you know how to cook food and clean houses and go and make money and talk to people and drive cars and all these other things. So you're amazing.
And so they know you know how to do this. And they also know inherently, I believe, that as you go about the work of cleaning this room, they get to observe and then they're going to learn. You see? All three of those things are taken care of. And all it took was for you to swallow your pride and to go where they are. But so often we're too busy and we're too proud and we're just too selfish to actually want to do that. Now, look, let's be honest. Do you want to be chained to the work of cleaning your child's room, you know, for years on end? No, we don't want that. That's not ideal. We can't be doing that all of the time. But the more that you commit to this task early on and the more consistent you are in going by their side, going where they are and helping them in this endeavor, the greater the likelihood that eventually they're going to take this over themselves.
And they will get to the place where they're like, you know what, Mom and Dad, I don't really need your help. Actually, I've developed a way of doing this myself and I've got a place for everything and it works for me now. And so I'd really rather you not help. Or maybe I'll be directing you, you know. And what have they done in that moment when that moment arrives? And it will arrive if you're consistent, if you stick with it. What has happened in that moment? They have taken ownership of that task. It's theirs now. Why is it theirs? Because they've built a habit and the habit has created a desire to ensure that that task is tended to on a consistent basis. They now know what it feels like to be clean, to be tidy, to live in a clean room.
So go where they are. Help them. And that's what I did. Amazingly, that's what I did. I went in there and we cleaned that room. We had a great time. Were there other things I would rather be doing? Absolutely. Were there other things that I needed to be doing? I don't know. I don't know. This is pretty important, folks. It's very important. It's important in so many ways. It's important for you, it's important for them. You know, set yourself aside. It's very important for your children. Do it for your children. Give them a hand up, a leg up. You know, it's that loving, lifting, learning process. And this is the moment of lifting. So you thought you were being loving to them by just barking orders, like this is what they need to do. Of course, they need to clean the room. Of course, they need to do their school. Of course, they need to be kind to their siblings and their friends and so on and so forth. And you think that the order that you barked contains within itself all the necessary material in order to ensure that a child is going to engage in that activity? You're wrong. You're mistaken. It's foolish and proud. What they really need is you. They need you by their side.
And so that's what I did. I went in there and I stuck it out and I said... Well, I realized this in very short order. I looked around and I said, OK, here's something. There's all kinds of space up in this closet on this upper shelf and they can't reach it. Furthermore, most of the things that need to go up on that shelf, you know, things that they don't access often, those things are pretty heavy. They're in tubs and they're not strong enough, even if they could reach that space, to get that up into that space. So they need a parent. They need someone bigger than themselves to be able to so they can't do that. There's no amount of barking that I could do to get the tubs of things that need to go up into that space into that space. You see what I'm saying? But I didn't know that because I hadn't entered the room because I'm too busy. Right? I'm too important to mess with that stuff.
So that was the first thing that I recognized. The second thing I recognized—I don't know that we'd ever taught them how to fold clothes. There's clothes everywhere. And also noticed that most of the clothes were clean. So somebody had done the laundry, folded the clothes, probably walked into the bedroom, set it down on the bed expecting that the girls were going to put their clothes away, and, you know, something happened. It could have been anything. They could have had a pillow fight, they could have been playing hide and go seek. They wanted to make a fort and lo and behold, the clothes get knocked onto the floor and then they get stepped on and moved around and then it's just a disaster. And you pick up these clothes and you're like, oh, these are clean. These are clean clothes. Somebody else had folded them for them.
Now, they don't know what to do with them. If they're going to do anything, if they can open up the bottom drawer of their dresser, they're just going to stuff them in there. And so, OK, well, we need to have a lesson on folding. Organization. They've never been taught to organize anything. Of course they haven't. They're seven and nine (or whatever they were). They're around 10 years old. And some of you might be thinking, your children are almost 10 years old and you haven't taught them how to fold? Like, well, guilty as charged. Right? Everybody's got areas that have room for improvement. So I need to teach them how to fold. I need to teach them how to put away their clothes. And on and on it goes.
So that's what we did. And I came alongside them. We got the room clean in record time, you know, or to them at least. Then, you know what we did? Well, I'll tell you what I didn't do. I didn't say, "Well, girls, that was fun. See you later." Right, because that's not what's most important. The clean room is not actually what's most important. The fact that you instill in them the appreciation for the clean room is what's most important. The moment when you take a step back with your daughters, you put your arms around them and you say, "Girls, look at this. Look at this." You walk around the room, maybe take a little seat on the made bed, walk them over, "We're going to go on a tour here. Look at this closet. Look at these dolls in this drawer, and look at the doll clothes in this drawer. And look at the various accouterments that go with your dolls in this drawer. It's all organized. Isn't that amazing?".
And walk around the room and they see this. It's like, ooh, ah. And they're getting a sense of what it feels like to be tidy. You're helping them to acquire an appreciation for that. And you've already got it. You know what that looks like. As you're going through the process of cleaning the room, you know what you're marching towards. You can see it in your head. You can feel it in your bones. And that's what propels you forward. Like, eventually we're going to get this thing clean. It's going to be amazing. Well, they've never experienced that before. They don't really know what that's like. Here's something else: you need to approach that moment with some humility and some grace. Because do you know what's going to happen? They're going to wreck it. They're going to wreck it. I'm not going to sit here and fool you or deceive you into thinking that after this wonderful process of going where they are and enjoying one another's company as you side by side tackle the task of cleaning your child's room and that once you step back and look at it all and smile in each other's faces and there's this moment where we understand each other and you'll never go back to a messy room again. No. No, it's not true. They're going to wreck it.
It depends on how long you leave it undone, but everything that you did will get undone. And there's a very, very good chance that it will look precisely the way that it did before you undertook to assist them in cleaning the room. So show some grace. You have not conquered this monster. You haven't. You haven't conquered this lack of discipline in a moment. You haven't. But you've taken a very important step. What's the next step? Do it again. Step after that—do it again. And again and again and again and again. We're going to stop with that. But you get the idea. That's the consistency. How are habits built? By tending to them on a consistent basis, whatever that basis is—daily, weekly, monthly. Depends on the habit. Concerning the issue of cleaning the room, probably daily. I would assume that that's your expectation. Maybe it's every other day. Maybe it's once a week. I don't know what your expectation is, but I can very easily see that it's daily. You know, that's a good habit to build. Clean your room every day.
And, you know, after you've helped them the first time and maybe they don't... Again, if it's age appropriate depends on who we're talking about here. But isn't it that way with you? I mean, did you master something the first time that you did it? No, but you acquired a little taste of it. You know, whether it's playing the piano or some instrument or some sport or driving a car or whatever. You have to build that habit. You have to acquire that skill and keeping your room clean is a skill. And so you're going to have to go in there a few times. Mom and dad, you have to go in there a few times. And that's exactly what happened with me was that I humbled myself to the point that I was willing to go in there and assist my daughters in cleaning their room. I went in there and helped them clean their room. I think it was over the course of probably a week or two or thereabouts, which is not a long period of time. It's really not very long in the grand scheme of things.
Good grief, if I could tell you that it was going to take two weeks for you to get your children to the place where they would consistently clean their room and it would be that way for as long as you both shall live... I don't know. Do you know what I'm saying? You would take that deal, wouldn't you? Yeah, you absolutely would. Now, again, those other things, those things that you need to be doing, whatever those things are, they're going to be nagging you all throughout this process. Like what are you doing? You're cleaning this child's room? You've got to be making this phone call and paying this bill and tending to your own room and whatever else. That's going to happen. But again, you've got to see the end from the beginning.
And that was the last episode I did. What's the end? The end is your child's doing this on their own and they've acquired a taste for being tidy. So that's what I did. Took about a couple of weeks. And then lo and behold, one day I'm down in my office at my computer. One of my daughters comes down. She says, "Dad, we have a surprise for you." I said, "OK." "Well, you've got to come upstairs. Come upstairs." "OK, all right." "Close your eyes. Close your eyes." So I let them march me through my room, up the stairs, through the kitchen, living room, down the hallway. And I pretty much had figured out by that time what we were going to see. Put me in front of their room. "Dad, open your eyes." Opened. What do I see? Clean room. I had nothing to do with it. I hadn't helped them at all.
They were up there that morning. I don't know, it probably took them two hours. Two hours. Two hours of time that they could have been doing anything else that they would enjoy doing. You know, you could think of lots of different things. And yet they spent all that time to clean their room. Looked amazing. They did a great job. And here's the thing that was most beautiful of all: they were so happy about it. They were so excited to show me. Now, why did they clean that room in that moment? Now, I knew after two weeks it wasn't because that they just had fallen in love with clean rooms. That wasn't why they had done it. They did it to please me. They did it because they knew it brought me joy. And that I was free in my expression of that joy towards them. "Good job. That's amazing!" And I was so impressed. I was so pleased. I was happy for them. I was happy for myself. I was just all around happy.
And children know when you're happy. They know that. That's unmistakable. And you know, that's the greatest joy in their life—is when you're happy. Particularly when you're happy with them. They can't get enough of that. Now, they can sometimes be tricky. Can be tricky to discern that. But I'm here to tell you that it's absolutely the truth. As they get older, if they're deprived of that pleasure that you can express to them on occasions, if they're deprived of that, they are very convincing that they have no desire to receive any kind of pleasure from you whatsoever. That they don't need your approval, they don't need your good opinion, they don't need any of that. And that's, you know, for the most part, that's not their fault. That's your fault. It's not their fault because I'm here to tell you that they came out of the womb hoping to please you. Desiring to please you. To make you proud of them. And to hear those words, "Well done.".
And I can say that with confidence because I think that's what we want. We want that from our Heavenly Father. We want to stand before him and hear those words, "Well done, good and faithful servant." Can't think of any greater joy than that. And when we're walking in his ways and keeping his commandments, we are free. And such a freedom that cannot be replicated. And we can replace it with other things but there's no freedom. There's no joy like this joy. And it's the same for our children. And so when they brought me there before their doorway and showed me their clean room, that is really what they wanted.
Now what they're going to get eventually as they continue this habit... And let me tell you full disclosure—my girls are now not that tidy anymore. And do you know why that is? Because I wasn't consistent. Because we have not been consistent in coming alongside them and allowing them to experience the joy of our presence. Can I put it to you that way? Do not underestimate the joy of your presence. As long as it's joyful. Now your presence can be very innerving. It can be very... What do I want to say? It can be very distressing. I mean depending upon your mood, your attitude. But if you're a parent who truly loves your child and wants to see them succeed and flourish, do not underestimate the joy of your presence. That's what they want. They want you there. They want to know that you love them.
When you take time out of your day, your hectic schedule, of all the many important things that you have to do... And some of the things that you're doing, folks, are not important. But they don't know that, that's just between you and me. Some of the things you're doing are not important. But as they look at your life, everything's important. You take time out of that busy hectic schedule to spend time with them? Well that just lights up their life. And if you can spend the kind of time that helps them to acquire a habit that will remain with them for the rest of their life? Oh, you've really got something there. You've got peace for them and peace for yourself. Because you don't have to clean that room. That's just one thing. One thing.
And that's what I'm telling you: start small. Start small and build courage. Build courage in yourself and build courage in their lives. Because once they conquer the room, then they're thinking to themselves, what other thing can I conquer? You know, not only as you look back at the end of the day at the clean room, I did that. Then you look back over the week. You know, I've had a week of clean rooms. You look back over maybe a year or so, look what I've done. I've kept my room clean for quite a long time. What else could I possibly conquer? Then they go looking for something else. And that next thing doesn't have to be grandiose. It doesn't have to be. It could be just one more thing.
And that's what makes for a grandiose life—are those individuals that have conquered all kinds of little things in their lives and they've moved from one thing to the next thing until there are few things left to conquer. And the things get bigger and bigger and bigger as they go on. See, they do that by God's grace. They do that in and through the strength that is provided to them by your presence. By your cheering them on. By your showing them how. By your rewarding them after the fact. That's where they get that. And then what can they not do? That's a question that's going to be open ended. What can they not do? And watch them go on. Strength to strength to strength. And where did that start? It started with you coming alongside them and helping them make their bed, clean their room, and any number of other things.
It could be their chores, their school work, their instrument practice. It could be nap time. It could be nap time. You know, you put them down at a particular time every day. Many of you perhaps don't do that. Some of you do. And what wonderful things can come from just a consistent nap time. It's good for them, they get the rest. It's good for you, you get the rest. Maybe you need to rest during that time. Maybe you need that time to tend to some things. Maybe it's time for you to read a book. Maybe it's time for you to clean your room. I don't know. But there's good that comes from that kind of consistency. That's the point I'm trying to make.
And this consistency also applies to correction. The correction that we give to our children. And maybe I'll talk about that next time because it's enough for today. It's enough for today. Actually I'll maybe try to talk about consistency and correction next time because that's important. And I also don't want you to misunderstand me. I don't want you to think, well, I've just got to double down on the correction. Sometimes that's very bad. You've got to be careful with that. So I'll leave you with that for today and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Hopefully my voice is better and whatever this is, I'll be over that by that time.
But you know, before I leave, convention season is coming up really fast. Really fast. We're not ready for it. We're trying to get ready for it. I don't have the exact dates but middle of March, I think, or thereabouts, we'll be in South Carolina. So if you're in South Carolina and you're listening to this, we're coming to your neighborhood. Well, Greenville, South Carolina. And we'll be there, God willing. We're looking forward to it. And we're in the process of getting the dated planner. Our brand new, Well Ordered Homeschool Planner. It's getting to where it's almost into production. Our pre-order is live now, so take advantage of it. First come, first served. Last year we sold out real fast. More quickly than we expected. We wished we would have ordered more. So if you order first, you're going to get yours first. And we're going to try to order more this year, so hopefully we don't run out. But still, there's always that threat of running out. Because it's grown every year and we're so very grateful for that, so go to TheWellOrderedHomeschool.com and look at that. We've got a beautiful new cover and one very important new feature that I think that you'll like, so check that out.
We also have an undated planner so going forward, we're going to offer both of those—the dated and the undated. We're happy about that. So look into that. And if you'd like to take a look at it in person, you know, come to Great Homeschool Convention. See us there and you can see it and flip through the pages yourself. So thank you all very much for your time. God bless you and will look forward to talking to you again very soon. Goodbye for now.
Thank you for joining us this week on the Homeschool Solutions Show. You can find show notes and links to all the resources mentioned at Homeschooling.mom. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast. And while you're there, leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the show. This will help other homeschooling parents like you get connected to our community. And finally, tag us on Instagram @homeschooling.mom to let us know what you thought of today's episode. Have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? The Great Homeschool Conventions are the Homeschooling events of the year offering outstanding speakers, hundreds of workshops covering today's top parenting and homeschooling topic, and the largest homeschool curriculum exhibit halls in the US. Find out more at GreatHomeschoolConventions.com. I'll be there. I hope to see you there too.
