Individual time with each of the children, "doing whatever they would like to do"-is this really a good goal? First, our kids need personal attention, not necessarily scheduled time completely alone with us. Second, should they always be the boss in our times together?

I find that time alone with each child arises spontaneously. You can give a child your full attention even if the room is filled with other children! Besides, often some children will be napping or playing in another room, while one remains behind on his own to talk with you. Homeschooling, which requires personal attention to each child's work, automatically provides such personal times together. These can be used for discussing other things besides homework!

Shopping trips provide opportunities for one or two children to be alone with Mom or Dad while the others stay home with the other parent. In our family, the kids don't take turns accompanying Dad. It depends simply on who is awake, who is clean and able to get ready quickly, and who behaved well the last time he was taken along.

"Special times" can so easily degenerate into each child being jealous of the other and developing an attitude of "I hate to share Mommy with you." We don't make a big thing out of time alone for this reason. Most fun times are actually more fun if done as a family, anyway!.

Our job as mothers is to help our children discover and learn to love what they should do. This includes a proper sense of what is fun and what is not. Sometimes the child can initiate a good fun time. Sometimes he or she will be bored or overburdened, if left to figure out what he or she wants to do.

Most of us enjoy surprises planned for us more than being asked to plan our own fun. You can give the kids a choice ("Would you like me to read to you or would you rather I pitch while you bat?") or you can simply tell them, "Come here and I'll read you a book" or "Let's do a craft project," or whatever. We are open to their suggestions, but do not feel that we always have to follow the kids' ideas!

I also wouldn't think in terms of "building my marriage" or "building my relationship" if I could help it. Time with your husband is just a natural, organic part of life. When we get too serious about "building" things when we are with our loved ones, it adds stress.

You do need time with your husband. If you are like me you need to talk things over, cuddle and be affectionate, and so on. Perhaps you may have to plan this time since you are the one who needs it (unlike your time with your kids, where you can depend on them to force themselves on you if you neglect them!). But you want this time because you already love your husband and want to be with him, just as you did when you were courting, not because you are working toward some intangible goal of marriage-building! It's one thing to be wanted and needed, and quite another to be enlisted in a "relationship-building" project! The first is fun, the second is work. Guess which most husbands would rather do?

Cleaning house is something you get better at as you go along. If you are making gradual progress, feel good about it! You will never have enough time for a perfect job of housekeeping until you are a widow with grown children. Count your muddy blessings!

Time to write, sew, garden . . . Do a little instead of taking on massive projects. A letter to the editor that gets written is better than a novel that never makes it past Chapter One. Almost every writer I know started small, myself included. Ditto sewing (one dress for the toddler v. an entire spring wardrobe for yourself), gardening (one new flower bed v. an entire landscape project), etc. You are aiming for progress, not perfection! Also, these are learning experiences that will make you speedier and more effective at future projects. Even if your garden does not grow (as mine threatens in spots!), you will have learned something.

Pro-family activism: do you want to do this, or are people pressuring you to do it? Some of us have the "call" to represent God's people by working with the legislature, and others do not. You can support the activities of others by prayer and donations. If you just don't have the time to both do a good job with your own family and get politically involved, forget the politics.

As for home ministry, I don't really have any right now, except to my family and readers. We can't all do everything all at once. For that very reason, we have cut back on our home business, and eliminated (for the moment) our political involvement. Jesus said His yoke is easy and His burden is light. Trying to do all the things you can do at home at once will kill you! I know! I tried!

When I'm older and my children are older, I expect to have much more home ministry and perhaps more civic involvement as well. I don't regret what we did in the cut-back areas in the past, as we honestly felt called to do it. But God has taken off the pressure and let us readjust to a more sane pace of living.

Homeschooling our five is easy for me, because I have put in my apprentice years learning how to do it! There is no way to avoid the early stages of homeschooling panic except by living through them. You learn what works and what is a waste of time. My new book, Schoolproof, goes into all this in some detail and might help you eliminate some of the clutter from your homeschooling. . . .

First, identify the stuff your kids really need to know. Yes, an understanding of the great artists of the last ten centuries is wonderful to have. So is the ability to play gracefully on the violin, or a knowledge of all the kings and queens of England, etc. Almost everything is worth knowing-but not everything is essential. Pick the essentials.

I'll help you a little. Reading, writing, math, and Bible are essential for everybody. History is essential-but not for two-year-olds. Art may be essential some day-but you can always pick it up later, when the kids are reading and writing beautifully.

Keep in mind that children of school age must by law be learning something, whereas preschoolers can fool around the house and play without bringing angry state officials down on you. Thus, educating the schoolagers is more essential than a fancy preschool program for the toddler.

Different families have different essentials. If your family is a performing acrobatic troupe, then Junior absolutely must learn acrobatics. If Sally is an absolute whiz at art, it also would be a shame to make her wait forever for art lessons-provided she knows her basics.

Most of us, though, will find our priorities centering around the basic core subjects: math, reading, writing, handwriting, history and geography, and Bible. Science is not as important as these, and most early grades science texts are a waste of time, so feel free to ease off on science for a bit if that helps.

Now that we have set some priorities, we need to develop ways to concentrate on our priorities. Trying to teach seven or eight subjects a day is not a good way to accomplish this. In fact, I suspect that doing too many things at once is the major cause (just behind lack of child training and discipline) for home school burnout.

Here are some ways to concentrate on your priorities:

1. Teach the core subjects by themselves. For example, you just concentrate on math, English, Social Studies, and Bible for three weeks at a time. Then you take a week off from these and concentrate on all the enrichment stuff you are longing to do: art, music, science projects, etc. Another way to do this is to concentrate on core subjects during the school year, with the entire summer free for fancy projects, field trips, art, music, and so on. Always consider the enrichment subjects as "bonuses" which the children earn by doing their basic subjects well, so you don't stress out on trying to include these nice-but-not-essential extras at the expense of the basic curriculum

2. Teach the children in age groups. For example, plan to give the preschoolers a special program during the summer, but during the school year concentrate on the compulsory-attendance-age kids. You don't need to feel guilty if the little kids spend a lot of time playing-they like to play!

The last major cause of homeschool panic is the disorganized curriculum. By this I do not mean the create-your-own curriculum, because these can be very organized if you know what you are doing. Rather, I am talking about curriculum that does not have a clear or logical sequence of instruction, and that makes you scramble to get together tons of different manipulatives, books, etc. in order to give one simple lesson.

If you are suffering from disorganization, my new book Schoolproof has several chapters on how to overcome this. For a quick fix, just switch to Alpha Omega LIFEPACS. These have all the text and exercises in one place-very handy, and a great help when recovering from the I've Overdone It blues. For math, get Bob Jones University Press math texts (you probably won't need the teacher's manuals). Then, from this start, you can gradually add the projects and bonus subjects back in!