Modern Miss Mason (with Leah Boden)

Modern Miss Mason Leah Boden Homeschool Conversations podcast interview
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This conversation with Leah Boden (whom you likely recognize from Modern Miss Mason) was such a treat! Leah shared how she found Charlotte Mason while looking for a British influence in homeschooling, and how that discovery brought such joy to their home education journey. We chat about the joys and challenges of homeschooling, and she gives tips for helping the day run smoothly. She also has some wonderful encouragement for prioritizing wonder and delight, not only in the early years of education, but even as our children grow older.

Be sure to check out all the other interviews in our Homeschool Conversations series!

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Modern Miss Mason Leah Boden Homeschool Conversations podcast interview

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Who is Leah Boden?

Leah Boden is wife to Dave, mother to four children, and long-time home educator. With over two decades of experience in church leadership, Leah’s working background also featured many years in youth, children’s, and family work for her local LEA; she worked with children, and their families who were on the verge of exclusion from the school system. Currently her life and education focuses on the practice and pedagogy of early 20th Century educator Charlotte Mason. Leah leads the Charlotte Mason Conversations, UK community as well as being the founder of Modern Miss Mason, an international initiative to help parents, and children find their freedom in the philosophy. She writes, speaks, podcasts, hosts coaching sessions, and runs workshops sharing the beauty of a Charlotte Mason approach to childhood, motherhood, and education. Leah is signed with Tyndale Publishing to write the book “Modern Miss Mason”, launching January 2023.

Modern Miss Mason Leah Boden Homeschool Conversations podcast interview

Watch my interview with Leah Boden

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Amy Sloan: Hello everyone. Today I am delighted to be joined by Leah Boden. She is a wife to Dave, mother to four children, and longtime home educator. Currently, her life and education focus on the practice and pedagogy of early 20th-century educator Charlotte Mason. She leads the Charlotte Mason Conversations UK community, as well as being the founder of Modern Miss Mason, which I’m sure many of our listeners are familiar with.

Leah writes, speaks podcasts, hosts coaching sessions, and runs workshops, sharing the beauty of Charlotte Mason’s approach to childhood, motherhood, and education. I’m very excited that you have a book coming out in 2023, so I know it probably feels like a long wait for you as well, although you probably are a little bit ahead of us in those details, but that will be an exciting thing to read so congratulations.

Leah Boden: Yes, definitely. Thank you.

Amy Sloan: There’s the official bio introduction but here at the beginning, could you just introduce yourself a little bit? Tell us about your family, your children, and how you began homeschooling.

Leah Boden: Sure. Thank you for having me as a guest on your podcast. It’s so lovely to be here with you and your listeners. As you said, I’m married to Dave, we have four children, and we’ve been home educating for coming up for 15 years. My eldest is nearly 19, so I think many of us recognize we were always home educating, I was the mother who was playing Mozart’s for babies in the womb. We did have a journey into deciding whether this was the path we absolutely and definitely wanted to take.

After graduating from university, I spent a year in St. Louis, Missouri and I was in a Bible college discipleship course a year. I had never heard of homeschooling, or home educating before, and this was before I was married, I was on this year. Basically, the place where I was based, had a center that supported home educating families. They did art, drama, and music lessons and I just remember one day, meeting some of the children that were there for the day, a couple of times this happened and these kids just blew me away.

They were able to happily converse with adults with intelligent conversations, not like super genius-type conversations, but just like look me in the eye and have a really healthy, normal conversation about some really interesting things. I remember saying to a friend, “Who are those children? Where are they from?” She said, “They’re homeschooled.” I was like, “They’re what?” Here am I, a single woman about to– just really my life unfolds, is starting to unfold in front of me.

I know that that day a seed was sown of, “Okay, this is a possibility.” I remember thinking even as a young, whatever I was, a twenty-something, I remember thinking, “I would like to think about that again someday when I have children.” Then zoom along, I’m married today, we’re starting to have our babies and we are starting to apply for school places in where we live.

We literally got to the point where I started to– I knew of a couple of families that were considering home educating in the UK, but it really wasn’t something that was at the forefront of our minds.

We didn’t really know anybody who was doing it, but I remember in my reading and in my interest of motherhood, coming across people like Sally Clarkson, and you start to receive these terminologies around homeschooling. I did start to read and research. It wasn’t until the day I was walking my eldest daughter down the street, with her little school uniform on and her bookbag in our hand, so I guess she would have been going to, I think it’s pre-K, I think, what you guys would call pre-K.

She was very young, three and a half, four, something like that, not even that, they start them in those kinds of things really early. I remember walking down the street, we lived in a walking distance from the school and I just remember thinking I did not want to do this. This is not our life.

From that moment, Dave and I just started those conversations around, “Okay, let’s find out. First, is this legal? Are there other people that were doing this in England? How do we do it? Where do we get our research from?” That began really.

We spent some time for Dave and I to get on the same page with everything, and both of us feel this real conviction of we don’t just going to trial this if we’re going to do it. This is it. We’re going to go for this, we’re both going to jump in. Both Dave and I are working on education, not the teaching side, more the pastoral side, so we were caring for kids who were on the verge of being thrown out of school. We were on the other end and I was working with mentoring, working with families who were struggling with the school system.

That basically was our beginnings, that’s where the journey into what homeschooling looked like for our family, what the landscape looked like in the UK, but also the beginning of an amazing journey that we are still on.

Modern Miss Mason Leah Boden Homeschool Conversations podcast interview

Amy Sloan: I love hearing the stories of how other families have come to homeschooling. It’s so different for me and my husband because we are actually second-generation homeschoolers. It’s like, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to homeschool my children one day and that was something that was very natural, it felt like a very natural organic progression for our family. It is always such an encouragement to me to hear in many different ways that the other families catch this vision for this home education adventure.

Leah Boden: We are first-generation homeschoolers as a nation, I think I know now two of the women who are second-generation homeschoolers, they’re very young, they’re a lot younger than me, but we are the pioneers here really and that’s what’s interesting is seeing, it’s so encouraging seeing it grow and seeing others come up after us.

Amy Sloan: Yes, there’s actually a young woman– I call her young woman but she’s my peer. My children are like, “No, Mom, you’re not you’re not young.” She lives in England and is a second-generation homeschooler and I would butcher her Instagram handle if I tried to say it right now, but I’ll add that to the show notes to remind to myself to do that.

A Charlotte Mason approach to home education

You’ve got this idea about homeschooling, and then we know now you are teaching others and using Charlotte Mason’s approach to education in your homeschool. Was that something that always had sparked your imagination or how did you first come to hear about Charlotte Mason? How is your philosophy and approach to education grown and changed over the years?

Leah Boden: Charlotte Mason was British, but nobody here really knew about her, unless you were a historian, or you were studying in the Lake District and you happen to come across her archives, or some people who had done teacher training in Cumbria may have learned about her heritage there, but generally, she wasn’t known here.

In the beginnings of my research, and before social media, I was looking at blogs and Yahoo groups, and all that kind of stuff. I came across Charlotte Mason because I was looking for British influence.

I loved everything that the American pioneers in homeschooling were teaching us, but it had to be culturally relevant and I had to be able to apply it to my 21st century British family. Came across at Charlotte Mason and I think, generally, people are introduced to her through maybe nature study, maybe something more literature base, I just remember reading an article about possibilities for approaches for homeschooling and it just struck my eye. I started to go down that rabbit hole (and what a rabbit hole it is), and I never came back up and I still haven’t.

There were so many things that were in my heart about it. Not only her as her own personhood in her life and discipline, and she wasn’t a mother, she wasn’t a wife. She didn’t have the lived experience I have, but her insights into childhood and education has just transformed my approach to those things as well. I remember just being– she did catch or in wonder in childhood, she wanted to keep children young and in to be able to enjoy the beauty of childhood but didn’t ever diminish what they could achieve or think, or take in and absorb. I love that. Let’s celebrate childhood, but let’s not dumb it down.

That’s a really beautiful thing about how she approaches childhood. Many aspects of her philosophy reminded me of my 1970s childhood of schooling where we had nature tables, reading corners, and we’d go for nature walks. I have spoken at length to my father who went to school in Leeds in West Yorkshire, and he remembers walking into the school gathering in the morning, the assembly, and classical music being played and art prints were on the walls as he walked down.

As you start to trace the history, it feels like it’s been watered down and watered down. What she did pioneer in the UK school system has just gone really. It’s the home educators who are bringing definition to it and bringing it back to life. Yes.

My mother-in-law bought me the six pink volumes, that was all that was really available apart from reading online. I started to read and just as soon as we started to formally home educate, I had children of various ages. They all were involved whatever age they were at, whether I was breastfeeding one, another one crawling around, another one reading at the table.

I began to read, follow volume one which is really pitched at younger children up to the age of about nine. I just took it really slow and I would read something, I often couldn’t get past a paragraph without highlighting it and really studying it, and then thinking, “I want to do this now. Now I’ve read this I need to put this to action.” Rather than just whizzing through the six volumes and devouring everything I could find, I was truly a practitioner and I wanted to put into practice what I was learning.

They really were the early beginnings of putting into practice what I was learning, and that has just grown.

Charlotte Mason says the sole end of education is growth, and that is for the child, for the parents, and the teachers because I know there are people who are Charlotte Mason educators in schools across the world.

That growth is for all of us and that really has been my story, and my journey is that we just have to continue to grow.

Modern Miss Mason Leah Boden Homeschool Conversations podcast interview

Amy Sloan: That is beautiful and encouraging. I love what you said about how Charlotte Mason brought in this wonder, emphasized this wonder, without dumbing down the education. That is something that is really central in my approach to homeschooling my own children. I think there can be this misunderstanding if you are emphasizing delight and wonder, and this joy of learning, this posture of humility, that somehow that means you’re not being rigorous or challenging your children and that’s such a false dichotomy. Right?

Leah Boden: Right. Yes.

Amy Sloan: As an adult, as a human being, as a person, as a mom who just happens to be an adult, I still am in full of awe, wonder, and joy as I learn and grow. I love that reminder that those two things can come together and I love that you found that in Charlotte Mason.

Some of the joys of homeschooling

That’s certainly one thing that would be a joy of homeschooling. Are there some other things that are your favorite parts of homeschooling as you look back over the years?

Leah Boden: I think definitely the continued learning journey that I– I’ve got a degree. I love studying, but really, I always say my real education started when I began this journey with homeschooling and Charlotte Mason because she taught me how to learn. She taught me how to make that environment available to my children, but also for me. She encourages the mother, the teacher to stay intellectually alive.

That has been a great mission for me, is how can I daily add into my rhythm to keep these things alive? Homeschooling alongside my children, being able to facilitate their world of the feast of education, is just a joy.

I think just recognizing the power of community, that’s been a really a wonderful part of our homeschooling journey that it doesn’t have to be busy, fast, and tons of groups but you can find true community, and you can find those kindred spirits and pressure friends that you can do this journey with. That has been really important for us.

I think as well, just staying humble, being open to learn from the people around and from the children. I was running a living science group this week, I launched it this week and we’re doing chemistry, trying to do some stuff for all older children. I learned so much from the kids because some of them are super smart and coming out and telling me all these things.

I’m like, “This is a privilege, this is amazing to not be so arrogant to think I can open up everything for them, but actually, they are opening up the world for me as well.” We do that life together and that is a privilege. Isn’t it? That is a real honored position from homeschooling, but I love it all, Amy. I love it all.

Even after these so many years as I start to plan a new school year or a new term, I just feel this visceral joy of, “I get to do this.” I don’t know how many years I got left, it could be a handful of years before my kids end up having to do it exams in the UK school system, but I am going to savor every moment and just take great joy in this. I don’t know if that’s specific enough, but I just love it [laughs].

Amy Sloan: Yes. I love hearing that joy coming out of you. I’m going to push a little and say, “Okay, I hear this joy”, and you said you love all of it. I would love to know maybe there are some days where there has been a challenge. We aren’t always having this joyous experience, even though we love it all the time. What are some challenges may be, and how have you overcome those?

Overcoming the challenges of homeschooling

Leah Boden: Yes. Joy is not a reflection of perfect circumstances. Joy is an inner strength. I think that joy is important to be a constant, even when you’re dealing with the normality of parenting and child-rearing. I have four very normal children and they all see the world in different ways, and they all have very different personalities. I literally have, at the moment, I’ve got two who are left home homeschooling and one is an extreme extrovert, the other is an extreme introvert. You can imagine that is very interesting [laughs].

I think one of the challenges for us has been that cross-section of parenting and educating, and how I know the lines are so blurred. I think that comes from years of gaining wisdom and confidence in that, that you don’t switch from one to the other, but there is this gentle approach to observing our children, what stage they’re going, do they need to eat? Do they need a nap? Do they need to just call it a day today because they’re bickering with their siblings and this is not going anywhere?

Being confident enough to say, “Hey, do you know what? Let’s call it a day. Everyone just needs a nap”, or, “Let’s go for a walk, let’s go outside.” I think those are the things that really can throw us and can make us feel like– I hear it when I’m coaching, I hear it from peers that actually they’re exhausted from house, running the home, and parenting. It’s not so much the joy of homeschooling and making learning come alive, it’s everything else and that is weighty.

Sometimes I’d rather say I need to do the laundry today.

Sometimes I fight that urge, other days I have said, “Do you know what kids? Here’s a few projects you can be getting on with.” I have got to clean those bathrooms. This has got to happen because my mind is not clear because I know there are a million jobs to do. Now, as I’ve got old, as my kids have got older, as we’ve done this for a while now, I’ve learned how to create rhythm in my practices and in my– to prepare better.

In some seasons, I’m better than that than others, but I think the real tension for me has always been that the blurred boundaries with managing a home, raising humans, and then facilitating their education. That can happen daily and I have to lead my own heart and lead myself in all that.

That’s a constant of humbling myself and recognizing, “Hey, do you know what? I don’t always get this right.” But I love that we get a new day every day. That’s great. “Let’s start again tomorrow.”

Modern Miss Mason Leah Boden Homeschool Conversations podcast interview

Amy Sloan: Yes. I think somehow, we forget or we try to act as if we’re not finite creatures. When we try to push that boundary and not accept who we are as humans, and that always leads to discouragement and overwhelm. To recognize that as moms, as well as recognizing the finiteness of our children, and just knowing that every day is not going to be the same. It’s okay sometimes to just say, “Today, we’re going to ignore the laundry.” Whereas another day you might need to say, “No, today we’re going to ignore that school subject”.

Leah Boden: “We have no clean underwear”.

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Amy Sloan: “Yes. we got to do the laundry” I generally keep mine clean. It’s the folding that becomes an issue for me.

Leah Boden: I’m guilty. There are piles of lovely, clean, dry laundry.

Amy Sloan: Exactly. Last night, my husband was finding his sleep shirt and he said, “So, have you just given up on this?” I was like, “No, no, I’ll do it tomorrow. I promise”.

Leah Boden: Yes, we get like that.

Amy Sloan: It happens.

Leah Boden: Yes.

how homeschool preschool

What ought we to prioritize in the early years of home education?

Amy Sloan: You are a little bit farther along on this journey. I think one of the things that can be most important and valuable for moms who are just starting out who have young children, is to really talk, of course, to other moms with little children, but also to talk to moms who have that long-term perspective, who have gone through things and can see the things maybe that they worried about that weren’t really important and just have that perspective. If you were talking to a mom with young children, what would you encourage her to really prioritize in those early years of education?

Leah Boden: I don’t want to be too cliche, because you could be with this. Just enjoy it. I think back to myself when I had babies, toddlers, and all that stage, I was the woman I am today, I was hungry to learn. I was eager to facilitate things for my children and create a beautiful environment for them to learn. Even though all the– especially Charlotte Mason advice is nothing formal before age six. I was eager to do things, I wouldn’t change the person I was. Then I know that I’m sure there are people listening saying, “Yes, I feel like that”.

I would definitely say from a personal, from a female woman, mother point of view is that it is important, no matter how exhausted you are and what’s going on around is to continue to grow in some way, shape or form. Whether that’s having an audiobook on the go, listening to podcasts, joining a book club online, if you can, if you can’t even get there. Just spending five minutes listening to some music that you love or just taking that moment to take your eyes off the immediate and focus on beauty. That really feeds the soul. It really feeds that inner life, whatever that looks like for each individual, that was always really important to me.

I remember waking up early and reading my Bible and a baby would wake up and just be on me, and then another one would come on and be sat at my feet. I was always trying to get up earlier and earlier to have that perfect moment where nobody disturbed me, and that rarely happens. When I actually accepted that that probably wasn’t going to happen. It sounds like a weird thing and I say this all the time to people, but I’m always like, “Lower your expectations, really lower your expectations.” You can want to do great things, but this is not a sprint. This is a marathon and you will get there.

I think, lower your expectations, but yet keep them wide and expect beauty in every day. I think those kinds of things were really key for me, is that as much as you want to set up the world for your kids, continue to grow yourself.

I think with regards to our children, I think just creating rhythm in the day is really, really key. Children really thrive in knowing what’s going to be happening. They’re thriving and feel secure.

Mealtimes are great for this. Mealtimes, nap times they’re brilliant for setting up a rhythm throughout the day. We read this book at breakfast, this kind of book at breakfast, this time we read something else, we read a poem at lunchtime. We listened to a piece of music before we go to bed. Whatever it is that it’s not formally setting up a curriculum, but you are actually helping your child get used to paying attention, listening in, enjoying togetherness, enjoying focusing their eyes on something beautiful.

Those kinds of rhythms you can put in place really early. People will often say, especially with reading and listening, people will say, “How’d you get your kids to do that?” I’m like, “Well, they didn’t ever know any different. They never knew any different.” It’s difficult to advise on switching kids thinking and neural pathways, because if you have the opportunity of you’re listening to this and you have babies and toddlers, and you’re right at the beginning, begin those, build those foundations now because they will benefit you for the years to come. They’re the kinds of things that I would definitely say to young moms.

Amy Sloan: It’s not just developing the habits and the routines for them, but it’s for ourselves as well because the more helpful habits we can have, it eliminates that decision fatigue, especially when we’re tired. When you just have your habits in place and these special times of day that are linked to a rhythm, it’s going to make it so much easier for mom too to continue and not to grow discouraged.

Leah Boden: That’s right. Yes, absolutely. Yes, brilliant.

How do we continue to include rhythm, wonder, delight, and joy in the older years of education?

Amy Sloan: As our children get older, how do we continue to include rhythm, wonder, delight, and joy in those older years while dealing with the day-to-day realities of life, but really wanting that to be this joyful education for them.

Leah Boden: From a Charlotte Mason point of view, a lot of what you do in the younger years, Charlotte Mason talks about children having this mind gallery, humans having this mind gallery, that they are collecting things that they have seen, heard, and experienced, and they curate for themselves this beauty. That doesn’t go away. They don’t turn 13 and all that disappears, thank goodness, along with personal hygiene and whatever else. It’s still there. It’s still possible. I think you have to always water what you’ve planted. You have to cultivate what you have sown in the early years and continue to do that.

That may look different. For instance, either looking at nature and observing nature in the teenage years may look different to when you’ve got younger ones and they’re picking up stones and every single feather. We have to creatively approach it that way. They’re reading more books, you are getting outside as much as possible. My younger two, one is a teenager and one is almost a teenager, so I call them my younger ones, but they’re not that young. It’s like, “Isn’t getting older?” We call them the little ones still. At some point they will say, “Can you stop calling us that? Because we’re …”

Amy Sloan: I had a child actually asked me recently, “I’m not one of the little ones anymore.” I was like, “Oh, you’re right. Okay”.

Leah Boden: “I’m sorry.” I know. You get into that language. I was trying to get a photograph of the view in front of our house printed. Is full of trees, we live on a park. Lay some kind of tracing paper over the top. I said to the kids, “Okay, we’re going to identify every tree in our view and this is how we’re going to capture it. You’ll be able to stand on the doorstep and say, ‘This is an oak tree. This is a sycamore, this is a whitebeam.'” We did it, and it was just this different way.

They took an app. They went outside, they took an app. They identified everything, they labeled it on this, and it was just this different approach to still being observant, paying attention, capturing something that they would see every day, but yet making it applicable for an older kid that this is actually really fascinating. They might not be picking up every pine cone in the forest and bringing them all home like they used to, although I still do that. That’s just a little example of the, I am constantly aware of capturing, continuing to water what I have planted in those early years.

That is their responsibility as well, but what I can do, I will do while they’re around, I will continue to water.

I was reading today in the UK it’s actually national poetry day. I was doing a little bit more in-depth reading about the I’ve got some research around what Charlotte Mason talked about poetry, and there was a paragraph that caught my eye that was talking about all the children and how things do change and you can’t control everything. You can’t go around spoon-feeding them. She says, “They have to choose for themselves. They have to go their own way, but now and again, if you want to pass them some meat on a spoon”, that’s the way she puts it, “Then go for it.” I was like, “That was so brilliant.” It’s like a little bit of persuasion now and again with some older children, it sometimes helps. She knows what she’s talking about.

Amy Sloan: That is genius. I love that.

Leah Boden: I loved it.

Amy Sloan: One of my favorite parts, I think, of seeing my children grow up is, when they’re younger, you see them certainly as individuals, but a lot of the things, they’re so much wanting to imitate you or the people around them. Then as they grow older, they start saying more and more things that are just uniquely them, and you just think, “Why did you think about that that way? That’s so fascinating.” Just to see their own minds, their own personalities begin to grow, their interests, having older kids who show me new music that I don’t know about. That kind of thing it’s such a delight, and I love being able to have that relationship with them, and to see their interest and their joy being used in their own unique ways.

Leah Boden: Yes, so good.

Modern Miss Mason Leah Boden Homeschool Conversations podcast interview

What Leah Boden is reading lately

Amy Sloan: Well, this has been such a delight. Thank you for chatting with me today. Here at the end, I’m going to ask you the questions I’m asking everyone this season. The first question is just, what are you personally reading lately?

Leah Boden: Two books. I have just finished a brand new book that hasn’t been out very long, No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler. That was great. I finished that one last week sometime. I always have a book of essays. I’m always reading poetry, that’s always on the go. My favorite poet at the moment is Lucy Shore. She must be in her 90s. Her latest poetry collection which is called The Gratitude is her best one yet. I’m like, “If I’m writing poetry in my 90s”, she’s like– I want to be like her.

I always try to keep a book of essays on the go, and so at the moment I’m reading a book called The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg. She is or was Italian. This is a reprint of a republished collection of essays that actually were printed in newspapers, I think during and after the Second World War. It’s Italian literature, obviously in English, and it’s great. Just short snippets, dip in, brilliant for moms who are busy. Having essays and poetry is just fantastic for keeping on the right. That was a lot more than you asked me, sorry. You asked about books and I went there.

Amy Sloan: That’s great. I love that. I have so many guests who are like, “Well, I just have so many things I’m reading now. Which one do you want me to tell you?” I’m like, “Tell us all of them.” We all need new book stacks.

Leah Boden: Yes, absolutely.

Leah’s best tip for keeping the homeschool day running smoothly

Amy Sloan: The second question I have for you is just, what would be your best tip for keeping the homeschool day running smoothly?

Leah Boden: Something that I’ve had to learn that doesn’t come naturally to me has been just the simple art of being prepared, of planning. Not just planning, like having fancy planners and spending hours, but actually really thinking about your vision, thinking about what you want to get out of the next year or term. This could be school stuff, it could be cleaning routines, it could be personal goals. Honestly, if you’d have asked me this 10 years ago, I’d be like, “I’m still trying to get hang on this”.

This is something that I am refining and forming all the time. What I found is, the more prepared I can be, the more I can think about my future self. There’s a greater ease to each day, and a greater ease to how I can then present myself and be present in every situation that I’m in because I haven’t got as many tabs open in my mind computer. You know what that’s like? You’re like, “Where am I now? Which one am I looking at?” If I can eliminate some of those things, that is what I’m always looking to do. That’s definitely something that’s come with age.

Amy Sloan: Just that perspective.

Leah Boden: Yes. I think every year I just check, “How can I do this better? How can I really help future Leah, and what can I put into place today that is going to make it easier tomorrow?” Those kinds of questions, whether that’s a scrap of paper, or it’s a beautiful planet, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever you can do, definitely do it.

Amy Sloan: I’ve heard that kind of thing described as a gift to your future self.

Leah Boden: Absolutely.

Amy Sloan: Sometimes for me it could even be something like putting a book on hold when it’s just on order at the library, like it hasn’t been published yet, but it’s on order, and you can put it on hold. A couple months later, I get that notice, “Hey, your book is waiting for you at the library.” I’m like, “Thank you past self. That was so kind of you.”

Leah Boden: We say it all the time in our household, the parking situation near where we live is terrible, and we’ve got these old English streets that they weren’t built for cars, so it’s very difficult to turn around. Every time we come down our street to park the car, we always say, “Okay, let’s turn the car around for our future self, so that tomorrow morning, when you hop in, you’re facing the right way.” I won’t reverse up the street. We use that phrase all the time, “Let’s do this for our future selves”, so yes, I think it’s great.

I think whatever you can do, even just like, “Okay, get the meat out of the freezer because I know tomorrow’s dinner needs to be defrosted,” rather than thinking about it at 4:00 and suddenly having to use the microwave. It’s just eliminating pressure and stress helps.

A big thing that I know I have learned from coaching and just leading for many, many years is that mothers want to be confident, they want to sense that approaching their relationships, their day, their work with confidence. I think we can help ourselves. It’s not just the personality thing. We can actually build into that by learning how to prepare. Definitely, something I’ve learned over the years, so I can say that now.

Amy Sloan: Later on.

Leah Boden: Yes, tried and tested.

Amy Sloan: Exactly. That is fabulous advice, and I appreciate that reminder very much.

Leah Boden: Thank you.

Find Leah Boden Online

Amy Sloan: Leah, where can people find you all around the internet?

Leah Boden: Modern Miss Mason is the easiest thing to type into Google. That is Instagram, Facebook. I do have a Twitter account, not that I tweet very often. We’re working on the website at the moment, so that is up there. You can find me but there’s not a lot to see. Leah V. Boden, but Leah Boden, there aren’t many of us around, or Modern Miss Mason. I’m mostly hanging out on Instagram.

Amy Sloan: I will have links to all of those things in the show notes in the blog post with this episode over at www.humilityanddoxology.com. I’m going to be keeping an eye out too so I can share when your new book comes out. That’s exciting.

Leah Boden: Thank you very much.

Amy Sloan: Thank you. Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Leah Boden: Thank you.

Check out all the other interviews in my Homeschool Conversations series!


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