The Perimenopausal Homeschooler:: Brain Fog

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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.Welcome to The Perimenopausal Homeschooler series! Here I share with my readers some of my favorite tips for homeschooling and taking care of young children despite those lovely perimenopausal symptoms. At least when I remember. {wink, wink} If you're new to this series, you may want to start here.

When I first started homeschooling, I was very much a delight-directed/ unschooling type of mom. I didn't plan exact lessons. I just followed what the children wanted to do that day and guided them along. We had a great time following rabbit trails and learned tons.
 

Then something happened. I found that I was forgetting the "guiding them along" part. My children were starting to drift and weren't learning as much. How had I forgotten to help them along– answer questions– tell them about related topics?

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It was the brain fog. I felt like I was adrift in a fog most of the day. I couldn't remember what I was supposed to be doing. I would start a task, only to forget what I was doing mid-task, even though it was about one minute later. This is one perimenopause symptom that was not helpful for my homeschooling venture.
 

How could I stay on track with our schooling while trying to navigate the brain fog?

I said before that I was a delight-directed/ unschooling homeschooler. In order to fight brain fog during our homeschool day, I had to go completely contrary to my nature and my philosophy of education.

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I made a schedule.

I know, right?! I made a schedule, and the children loved it. I was so surprised! I really didn't think they would like the schedule at all. But I also thought it may be the only thing that could help me stay on task~ at least until my hormones decided to cooperative with life again. For me, it seemed the lesser of two evils. Then my family had to go and love it!
 

Mind you, I didn't plan what we would be doing every 30 minutes, but I did make a schedule based on 45-minute time slots. If the day did not start on time, we just started at the beginning and changed tasks every 45 minutes. My timer was my friend.
 

However, we were not slaves to our schedule. We still threw it out the window when a bit of a rabbit trail presented itself, but it gave us the structure that I needed to keep us moving forward.

Then I added Remifemin.

I also found that Remifemin was my best friend in regard to brain fog. It's black cohosh. It takes about 6 weeks to take full effect, but it is a wonder-worker for me. (Always check with your doctor before using any sort of herbal medication!) In fact, after a year with our schedule and Remifemin, I was able to back off to only using a routine. It still kept us moving forward and me out of the fog, but with less structure than our schedule.
 

I guess the moral to this portion of the story is:

Don't be afraid to try something outside of your usual philosophy or way of thinking in order to survive brain fog.

It also helps to remind myself that I'm really not permanently stupid. I'll be smart again one day when the estrogen settles to its new low.

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What have you found helpful to manage brain fog?

If you have any questions about managing life or homeschooling in the midst of perimenopause, please leave your question in the comments.We can share with one another the things that we have found helpful, or not so helpful. There's power in numbers, ladies!
 

Come back in 4 weeks for the next Perimenopausal Homeschooler post, or subscribe and I'll send it straight to your inbox.

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