Meg lives in South Carolina, and has been homeschooling for 12.5 years. Her oldest graduated this year. Her younger two will be in 10th and 5th grade in the fall. A breast cancer diagnosis in 2022, at 37 years old, imploded not only her life, but her family’s as well. Now she shares what that experience was like, and what she’s learned along the way.

Podcast webpage

A Homeschooling Journey

Show Chapters

01:23 Introduction
02:54 Homeschooling in South Carolina
05:01 The Path to Homeschooling
07:46 Before the Diagnosis
12:39 The Cancer Diagnosis
14:53 Adapting Homeschool During Treatment
20:22 Life After Treatment
23:46 Homeschooling Now
34:08 Advice for Families in Hard Seasons
46:45 Breast Cancer Awareness and Self-Care

Table of Contents

Transcript

Della (01:23)
This week we’re meeting Meg. Meg lives in South Carolina and has been homeschooling for about 12 and a half years. Her oldest graduated this year. Her younger two will be in 10th and 5th grade in the fall. A breast cancer diagnosis in 2022 at 37 years old imploded not only her life, but her families as well.

She shares what her experience was like and what she learned along the way.

Della (01:52)
This is a homeschool journey.

Della (02:54)
Hi Megan, welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. It’s really good to talk to you.

Meg Nichols (02:56)
Hi, Della. Glad to be here.

You too, always.

Della (03:00)
I’ve been starting the interviews with where you’re from and what the requirements are for your state.

Meg Nichols (03:06)
I, live in South Carolina. I’ve lived here my whole life and there are three options for homeschooling legally here option and they’re cleverly named option one, two and three. I feel like the most common one for homeschoolers in our state is option three. And it’s the one I know the most about about the other two They’re connected with public schools in different ways and there’s testing required for some of those. But with option three, you sign up under a homeschool association and there’s multiple in the state.

and they are your legal backing and you submit forms to them midway through the year and at the end of the year stating that you have done the amount of days of school you’ve taught. It’s 180 days we have to do

you keep a plan book either weekly or monthly for your own records, but we never have to turn any of that in unless it’s asked for and I have never been asked in all the years we’ve done it. then your homeschool association and that’s about it. So it’s pretty, pretty simple as far as that goes.

Della (03:58)
me see if I can have this right. So you’re simply sending in a form that say we hit all core subjects and we schooled 180 days, but that’s the basis. There’s like portfolio or standardized testing, That’s interesting.

Meg Nichols (04:01)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Exactly. And no,

no, no testing, no portfolio. we’ve only been with two different homeschooling associations in the state. One of them was Carolina homeschooler when we started and for anyone in South Carolina who may listen to this, it’s a fantastic resource. Even if you don’t use them, she has loads of frequently asked questions on there and she breaks down the options. So it helped me a

And we only switched from them when I had a high school aged student because he was wanting to do college. I wanted an association that would be more helpful with all of that. And that’s why we switched to Palmetto Homeschool Association because they do more, help you with transcripts and all that. And Carolina Homeschooler didn’t. But anyway, with both of those, the process has been at 90 days.

halfway through the year, you submit a form. And then at the end of the school year, you submit a form.

Della (04:58)
it’s nice that the associations help you with different things.

how did you guys find yourself homeschooling what did that path look like

Meg Nichols (05:05)
Well, it started with our oldest. We weren’t planning on homeschooling from the beginning. We’re both giant nerds and I always wanted to be a teacher. I had some experience with homeschooling myself in seventh and eighth grade. it was something I was relatively familiar with, but wasn’t in the plan from the beginning. when he started, typical got sick a lot, but for us it was a little excessive because when he got sick,

It got my husband also very badly sick. My oldest had strep multiple times and then my husband ended up with pneumonia multiple times. They think from the germs that he was bringing home and to the point where my husband was being watched, monitored for lung cancer. We had to wait six months to find out if he had lung cancer because it was so highly unusual that he was getting pneumonia back to back. that was very stressful. There were things happening in the classroom.

that weren’t ideal, again, not deal breakers, but not the best things that I wanted or that we would have wanted. then Mike got a job where he worked from home. we were able to have more freedom. if we had wanted to travel, we could travel more and do that, but we were very locked in with the public school schedule. And then with stress that my oldest was under with the way they were doing handwriting.

first thing every day and lack of communication with the teacher. When I would talk with her about it, I would message her about it. I would get either, it’s fine or no response, but it wasn’t fine because he was breaking down in tears every single morning before school. it wasn’t like, I don’t want to go to school. was, I’m really struggling with this thing first thing in the morning every day and the teacher’s not listening to me. she wasn’t giving us any feedback on how to help. not saying you’re doing anything wrong, but what can we do to help?

this be easier for him and we weren’t getting anywhere with that. So it was a whole combination of things that led us to pull him out in March of kindergarten and we just kind of flew by the seat of our pants from there and it’s kept going ever since he graduated this year.

Della (07:00)
One of the things that I wanted to talk about most today is the…

trauma that your family experienced with your breast cancer diagnosis. But I kind of want to show because there are lots of people that ask about different seasons in life, like a newborn baby or pregnancy or a toddler or a death in the family. if you are homeschooling long enough, something is going to happen that you’re going to need to shift.

Meg Nichols (07:11)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Della (07:28)
at least to your baseline and maybe outsource a whole lot. And I want to contrast what your homeschooling was like before that. And then what happened, what changes you made, and then what adaptations happened, and then what it looks like now. before your diagnosis, what did homeschooling look like for you?

Meg Nichols (07:51)
I think those were some of my favorite years of my life, honestly. My boys were smaller, and I think those are some of the most fun years to teach. we started out very much I think as a lot of homeschoolers do trying to recreate school at home, and I had a school room set up and I had a calendar on the wall and all these things and

Those slowly went away, but it made room for more hands on things and I had curriculums with lots of moving parts. so often our homeschool days were spent on the floor in our living room with books spread out around us. my oldest is two years and three months older than my middle. we did so much of their school together to the point where

My oldest was a little jealous that he didn’t get, because my middle would get ahead, than where he was supposed to be because he was following his big brother. my oldest was like, wait a second, I wasn’t at this point at this age. it was a whole thing, but we did so much together, so many read alouds, so many science projects and fun hands on activities. And then my third was born. He was a bit of a surprise.

And my oldest was eight, and my middle was six when my youngest was born. that threw a wrench in things as anyone who homeschools with a baby knows, you’ve got you’re not sleeping at night and that kind of thing. feel like it’s a different thing

having a chronic illness or really hard diagnosis is a different kind of mental exhaustion and tiredness than the very legitimate tired and exhaustion that you have from having a newborn. I was still able even with sleepless nights, we were still able to do our school on the floor, I would have my youngest and be feeding him.

keeping him happy and doing other things and we still made it work it still was doable. Yes, things changed as they do, but there wasn’t any giant change when they were little and I had a baby and a toddler. It was just timing things shifted like we do more school at nap time, but we could still do our main things if that makes sense.

Della (09:50)
Yes, does make sense. What kind of curricula were you using? What did your schedule look like? How hands-on was your teaching?

Meg Nichols (09:59)
my oldest struggled with handwriting so much. found and researched at the time that cursive could be more helpful for left-handed kids. And I was already like, yes, we’re going to do cursive at some point anyway, because I love so we started with the logic of English curriculum from, I think, the end of kindergarten through third grade or something like that we did.

I am distracted very easily I love unit studies and unit studies are so hard for me because I need more structure than they provide. need, okay, this day we are doing this, this day we are doing that. And what was beneficial is that was scripted, but there was lots of fun built into it. Like fun games were built into it and the boys had fun with that. For history, then we were doing story of the world and we had the activity book with the projects.

we did so many they still talk about one of the projects we did with the Nile and it was a lap book with the alligator and like building or making staffs and things and lots of arts and crafts, clay pots, soap carvings, all of that kind of stuff. We did Singapore math.

And that just happened to work for us from the beginning, it happened to work really well. And that transitioned into, was it Beast Academy? I think we did after that. And English, then I started incorporating Brave Rider, Julie Bogart, as they got a little bit bigger and I-

I was like just finding her when my oldest was in first and second grade, then I started incorporating more, getting more like, take a breath, breathe, everything doesn’t have to be stressful and structured, you can get a little more loosey goosey and things will still be okay. So it was kind of this, I have to do x, y, and z into more relaxed, which is also I think just what happens to all of us a little bit.

Della (11:38)
I think the parents

need as much de-schooling, if not more de-schooling, than the children do.

Meg Nichols (11:43)
Yes.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, for sure. in the mornings, they’d wake up, eat breakfast, have like some chill time. I’ve never been a morning person. I have never been wake up.

before the children and enjoy the sunrise and all the things I wish I could be that person. That is not me. I would wake up delirious with my kids. And we would all just have a slow wake up time in the morning, eat our breakfast, do something we wanted to do. then they were happy I was alert and we would get a big chunk of school done before lunch. then we’d have lunch and after lunch was when we would do like projects, crafts, playtime, all that kind of thing. For a long time, that was how we worked.

Della (12:20)
Okay, and your diagnosis came in what year?

Meg Nichols (12:24)
2022, June 13 2022. my oldest was a rising freshman, who was going to be his ninth grade year. so that was a whole thing. And my middle was sixth grade. And then I believe that’s when my youngest was starting kindergarten.

I think it was his kindergarten year. it was a lot of milestone school things happening. And then I was like, wait a second, am I going to be alive? What is happening? So it was a big, huge, didn’t know if we were going to keep homeschooling. It was a whole thing.

Della (13:00)
What plans did you start making at that point? And what was your thought process in regards to how you were gonna keep homeschooling?

Meg Nichols (13:10)
school was not an immediate thought after my diagnosis. Initially, I was just like, what’s going to happen? What’s my process for me after we figured out the plan for me and what was going to be happening to me? My brain could then go, okay, what’s going to what are we going to do for my voice? Because our life was it was an upheaval. It was an absolute upheaval in the worst possible way.

I wanted to keep things as normal as I possibly could for them. But on the other hand, I did not want to sacrifice their education. And I knew that I was not going to be able to be at the same level teaching them because my chemo was going to start in August. And that’s when school starts. there’s all different types of chemo.

different types of cancers, so all different types of chemo. So some people are able to have chemo and keep working or keep doing the things and that’s wonderful. But at this point, I had no idea how I was going to be. But I did know I was getting a chemo called the Red Devil at the highest possible dose, dose dense, because I was young and healthy. I could be hit to really knock it out because I was at high risk for recurrence. So I was not optimistic that I was going to be able to continue teaching them.

My husband and I had lots of talks together. we were agonizing over what to do because again, putting them into public school while it seems like, that’s just what you need to do is not always an easy option when you have kids who already have so much changing in their life to then dump them into a totally new environment that they are not used to. Even though they would be technically getting education, how much of that would they be retaining because of the stress that they were under?

we talked about it with each other. We talked about it with our kids. I talked about it with home school friends on Instagram. I was like, you guys, input And ultimately my kids did not want to do public school. So that’s when we outsourced, we just had to outsource and we did workbooks, which I did not have a high opinion of workbooks before this. was like, we’re not gonna do a workbook, you know, but.

needs must and that’s what what we did and we have wonderful friends gift us so many things but one thing was Della you know this for a brave writer essay class which is still one of

Della (15:13)
I do.

Meg Nichols (15:17)
my oldest best memory. It’s one of his best memories is that Brave Writer class that he did and his essays in that class were just, I saved them all some of his best writing. it was a wonderful gift. it was outside of his comfort zone because he had never had an outside teacher in any way. that really helped him even later with other because he did it then and he was like, I this isn’t bad. I like this. And so

when we got to dual enrollment and we also outsourced his history class and he ended up loving that. it was a lot of hard, my husband stepped up immensely. I mean, I cannot, we had the unique situation where he still works from home. I don’t know that things would have worked out as well if he was working out of the house. So he stepped up immensely with my sixth grader. He did almost all of his school that year.

with my youngest, I was still able to do school with my youngest for kindergarten, which was really important to me because kindergarten is one of my favorite years. I got again, gifts and art supplies and so many wonderful things to help. we ended up on the days that I didn’t feel well, we could still draw together. We could still work on making letters together. He would climb up in bed with me and we had little lap desks that we could do things on. And I could still read to him and he could practice reading with me.

curled up next to me. So there was a lot that I was pleasantly surprised I was still able to do with him. It didn’t look exactly how I thought it was going to look, but he learned to read. we did all numbers and all the things it was a little slower than his brothers, but we still did it and it was still really good.

Della (16:46)
What were some of the curricular changes that you did? Obviously, you’re working towards more autonomy here, where especially the older boys are doing more independent work, and then you’ve also outsourced oldest, someone else is keeping up with his progress and critiquing his work. first,

What did you let go of and what were the curricula changes? Because when something like that happens, you definitely have to let go of something.

Meg Nichols (17:16)
Yeah, So I mentioned my great love of BraveWriter, it’s read aloud and it’s more open ended. it was an open ended curricula that worked with my brain and I was able to really get into the rhythm of it. it was, teacher dependent. It’s not really something you can hand off. I was heartbroken to not be able to do that, that year because I just I just couldn’t do it.

English being my favorite subject to teach. that’s when we brought in more Oak Meadow because Oak Meadow was written to the student. That’s what we did for a lot of things. Also for my sixth grader that year, because it was written to him

It was more of either my husband or myself could go through and check things and make sure they were on the right track on a weekly basis with those subjects. And they could kind of take the lead and do what they needed to do and had their checklist. That’s one thing I do really like about Oak Meadow is at the beginning of the lessons, they have the little check boxes for the students so they know, okay, I haven’t done this. That helped my older boys a lot. If you ask them, it was not their favorite curriculum. Again,

They felt more on their own with it and they went from me being with them for most all of it to suddenly it was more of a throwing them in the deep end than a gradually, okay, you’re gonna slowly get into more on your own. But it worked well, it worked well for from what we needed at the time. So yeah, it was a lot of Oak Meadow. I also use that for my youngest, kindergarten.

Della (18:32)
That’s a huge transition from having a homeschooling that’s more teacher intensive and you’re more involved to one that does throw them in the deep end and they have to be more independent and autonomous. So how did the boys handle that transition?

Meg Nichols (18:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there were were tears on both sides for me one of my favorite things in my life has been teaching my children, it has brought me immense joy. I will forever cherish this time. to kind of give some of that teaching away a little bit was really, really hard for me to do.

And then the same side, my boys, struggled. They did not like, change. My oldest, wasn’t tears so much. It was more anger and resentment a little bit. Just because a lot of things, it wasn’t just the curriculum, obviously. It was that the unfairness of it all. His freshman year of high school, his mom is sick. He’s having a whole lot more responsibility. He’s helping a lot more with the younger kids. He’s being this amazing child, and support.

they would make me smoothies to help keep my energy up and they would bring me coffee. You know, they were, were taking on a lot more and that while they, they’re ultimately okay. It was a really hard time and there were lots and lots of, just feelings about all of it. Not all of them were good. So yeah, it wasn’t the easiest, but as time went on, they adjusted as kids often do.

Della (20:00)
What does your diagnosis look like now Meg, after treatment?

Meg Nichols (20:01)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, so I currently have no evidence of disease and I hope it stays that way forever. But I will be on treatment. I am on a pill that blocks the estrogen from my body because estrogen does not cause my breast cancer, but once my breast cancer was there, it feeds off the estrogen that is present in my body. that obviously…

comes with a whole host of side effects. It’s medical induced menopause and you can have that for other reasons too besides

a breast cancer diagnosis. I still have chemo brain, I swear, and it drives me crazy. And it might be menopause brain plus chemo brain. I don’t know, but my brain is not what it used to be my energy is still not what it used to be. I don’t think it’s ever going to be.

back. For a long time, I kept saying to myself, when I get better, when I finally when my body finally heals, I’ll feel like I did again. And I’ve had to come to accept the fact that I’m pretty sure I’m not ever going to feel as good as I did before cancer just because of naturally aging. And then everything that my body has been through, I don’t think it’s ever going to get back to that same previous point. it’s kind of like dealing with a chronic illness, I have

to listen to my body. have days where I can do a lot of things and I feel relatively good, but I know on those days when I do that, that I’m going to pay for it the next day or the next couple of days. I will not have the energy to do what I want on those days. I’m finally at a place where I’m used to this little roller coaster. What’s still frustrating is other people look at you and you look fine.

and they don’t understand and they think why can’t you do these things? Why aren’t you, I’m at the point now that people think what they want to think I know how my life is and what I can do. But I am on the good side. I don’t know if there’s a good side. I’m on the other side. And yeah, just

Things are looking better.

Della (21:53)
Okay, friends, this is the last week that the Beauty of Play membership subscription will be open for enrollment. It closes on Sunday. You can find the samples pinned to the top of my blog, or you can sign up for my email where I will send the links to the samples to you. Thebeautyofplay.com. I will be opening up again this fall, sometime in October or November, but the prices will increase.

So if you’ve been interested in the subscription, now is the time. There is a subscription for homeschooling and another for math. You can, of course, do both, which will give you a post per week. The subscription is so packed with good stuff. I write a post a week about different homeschooling topics or math topics. It usually has a video or audio.

And the audio is provided in podcast form so you can listen via your favorite podcast player. I often leave downloadable files that you can take with you.

In addition, I will send you weekly emails checking in with small drops of useful gems like book recommendations about homeschooling or math, resources that I’ve found, or answer your questions.

I’m also accessible to you. You can reply to any email or voice message me on Instagram. Lastly, all the videos of the podcast, as well as any workshops that I’ve done, will live in your membership area. It’s a really lovely place. I’d love for you to join us. To learn more, check out thebeautyofplay.com and click learn more either under the homeschooling or math. I’ll see you inside.

Della (23:47)
your homeschool look like now after your diagnosis you’re finished with treatment?

Meg Nichols (23:52)
now when my active treatment finished, it was when my oldest was ready to start doing dual enrollment because I was on active treatment for a while. I was also on a chemo pill essentially for a couple of years. That was brutal. So I still consider that active treatment because that was absolutely killer. So by the time all that was done and I was kind of out of the worst parts of treatment, he was ready for dual enrollment and he was

looking back very well set up for that because of how much we had outsourced. I pulled back even more with actively teaching him, I think his junior year. I only actively taught him English because I was like, you’re gonna let me do one more year of English. And we did British literature, and we used some brave writer guides, and we used an Oak Meadow British literature guide,

I was able to kind of make it my own and pull it apart like I like to do. So that was really fun for me. I was glad we got to do that. And then his senior year was all dual enrollment. I wasn’t actively teaching anything. Then my middle guy, we were able to do a little bit more hands-on with me again. he still did some Oak Meadow.

He does art of problem solving math with my husband. They’ve kind of stuck to that together because they love that. yes. really?

Della (25:04)
Can I say how impressed I am with that? Because we started the art

of problem solving for algebra. We started algebra. So I’m teaching and then we’re doing algebra and she could do it, but nobody was happy. Like it was a lot of work. It’s yeah, it’s really meant for mathy families.

Meg Nichols (25:11)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, they love it. My-

Yes, and that would be not me, but that would be my husband and my older two. My youngest does not like Beast Academy and he does not like anything we’ve done. no, for him, he loves, Kate Snow’s math program, he loves that math program.

And he loves yours that you so kindly gifted us with the circles he loves doing that we still pull out activities from that and do it as a review because it’s fantastic. But he’s a very different learner than my older two were my older two were like, give us all the structure with math that we can have

his freshman year worked so well for my oldest, we thought, okay, we could start doing a little bit of that with my youngest. So we found from another homeschooling mom, a fantastic Spanish class that’s online. It’s synchronous. So he has a zoom class once a week, and he has loved it thrived with that. And he wants to do it for Spanish to next year. So for him, it’s only been English still and

science and math that we do together. my husband does most of the science and math because that’s his favorite. He loves it. And I do English and kind of pitch in and help with the science and math with what we needed. But most of my time now is spent with my youngest because he is in fourth grade. he got the short end of the stick a lot. And that’s something that I am still very sad about with cancer. Because

he didn’t get that same attention that my older two did with it. I’m trying to make up for that now. I’m trying to go back and do some of the things that I remember doing with his brothers that he and I didn’t get to do when I was actively in treatment. we’re just kind of having fun with that.

Della (27:04)
What kind of curricular are you using with him?

Meg Nichols (27:07)
We are doing,

math with confidence. it has tons of like games built into almost every single lesson. And so he loves that. for history, I have so many different history curriculums that we aren’t doing just one thing. because he loves to talk about history. And on any given day, he wants to talk about a different time in history. So I just follow his lead.

if one week he wants to talk all about the Romans, then I just pull, I’ve got story of the world. I’ve got history quest. Is it history odyssey? got, I mean, I’ve come to have a lot and I have like box sets of history books and different things that we pull from. And so we just dive into whatever he wants to talk about that week. And so right now we are still on the Greeks. we school year round with him. I’m schooling year round with him because of time. feel like I lost. So.

doing Greeks right now. We were doing, Aztecs, we were talking about the Aztecs. we just have been jumping around. It’s not anything that any history person will recommend doing. Because everybody’s like, you either do it in that four year cycle or you do a whole thing at a time. we’re just like, no, we’re just having fun and just doing whatever we want for history. that’s what we’ve been doing in social studies. in South Carolina, in fourth grade.

that they do South Carolina history. we have a book about South Carolina history that we’ve been going through together. for English, we’ve been BraveWriter all the way this year with him for English. We’ve been doing lots of books and read alouds and discussing it and reviewing it. then I had a moment, even after this long of homeschooling, I had a moment where I was like, wait a second.

What do most fourth graders know at this point? What should most fourth graders be able to do? And I Google it and it said something about the three paragraph essay or something like that. And I was he hasn’t done that. He also struggles with writing a lot. My oldest and my youngest had a very, very hard time with handwriting, just the physical motor aspects of handwriting. They really have a hard time. I’m like, we haven’t done enough of that. We need to refresh this. then you have that panic moment.

I tell him, we’ve got to do such and such. he hates it and I hate it. listen, you’re going to be fine. I didn’t do this with your oldest brother and he’s fine. He’s got into college just fine. Everything’s going to be okay. I need to take a beat and we’re all right. Science, again, Mike loves to do science experiments with him. we pull from the vast different science.

curriculums we have at this point. I realize this is not helpful for people who are homeschooling and like wanting to know exact curriculum.

Della (29:20)
You know, I think it is helpful for people

for a variety of different reasons. One, it shows them that you can let go a little bit and it’s going to be okay. also it shows that gaps will reveal themselves, which I’m sure you’ve run into, too. We ran into the oddest, craziest gaps like he was taking a

Meg Nichols (29:41)
you broke it. yes. Gaps will

reveal themselves. Yeah.

Della (29:44)
math class online and it was probability and statistics and it was based on a deck of cards. they’re thinking this is a universal experience. And I realized he did not know enough about a deck of cards to adequately answer the questions. And so we had to fill in that gap. Okay, a deck of cards is made of four suits. Each suit has, you know,

Meg Nichols (29:55)
Yeah. huh.

Yeah.

Della (30:07)
All of that kind of thing because he was like I don’t understand what they’re asking of me

Meg Nichols (30:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. That’s yeah. And that’s the thing with my oldest, he tested in for his dual enrollment into a calculus, but he had never taken was it trigonometry. And so they started talking about the stuff and he was like, I have no idea what they’re doing. he and my husband had to have a quick

jam session, jamming in some basic trigonomic functions and things so that he could get through and he got it. It was okay. We were like, whoops, okay. and I will say about science curriculum, my husband has a biology degree, but he doesn’t work in biology and he was gonna get a physics degree, but anyway, he ended up with biology. And his favorite,

Della (30:40)
Right.

Meg Nichols (30:53)
science curriculum to date so far to use if you want a curriculum to use and I think they only have it for sixth grade or but he swears it could be a high school level curriculum is the real science odysseys biology level two when he first looked at that he was this could be a college biology course he absolutely loves it he did it

with my oldest in sixth grade and with my middle guy in sixth grade. he was like, now you know everything you ever need to know about biology. You don’t really ever need another biology class after this. They still did it again in high school, but it was like the high school level ones. He was like, this one is so fantastic.

Della (31:28)
Do you know what my favorite is?

So there’s a famous ecologist he passed a few years ago, but his name is E.O. Wilson. And he wrote a free high school curricula biology that’s available on Apple. It’s their Apple books and is the epitome of an Apple book.

Meg Nichols (31:31)
No.

Mm-hmm.

my word.

Della (31:48)
has videos, but also has interactive things where you can move and change things and see how the processes work. is amazing. And then they have a lab. Yes. There are series of six books and each chapter has a lab. And one of the things that I really liked about this lab, you read some curricula and they’re like,

Meg Nichols (31:55)
Yeah, that’s so cool. I will have to get

Mm-hmm.

Della (32:12)
get this obscure membrane that only you know what I’m saying like where do I find that?

Meg Nichols (32:19)
Yeah, yeah. Yes, that’s

very difficult. I know exactly.

Della (32:24)
They have worked really hard to make all of the supplies reasonable. Like you can just pick this up at the pharmacy or you can pick this up at the grocery store or like everything is reasonable, but the labs are really well thought out. That’s my favorite biology,

Meg Nichols (32:32)
Good. Okay. That’s wonderful.

Okay, because my middle is doing

biology next year and so.

Della (32:47)
I often get asked, what’s your favorite science curricula? And I do have some, like, I really enjoy the series Foundations and Scientific Understanding. Those are amazing. It is amazing, but it’s highly teacher intensive and you have to do a lot of reading before.

Meg Nichols (32:56)
Yes.

Yes, I have that from you and I love that. Those are really good.

Yes.

Della (33:10)
some studying and then you have to gather up all the materials. It’s a little challenging because I am a scientist, we don’t really use science curricula like other people

Meg Nichols (33:16)
It is, yeah.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, that’s kind

of how it is with Mike. He’s like, I can do better than this.

scientific connections through inquiry. they use building foundations of scientific understanding. I’m 99 % sure as they’re spine and make it easier for a parent to implement. I did enjoy that. I can’t remember if we had level zero or level one.

but I did enjoy that with my youngest,

Della (33:46)
I don’t know how far that curricula goes, but the volumes of building foundation, scientific understanding only goes through middle school,

what kind of advice do you have for families that have some kind of tragic event or…

rough season of life. What are some advice that you have for that?

Meg Nichols (34:12)
one of the things that I come back to, and it’s a comment I made on one of your posts when I was still in active treatment that still comes up as people liking it years later, I think you pinned the comment. looking back right at that time, your whole life is blown up and you’re terrified about everything. But I think especially for homeschooling families, we are families who in general.

we care about learning and it’s kind of baked into our life. we are people who love to talk about history. We love to talk about science. I love to talk about like the history of words and why they’re this way and what’s the origin. And that just comes up in our daily life. I feel like that’s a pretty common theme in some way or another for most homeschooling families who choose to do this. So I would say it will be okay.

It’s not going to look the way you think it’s going to look. You’re going to have epically hard days. You are going to miss things. There are things that are going to go poorly. that’s going to happen with any way you choose to educate your child. But as long as you care about learning and you care about creating an environment where learning is accessible and fun and just part of life.

then things are gonna go

what you and your family will learn going through a trial is worth more than any curriculum could ever teach. Learning how to have empathy and how to help people when they are at their absolute worst is a life skill that, yeah, it’s not fair if you have to learn it really early in life, but it’s beneficial for the rest of their lives. they’re gonna be okay because you care about them being okay.

And well, that’s about it.

Della (35:47)
really good advice. I don’t share this often, but you know that in 2018 my husband diagnosed with cancer I feel like in a lot of ways our journey was easier than your journey, but still life-upending

Meg Nichols (35:58)
Mm-hmm.

Della (36:05)
I feel like the same thing. We had to let go of a lot. There was a lot more autonomous stuff. I had to make room for caregiving for my husband. I didn’t have a lot of the mental capacity to pay as close attention to the work that was happening. It was my son’s eighth grade year, I want to say.

Meg Nichols (36:08)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Della (36:29)
And at one point for history, was like, just read the rest of the book. But the thing that I want to say that’s very close to what you’re saying, two things, is that much of what we’re learning is repeated over. It won’t be the last exposure to whatever they’re experiencing that year.

Meg Nichols (36:33)
Exactly. Yes. Just read it.

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Della (36:52)
And we don’t have to go on somebody else’s timeline. My son had an extra year of high school before he went to the university. there were several reasons for that, but it worked out just fine.

Meg Nichols (36:56)
right.

Mm.

Della (37:05)
Yeah, it does work out.

Meg Nichols (37:05)
And that’s, think,

we get. I think one of my biggest homeschooling surprises is that it worked out. You know, my oldest, it worked. It’s like you go through this whole thing and you’re like, am I gonna totally screw them up? What’s happening? know, are we doing the right thing as parents? I feel like we all are like that. And then it’s like, he did it. We did it. Okay, yay for us.

Della (37:11)
Hahaha

It is in hindsight, like I hope that that offers some level of comfort and confidence in other people to hear from people who did make it all the way through high school and their children went on to whatever’s next, the trade school, the college, work, whatever’s next, and they did well. Right.

Meg Nichols (37:34)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah, right, exactly. There’s so many options, exactly. That’s all we can hope for

Della (37:49)
your oldest, what choice did he make for after high school?

Meg Nichols (37:54)
knew for a while he wanted to do college and he decided to do biomedical engineering. That’s where he’s at right now. For now, that’s what he’s wanting to do is biomedical engineering. It’s fascinating to him and he’s very excited about it. And he got into three schools and he chose the one that gave him the most scholarships, which I thought was very wise and I was very happy about.

And it also happens to be the closest one to home, which also doesn’t make me upset at all.

Della (38:21)
That’s excellent. Yes,

I also have been really happy that our son has been so close to home. There are several things that he went through in his first year, including a school shooting that I was just really glad that he was so close to home.

Meg Nichols (38:34)
Yeah.

Yes.

Della (38:39)
What was something that surprised you about your homeschooling journey?

Meg Nichols (38:43)
like I mentioned that we made it for one so far. We’ve made it with one and we did pretty okay, I think. Other things is that it could be as flexible as it ended up being. And I would get very overwhelmed in the beginning of homeschooling seeing all of.

the things people would share with these very structured days and structured curriculum and lots of co-ops and going here and going there. we were never in a co-op. never been structured a day in my life. I wish that I was. We would have weeks where

I wasn’t as on the ball as I should have been. And we got behind in school through not the kids’ fault, but through my fault. Like it was me not doing what I needed to be doing because I was overwhelmed with whatever was happening at any given moment. But we always caught up and we always got things done and it’s somehow kept working. And we’ve done really well, I think. it doesn’t have to be your

homeschool, our homeschool did not have to be exactly like everyone else’s homeschool, just because that may be, you may mostly see super organized, super curated That is not the reality for a lot of people, I found out as we go along. it was okay to be a little less rigid. It was okay to just take a breath and keep going.

I think would probably be the biggest thing because I stressed a long time in the early years about am I doing enough? I should be more rigid. They should have a stricter schedule. They should be X, Y, and Z. And I didn’t need to be as stressed or as hard on myself as I

Della (40:15)
from the cancer diagnosis and living through cancer, what was the most challenging aspect of homeschooling for you?

Meg Nichols (40:22)
Mm-hmm.

motivating kids on days that they really don’t want to learn and don’t want to do school. I think that was hard because I struggle with my own self motivation and keeping like I said keeping things going and so when I was already on a lot of days forcing myself to be on game and do what I need to do and then to have that pushback.

from them some days, which you’re gonna have. Kids are not gonna wanna do school every day. That’s just not real life. They’re not gonna be like, yes, mom, I want to sit down and get all my schoolwork done with no complaints right now. That’s just not gonna be your daily occurrence. So that was a really big challenge a lot of times. And I would some days just throw my hands up in the air we would take breaks. I did learn a thing that worked out well is,

When it got to that point where they weren’t engaged, they were not focused. I was crazy overwhelmed. Everything stopped. this I think was something that Julie Bogart helped me to realize and implement too, probably. We would just take a breather because there’s not any wonderful learning that’s going to happen when they’re not in the right head space and I’m not in the right head space. We’d take a break and you can start your day over at any time of the day. So we would take a break, half an hour.

couple hours, whatever it meant. Some days we would be doing school in the evenings because that’s when everybody was in a good mood and we could get it done. But yeah, that was for a few years there, real difficult. And I think probably middle school age is when it got the hardest, upper elementary into middle school. When things get to be, the curriculum’s a little less fun. more, know, let’s sit down and do it

And you have more to do, I feel like, as they get older, they’ve got more. And so it was like the time that I already am not great with managing, right? It was even more like you really, you get even more behind when it’s not done well. So that was a struggle and a challenge.

Della (42:16)
That’s a really good one. It’s makes me think of some coaching things that I say often One is to have a plan B when your day goes bad, because it is so much easier when you have a plan B and that plan B can look like anything from scrapping school, we’re done with school today.

Meg Nichols (42:24)
yes.

Yep.

Della (42:35)
which you can’t do all the time. I think that’s used too frequently. Like, just let it go. You don’t have to, like, you can do that occasionally, but you can’t do that every day. And it can look like that, or it can look like taking a breather and finding something fun that you both do. I used to keep a list of documentaries.

Meg Nichols (42:35)
Mm-hmm.

No, right. Yes, yes, agree, hard agree. Right. But not every day. No.

Della (42:58)
that were in the theme that we were studying. So if we had a bad day or maybe somebody was mildly sick, or if I was on my cycle, didn’t have a lot of energy, then we could pop that in and we would still be learning. And then we would maybe do our daily work in addition to that, but it was a much easier, low key day. It could be bringing snacks.

Meg Nichols (42:59)
yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Della (43:23)
into the homeschooling or choosing to have a field trip. Yes, snacks are always a good idea. That is probably the hidden expense of homeschooling is snacks. You save a lot on clothing. You spend a lot more on food.

Meg Nichols (43:25)
Yes, snacks are always a good idea.

Right.

Food, exactly, so much food.

Della (43:43)
yeah, having a plan B was a big one. And then, also what you were saying, like breaks work wonders for everything in math. I often coach that if you’re hitting a subject, maybe you’re doing multiplication, you’re hitting your head against the wall because they’re not understanding long multiplication or perhaps long division break.

Meg Nichols (43:52)
Mm-hmm.

Della (44:06)
You don’t have to not do math at all, although we have done that. And I have been surprised because when we come back to it, all of sudden they’re understanding better, but you can also just go to a different concept, maybe work on addition or factoring or something that’s just to give their mind a break so that their mind

Meg Nichols (44:16)
Yep.

Yes.

Right.

Della (44:28)
can process that concept and you can come back to it. But it also works in the larger homeschooling as well, like break for five minutes, break for a day, know, whatever is needed.

Meg Nichols (44:36)
for sure.

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Definitely.

I wish I had had you tell me that about long division when my oldest was in learning long division and I thought we were never going to get out of it. Never. And now he’s like doing this crazy high level math for fun. And I’m just like, do you remember long division? I thought I was going to never survive that. And here he is doing.

Della (45:02)
What grade did you introduce

long division in?

Meg Nichols (45:04)
was it third? it might’ve been fourth then. It might’ve been, was thinking third or fourth. Don’t trust my memory. It was probably fourth. That’s when it’s generally brought in.

Della (45:05)
It’s usually four. was it third? You did third? Okay.

It’s generally

taught in fourth grade. I don’t teach it till fifth grade because it’s a, it’s a hard, there are, what people don’t understand is that there are a lot of things that you have to have a solid foundation in to do long division. You have to understand place value very well. You have to understand what division is to be able to do that. And then you also have to understand

Meg Nichols (45:17)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Della (45:40)
multiplying by magnitudes of 10 and understand magnitudes of 10 which was closely related to place value but if you don’t have those things locked in

Meg Nichols (45:45)
Yes.

Della (45:51)
It’s really hard to understand. And I’m convinced most adults don’t really understand what’s happening in law and division.

Meg Nichols (45:57)
No, they don’t. They don’t

because I learned it teaching mine. I was like, that’s why it’s this way. okay. Now I get it.

Della (46:03)
Exactly. Yeah.

yeah. So.

Meg Nichols (46:06)
Yep,

totally learning as we go over here.

Della (46:08)
Yeah, that’s also a wonderful thing to do. It’s okay to learn with your children. You don’t have to know it all before doing it.

Meg Nichols (46:17)
Yeah, that’s for sure.

And I think that’s one of the things I like most about or one of the top things for me that I love about it, because I learn stuff at the same time. And it’s so fun, like that building foundations of scientific understanding you were talking about. I love those books just for me to like sit and read through. I’m like, I remember when I read the section about eyes and mirrors or something like that. And I hadn’t heard of it before. But the way it was explained there, I was like, this just makes so much sense.

reading it this way. love this. yeah, it was it’s it’s great. Yeah. It’s

Della (46:45)
I really do love that, that curricula.

do you have any additional advice for parents?

Meg Nichols (46:53)
Yes, I do. And this is more specifically to moms, but could equally apply to dads or caregivers. You need to not spend so much time taking care of everyone else that you forget to take care of yourself. for me, with my cancer diagnosis, I had not been to yearly OB-GYN appointment for

three or four years. It was after I had had my youngest. with the experience I had, I don’t think my cancer would have been caught any sooner anyway, because I had to push for things to be done for mine. But I do wish that I hadn’t waited

I didn’t have a good relationship with an OB-GYN. So I had to get a new doctor to go get checked and all the things. And it wasn’t as good of an experience. I think I could have possibly had better care if I had been an established patient going in with my issues rather than this new patient just getting brushed off saying, you’re too young. I’m sure it’s nothing. if you have, especially women, do your monthly breast checks. Don’t do them out of fear.

Do them out of having agency and being able to take care of something as soon as it pops up because breast cancer survival rates are ridiculously high when it’s caught early. don’t avoid it because you’re scared of finding something. Do it to keep yourself as healthy as possible for yourself and your kids. Because I was 37 years old, no risk factors. No one in my family had any cancer at all whatsoever. And I got diagnosed with stage three breast cancer at 37.

you have to, you have to, you have check yourself, advocate for yourself. Don’t think you don’t need to worry about this till you’re 40 or you don’t have family history. 85 to 95 % of breast cancer diagnoses have zero family history. So don’t think that that is, in my head, I was like, oh, nobody in my family has cancer. I don’t need to worry about this. I wasn’t checking regularly, but I needed to be, I needed to know those things. So take care of yourself.

Do your scans, do your things. Any uncomfortable scan, whether it’s a colonoscopy, a mammogram, whatever it is, any discomfort you have from that is infinitely better than a drawn out treatment of cancer and taking care of it. It’s not fun at all.

Della (48:59)
know you have resources for breast exam. Can you talk about that?

Meg Nichols (49:02)
Yes.

Mm hmm.

Yes. Yeah. There is a free app called Know Your Lemons. I am not affiliated with them in any way whatsoever. You can go on there. They help you know the best time to check your breasts every month based on when your cycle is if you’re still having a cycle. They help you keep track it if if something is questionable. They help you navigate it and know what to ask your doctor about when to make an appointment.

They show the 12 signs of breast cancer, because there are 12 of them. It’s not just a lump. Mine was dimpling. It’s a lot of different things that you need to be aware of. I have fantastic resources for who are diagnosed under 40, thriving beyond breast cancer. And they are doing fantastic things to educate younger and younger women, because so many of us didn’t know these things until our diagnosis. And we are smart women.

And we should have known. So they’re doing things to try and get into schools and help younger girls know about their bodies and know things to watch for. Again, not out of a place of fear, but a place of empowerment so they know how to best take care of themselves. But for everyday use for women, Know Your Limits is absolutely wonderful app to use. they keep any of your stuff, none of that. it’s just really good.

Della (50:12)
Nice. I learned a lot from know your limits from you. Things that I didn’t know that could be signs of breast cancer.

Meg Nichols (50:16)
Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, and it’s a shame that we don’t know for so long. Why is this not shouted from the rooftops,

Della (50:26)
Yeah, I was really bothered by the dismissal of you being so young, so we don’t need to look for that and the damage that that causes. Yeah.

Meg Nichols (50:33)
Yes. Yep.

Mm hmm. Yeah, because she told

my new OBGYN, she was like, I’m sure it’s nothing. You’re young, you have no family history. she had all the certificates on her wall for all these awards She was a very highly rated doctor. And that she told me two things that did not matter. Like it does not cancer doesn’t care how old you are. And like I said, huge percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer don’t have family history. So that is irrelevant to my

she should have sent me for scans. So then six months later, when I went back from the dimpling, it was a five centimeter tumor. So, and in my lymph nodes, and who knows if it had been treated sooner, if it had been in my lymph nodes, it could have been a whole different situation. you have to know, she was the doctor and I was yes, I don’t need to worry about this. she said I didn’t, so I trusted her. yeah, now, now I know through a hard.

I know better, but that’s why I want to tell other women so they know what they need to know

Della (51:34)
Well, thank

Meg Nichols (51:34)
so good.

Della (51:35)
you so much for talking with me today,

Meg. I really enjoy it.

Meg Nichols (51:40)
I did too, it was a blast.

Della (51:42)
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Next week we are talking to Heidi with Twig and Berry Homeschool. Heidi is a Waldorf homeschooler in Tasmania, Australia. We talked to her about her journey with her three children, of which the two oldest are now in school.

In particular, we discuss the difference in her three children and their journey learning to read, Orton Gillingham training, and her new Waldorf Guides. See you next week.