One habit that’s gotten away from me as a homeschooling mom is reading. We read all day in school. We read for our Charlotte Mason style curriculums. I read for work. But I have noticed that it’s getting harder to read for myself.
The other night I felt I had a little more in me and eagerly cracked open the book The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. It’s one I’ve been inching through lately, and really enjoy each time I get to flip through a few pages.
That night’s quick read hit me hard, though. It was all about the Red Queen Effect. As Sahil states:
The Red Queen Effect says that we must run just to stay in place and that we must run even faster if we ever hope to get ahead.
As a working and homeschooling mom, that definition felt like a gut punch.
The term comes from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. Remember the scene when Alice and the Red Queen start running in place? Here’s the excerpt from the story:
All she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying, “Faster! Faster”… The most curious part of the thing was, that the trees and the other tings around them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything.
Once they come up to rest, Alice leans against the tree.
Alice looked round her in great surprise. ‘Why, I do believe we’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!’
‘Of course it is,’ said the Queen, ‘what would you have it?’
‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you ran very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’
‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’
Feels relatable, doesn’t it? Running hard and never really getting anywhere?
Schools do a great job instilling the Red Queen Effect in our children. Rather than encouraging exploration, fostering excitement for something as simple as climbing trees, or taking the time to bake sourdough cookies with our kids, schools stuff their days with things that will build their resumes and offer a fake community through extracurricular activities.
Instead, what if we all slowed down?
What if mornings started to be slower? What if we cooked more? Baked more? Read more? Took more time for ourselves?
As we head into summer, I’m looking for things I can shave from our hectic days to stop running just to stay in the same place. To do that, I’m starting to analyze our days through the lens that Sahil offered to close out the chapter. It’s a theory provided by ancient Greeks about time.
Chronos time is what we often think of when we plan our days. It’s the sequential, quanitative time we see in the typical academic planner. While some of that is necessary (I have to know when to show up for jiujitsu and swim team after all), not all of it is.
Kairos is fluctuating, qualitative time. It gives more weight to certain parts of our day so that instead of rushing through life like a crazy red queen, we can focus our minutes and hours on the things and people that matter.
That Kairos is why I chose to homeschool.
And I’m exploring this more intentional approach to homeschooling as a parent alongside other homeschooling parents inside my new community, The Homeschool Flow.
If you want to link arms with other parents, be part of a homeschooling book club, and join a rink of FUN centered around Kairos instead of Chronos time management, I’d love to invite you inside.
Coming up, we’ll be reading books together, skating the homeschooling rink together, and I am working on scoring us some exclusive discounts! Unlike free Facebook groups, this community is intimate, intentional, and private.
Better yet, there’s no Red Queen effect pushing here!
You’re never in this alone. If you feel like you’ve been thrust into a world that’s constantly on-the-go, join The Homeschool Flow for that daily, intentional interaction that’ll keep you grounded with solidarity, sanity, and even some FUN for you as a mom (because this journey isn’t all about the kid’s education ;)).
As you’re closing out this year and planning for next year’s homeschool routine, there’s never been a better time to link arms with fellow parents on this beautiful journey.