At Home Learning Tips With A Pro

Oh hello everybody, sorry about the technical difficulties. My name is Seth Perler, this is Debbie Reber — we’ll introduce each other in just a moment. Welcome to our live video, which will then be recorded and uploaded for you all to view again if you should so desire. Welcome, it’s great to have you.

We are going to try to impart some of our wisdom here today. I asked Debbie to come here today because she has so much experience in the homeschool world, and I thought it would be amazing for her to share some of her expertise that I don’t have in terms of how you parents can make life easier for yourselves during this at-home schooling time, while helping your child get the most out of their education, while building a relationship and all of the important things.

So hi Debbie Reber, I’m happy to be here with you.

I’m glad you’re here. Debbie is one of my favorite people. You all can put comments in the comments — we won’t see them right this minute, but we’ll look at them later, but feel free to communicate with each other.

Alright, let’s do a quick intro. I’m gonna intro you, you intro me.

Cool, sure.

This is Debbie Reber. Debbie Reber has a podcast called the Tilt Parenting Podcast. Debbie Reber is my favorite education-type podcaster in the world, literally. I’m very lucky that she’s also a friend. We’ve gotten to know each other over the last couple of years and have collaborated a lot and helped each other and supported each other a lot in trying to figure out how we can better serve families.

She really just has a very down-to-earth, straightforward style, but she’s very sharp, and I love the way that she explains things from a very heartfelt but very intelligent place. Debbie’s Tilt Podcast — you can find it online, you can subscribe, leave a comment for her on iTunes or things like that to support her. That would be fantastic if you want to support her in that way. But go ahead and check her out and subscribe and start checking out her podcasts. There are amazing topics with amazing experts that will really help you.

The purpose of Tilt is that this is really for neurodiverse kids — what Debbie calls “differently wired kids.”

Debbie, thank you for that intro, Seth. And for those of you who don’t know Seth, Seth is — I always refer to him as the executive functioning guru. Seth and I connected a couple years ago. I think he reached out to me and said, “Hey, I have some thoughts on this, I can come on your podcast,” and I listened to another interview he did and I was like, “Oh my gosh, yes please.”

I think you’re probably the most frequent guest on my show, and I’m just so grateful for your friendship and your passion. The passion that you have for the work that you do, and your relentless generosity, and the way that you continue to show up for this community, for parents like me, and for kids directly — it’s just really incredible and it’s a gift.

So I would say to anyone who hasn’t already jumped on Seth’s list that has so many resources — and actually, I know during this pandemic you’ve been really busy making videos — so there’s a ton of free content on there that is just so helpful, again, for parents, educators, and kids alike. So definitely check out all the resources that Seth Perler talks about.

Alright cool, alright let’s get to it.

First of all, I want to say Happy Earth Day to everybody. This is no joke — if we don’t have a healthy planet for our kids to grow up in, that’s a problem. So I just want to encourage you, if you aren’t doing anything and everything you can already to make the best impact on the planet — or leave the least impact on the planet, I should say — please consider that. So I want to start with that because that’s very personal to me.

Now Debbie, my first thing that I want to start with before we get — so Debbie has the structure that we’re gonna walk through that will help you understand how she processes at-home learning. She’s coming to it from a homeschool perspective, but we’re gonna adapt it to you so that you can think through the right questions to be asking yourself.

But Debbie, before we even start that, what is your sort of heartfelt message to people? What is the most important priority that people should be keeping in mind? How do we cut through all the noise and get down to what you feel in your heart is the most important message to start this call with?

Well, what I’m really focused on in my own life with my differently wired child, and what I’m trying to help parents think about, is that the number one priority right now has to be our kids’ emotional, mental, and physical well-being. And I think probably mental, emotional, physical — in that order.

This is such uncharted territory, and I think we cannot underestimate what’s going on internally for our kids. So really knowing that at the end of the day, maintaining their sense of security and safety and their mental and emotional well-being has got to be the number one priority above everything else.

Awesome, thank you. And I always talk about that — the relationship is the most important thing. I know that a lot of families right now are having a lot of challenges. Everybody’s buttons are being pushed. Your kids’ buttons are being pushed. This is a very sensitive time for a lot of families.

Even though those things are happening, it’s okay. Those are all opportunities to grow and learn to problem-solve and learn to connect and learn to hear each other better. And so I want you to look at those as opportunities.

So I just wanted to piggyback on what Debbie was saying and add my idea to that right there.

Debbie, when we are designing an ideal home learning plan with your child, what does that look like? Why do you even think we should do it with the child? Why shouldn’t parents just dictate what happens? And how do we design this?

Yeah, I think the “with” is key. That’s something I learned the hard way by trying to be the dictator principal of our school and just learning year after year after year how important it is to collaborate and design the school together.

Even though for many families watching this, this is a temporary situation, that collaboration piece is critical in order to have buy-in, in order to reduce the conflict in the home, and just create — kind of set yourself up for the best possible outcome considering what’s going on.

And so when you’re designing that plan, the things that you initially want to figure out — and I’m sure many of you have done this on some level with varying degrees of success — but thinking about the schedule and designing that together. When things are going to happen, when breaks are going to happen, when homework’s going to happen — it’s all homework at this point.

I think some kids have more freedom and flexibility in their schedule right now, and others it’s really dictated by Zoom calls that are happening. But you really want to work out the schedule, even for the free time, with your kids.

Thinking about your work environment — where is school going to happen? Again, some of you may have already done this and tried to dedicate certain areas, distraction-free zones for where school is going to happen. But make sure your child has a voice in that decision.

And it might have to change — we’ll talk about the need to be flexible later — but that may change from day to day or week to week.

Then you want to talk about with your child what you ideally want the relationship between you and your child to be. Many of us are playing this kind of weird role of parent, substitute teacher, homework monitor, screen time monitor — there’s a lot of monitoring going on right now.

And it’s really important to maintain the integrity of your relationship with your child. No matter how young your child is, discuss that openly and think about how are we going to handle conflict? What is our approach gonna be if we’re butting heads? Because I don’t want to be butting heads with you. We could be in this situation for a while.

So how can we design a way to communicate so that we can make sure that we prioritize our relationship? And also, how do you want to communicate? Should we have a daily meeting? Should we check in with some tea and cookies after school every day? Should we write letters to each other? Should we leave little Post-it notes on mirrors?

There’s so many ways we could do this, but you want to talk with your child about how you both would like to — or all of you, depending on how many kids you have — want to be working together in relationship with each other.

Awesome. And I want to make it very clear to those of you listening — I know some people are sitting there saying, “Yeah but Debbie, if we try to get buy-in from our child, our child is just gonna say, ‘Just leave me alone,’ or ‘Just let me do it on my own,’ or blah blah blah.”

So Debbie and I are very aware that those are issues, and we will address some of those.

Basically, and we’re also going to give you a PDF of these notes, so what we’re starting with is best practices for home learning. And the first thing that we’re doing here is designing the ideal home learning plan with the child.

So what Debbie said is: sit down with your child to design this, and you should be looking at the ideal schedule, the ideal work environment, and the ideal ways you guys are going to relate.

Yeah, that’s where you want to start. And again, that might change. You can make a plan and then realize the next day or in a few days, “Okay, this plan is failing big time, so let’s revisit.” So it’s doing all of this with the understanding that we need to continue to pay attention and pivot and tweak as necessary.

Awesome, I love that structure.

For those of you taking notes: step one is making your learning plan with your kid. And what you’re going to do in order to make that plan is consider the schedule, the work environment, and the relationship.

Debbie, how can we find ways to set up our child for success and build extra scaffolding to support their learning?

One of the things we can do — and hopefully this will address some of the monitoring piece — we can talk about co-working. I know many of us are working or trying to work from home while our kids are also doing school. So you might set up some time every day — like your own personal homework cafe or something — where you decide, “Hey, I’ve got to do something I really do not want to do, I’ve been putting this off for a couple days, why don’t we work together?”

So we’re both kind of supporting each other. We don’t have to be explicitly supporting each other, but it’s that idea: we’re in this together, we’re both trying to do something we don’t really want to do, so let’s make it easier.

Making dedicated co-working times can be really helpful. Taking breaks for snacks — no matter how old your kid is. My child will happily meet me if I bake something or make tea or hot chocolate. He’ll come sit at the table for 10 minutes, and that connection time can really help.

Also making sure kids get out for exercise or walks every single day. Depending on where you live it might be easier or harder, but movement matters a lot. And this is a great opportunity to notice with your child: do you feel different after a walk? Does it help you focus more? Helping them connect movement to regulation.

Another thing I do is offer to be my child’s assistant for certain tasks — especially for kids who struggle with processing speed or writing. For example, instead of pushing them harder, I’ll say: “I’ll be your typist, you just dictate.” This is not the time to force struggle unnecessarily. It’s about scaffolding.

Scaffolding means adding support so they can actually succeed at the task.

Also, if your child responds to rewards or incentives — I’m not really a punishment/reward parenting person — but I do like to build in natural motivators. For example: “Let’s do this, and then we’ll watch something together after.” It’s not a bribe, it’s a shared rhythm and motivation.

We also use shorter work periods — like Pomodoro style: 15–20 minutes of work, then a break. Timers help a lot. Especially for kids with attention challenges. Short bursts are often more effective than long forced sessions.

And I’m a big fan of creating cozy environments for hard tasks. Blankets, tea, comfortable space — making difficult work feel less threatening. When kids feel physically safe and relaxed, they’re more willing to engage.

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Seth then summarizes these ideas, emphasizing scaffolding again: that every child needs different levels of support, and it’s not “cheating” to help them. It’s adjusting expectations so they can succeed.

He adds that parents should be careful about over-monitoring and constant correction, because sometimes the effort of doing the task + being corrected makes everything worse. The goal is the big picture, not perfection.

—

Next point: pre-conversations.

Seth explains that one of the biggest mistakes parents make is starting conversations “out of nowhere,” which makes kids defensive. Instead, you say things like:
“We need to talk about school. It’ll take about 10 minutes. Would you prefer now or later?”

This gives the child mental preparation and reduces resistance.

He also emphasizes being concrete instead of abstract:

* not vague emotional lectures
* but clear time boundaries
* clear structure
* clear expectations for the conversation

Debbie agrees and adds that collaboration is key. One example she gives is sitting down with a whiteboard and letting the child help design the homework schedule. They list options, pros and cons, and the child chooses. Then they identify obstacles together and problem-solve them.

The goal is not control — it’s buy-in.

—

They then move to the idea that real learning happens when a child feels safe.

Debbie explains that stress, pressure, and anxiety push kids into fight-or-flight, which makes learning almost impossible. So emotional safety is the foundation.

She reframes “real learning” as:

* emotional intelligence development
* executive function growth
* self-awareness

Self-awareness is especially important: helping kids understand how they learn, what distracts them, what supports them, and how to advocate for themselves.

Seth adds that instead of telling kids what to notice, parents should ask questions that lead them to notice it themselves. For example:
“How do you think that went?”
“What would you do differently next time?”

This builds reflection rather than compliance.

—

Then they talk about goals.

Debbie says goals should not just be grades. Instead:

* emotional well-being
* confidence
* independence
* skill growth
* relationships
* self-awareness

She explicitly says grades should not be the main priority during this time, especially for differently wired kids, because the stress can outweigh the benefit.

Seth agrees and reframes it as focusing on process over outcome.

—

Next: shaping the environment and routines.

Debbie introduces the idea of “shaping the path” — designing the environment so success is more likely. This includes:

* morning meetings
* weekly check-ins
* visual schedules
* habit trackers
* clear routines for the day

Morning meetings can be simple: a short check-in, a small activity, even a game or video. The purpose is to structure the start of the day and reduce conflict.

They also suggest weekly planning: setting bigger goals on Sunday or Monday, then checking progress daily.

—

Then Seth adds another layer: communication structure.

He emphasizes:

* pre-conversations before difficult topics
* giving kids time to prepare
* setting time limits (e.g. “we’ll talk for 5 minutes”)
* being clear and calm instead of reactive

He also stresses that parents should shift from “explaining” to “inquiring” — asking questions instead of trying to convince.

—

They then move into parental mindset work.

Debbie talks about “doing your own inner work” — noticing your fears, expectations, and stories like:

* “my child is falling behind”
* “this should be easier”
* “they should be more motivated”

She says those thoughts often increase pressure on the child.

Instead, parents should focus on flexibility, acceptance, and remembering that every child is on their own timeline.

—

Finally: relationship priority.

Debbie closes by emphasizing that the relationship is the foundation of everything. Kids need connection more than productivity. Parents should:

* stay present
* avoid constant power struggles
* protect emotional connection
* prioritize understanding over performance

Seth reinforces that the goal is not compliance, but a child feeling seen, heard, and supported.

They end by encouraging families to be gentle, flexible, and to focus on connection during a stressful time in the world.