Find Your True Spark
- By BookShark Homeschool Curriculum
- Sep 5, 2023
EPISODE 142 SEASON 4 | Motivation is a tricky thing. It allows us to move forward to goals and accomplish the things we need to and even our dreams. But sometimes it is HARD! Sometimes getting motivated and staying motivated to finish that project or write that paper is so difficult, other times it’s a breeze. Motivating ourselves and our children can be a challenge. Wouldn’t be amazing if if you could determine what actually motivates your children and you? Especially if those motivators are totally different and might even work against each other.
Join Janna and Jimmie Quick from TruSpark as they talk about homeschooling and a few ways you can determine what motivates each person and use that to accomplish everyone’s best.
ABOUT OUR GUEST |
Jimmie Quick is a former homeschool parent whose only daughter is now an independent adult. After working for about a decade to help homeschool curriculum companies market their materials, she transitioned into marketing for Motivations AI, the owner of the Motivation Code suite of assessments: MCode for adults, TruMotivate for young adults in college, and TruSpark for junior high school.
Motivation Code: https://bit.ly/3PcRBbb
TruMotivate: https://bit.ly/3rabEiy
TruSpark: https://bit.ly/489QDoO
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Podcast Transcript
Janna 00:00 Welcome to Homeschool Your Way. I'm your host, Janna Koch, BookShark’s Community Manager. And today's episode we're going to be talking about motivations, not the kind that make you feel bad because you haven't been to the gym lately, or you had that extra handful of M&M's last night. The type of motivation that's going to help you homeschool your children better. My guest today is Jimmie Quick. She works in marketing for Motivations AI, and we're specifically going to be talking about a product called TruSpark. Jimmie, thanks so much for being here.
Jimmie 00:29 Oh, it's great to be with you today, Janna, and catch up a little bit and talk about TruSpark.
Janna 00:35 For those of you who don't know, or may wonder why Jimmie and I are so familiar, but we have worked together for a number of years. And so it's exciting to talk about this new product that she has been marketing. And to give you guys some insight into what I learned about myself taking the test, and how I believe it's going to help me motivate my children in ways I never knew possible. So Jimmie, first, a quick introduction of how you became involved in the homeschool world.
Jimmie 01:02 You know, I originally was a public school teacher. I taught middle school for about seven years, I taught English and I loved it. And I never thought that I would homeschool. I knew what homeschooling was, but just wasn't on my radar at all. But turns out, I've moved abroad and lived abroad for eight years. And during that time, my daughter came of kindergarten age. And I realized that homeschooling was really the best option for her going to an international school or local school really wasn't a good fit. So we started homeschooling and I loved it, and she really thrived. And it turns out that not only did our living situation dictate homeschooling, but we were a perfect fit for homeschooling, my daughter is incredibly creative and a little bit on the sensitive side. She's very much an outside the box thinker, and homeschooling just really gave her the freedom to thrive. You know, with us setting the pace and US setting the subject matter. So it was a great situation. I I look very fondly back on those years. My daughter is now an adult, she's independent, she lives on her own in another state. I'm very proud of her.
Janna 02:11 Now being classically trained in education, did you feel like that hindered your homeschool experience or your desire to homeschool? Or do you think that it helped you as you went along?
Jimmie 02:21 I think it was a double-edged sword. I think it gave me a lot of confidence. And I lived in a country where homeschooling wasn't a thing, there wasn't even a word for it. So I would say homeschool. And then I would have to define what I meant. And then I would have to say it in three different ways so people could understand what I meant. And I would often say, Oh, I'm a teacher, so I know what I'm doing. And that would reassure people so that they could accept that we were homeschoolers, it lent a bit of credibility to my role. Obviously, you don't have to be a certified teacher to homeschool. But in that setting, it really helped alleviate people's fears that, oh, she knows what she's doing. Oddly enough, because I was a secondary teacher. This is so funny. When I think about it. Now, I was terrified about teaching my daughter to read, which I think now is just absolutely hilarious because it's not that hard. But somehow it had been mystified to me as if it was a very difficult and you know, earth-shattering thing. And if you don't get it, right, Everything's ruined, and actually was not that difficult. And it was very enjoyable. And it was something I got worked up about for absolutely nothing.
Janna 03:41 I know that you are not the only homeschool parent who is worked up about those very things, I had a relief in the sense that I was like, I didn't have to teach my children how to read. But over the years of homeschooling, it's like I've taught them all the other important things. And it was just a natural process talking and walking and interacting with people. And so to demystify this idea that there are certain things that we are incapable of teaching our children is such a myth. And I'm so glad that we can shed light on the subject and that you have so many tools now that can help you reach your child even if something does become more difficult for you and it maybe was less difficult for a friend of yours. So true. So you homeschooled through high school correct? Now that in of itself is a feat that not all of us homeschool parents have decided to take on I myself was homeschooled through high school, and my youngest is entering her freshman year of high school and we are going to homeschool so I didn't homeschool my oldest two as they went into high school. So this idea of thinking about teenagers, and maybe not even just an age range but more of a personality. There are definitely some children that are harder to motivate and get buy-in into the things that we need to accomplish as parents, let alone homeschooling parents just parenting in general. So when thinking about motivating teenagers or strong-willed children, it's definitely slightly I don't know, what would be the word like, I kind of get scared. I had one daughter that people were like, are you afraid of her and I was like a little bit. Oh, I am a little bit afraid of her.
Jimmie 05:35 You know, here's a quote I just read recently from James Clear. And I think it is just a great encapsulation of what we're going to talk about today. “Excitement is a better motivator than discipline.” It's that old adage of the carrot or the stick. And sometimes as parents, we have to use the stick. But the carrot is so much more appealing for everybody. As a parent, the carrot is much more enjoyable. We don't like getting the stick out. That's it's terrible when we have to do that. So excitement is a much better motivator than discipline. So anytime we can structure our day or our homeschool, to leverage excitement, and natural, innate motivations, we are all going to be happier in the home, the tone in the home is going to be more peaceful, and more joyful. Yes, when kids start to reach middle school ages, it's perfectly developmentally correct for them to start pushing back on boundaries for them to question why. And, you know, tell me, why do I need this information? And why are you being so strict with me, this is normal developmental behavior, we need to expect that it doesn't mean you're a failure. In fact, it means you're a success, your children are growing to be independent. But it can be hard as a parent to navigate that. And that's what TruSpark was designed for. It's designed for that exact age, for the middle school, maybe as old as a freshman in high school, but those intermediary years are really kind of awkward. Or as you say, you do get a little scared of your kids because they can be touchy. And you know, if you say the wrong thing, oh, boy, it's gonna be a bad day, because I made so and so angry. And now she's pouting and she's fussing at me. So when we learn about our motivations, our own, and our children, it really helps us to smooth out the rough spots of the day.
Janna 07:36 Personally, I think when I hear the carrot versus the stick, it sounds Yes, 100%. I want to get on board with that. Why does it seem to be so much easier to fall back into the stick versus the carrot? You know, it's I understand it's human nature, right? Like, I can be excited about an exercise regimen and a diet program and I'm all ready to go. My default is not the healthy choices by default or the unhealthy choices, and I don't think that parenting or homeschooling are any different.
Jimmie 08:11 Absolutely, I think the easy answer is it requires more effort and more creativity on our part, to stimulate the excitement to stimulate the motivation. The stick is the stick is the stick is the stick, you know, we just have those few sticks that we go to, and they work, you know, unfortunately, they work. There's a high cost, sometimes we may destroy our relationship with our kids, and we may put certain ideas in their heads that we really don't want them to have. In other words, like learning is a drag, you know, learning has to be forced upon me those kinds of, you know, misconceptions, but it's easy. We know how to use the stick. If we want to inspire excitement and innate excitement, it requires that we use creativity.
So when you give your kids the TruSpark assessment, maybe I should tell a little bit about the assessment. So it's an online app, it's an online assessment, you create an account, you purchase the assessment, it starts with a curriculum that guides the student through what they're going to be doing when they take the assessment, what they're going to be doing is writing some small short stories about a time when they felt really good about themselves when they achieved something or made a difference when they felt like they were really proud of themselves. This is a personal value judgment, not when other people are proud of you. But when you are proud of yourself. And it's a short little story, you know, maybe three to five sentences, just a paragraph, the kids are going to write these stories. And then based on those stories, they're going to work through the app, dragging these cards, whether Yes, this applied to my story or no that didn't really apply to my story, and then at the end of the assessment, the tool gives them a report telling them their top three core motivations and I'll you can go to the TruSpark dot NEA website to see all of the 90 motivations that we assign.
For example, one of them is a Maximizer, you're always looking to find unused areas and bring them to life. There's a Teacher, someone who likes to teach other people think there's a visionary, someone who has these big ideas. There's an Improver, someone who's always looking at how to make something better, there's a Fixer who actually makes it better. There's an Expert and Explorer, an Arranger and Achiever. There are 19 of these different motivations. So when your student takes the assessment, they get this report with their three top motivations, and you learn more, it goes into more depth about them, defining them, and you even get as part of your purchase a document that helps you apply those motivations to your homeschool into your parenting, it goes a step farther, and it takes those motivations and then it guides kids through some career exploration. Kind of like TruSpark becomes your guidance counselor. And it says, Oh, you are an Overcomer. And these kinds of careers really fit well within overcome or motivation. And then it guides them through some online research, learning about careers, and it can really get kids excited about, oh, this is how I'm wired. And these are jobs that fit with that kind of wiring. So when you learn about your child's motivations, the idea is then, because you're a homeschooler, you have control over how your day is structured, what curriculum you use, what time of day, how you know, are you doing school on the couch or outside, you've got pretty much free rein of everything. When you know your child's motivations, then you can use those to help them learn. Like for example, here's just a small example. Let's say your child is motivated by improving, your child is an Approver. I'm an Approver. I see what's wrong, and I want to figure out how to fix it. That's one of my motivations. So it means that I always see the bad thing, I always see what's wrong. But I always have an idea of oh, if we do it like this, it will make it better. Right? I'm an Improver. If your child is an improver, a great activity for learning language arts is to give them those sentences that have mistakes in them and say, find all the problems and fix them. Or give them a math problem that's already worked out and say, Is this right? Or is this wrong? Where did where did the person go wrong? Find the mistake in this math solution. So use their motivation, to approach whatever topic and there are so many different ways you can do this. And this is why I say it takes creativity, the stick is just do your math problems, right? You know, I'm gonna hit you with the scissors, you know, not literally, but figuratively. But creativity comes into play when you think, okay, my child is an overcomer. How can I make overcoming fit into math? Oh, do I need to come up with some kind of a game like an obstacle course or something, you know, you have to really get creative. And it does take effort. It's not. It's not as easy as the stick. But it is so much more motivating. And it's going to be motivating for you as a parent, when you start incorporating these things in you, you realize, oh, my kid loved math today. My child wasn't crying. During the writing lesson today, this was a success. I'm going to keep using these motivations. And the great thing is once your child is middle schooler, they're old enough to be introspective. You can sit down with the child and say, this shows that you're a finisher, that means you really like to see things through to the end. How could we incorporate that in our homeschool day, and your child may have some great insights like well, you know, I really want you to give me my, my sheet every day instead of you know, just giving me bit by bit, I want you to show me the whole outline I want you to give me In fact, I want you to give me a whole week's schedule at a time. And I want to mark it off and I want to be able to move ahead. If I want to let me do that Mom, I think that would give me a motivation because I'm a Finisher. So don't just try to incorporate these motivations. Also, talk to your child and get some feedback from them on how you could incorporate these into the way you structure your homeschool day to give them more autonomy and to really make them feel better about what they're doing.
Janna 14:38 I love these concepts because I think for any parent who has a leaning towards figuring out personalities or love languages, or anything, I like career-oriented. We already have that desire. We're excited to see how they fit in it for me, it's almost like we're being creative in figuring out how they fit into boxes, which, I mean, it kind of seems counterproductive, but it works. So taking not only what they enjoy, but when you learn those things, you're realizing what motivates me doesn't motivate them. And it's so hard as a parent sometimes to let go of what I think works, what I think is exciting. I have found now having three teenagers in my house, I have to actually ask, do you guys want to do this when they were little, I just made the plan. And everybody just came along and one was happy. One was grumpy one didn't care. And I thought that was just personality. And we just did what I thought was the best and we moved on. And now that I have teenagers, I'm like, wait, I'm putting in a lot of effort into this, is this something you even want to do? When I wasn't doing that I was spinning my wheels, I was getting frustrated, and I wasn't enjoying myself. And I was sad because I thought this is what we should be doing. And I feel like I hear what you're saying. It's very similar to these motivations, we have chosen to homeschool our children, and hopefully, our children have bought into the idea or they're still getting used to the idea. But if we can come alongside parents and help them figure out how to have the best experience possible, that's going to be successful, like you said, not only for the child but also for the parent.
Jimmie 16:24 Absolutely, it's a partnership. And you really nailed it. And as far as knowing yourself. If parents want to take this test, they can use the TruSpark Assessment, but we actually have a version that is for adults. And it's called M code. It stands for motivation code, so you can go to motivationcode.com. And as an adult, you can take the full test. So TruSpark is based on the test for the adult. But it's made in a more kid-friendly format. We also have a format of the test called True Motivate that is for upper high school or college-aged young adults. So each one is just specially crafted to meet the needs of people at these different age ranges. So you've got TruSpark, you've got TruMotivate, and you've got ENCODE. Now I know Janna, you just took Mcode. And I know you told me Oh, it's okay if I share this that one of your motivations is Finisher. And as a Finisher, you like to get things done, and you don't like to leave things hanging for too long. So a really long project is gonna kind of make you a little anxious. Let's write that out. Let's finish that up. Come on, let's get this done. Let's get this done. But maybe Finisher is really low in your child's motivation. They don't really care. Maybe for them, they're an Explorer. And they really like to constantly be learning something new and figuring out something new. They could care less about finishing. Is it wrong to not be motivated by finishing? Certainly not. There are no value judgments in any of the motivations. We're all unique. We're all different. Of course, in life, we all have to finish things in life, we all have to explore things as well, right? I mean, all of these motivations we want, we have to operate in them at some time. But how could you let go of your desire to finish? And instead, go with your child's desire to explore. It's kind of a rhetorical question, but you might actually have thoughts on that.
Janna 18:29 Well, I've experienced some of that having three daughters, and they're all very different personalities, which I love, and then sometimes don't enjoy 100% of the time. But I had just said to my youngest recently, that we had gotten through probably 32 weeks of school and I said are we just done with eighth grade? And she said, Yeah, I think so. And okay, realistically, she didn't have enough of the curriculum she had, she enjoyed it. I didn't have to know. I mean, I could have nagged her through these eight weeks of summer. But what fun would that have been? And, she's excited now and ready to start the next level? And I am appalled.
Jimmie 19:15 But she isn't. Is that because she didn't finish the curriculum is that what is the hang-up?
Janna 19:19 Yeah, like I will, why doesn't that bother you? She's like, no it doesn’t.
Jimmie 19:23 Yeah, she's not a Finisher, you know. In other words, that doesn't motivate her. She doesn't get a thrill from check. I did it all. It doesn't thriller, like it thrills you. So we have to be willing. I mean, we don't have to, we can fight. We can push our kids, but it's going to make them miserable. It's going to make them resentful. And really, it's going to make you feel like a terrible parent.
Janna 19:47 Yeah, yeah. One thing that I noticed too, when I took the test is that it was realized the vision. So I am not a visionary. I don't necessarily come up with these grand ideas. But if some of gives me the grand idea. Oh, now it's on, let me see how we can make this a reality. And a very simple example is my daughter wants a dress for a certain occasion, I am the mom who will go from 9am to 9pm. And travel 50 miles if necessary trying on 500 dresses until they find the right dress. And they're the ones that are like, it's fine, we don't even care anymore. And I'm like, we got to find it, we got to find it for you. And they, they were done like three hours ago. And they were like, please let us just go home.
Jimmie 20:38 That's another great example. So let's say your child is achieve isn't achieved the vision achieved religion or realize that realize, realize that, sorry, I forgot the word there. So realize the vision, but you're giving them a very open-ended assignment by coming up with a science project and the child feels paralyzed because they're not very good at just coming up with ideas out of the blue. But if you were to give them some structure, and say, Look, here are four ideas, make that come alive, they would just be excited, like, Oh, that's a great idea. I can totally imagine how we can do that, yes, let's go. And they can bring that vision to life. So don't ask kids to do things that, you know, aren't in their wheelhouse, you know, make it easier for them to cater to their strengths, cater to their motivation. So I think if you take the TruSpark test, you will get so many insights about your child that you did not have before. And you know, really hold on to your current concept of your child a little more loosely than you think. Right? We know our kids, but there's always more to be learned about our kids.
Janna 21:53 Well, and we know our kids through our lens, which I think is so interesting, I saw in a recent interaction between a mom and a daughter, and her mom was answering how she thought her daughter would answer. And her daughter stopped her and she was like, Why do you think that? And she's like, well, I know you and her daughter was like, huh, actually, that's not what I thought. And I was, you know, slightly embarrassed to be involved in the conversation, but at the same time, privileged to see an interaction that probably I've had with my own daughters, that we see our kids through our lens of them. And they have their own lens, especially as they start to become young adults, and independent. And maybe they're mimicking some of the motivations that we have. And they start to realize, okay, I do that, because that's our family culture, or that's how we've always done it. But that doesn't motivate me to have the freedom and to have a structure that comes alongside you and says, Okay, maybe it isn't that it's this, that I'm, you know, super excited about my girls graduating high school and start thinking about college and their careers, and to have a good clear understanding of what motivates them, versus what they think they should do, or what they think we think they should do, it can get so complicated. Even, you know, no matter what the age of your child is.
Jimmie 23:18 Yes, you know, what we at Motivations AI, all of us really love seeing people at whatever age or stage reaching their full potential, you can't reach your full potential if you are being formed in a mold that doesn't fit you. So we as parents need to identify what our children are really about what they really love, and what really motivates them, not shape them in our own image, but really allow them to develop into who they are designed to be. So TruSpark is just a tool to help you get another picture, a fuller picture of who your child is. And it's also at this middle school age, very eye-opening to the child because you know, kids at this age really start to want to fit in the peer group becomes very important to them. And again, developmentally appropriate, there's nothing wrong with that, that is a natural stage of development at this stage. In fact, sometimes their peers become overly important, right? They may make decisions based on what their peers say instead of maybe, you know, their own values or something like that. When they learn about their motivations, it can really click for them to see, oh, this is how I'm unique. This is how I'm special. This is how I'm gifted actually, this is my superpower, if you will, and they can lean into that it can also help kids become an advocate for themselves, right? If they know you know, I'm really not good at this, but I'm really good at this. Then they can go to the person in leadership and say, Hey, I know you want me to do this but couldn't I tweak it a little bit? Could I do it this way? Or could I do it like this? Because that makes me excited when I think about doing it this way, and it would still get done. Would that be okay with you? So they're becoming an advocate for the ways that motivate themselves and what a life skill, I mean, I'm still using that kind of life skill myself right now in my 50s, to take a task that I don't really want to do, but I can flip it, and I can make it somehow match with my motivations. So that I am more excited to actually do the job. So it's a great life skill. It's really special for kids at the middle school age, and even high school age when, when their identity finding out who they are coming up with labels. You know, I know a lot of times we laugh about our Gen Z children and how they have a label for everything. They label everything. They just love labels. Well, you know what, we've all had labels, we had labels, when we were teens they were just different and maybe a little more limited. But TruSpark is healthy, has positive labels that your kids can use, there are no negative motivations, again, they're value-free. They are all wonderful aspects of the diversity among humans, and all the skills and talents that we bring to the table.
Janna 26:25 And we are living in an age of innovation. We are talking to parents who chose to get out of the system and do it a different way. Is it no wonder that our children are, are at that place where they're encouraged to think outside the box, I do think it's sometimes it's kind of counterintuitive, where as a parent, we're thinking outside of the box, in areas where we feel safe. But when our children start thinking outside of the box in ways we haven't we feel threatened. And so I guess there's no shame that when you start to explore this, to know that you're going to be uncomfortable as a parent. I mean, this is why we're probably, I'm more uncomfortable as parents than we ever would care to admit. Although I did say to my daughter, that I've never been a parent of a 17-year-old. And she said, It's really showing. So, I mean, there's so many things that we just have to get comfortable in the uncomfortable. And I think this is one of those examples. Because, you know, you're gonna see that your children are motivated in different ways. And you're gonna go well that I don't understand why or why it shouldn't be that way. So to just embrace that, more than likely you're outside of the box thinker, and you're demonstrating to your child's being outside of the box thinker. Now, how can we capitalize on that? Instead of it creating tension, which I would say I have observed in a lot of homeschool homes and environments because there's just like, we don't want to do it the way the system tells us to. And then then we're raising kids who say we don't want to do it the way you're telling us to. And that can be a little tricky.
Jimmie 28:03 Right? Right. We trade one box for another box.
Janna 28:07 Yeah, yeah. And we do. I do think that because we're homeschool parents, we already feel this heavy burden of proof, to society, to whom and whoever that society is in your circle of life, but that we really should just shut that. We don't have to prove anything to anybody. And if we can stop looking outside, to what people think about what we're doing, and start looking and putting our energy and insight into how we can help our children succeed to the best of their ability, think we can really see a generation come out of this post COVID, Homeschooling with just amazing ways to do things differently.
Jimmie 28:44 Well, you know, I have an adult daughter now, and I will say looking at it from this side of the track. People say this, but I think it bears repeating. The most important thing is truly your relationship with your child. You don't want your child to be 24-25 living in another state never calls you. They don't want you to be part of their life. Because you were too rigid when you homeschooled them. It's so important that you keep those lines of communication open, that you give kids autonomy, you give kids freedom that you listen to them. And TruSpark is just another tool to help you listen to your kids. It opens an avenue of dialogue. Hey, you're an explorer. Wow, I didn't expect that. Do you think that you're an explorer and the kid is yeah, I am and will you explain that to me. Let's talk about that. How can we put more exploration in our homeschool? It just opens the line of communication and I think it's the kind of thing that you could revisit quarterly or every year and as your child grows, you know they could take TruSpark one year and in a couple of years happen to take Tru Motivate which is at a slightly higher level and revisit and see, do you see consistency over the years? Scientifically, this intellectual property does show consistency over the years that people will show the same motivations or at least themes of motivations.
Over the years, it's very consistent in life. Unlike things like strength, and finders test, did you know strengths actually are a reflection of what you're currently doing, you might be really strong in a certain task, but you don't really love it. You just can figure it out and do it. But it doesn't give you that zest for life. You don't wake up thinking, I can't wait to do that. Or when you're finished, you don't think yes, nailed it. You just don't have that feeling. It's kind of flat, but you can do it. And you can do it with excellence. Strengths are not the same as motivations. Strengths are another interesting thing that you can learn about your child. But strengths change over time. If you take a strength test in your 20s, and you compare it to a test in your 40s, you'll be surprised to see, Whoa, my strengths are totally different. And you'll realize, oh, yeah, it's because, at that phase of my life, I was doing those things I was having to act in those strings. And now at this phase in my life, I'm having to show these other strings. But underlying it all, consistently, will be your inner core motivations. Regardless of what I'm doing, I'm motivated to Achieve or Excel or Explore or Finish or Optimize or be a Visionary.
Janna 31:32 I think that's a really good point, because your student may really be showing or excelling in, let's say math, but it's not because they love math, it's something about the math, that the challenge, or whatever it is that that's actually the part that they're excited about. So sometimes when, when they hit those adolescent years, and their interests change, and the parents are like, wait, you used to love math and used to be so good at math, and, and they think that something might be wrong with the child, or, you know, I felt that way something must be wrong with me, I get so excited about certain things. And then once I do them, that passion 100% gone. I mean, three weeks ago, I would have, you know, given my life over to this cause or this thing, and, but once it's accomplished, I'm like, and now what, and they're like, the way you love that I'm like I did, and it's done and not, and I gotta find someone else to love. Like, I used to think that there was something wrong with my personality that I must not be I don't have longevity and things I don't know, my husband's had the same job for 24 years, I couldn't I don't understand how, like that just, I would die in so many things.
Jimmie 32:43 So you like to finish things. So it's really important for you to have an endpoint so that you can wrap it up. So you know, knowing that about yourself, it's important that you structure your work in ways that have clear endpoints where you can say, Done, check it off, finished product, this chunk is complete. And that gives you that sense of satisfaction.
Janna 33:03 Yeah. And how amazing would that be to know about my children? Right? So whether or not it's the finishing? Or they can they're the type that can create the vision, but then have no desire to actually do what the vision is?
Jimmie 33:20 Not Yeah. But a visionary often does have a desire to see it come to reality. They just love the big ideas. You're exactly right. But if you're not that person, it's hard for you to wrap your head around, isn't it?
Janna 33:33 Yeah, it is. But I can also see how it all works together in the community, which is really what it comes down to right? Like I've always said, You've got to staff to your weakness, right? So if you don't like it, there's a very simple example. But at dinner at night, I have one who doesn't like to be told when exactly she needs to do her task. So her task is always the one that doesn't matter. She can do that at any point up until she goes to bed, even though it drove me nuts. But for the other ones, I give them the tasks that they don't mind doing right away. So I know at least that part of the dishes are done. And it really has eliminated so much strife in our home. Because I'm like fine, whatever do it. It just has to be done at some point. And even so I still after all these years, I'll be like, hey, it's almost nine o'clock. I mean, my dishes still aren't done. And she's like, Oh, I know. They'll get done. And sure enough, I've never come down in the morning and the dishes weren't done. That is so contrary to my personality and my motivations, but allowing her the freedom to be able to do it the way that she wants to do it has eliminated, you know, just the arguments in our home.
Jimmie 34:43 That's a fantastic example. Yeah, it's such a subtle thing. Really, when you think about it, you know, let her do it three hours later, is it really that big of a deal? Not really in the scheme of things?
Janna 34:57 Yeah. You figure out the things that really matter and I know that just again having like older teenage children now if you would have told me this 10 years ago, it would have been like, Uh-uh, it's been done my way or the highway, right? And then, and then reality hits and you're like, Okay, I'm slightly afraid of her and
Jimmie 35:17 but it's not just fear, it's you love her. And you want to maintain that relationship just like you compromise with your spouse, right? Why wouldn't we compromise with our children, we compromise with our parents, we compromise with our siblings, we compromise with our boss and our co-workers, we can compromise with our children, there's nothing wrong with that doesn't mean you're not a good parent it's actually the opposite. It means you are a good parent. And I think modeling that compromising behavior is teaching our kids how to compromise and how to negotiate, advocate for themselves, but to let other people be who they are. It's okay to tell your kid you know, I personally don't like this. It's uncomfortable for me. But I love you. And I want to give you the freedom to do this. I just want you to know it kind of bugs me, it's good for your child to think through things through another lens. Oh, Mom doesn't really like that. But she's respecting my preferences. Okay. That's how you interact with people, you realize they're different from you, and you compromise and you negotiate.
Janna 36:18 And I would think that this type of parenting hasn't typically been modeled to our generation. And so it's just being willing to learn a new way, and knowing that the outcome is only for the best of everybody. Jimmie before we go, do you have a homeschool hack for our listeners?
Jimmie 36:35 I do. I was thinking back on the many mistakes I made as a homeschool parent. And here's my hack. Many of you are probably already doing this. But here's your hack. The field trip is the school day. You're done. There's no need to try to cram math in on top of the museum. Don't try to force the reading in after the picnic. Even if it's just a homeschool play date. That is your homeschool for the day. It is perfectly okay. When you add when you try to cram a field trip in with your other homeschool. It actually makes kids dread field trips because it's like they have to do double they have to do the field trip and they still have to do their schoolwork. So throw the bookwork out on field trips day field trip days. Calm down. It's okay.
Janna 37:27 Well, that is a great hack and something that I need to remember probably on a daily just the calm down part. Jimmie, I appreciate you coming on and talking to us and telling us about TruSpark. All of TruSpark’s information Motivation AI and MCode will be in the show notes you guys can click on those links and find out more and maybe you will just have a better homeschool year once you find out how to properly motivate your children. Thank you guys for being here. Until next time, bye bye