Best of Christy Faith Homeschool Conversations with Dr. Amy & Sandy

About this Episode

Educator and homeschool mentor Christy Faith is brutally clear on what’s driving so many families to rethink education. On this mash-up of the best moments from previous conversations with Christy Faith on The Brainy Moms Podcast, Dr. Amy and Sandy talk with her about the gap between what modern kids need and what mass schooling often rewards, and why more parents are choosing homeschooling for school environment, mental health, and real learning instead of constant performance.

Christy walks through why the structure of compulsory schooling can stay archaic even as we learn more about the brain, motivation, and child development. We dig into teen stress and anxiety, how letter grades can turn learning into identity, and why bullying can become normalized trauma. Then we take on the socialization debate head-on by defining what healthy socialization actually looks like, why age mixing matters, and how peer orientation and attachment theory help explain what kids are really hungry for.

You’ll also get practical next steps: why “just tell me what curriculum to buy” is the wrong starting point, how deschooling creates breathing room, what to watch for with reading and math foundations, and how homeschool transcripts and college admissions work in real life. 

If you know parents on the fence about homeschooling, share this conversation with them. Then subscribe and leave a review so more families can find it. What’s the biggest pressure point in your child’s schooling right now?

About Christy Faith

With over 20 years of extensive experience in K-college academics and administration, Christy-Faith has worked in and instructed every level of education in a professional capacity. She achieved remarkable success by establishing and managing a private educational center and consulting firm, alongside her husband Scott. As their family expanded along with their center, Christy-Faith embarked on a personal exploration of homeschooling, an experience that profoundly transformed her perspective on educating children. Today, Christy-Faith spends her days advocating for homeschool on social media, advising moms within her flourishing membership community, Thrive Homeschool Community, hosting her podcast The Christy Faith Show, and writing. She’s the author of the book, “Homeschool Rising: Shattering Myths, Finding Courage, and Opting Out of the School System.”

Connect with Christy:
Website: https://christy-faith.com/
Instagram: @Christy_Faith_Homeschool
TikTok: @Christy_Faith
YouTube: @Christy-Faith
Twitter/X: @Christy_Faith_1
Facebook: @ChristyFaithHomeschool
Podcast: The Christy Faith Show – https://christy-faith.com/pages/podcast
Book: “Homeschool Rising: Shattering Myths, Finding Courage, and Opting Out of the School System” (on Amazon)
Click here to access the Free Homeschool Style Finder from Christy

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NOTE: This transcript was auto-generated by an AI assistant that thinks it’s smarter than we are. It’s not, but it has more free time than we do, so we gave it a low-stakes job. It probably spelled a few things wrong, but we’re okay with that. We’d rather spend our time interviewing cool guests!

Mash Up Welcome And Guest Intro
Dr. Amy Moore 0:00
Hi, smart moms and dads. Welcome to this mash-up episode of the Brainy Moms Podcast brought to you today by Learning RX Brain Training Centers. I’m Dr. Amy Moore, and I’m super excited to be able to share with you some of the best moments from our interviews with the amazing Christy Faith. So this is actually an encore presentation. We’ve interviewed Christy a couple of times over the last couple of years. And so we just chose some great moments from both of those interviews. Let me tell you a little bit about Christy in case you don’t know who she is yet. Christy is a social media powerhouse with 400,000 plus followers and millions of video views. She motivates countless moms to take the homeschooling leap, remains steadfast and revitalized in their purpose. With 20 plus years in education and homeschooling, she has advised countless kids and families, including high-profile clients. She is known as the teacher’s teacher. Her heart is to help parents build homeschools that their kids will thank them for later. She’s the host of the Christy Faith Show podcast and the author of the book Homeschool Rising. So I hope you enjoy these moments from these interviews over the last couple of years with the amazing Christy Faith. Here we go.

What Education Should Really Be
Christy Faith 1:24
I started to ask myself, what is an education? Is is this what we want for our kids? I started to ask myself, what should a childhood be? What should a childhood look like? What do we want? But I’ll also say that that was combined with kids at our center who were really struggling. So we were we were helping kids of the extremely wealthy. There was not anything they couldn’t pay for. Their kid needed reading intervention, they did it. Their kid needed a private football coach, they did it. So wouldn’t you think that outcomes would be better? I often relate it to dieting, right? We often say, well, if I could afford a private chef, I’d be skinny too, right? When we look at someone else and say who’s wealthy and maybe can afford the private chef. I think sometimes analogies outside of our space help us understand our space. And so this would be an example of people who could afford everything. Wouldn’t you think the kids would be happier? Wouldn’t you think the outcomes would be better? And the reality is they were not. We saw kids riddled with mental health struggle struggles. It is a pandemic right now in our society, teenagers with mental health, dangerous self-destructive behaviors, kids struggling with learning disabilities and not getting the help they need through accommodations, those poor kids having to come to us just to spend more hours on end working on stuff when all you want this kid to do is to go out and play and to work in their giftings and find out what is in their toolbox. So we just started to deconstruct. We really did. And when we asked ourselves those bigger questions, it led us to feeling like we we loved our center, we loved what we were doing, and we knew we were helping families, but we also started to feel like we were enabling a system that we no longer believed in. And that eventually led us to sell the company. So we now, that was in Los Angeles. We are now in Colorado. We have been here for six years. And um I we moved to Colorado, we sold our company, and I was a homeschool mom and loving my life. And one day I went on TikTok to see who else was on TikTok doing the homeschool thing. And I was extremely disappointed because it was a lot of moms complaining about homeschooling. And the other piece is it was a lot of moms playing defense. No, my kidding socialized, or no, we do get into college too. And I was thinking, wait a minute, our decision to homeschool was based on a lot of data. A lot of data, which you will find that data in my book. We don’t need to be defensive. And so I thought, well, TikTok is kind of a place where you can say whatever you want. Someone needs to play offense here. We homeschooling’s great. We need people saying how what an amazing opportunity it is. And that’s what I did. And I think it landed really well with that particular audience. And I’m thankful because uh I think it’s an important message to share with America.

The Origins Of Compulsory Schooling
Christy Faith 4:30
Well, mass education is failing our kids because it never was intended for their best interest in the first place. I debated whether or not to put the history of compulsory schooling in my book because it’s like snooze fest, you know, and I am a historian and I didn’t want to bore people, but I actually do think I tried to tell it in a more compelling living way through story. I tried my best. But the reality is that the massive compulsory schooling experiment that we are currently in in our country is new. It’s about 150 years old. Someone didn’t say, sit in a room and say, you know what? How thing, these, it’s not really working right now. We need to come up with something better. Let’s do mass schooling, government-sponsored. That’s not how it happened. It happened because governments needed more compliant citizens. And I know that might come off as a little abrasive to the audience, but it is actually the fact. It was in Prussia. They had lost the war. They were trying to figure out why they had lost the war. And the reason when they looked into it that they lost the war was because all of the soldiers were acting as individuals and they did not know how to obey commands, and they did not obey commands well, and they had a lot of self-governance. The government freaked out. We can’t have this. So they devised a compulsory schooling education. Now it was not for the elites. Keep in mind, the elites have always been privately educated. This was for middle class and lower. And that it and the government decided that all of the children in their country would go through this system to be, for lack of a better word, indoctrinated. And um, it worked. It worked so well that Nazi Germany took notice later on, adopted by them. Our intellectuals, educational intellectuals in the States were, they were visiting Europe, examining the success. And I’m going to use success in air quotes for those of you listening, the success of the system. And they thought, wow, we need this here. We need this here. And that is how it was a couple of progressives who pushed through compulsory education in America. And that’s how it started in Massachusetts. And then it kind of spread like wildfire from there. But the message behind that, no matter where you stand politically or not, it really doesn’t matter. The reality is, and that’s this is what I try to point out in my book, is that what you need to know is that compulsory state-sponsored education was never created for the best interest of a child. It was never created to better fit how their brain works, how boys and girls learn. None of that was taken into consideration. The research wasn’t even done on that. We know a lot more now. And that’s why it exists. What I’m hearing you say is as we’ve learned more about the brain, as we’ve learned more about how children learn and the ways to kind of diversify our instructional methods and diversify the ways that we allow kids to show what they know and what they’ve learned. We’re still doing that within the confines of this archaic system. So no one is actually pushing the boundaries in mass education on that system. They’re just trying to work within something that has been in existence since the beginning of time. Right. That’s almost unbelievable. It’s and I will add, it has not changed. We are living in an archaic system that we think is preparing our kids for the real world, but the world that this system is preparing our kids for does not even exist. Think about it for a second. Think about what jobs our kids will have in 10 years. We can’t even fathom based on what’s happening with AI and all of that. What actually will prepare our kids for this fast, demanding, changing world? It is not rote memorization of the water cycle and the periodic table. Do those things have their place? Yes, they do. But we already know from research that it is other skills, a lot of soft skills, that better prepare our kids for real life. And I think that’s why we’re seeing the statistics roll in on how well homeschoolers are doing in their adult lives. If you’re curious about any statistics, you can, of course, check out my book. But also, Neri is a great website to go to because they are our major think tank right now that does a lot of the research on how homeschoolers are doing. And we need kids who adapt really well, who are self-starters. It’s more important to know, and I know you guys have probably said this on your podcast a million times. It’s more important to know how to learn something new rather than a static piece of fax that you then regurgitate and get an A on a test. So what our schools are doing is so outdated and archaic. It’s it’s kind of unfathomable that American families are duped into thinking that this is preparing our kids for their futures. It’s it’s mind-boggling to me.

Why Parents Are Choosing Homeschool
Sandy Zamalis 10:04
Yeah. So we have we’ve all homeschooled here um on the podcast today at some point. And I think everybody enters it differently. You know, I started from the get-go. So my kids were in preschool. I could see my son was ready to read, and they were just learning colors in preschool. And I was like, well, that’s lame. Uh, we’ll learn to read. And it just kind of went from there. Um, and I know my my driving desire was always, I wanted my kids to love learning. That’s what I wanted. Um, and I would say from personal experience that school took that away from me. I kind of regained my love of learning and homeschooling my kids. You work with parents uh for lots of different reasons who are entering this homeschool journey. What are some different things that parents are looking at when they’re bringing their kids home? Um, is it things like yours of, you know, I want, I want to re-engage learning? Is it, you know, special needs issues? Is it um, you know, bullying? What kinds of things are you hearing about why people are bringing their kids home?

Christy Faith 11:05
The data is showing us that the number one reason why parents are choosing to homeschool in America right now is school environment. And so that does encompass safety and encompasses bullying. What’s funny is I think that we have a stereotype that it’s religious. Um, and those are vestiges that we need to own from the 1990s. You know, homeschooling actually started by hippies like Peter Gray in the 1960s. It did not start as a massively Christian fundamentalist-ish movement. Um, but I will say that in the 80s and 90s, as homeschooling was becoming legal in all 50 states, a large, that’s when Christian conservative families were starting to be very dissatisfied with what their kids were learning in the schools and pulling their kids out. So we have that stereotype for a reason. But one thing we need to acknowledge is that is not the case anymore. The statistics regarding the amount of secular families who are now homeschooling is astronomical. Black families are increasing tremendously, Spanish-speaking families. So many women in my Thrive Homeschool community have found a safe haven because we are non-sectarian. We have Muslims, we have people of the Jewish faith. And yes, of course, we have Christians too, and we have people that are agnostic and atheist. But we are a place where they can find a haven because there is so much we do have in common, because we all want the best for our children. And to answer your question, what are mamas looking at and what are they needing? Well, here’s the thing. And I’m sure you guys have realized this along the way, especially with the brain training. What people think they want right off the bat often isn’t actually what they need. Have you guys discovered? Yeah, I’m sure you have, especially when it comes to brain training stuff. I just want my kid to memorize their math facts. And then you say, well, this is how we can help a lot more than that and the math facts. And then it’s like, wait a minute, I just want them to know their math facts. Homeschooling is a lot like that too. Christy, just tell me what curriculum to buy. To which I often answer, well, let’s take my my five-minute homeschool style finder, which is free, by the way. You can just go to my website and take it. Let’s find out what you want for your kids. What are your dreams? And yes, I can help you with curriculum choices, but there are so many out there, so many curriculum choices. How do you narrow it down? So um that’s something that we do in my community is I have a process for curriculum selection on how to narrow stuff down to dream for your kids what you want. We also have a lot of um, uh, I have a lot, I’m passionate about helping kids to have special needs. So it’s very important to me that we catch things early. So I have through my processes and my I have an eight-step homeschool success framework in there. We are constantly

Curriculum Choices And Early Red Flags
Christy Faith 13:52
assessing. Here’s the thing. I’m gonna be a little bit controversial here. So um uh something I disagree with is don’t worry, your kid will read when he’s ready or she’s ready. And uh the other thing that I disagree with is there is no behind. I actually do think there is a behind. I think that um there is a there is a certain age and developmental level where if your child is not reading, um, it’s an emergency. And uh and so I think there is damaging, not only damaging advice in the homeschool space, but I also think there is some damaging curriculum that I have looked at. So uh I think that it’s important that we have uh educated people in the space who have voices who can help women catch what they need to catch. Now, I’m not saying this stuff would be catched in the system. Half the time it’s not catched there either. So, but I am passionate about making sure that we are setting our kids up for a successful life. And I think there are there are some things I don’t care so much about. When it comes to math skills, literacy skills, comprehension skills, it is a hill I will die on till the day I die. One thing I made sure to say in the very first chapter of my book is that not everyone can homeschool. Not everyone should homeschool, also. And I think that’s important to say because there are children in our country where the safest place they could be is in the public schools because of their home environment. Um, at the same time, I also believe that there is no better place to educate a child than in a loving home with a motivated parent. I have so many mamas in my Thrive Homeschool community that are not homeschooling every single one of their kids. Some are placed in different places and they’re homeschooling one because that child just doesn’t fit in the box and they can’t find a place where he or she can fit. So homeschooling it is, and I think that’s fabulous, absolutely fabulous.

College Paths And Transcript Myths
Christy Faith 15:57
So homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, and then we have low, medium, and high regulation states. There are unschoolers in every state because even when you unschool, there are ways you can prove to the state what your child has learned. Um so, and there are Facebook groups and things like that that help you figure all of that out. I do know families that have move states to have a little bit more freedom to homeschool in the way that they want. But one question I get all the time, all the time, it’s such a huge misconception is but you need an accredited transcript. How on earth are you gonna get into college? And the truth is, is that it’s actually discrimination to discriminate against homeschools in our country. And I want the mamas to hear that here because they cannot invalidate our private schools in our home simply because we did not file to become some institutionalized school. And that is something that HSLZA has fought for, and I think it’s valid. But what I love about that particular piece is that homeschoolers actually perform better in college. Homeschoolers finish college at a higher rate, meaning they don’t drop out. They drop out at lower rates. Um, I have a cousin who is a college professor, and every time I see him, I think he, I hope he’s not listening because he forgets he shares the story every time I see him, but I let him tell the story every time because I love hearing it. And this is the story. He says on the first day of class, he can spot every single homeschooler in his class. He’s a college professor and he shares it’s because they are engaged, they are sitting in the front, they are raising their hands, they are engaged learners. And so it’s so funny because people say, and I do want to get into socialization, but your kid won’t fit in, your kid’s the weirdo. To which I say, yeah, probably, because we want, if if we’re going to homeschool and we want our kids to love learning and to value that type of intellectual life and that growth mindset, they are going to look and present a lot differently than the average public school kid in America, because what school does to the average public and private school kid in America is disengages their learning, demotivates them. I remember I love reading now, but when reading was assigned to me in school, it was just a job. It was a tick, I had to just tick it off the box. I wasn’t engaging, flourishing, discussing with my family and my friends what I was reading. It was a job where we have an opportunity to reclaim that. So, does that mean our kids might present differently in the neighborhood? Yeah, it absolutely does. And it’s a difference that I gladly embrace. And going back to the high school piece, uh, it’s so fun to coach mamas through doing the high school transcripts. There are so many resources now, even free. If you go to hslda.org, there’s templates to build your high school transcript. And your teen can pursue what he or she wants, and you can turn it into credits and classes that actually make them stand out on a transcript. And yes, do you still have to fulfill all the requirements for the schools that you want to go to for college? Of course you do. But what I love is how different homeschool transcripts look because our kids look really unique because their learning experience is extremely unique.

Sandy Zamalis 19:36
And I think that’s great. Um, one of the statistics that you share in your book is that teenagers are the most stressed, anxious people in America, with 83% citing school as a cause. What specific things are causing this anxiety that you’re hearing from parents?

School Stress Grades And Bullying
Christy Faith 19:54
Well, there’s a lot. The fact that they were citing school was fascinating to me because I would have automatically think, social media, it’s because they’re on social media. But I think what we have done in our country with the giving of letter grades is we have taken away the love of learning and replaced it with achievement and defining success by a letter grade. And at least if I know a lot of people, kids were like I was, where I thought if I got a B, my entire life was over because I didn’t have the emotional maturity or the cognitive development to be able, or um, and I kept a lot of that private uh from my parents as well. So I dealt with a lot of those pressures completely alone. And I think that that when we can reclaim and redefine what an education is, that’s the first piece. But the second piece is more of the nut. And that is to be confident in it. Because a lot of moms, they know that the school is not working, they know their kid is thriving, not thriving, they’re seeing their light grow dim, but they have no idea if they were to homeschool what it would look like. Am I equipped? I’d probably mess this up anyway. They don’t see a vision for what it could be and what it could provide their child. So they keep their kid in the system, knowing that it’s really not the best place for them and that they are drowning. So I think that it’s a it’s a major problem. Just the grades alone comparison with others is just terrible. Bullying is quite frankly, I believe that we have normalized childhood trauma with what is allowed in our schools with bullying. It’s one of my favorite books I’ve read. I love Kim John Payne’s Simplicity Parenting. And in that book, he talks. Talks about how he did research overseas in war-torn countries and was studying children with PTSD. He came back to the States and was seeing the same things in children in America. He was seeing PTSD symptoms and wondering why is this? These are middle class kids. They are not wondering if they’re gonna get a meal. They’re not wondering if their dad walked off today and will be killed in a skirmish. This is what he was studying overseas. But these kids were displaying the same PTSD symptoms. And what he discovered in his research is it’s like the death by a thousand cuts, where constant trauma creates trauma. And then our kids are growing up where they are traumatized. Not every kid, you guys, not every kid. Some kids thrive in school, but a lot of kids grow up every day, they spend their entire school day in fight or flight. That is trauma. That is not healthy, that is not how a child should be growing up. And we in culture in our society today, we accept it as normal because partially because there isn’t really anything we can do about it, and even administrators’ hands are tied, they don’t want it, and there’s all these initiatives against bullying. But the fact is they’re on the back of the bus, there’s one bus driver driving, he cannot monitor the kids, and the classrooms are just the sizes are too big, and there’s a lot of reasons why bullying is is rampant.

Rethinking Socialization And Age Mixing
Christy Faith 23:36
But basically, the argument that I make in my book is rethink socialization, rethink what socialization is. I give 13 characteristics of a healthy socialized child based on research in my book. And what I found fascinating about that is not a single one of those 13 items requires a school environment. Right. Not a single one of them. And I think it’s time that parents stand up. When we hear the word homeschooling, a lot of people automatically think socialization question mark. So talk a little bit about um why we don’t need to be so worried. Well, we don’t need to be so worried because homeschoolers are probably the most healthy socialized of any population in our country. 87% of peer-reviewed studies show that homeschoolers are healthier, happier, both socially, emotionally, and psychologically. So the question really is why do we have this? I think there’s a lot of reasons. I think history. Back when homeschooling started, there were not nationwide co-ops and all of these things. So I do think families were somewhat more isolated than they are now. Do I think that was okay? I maybe I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem. I think they figured it out just fine. But the resources were not as available as they are today, with uh us able to be a part of almost too many options, honestly, of the groups that we can be a part of. But so I think there’s reasons why we have that stereotype. But also I think the most important thing to recognize and acknowledge is that the reason why people don’t think homeschoolers are socialized is because homeschoolers generally do present a little bit differently. Are their academic experience is entirely different than any conventionally schooled kid and their social life is completely different than conventionally schooled kids. Homeschoolers are not age segregated. We could do an entire episode just on the travesty of age segregation and how much kids miss out because there isn’t age mixing and learning. I think that is so important. It’s something that there isn’t even enough research in the homeschool culture. I think one of the reasons why we are so successful is because of that. My children can actively engage a and have, and people have commented about them regarding this, actively engage in a conversation with a grandmother at a birthday party, the child, the child’s peers, and then go and then play with a baby that’s on a blanket at the same birthday party. Don’t do age segregated learning. When our kids are invited to a birthday party, the whole family is invited. That’s just how we work. It’s kind of our culture. But our kids are not reading the same books. My kids are learning Latin. Kids in in conventional schools, unless you’re in a classical school, they’re not learning Latin. Another person might think that’s weird. And so I think that there are reasons why that is a concern for people. But when you actually ask yourself what healthy socialization is, and I go into this in my book in chapter seven, I actually think if socialization is something that you’re really hung up on, or maybe some family members are hung up on, buy my book and just read chapter seven. Because what I do in there is not anything anyone else has done. Everyone is always playing defense with socialization and trying to argue that their kids are really just like your kids too. And my argument is no, they’re not. This is why, and this is why it’s better not to be. And I go into the difference between fitting in versus belonging, a lot of Brene Brown’s research with that. And then also I go into Gabor Mate and Gore Neufeld’s research in that is documented in their fabulous book, Hold On to Your Kids, regarding peer orientation. And they actually call it a disorder, peer orientation disorder. And we generally, as a homeschool culture, just because of the way we’re raising our kids, we avoid by accident those two things, the fitting in versus belonging and the peer orientation. And it’s exciting now that there is data to back up where areas where we’ve already seen success to kind of explain why we’re seeing that success, why 87% of studies are showing that homeschooled kids are happier socially. So I find that extremely fascinating.

Dr. Amy Moore 28:13
Can you explain for our listeners? Can you just define for our listeners what peer orientation means?

Peer Orientation Through Attachment Theory
Christy Faith 28:18
Yeah. Peer orientation, as defined by uh Mate and Neufeld, is based on attachment, attachment theory. That children need attachment to a safe person in their life really through the teen years. Often people think at around 12, oh, their kid doesn’t need to be raised anymore. Studies actually show that our kids need that orientation to a safe, loving center, a compass well through the teen years. What has happened in our culture in this fight for we want our kids independent, we want this, we want that. That it’s not that they’re detaching from their parents because the innate need is attachment. They are reattaching to an unhealthy group for their center and their unconditional love, and they’re turning to peers for that, which is an extremely unsafe group because they are not grown up themselves. It’s kind of like think this is a very raw example, but it will help the audience. It’s sort of like Lord of the Flies. And I know that’s fiction, but that’s kind of where they’re going with a very rudimentary explanation. But if that piques your interest, definitely buy that book. It’s called Hold On to Your Kids. Very well researched. And this is what they argue that we need to reclaim our kids if we want them healthy, emotionally healthy. And they coach parents on how to do that. What I love about that book, my favorite part, is they only mention homeschooling, I believe, once and not in a positive light. So I love it when non-homeschooling books argue for homeschooling. I just think it’s fabulous. That’s awesome. Thank you for having me today. I love you, ladies. I love this podcast. I love learning RX. I recommend learning RX to almost every mom in Thrive. We have an office hours in there every month just for moms of kids who struggle, don’t fit in the box, they can’t figure out how their kids’ brains are working. And uh learning RX is just one of my go-tos. I love you guys. We love you. It’s a great partnership, huh? It is. Yeah, it’s a blessing.

Signs Homeschool May Be A Better Fit
Sandy Zamalis 30:27
Well, this is your second podcast with us, actually. So um, I’m we’re excited to have you back because um we are just super committed to nurturing and educating and helping homeschool families, especially on this podcast. So let’s talk to us a mom who is kind of on the fence. Her kids are in school right now, but their kids are struggling. What are some key indicators for that you think would be helpful for the mom to consider when she’s thinking about whether homeschooling is the better fit when they’re looking at their their kids’ education?

Christy Faith 31:05
Yeah, I mean, I think that their I think their emotional well-being is actually first and foremost because academic learning, it can happen at all different ages stages. You know, we know learning is asynchronous anyway. But I would really look at emotionally because um, for example, I have a sister with profound, profound learning disabilities, uh, and still to this day she struggles with life. But one thing that um that always sticks with me, and I try to remember this as my why, is the school system that she was in, and my parents didn’t know any better. This was the 80s, and my mom was a working mom, my dad worked, right? They were just trying to advocate for her in the system. Um, and they just beat their head against the wall. But sadly, and we talk about this now, and my mom is like, man, I wish I knew about homeschooling. Um, is the shame, the shame that children carry when they are labeled. Because what you have to remember is the school system is built for one type of learning, one type of learner, and one type of learner is rewarded. And some are lucky enough to play the game and be able to do it. And then there’s the rest of them. There’s the rest of us. And so, and then what happens is when we don’t fit in that box and we can’t be successful and praised for jumping through those hoops or doing those things or memorizing those facts. I really like kids to discover how am I smart and I want them to know how they are smart. Now, it doesn’t mean not building up those other areas. Um, I don’t believe in actually catering to learning styles, like, oh, my kid’s a visual learner, so I have to make every ding-dong lesson visual. Like that’s well, that’s a neuromyth anyway. In the absence of an injury, we’re all capable of learning all of those ways. We just have preferences. Yes, exactly. And so that’s a homeschool mom’s nightmare because I’m not gonna stay up till 2 a.m. cutting out stars for my tactile learner. That’s not gonna happen, you know. But and that’s why I love the brain training because it it uh that you guys do, because it builds up all the areas, all the areas, right? Because we want to strengthen the areas that we are not weak in just to, you know, to be a high functioning individual. So, but yeah, in terms of um how your kid is doing, you know, socially, emotionally. Um interestingly, the number one reason why parents homeschool in America is school environment. So number two is academics, and then number three is faith. You could be in a school, totally, where the environment’s fine. The environment’s fine, or that year you had a great class and a great teacher, and there’s no problems, and my kids are doing fine, we’re all doing fine. That’s totally great. Um, the people who end up homeschooling are people not in that situation where it’s just a constant struggle. And I’m I’m big about uh it’s really important to me. I think shame is so sinister, it’s so damaging to us that that is something that I really like to avoid when I see it, call it out, when I feel it, I make sure to tell my kids when I’m feeling shame. I want that to be a word in my house because, and sadly, kids with disability or diagnosed disabilities, learning disabilities in our society. They are labeled that and it, they’re separated, they’re sorted. Studies show that expectations for them are lowered, which is so sad. So teachers don’t expect much of them anymore. And that really um starts to communicate to a child who they are. And that that bothers me when we go into that territory. To answer your question, Sandy, I think it’s more about how they’re doing emotionally, right? Um as a primary indicator. Because if they’re not doing well academically, they’re also not going to be doing well emotionally. So and vice versa, right? So I mean, uh, you know, our youngest, um, you know, when we pulled him out of school, and of course we went through the well now what uh question. I mean, I literally called the school and said, I’m just enrolling him. He’s homeschooling now. But I didn’t know what the plan was going to be. I was laughing internally when you said that your d your choice to homeschool was very well thought out. And mine was totally on the fly picking the phone. I’m homeschooling my kid. And it was the second time I had done it because I did it with my oldest at the end of seventh grade when the school had failed him. Uh did not implement his 504 plan and IEP accurately, fell through the cracks. And I literally stood in the principal’s office and said, We’re done here. And we got in the car with our kid and looked at each other and went, Now what? And so um anyway, so but that was what my husband and I said both times. We have three kids, um, and so this was youngest and oldest. Both times was um our our kids’ uh emotional and mental health is more important to us right now than anything academic. Um anything. And so that was what was the deciding factor for us in saying, okay, we we need to do something differently than what we’re doing now. And so, and even just to lower the temperature on that initial conversation that we had about, you know, trauma, right? Like where people are like, well, my kid’s not experiencing trauma, so I’m not gonna worry about that right now, the brain actually responds the same way to trauma as it does to chronic stress. Right. So that fighter freeze kicks in with chronic stress, just like it does with acute trauma. And so when we think about struggling kids, they don’t even have to be diagnosed with a disability. Yeah. If there’s a struggle, that is stress that our brain will say is danger. But yeah, absolutely. Long, you know, stress over the long term, cortisol levels, and and there is that level. So what we’re what we’re not doing with homeschooling is we’re not sheltering our kids. Um, I don’t know any homeschool mom who’s wanting to coddle her child. In fact, I believe that we’re creating a healthier, more nurturing environment so that when they go into that big, hard, ugly, mean world, they’ll have better tools and they won’t walk into that world completely wounded without skills to manage it.

Sponsor Story Learning RX Results
Sandy Zamalis 37:51
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Deschooling And Building A New Rhythm
Christy Faith 39:12
So it’s just really neat. And and I think a lot of our conversation today, interestingly, is we’ve been like de schooling. And if you don’t know that term, it’s an important term to know when you begin homeschooling. And it’s one of the first things that I ask moms to do, and it’s a choice, de schooling. And it’s basically just deprogramming yourself on what an education looks like, even what success is, uh, I think is a really important thing to um to reconsider. And then um, and then kind of backtrack, take a breather, right? Let your kid de-school, you de school, and then you really just start thinking about what you do want and then build the life and the education that you do want for your kids. And um, you know, it’s interesting at when I go to conferences, uh, there’s this one talk that I give on how do I give my kids everything they need without overwhelming them or you, right? All the moms show up to that because every mom wants to give her kid what that kid needs, but they also don’t want to be overwhelmed. So um, but what I do in the first 30 minutes of that talk is I de school the mom. I actually talk about let’s look at the research and let’s look at what your child actually does need. Because they don’t actually need to memorize the periodic table per se. Do they need memorization skills? Absolutely, those are great skills to have. Do they need, right? And so I spend the first 30 minutes de-schooling and I see it in her shoulders, like just okay. Because I say if your child has excellent reading skills and reading comprehension skills and great math computation skills, they can do anything. They can really do anything. And that gives you so much freedom to have fun with your homeschooling. And that actually really, then you’re you have the freedom to actually explore what their hobbies and interests are and lean into those. Our high schoolers today in schools are so busy. They’re busy morning to night. And it’s so sad. Like, where’s the time to breathe and figure out what they like and love? Or, you know, and I was even one of those. So I was a very good athlete and I was tall. So, what did my parents do? They put me in basketball. I hated basketball. I hated basketball. I couldn’t wait for high school to be over, but I did it because I believed and I was never able to voice this to my parents. And so this is why I’m parenting differently now. I was never able to voice to my parents that, you know, just because I’m really good at something, it doesn’t mean that I love it. And can we find something else that I love? I didn’t get that till college. So, anyway, I think that homeschooling is a really great opportunity. And um, I think deschooling is so important to do when you are homeschooling. Because the last thing I want you to do, mama, if you’re considering this, is to pull your kid on a Friday, spend thousands of dollars on a homeschool curriculum, and then start it on Monday. Because what you’re actually doing is you’re just recreating that same system at home. So I want you to have breathing room. And that’s gonna freak you out. I know, I know it will, but I really want you to give yourself time. And if that means, you know, for the a for a couple of weeks or months, you just make sure your kid is reading, make sure they’re doing some math every day while you’re figuring out what you want for your child and your family. I want to give you that permission. This is a long game. They’re not gonna miss out from anything because they took a little break. In fact, even with brain training, so I’ve been familiar with you guys for years. We used to recommend you guys back at our center. Um, and I loved it when families were willing to even pull their children out for intervention out of school. To me, that was like, you get it, you get it, right? It’s like it’s really hard to heal when the wound is constantly being opened.

Speaker 3 43:08
Yeah.

Dr. Amy Moore 43:08
Yeah.

Free Tools And Finding Christy Faith
Dr. Amy Moore 43:09
And so that’s kind of what the homeschooling opportunity is. So, Christy, how can our listeners find more from you, get involved with you, take advantage of your resources? What does all that look like?

Christy Faith 43:21
Well, I don’t really, so I don’t want this to, I don’t want anyone to be like, well, here’s the catch at all. So do I offer no catch. This is just a if our listeners want more from you. Yeah, so like don’t you you don’t need to buy my stuff. Okay. But what what I would like you to do if you’re considering homeschooling is do take that free five minute homeschool file style finder. And then I also have a 27 page free ebook on how to homeschool. Because your first question is how do I make sure this is legal, right? So that’s a really great free download, too. Do I offer you all the support that you need later on? I do, but I don’t even want to talk about. About that, because the mom listening right now is just overwhelmed. She’s not feeling qualified. She’s seeing her kids’ light grow dim and doesn’t know what to do. And I just want you to know the first step that one, this is a possibility, maybe for you. This could be really, and I want you to hear me, mama, dad. This could be the rescue plan you’ve been looking for for years. And it’s not as hard as you think it is. Where I’m not teaching AP calculus, okay? Um, I’m teaching what I want to teach, I’m sourcing the stuff that I don’t. My kids are, you know, my youngest right now is nine. I can honestly tell you the homeschool days run by themselves because I’ve set it up to be that way. And they come to me for help because they’ve I’ve created an environment of independent learners. That’s what I wanted. So it is not you slaving from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in front of a whiteboard teaching everything you don’t know how to teach. That is not what we’re doing over here at all. And it really could be an amazing rescue plan for your family. And that’s really just what I want you to hear. Don’t buy anything from me. Just um, and maybe, and I know this is a podcast, but uh, it would be great to tune into my podcast. We’re not competitive podcasts at all. In fact, we’re very complimentary. But my podcast goes into like, okay, here are big ideas. How do we implement them practically? So maybe tuning in to and start listening to my podcast would be helpful. I I make it a point on my podcast to tackle really common problems we find in homeschooling. And then, okay, how can we, how can we tackle this? And ultimately to create a beautiful life and childhood for our kids. I want my kids to be in their 40s or 50s and look back on their childhood and say, that was really rich. My parents were awesome, right? Right. I could right. I want them to say that. I don’t know if they will, but I want to say, like, yeah, my I’m so glad my parents homeschooled me. They really helped me figure out what I wanted to do. They helped me learn well. I love learning now because of what my parents set up. That’s ultimately what I want for my kids and for all of your kids too. Because we, like I said earlier in the podcast, and this is maybe a great place to end, is we were born wanting to learn. We were born curious beings. And that gets lost, it gets killed with schooling. And we can get that back. Even stuff that’s hard, hard doesn’t mean bad. And that’s kind of where we want our kids to be with their learning. It’s not that I’m not challenging my kids. I am. My son was very challenged with cultural geography. Um, but he’s also loving that class. And to me, that’s the win. That’s the huge win. So um, yeah, I just want you guys to be encouraged, know that there’s support out there. And uh, and I it was just an honor to be invited on today’s show. I’m so excited about what you’re doing. And I will say that my daughter in January is starting a full Learning Rx brain training program. So when people say, Christy, what do you use? I, you know, I use Learning Rx um, and I’m really excited about her intervention starting. And uh, and what’s cool about it is we’re gonna like slow our role a little bit on her actual academics so that I give her brain the space to grow how it needs to grow. And I wouldn’t be able to do that if she was in a school. So I love that. Super excited about the new year for her and for you guys. This is just a love fest.

Dr. Amy Moore 47:46
All right, Christy, so we can find you on Instagram at Christy underscore faith underscorescore homeschool. I think I think if you just put Christy dash faith in any search bar, it’ll come up like homeschool or on TikTok. I’m just Christy Faith. But my website where you can get all those free things that I just mentioned is Christy Faith.com. If you forget the dash, it’ll still go to the website. But I have more um free resources than what I mentioned. So I kind of have free resources for every stage of homeschooling that you’re in. So just poke around there, email me. We answer every email. And uh if this is something that you’re really considering, and and we’ll help you with the steps. All right. And your book is Homeschool Rising, yes, um, which is available on Amazon. Um, right? And we’ll put links to all of this, uh, listeners, in our show notes as well. So you won’t miss any of the good stuff uh that we uh that we think is so amazing that Christy’s being so modest about. So, Christy, thank you so much for being with us today. I just love hearing all of your wise uh advice uh for moms and dads who are considering this. Um, you just bring so much energy um to our show, to your show. And so thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to bless our listeners with this conversation today.

Where To Follow And Final Goodbye
Dr. Amy Moore 49:11
Listeners, thank you so much for being with us. If you want more from us, you can find us on social media at the Brainy Moms. You can find us on our website at theBrainyMoms.com. You can find Sandy on TikTok at the Brain Trainer Lady if you want to see some cool uh brain training exercises and information about uh brain struggles. Um, she’s over there all the time doing really cool stuff that the rest of us are too embarrassed to do on TikTok. Um, thanks so much for listening today. We hope you feel a little bit smarter after spending this hour with us. We’ll catch you next time.