Do we actually know how to feel?

One of the most frustrating things about parenting a child with big behaviors and emotions is seeing them do something successfully one day and then watching them seem completely incapable of doing the exact same thing the next. They remembered the entire morning routine yesterday without you saying a word. Today, they’ve walked past their shoes three times while you keep reminding them to put them on. They sat down and finished their math independently on Monday. On Wednesday, getting started on the first problem turns into an argument. Their plans changed unexpectedly yesterday, and they rolled with it. But today, a small change to the afternoon schedule sends them into a meltdown. Once you’ve seen your child do something, it’s easy to think, Okay. So I know you CAN do this. And they can. The part that gets confusing is why they can do it successfully one day and struggle so much with it the next. Understanding a little bit about your child’s developing brain can help explain that inconsistency. Your Child’s Brain Is Doing a Lot More Than You Realize When we think about brain development, it’s easy to picture a child simply learning more information as they grow. They learn to read. They learn multiplication. They learn how to tie their shoes and remember their address and tell time. A huge amount of development throughout childhood also involves your child’s growing ability to manage themselves, their emotions, their attention, and all of the information and demands coming at them throughout the day. The brain is made up of different areas that contribute to different functions. The temporal lobes are involved in things like language, hearing, memory, and emotion. The parietal lobes help process and integrate sensory information about the body and environment. The occipital lobes are heavily involved in visual processing, and the cerebellum plays important roles in movement, coordination, and balance. The frontal lobes, including the prefrontal cortex, are especially relevant when we look at many of the behaviors parents are navigating every day. The prefrontal cortex is heavily involved in planning, organizing, problem-solving, attention, working memory, impulse control, flexible thinking, considering consequences, regulating emotions, delaying gratification, and shifting from what we want to do toward what a situation requires from us. Think about how many times you expect your child to use some combination of those skills before lunch. They have to stop playing and begin school. Remember what they need for the lesson. Follow several directions. Ignore the sibling making noise beside them. Keep working when something becomes difficult. Tolerate making a mistake. Remember what you taught them yesterday. Wait while you help someone else. Change plans when something unexpected happens. Think before saying the angry thing that just popped into their head. That is an enormous amount of executive functioning, and these abilities are developing throughout childhood and adolescence. “But I Know They Can Do It” A developing skill isn’t an absent skill. Your 8-year-old can demonstrate impulse control. Your 10-year-old can plan ahead. Your 6-year-old can solve a problem. Your 9-year-old can regulate their emotions. Your child can remember a three-step direction, organize their school supplies, think about how their actions affected someone else, tolerate disappointment, and stop themselves before doing something impulsive. And then there will be times when they don’t. We tend to respond differently once we’ve seen evidence that our child is capable of something. If we genuinely believe a child cannot do something yet, we’re usually pretty willing to support them. Once we’ve watched them do it successfully, their inconsistency can start to look intentional. You’re not trying. You’re being lazy. You weren’t listening. You know better. You’re perfectly capable of doing this yourself. When we interpret that inconsistency as a choice, we can easily respond to a child as though they’re refusing to use a skill that may still require support. A child being able to demonstrate a skill under one set of conditions doesn’t tell us that they’ve mastered it across every environment, emotional state, level of difficulty, or amount of support. Think about how different it is to organize something you’re excited about versus something you find boring or difficult. A child might spend an hour planning exactly how they’re going to build something in Minecraft and then seem completely incapable of figuring out what they need to bring to the table for science. That gives us useful information about the skill. There are conditions under which your child can use it more easily and conditions that place much greater demands on their developing brain. Motivation, stress, distractions, fatigue, familiarity, cognitive load, and the amount of support available can all affect what your child is able to manage in that particular moment. Instead of stopping at I know you can do this, we can start getting curious about when, where, and under what conditions they can do it. What Should We Expect From a Developing Brain? Learning about brain development can bring up a very reasonable question for parents: So what am I actually supposed to expect from my child? If impulse control is still developing, you still need to teach your child what to do with an impulse. If executive functioning is developing, your child still needs opportunities to plan, organize, remember, and take responsibility. If emotional regulation is developing, your child still needs to learn what to do with anger, disappointment, frustration, and overwhelm. We can expect children to practice planning, organization, problem-solving, emotional regulation, and impulse control while also recognizing that developing skills will still require support, reminders, modeling, and repeated practice. If your child is developing the ability to organize their work, they need opportunities to organize things. If they’re developing problem-solving skills, they need opportunities to solve problems. If they’re learning to tolerate frustration, they need experiences with frustration. If they’re developing impulse control, they need boundaries and repeated opportunities to practice stopping, waiting, thinking, and trying again. How much support they need while doing those things will change as the skills develop. There will be areas where your child is ready for you to step back and allow them to carry more responsibility. There will be other areas where expecting complete independence leaves them repeatedly failing at something their brain still needs help managing. This is something we’re constantly adjusting as parents: What can my child meaningfully participate in right now? Where can I step back? Where do they still need structure, modeling, reminders, or co-regulation? And that answer is going to change as they grow. Your Response Becomes Part of the Practice Children develop these capacities through years of using them. Your child gets thousands of opportunities throughout childhood to wait, remember, plan, organize, recover, solve problems, tolerate disappointment, change course, consider another person’s perspective, and try again. A lot of that practice happens in relationship with us. Your child may not be able to solve a problem independently yet, so you help them think it through without immediately solving it for them. They may struggle to organize a multi-step assignment, so you provide enough structure for them to participate in the planning rather than taking over the entire process. They may become deeply upset about a boundary, and you continue holding the boundary while helping them move through the emotions that come with it. As their capacity grows, the amount and type of support you provide can change too. Something that once required you to be heavily involved may eventually need only a reminder, and later your child may manage it independently. We can’t demand our child’s capacity into existence. Children need opportunities to use developing skills while they still have access to the support that helps them succeed with those skills. And Then There’s Their Nervous System This adds another layer to what we’ve been talking about with the nervous system thermometer . Last week, we talked about how stress changes a child’s access to skills they already have. Now we can consider the developmental capacity underneath those skills too. When your child is struggling, ask: How developed is this skill in the first place? How much access does my child have to that skill right now? Imagine a child whose impulse control is still developing. When they’re regulated, they have better access to the impulse control they currently possess. As they become increasingly frustrated, overwhelmed, angry, scared, or dysregulated, using that developing skill becomes harder. So when a child is at the top of their thermometer and we’re saying, You know better. Think before you act. Use your words. Make a better choice, we may be asking them to rely on a skill that is still developing while their nervous system is also making that skill harder to access. If a child hits when they become overwhelmed, we still address the hitting while also looking underneath it. Were they so dysregulated that they lost access to impulse control? Is impulse control itself still a skill that needs more development and support? Was there an unmet need contributing to what happened? Those answers help us understand what needs attention beyond simply stopping the behavior. All behavior is communication. Behavior can tell us about dysregulation, an unmet need, a missing or developing skill, and often some combination of those things. Lo oking underneath the behavior gives us more information about what our child is struggling to manage and what still needs support, teaching, practice, or development. Your Child Is Building a Brain I think we can forget this because we live with our children every day. We see how smart they are. We hear their surprisingly mature observations. We watch them explain complicated ideas and remember things we’ve completely forgotten. And then we’re baffled when that same child cannot find the shoes that are directly in front of them or falls apart because their brother touched their pencil. A child can be incredibly intelligent while still having age-appropriate limitations in planning, working memory, impulse control, emotional regulation, flexible thinking, organization, and all the other skills their developing brain is working on. We don’t have to wait for those systems to fully mature before asking children to use them. Childhood gives them years of opportunities to practice these skills with gradually increasing independence. So when you find yourself thinking, I know you can do this, get more specific about what “can” means for your child right now. How consistently can they do it? Under what conditions? How much support do they still need? What happens to this skill when they’re tired, frustrated, distracted, or overwhelmed? The answers give you a much clearer picture of what you can reasonably expect your child to manage independently right now, where they still need support, and which skills need more time and opportunities to develop.

You probably know what the top of your child’s nervous system looks like. Is it screaming, hitting, throwing things, running away, sobbing, slamming a door, or saying things they would never say when they’re calm? Maybe your child goes in the opposite direction and completely shuts down. They stop talking. They hide. They curl up somewhere and want everyone to leave them alone. When you’re raising a child with big behaviors and emotions, you get pretty familiar with this version of them. But what happened before that? Not the thing that caused the meltdown. I mean what was happening in their body and behavior as their nervous system was gradually moving from okay, to a little stressed, to overwhelmed, to completely unable to cope. And while all of that was happening in your child, what was happening in you? Because there are two nervous systems at play during a meltdown: theirs AND yours. Understanding both of them can completely change what you notice about your hardest parenting moments. Think of Your Nervous System Like a Thermometer One of the tools I learned long before parent coaching was a nervous system thermometer. Imagine a thermometer that starts in deep green at the bottom and gradually moves through yellow, orange, red, and finally white at the top. Deep green is where you feel calm, present, connected, and able to engage with what’s happening around you. As you move up the thermometer, your body begins giving you signs that something is changing. You may feel slightly on edge at yellow. By orange, your jaw might be clenched, the noise around you may suddenly feel unbearable, or anger may be building. At red, your breathing might become shallow, your chest tight, your thoughts faster, and your ability to think clearly much smaller. At the very top- once you’ve hit white, BOOM. Capacity- gone. Ability to think- gone. Reaction is all that is happening. And that top level doesn’t look the same for everyone. While we tend to picture nervous system dysregulation as an explosion, it can also look like shutting down, withdrawing, going silent, disconnecting, freezing, or feeling like you just cannot engage anymore. The same is true for our kids. You Probably Know Your Child’s Red. But What Does Their Yellow Look Like? If your child has big behaviors , you could probably describe their red or white level in great detail. The harder question is: What does yellow look like? Maybe your child starts getting silly. They ask the same question over and over. They become more sensitive to what their sibling is doing. Their body starts moving more. They suddenly need everything done a very particular way. They begin arguing about little things that usually wouldn’t bother them. For another child, yellow might get quieter. They stop responding as much. They move away from everyone. They start saying “I don’t know” to questions they could answer earlier. And in homeschool, you may see it show up in the work. Your child knew how to do these math problems yesterday, but now every question is “I don’t know.” They start making jokes. They wander away from the table. They complain that their pencil feels weird. They erase one letter six times. They argue about whether the assignment is necessary. It’s easy to see each of those things as a separate behavior that needs correcting. But the thermometer gives us a vital piece of information: Where is my child’s nervous system right now? Likely that behavior you are seeing is one of their early signs that their capacity is changing. The meltdown at the top of the thermometer gets our attention, but learning what happens on the way there gives us a lot more room to intervene, teach, and regulate than after the meltdown is already under way. Your Child Has Different Capacity at Different Places on the Thermometer This is where the thermometer connects to something I talk about constantly with parents: knowing something and being able to access it are different. Your child can understand a boundary at green. They can know how to take turns. They can know hitting hurts. They can know how to ask for a break. They can know how to solve the math problem. They can know the breathing exercise you have practiced tons of times. But as their nervous system climbs, access to those skills changes. Yet we are stuck in this loop where we keep asking for the skill with more intensity. “You KNOW this.” “We already talked about this.” “Use your words.” “Take a breath.” “Just tell me what you need.” “Stop and think.” So we’re actually asking a child to use skills that are getting harder for them to access as their nervous system becomes more overwhelmed. The thermometer helps us stop looking at behavior as though their ability and capacity should always be the same. Your child at green and your child at red are the same child with the same knowledge. But they do not have the same access to that knowledge in both states. That’s an important distinction when we’re deciding what this moment actually requires from us. But Where Are You on Your Thermometer? This is the part parents often miss. We become incredibly skilled at watching our children. You hear the change in their voice. You see their body getting restless. You notice the refusal beginning. You hear the way they just answered their sibling and think, Oh boy. You know exactly where this is headed. But while you’re watching their nervous system, yours is responding too. Imagine you sit down for math. Your child is already tired. Three problems in, they start complaining. They erase a problem aggressively and say they can’t do it. Their thermometer is moving. You feel the first little wave of irritation. We just started. Then they push the paper away. Now you’re thinking about everything else you need to accomplish today. You can feel your jaw tighten. They say, “I’m NOT doing this!” Your voice gets firmer. “You absolutely are. We are not doing this again today.” Now there are two thermometers climbing. Your child has less access to flexibility, problem-solving, language, impulse control, and regulation. And so do you. That doesn’t make you a bad parent. It makes you a human being with a nervous system. But your nervous system is part of what happens next. Your First Warning Sign Probably Isn’t Yelling This is where I think the thermometer becomes incredibly useful for parents. If the first sign you notice in yourself is, I yelled, you noticed yourself very late in the process. What happened at yellow? Maybe your shoulders rose, your jaw tightened, you started talking faster, you began repeating yourself, you suddenly became very rigid about something being completed exactly the way you planned. Maybe you felt hot, or the television, the dog barking, and your other child asking for a snack suddenly felt ten times louder. And you think, “ I cannot deal with this today.” That is information. Your body has been communicating with you throughout the entire interaction. Learning your thermometer means becoming familiar enough with those earlier cues that you can recognize, I'm moving. And then you can start DOING something about it. We Don’t Need to Keep Everyone in Green I want to be careful here, because nervous system work can very quickly become another parenting standard that you are measuring by perfection. The goal is not to keep yourself calm all day, and your job is not to keep your child in green. Humans, adults and children alike, are supposed to experience frustration, anger, disappointment, anxiety, sadness, excitement, overwhelm, and stress. Moving up the thermometer isn’t failure, and regulation doesn’t mean staying in the green all the time. What we’re developing is awareness of what is happening in our bodies, how our capacity changes as our nervous systems become more activated, and what those shifts communicate. That awareness gives you information you didn’t have when the entire interaction was “ The meltdown came out of nowhere and I finally lost it.” Your Child’s Nervous System Will Affect Yours This is also where things get uncomfortable. Your child’s dysregulation can activate you. Their crying might create an intense urge to fix whatever is wrong. Their anger might make your body brace for a fight. Their refusal might trigger fear that you’re becoming too permissive. Their yelling might make you want to get louder. Their inability to complete schoolwork might bring up anxiety about whether they’re falling behind. Their meltdown might make every part of your body scream, MAKE THIS STOP. And when we don’t recognize what is happening inside of us, that activation can start driving our parenting. We lecture. We threaten. We over-explain. We rescue. We push harder. We withdraw. We try to make the feeling disappear because we cannot tolerate being in the room with it anymore. This is one reason learning your own nervous system matters so much when you’re parenting a child with big behaviors and emotions. You aren't observing their thermometer from outside the situation. You're in it with them. Start Watching Both Thermometers The next time things begin going sideways, see what you notice before you get to the hardest part. What does your child look like in green? What changes first? What does yellow look like for them? What tells you they’re moving toward orange? And then turn that same curiosity toward yourself. What happens in your body first? What thoughts start showing up? What changes in your voice? What starts feeling harder to tolerate? You don’t need to perfectly identify five levels in the middle of a meltdown. Start learning the patterns. The more familiar you become with both thermometers, the easier it becomes to understand what is happening before you reach the point where everyone has lost access to the skills they needed most.  The meltdown may feel like the main character, but the nervous system story started much earlier.

You love your child. You like being with them. You want them to know they can come to you when they need help. And also... Sometimes you would really, really like them to need you a little less. They want you to sit beside them while they do something you know they're capable of doing. They follow you into the kitchen while you're trying to make lunch because they need to tell you one more thing. They call you back after you've tucked them into bed. They want help solving a problem you know they could probably figure out. They have another enormous feeling about something that seems very small to you, and you can feel yourself thinking, I cannot do this again. If you're homeschooling a child with big behaviors and emotions, this can feel especially relentless because there often isn't much natural separation in your day. You're their parent, their teacher, the person helping them regulate, the one working through sibling conflict, the one they find when something feels hard...and sometimes it feels like there is always someone needing something from you. So when you hear yourself thinking, Why do you need me for EVERYTHING? , I'm not interested in making you feel guilty for it. I'm interested in getting curious about it. When being needed starts to feel like too much Sometimes our children really do ask more of us than we have available in that moment. Parents have needs too. You need quiet. You need space. You need to finish making dinner without answering seventeen questions. You may need a break after spending an hour helping your child through a meltdown. Secure attachment doesn't require you to be endlessly available or to abandon your own needs every time your child has one. But there can be another layer here that's worth noticing. Some of us become particularly uncomfortable when our children depend on us in ways we think they should have outgrown. You're nine. You can do this yourself. You know how to calm down. You don't need me to sit here. Why are we still talking about this? You're okay. Sometimes we're accurately recognizing a skill our child is capable of using. And sometimes we may be bumping into our own discomfort with being needed. That's where attachment can give us a really interesting lens. We learned something about needing people, too When we talk about attachment, we're really talking about what we learned through relationships. Some people grew up with caregivers who were comfortable with emotions, closeness, comfort and dependence. Their needs could be expressed and responded to. They could move toward their caregiver when they needed support and gradually move away again when they felt ready. That's part of what we see in secure attachment. But some of us learned something different. Maybe strong emotions weren't particularly welcome in your family. Maybe you were praised for being mature, easy or independent. Maybe the adults around you were uncomfortable with vulnerability or weren't emotionally available themselves. Maybe you learned to handle things on your own because asking for help didn't reliably result in connection. You may not even look back on your childhood and think anything was particularly wrong. You may simply think, That's just how we were. We weren't an emotional family. And you adapted. You learned how to keep going. You became independent. Maybe you're good in a crisis. Maybe you don't need a lot from other people. You give people space and don't hover. You may be very capable of looking at a difficult situation logically and figuring out what needs to happen next. There are strengths in that. But those same adaptations can sometimes make another person's dependence or emotional intensity uncomfortable. This is one way insecure avoidant attachment patterns can show up in parenting, not necessarily as a parent who doesn't love or care about their child, but as a parent whose system has become very comfortable with independence and much less comfortable with need. And then you get handed a child who needs you A LOT. “They're too needy” may be worth getting curious about Maybe your child follows you everywhere. Maybe they want you beside them during school even though you know they can read the directions themselves. Maybe they get overwhelmed and can't seem to access all those coping skills you've practiced unless you're there helping them. Maybe they're eleven and still want you nearby when they're upset. Or maybe every feeling seems to require a conversation, and by 3:00 you're thinking, Can we please just move on? It's easy to start viewing the need itself as the problem. They're clingy. They're too dependent. They're being dramatic. They need to learn to self-soothe. They need to be more independent. And sometimes children absolutely do need support developing skills they can eventually use more independently. But there's a question I think is worth asking before we rush them there: Is my child actually ready to carry this without me, or am I uncomfortable that they still need me? Those are two very different things. A child can technically know how to do something and still need support accessing that skill when they're tired, frustrated, overwhelmed or dysregulated. Your nine-year-old may absolutely know how to complete their math independently. That doesn't mean their request for you to sit nearby is automatically manipulation or unnecessary dependence. Your child may know several ways to calm their body. That doesn't mean they will always be able to access them without another regulated person nearby. And honestly, this doesn't end when childhood does. Adults still call friends. We still ask our spouses to sit with us when something hurts. We still need reassurance. We still sometimes know exactly what to do and find that doing it feels easier with someone beside us. Healthy independence was never supposed to mean I don't need anybody. We can accidentally hurry children toward independence This is where I think things can get particularly interesting for parents. Independence sounds like an unquestionably good goal. We want children who can solve problems, manage responsibilities, advocate for themselves, regulate their emotions, make decisions and eventually function without us managing their lives. Of course we do. But sometimes, without realizing it, we start measuring progress by how little our child needs us. They did the whole lesson without me. They finally stopped coming out of their room every time they were upset. They didn't cry when I left. They handled it themselves. Again, any one of those things could represent healthy growth. But the question is whether our child is becoming more independent because they feel increasingly capable or because they've learned that needing someone is unwelcome. Those can look surprisingly similar from the outside. Secure attachment gives children room for both dependence and independence. They can move out into the world, try things, struggle, develop competence and discover, I can do this. And they can come back. I need help. I'm overwhelmed. Can you stay? I don't know what to do. The eventual goal isn't a person who never needs another person. It's someone who can trust themselves and participate in relationships where people can depend on one another. But what about when I genuinely need space? is important, because I don't want this conversation to turn into one more message telling parents, especially mothers that if their child needs something, they should somehow find more of themselves to give. That's not secure attachment either. One of the things we see in secure attachment is the ability to recognize that both people in the relationship have needs. Your child may need connection. You may need ten minutes without someone touching you. Your child may want you beside them for every math problem. You may know that you cannot sit there for the next forty-five minutes. Your child may desperately want to process what happened right now. You may be too activated yourself to have that conversation well. Both experiences matter. Secure attachment doesn't require you to erase yourself so your child never experiences disappointment, waiting or separation. In fact, part of healthy relationship is learning that another person can love us deeply and still have boundaries, limitations and needs of their own. The difference is that we don't have to make our child's need wrong in order to honor ours. Maybe you can't sit through the entire assignment, but you can help them get started and check back. Maybe you genuinely need space after a hard interaction, and you can communicate that rather than shutting down or disappearing emotionally. Maybe you can't listen to the entire Minecraft story while you're trying to get everyone out the door, but their desire to tell you about it doesn't have to become annoying or ridiculous simply because this isn't a good time. Sometimes the answer really is, I need some space right now. And sometimes the deeper work is noticing how quickly we want space whenever someone else's emotions, dependence or vulnerability gets close to us. You don't need to diagnose yourself I don't want you finishing this article wondering, Oh no. Do I have avoidant attachment? Did I give my child avoidant attachment? That's not particularly useful. Attachment patterns aren't character judgments, and individual behaviors don't diagnose an attachment style. A child who wants to be alone after a meltdown may need sensory space. A child who doesn't want a hug may simply not want to be touched. Neurodivergence, temperament, development, stress and the context of the moment all matter. What is useful is noticing patterns. What happens inside you when your child needs comfort? What happens when they need more help than you think they should? Do you find yourself quickly moving toward logic, fixing or positivity when emotions become uncomfortable? Does your child's dependence sometimes feel suffocating? Do you feel an urgency to teach them to handle things on their own? And maybe most importantly: Is there room in your relationship for your child to need you without that need becoming something they have to outgrow as quickly as possible? Because secure attachment isn't raising a child who never needs you. It's helping them experience enough safety in relationship that they can venture farther and farther out into their own lives knowing that connection is still available when they need to come back. And for some of us, creating that kind of relationship with our children may also mean learning something we didn't fully learn ourselves: There’s nothing wrong with needing, or even wanting, people. Needing people is part of being human.

Long before you became a parent, you were learning what parenting was supposed to look like. You learned who got to make decisions. You learned whether children were allowed to disagree with adults. You learned what happened when a child became angry, made a mistake, broke a rule, or said no. You learned whether adults apologized. You learned whether children's feelings changed anything, whether rules required explanations, and whether being a "good kid" meant being quiet, agreeable, obedient, independent, successful or something else entirely. You probably weren't consciously studying any of this. You were just growing up. But those experiences gave you some of your earliest lessons about power in relationships. And now, years later, you're the adult in the relationship. We all learned something about who was supposed to have the power One way we can understand these early experiences is through a continuum of power over, power under, and power with . Power over is closely associated with authoritarian parenting. The adult holds the power, and the child is expected to comply. There may be very little room for the child's perspective, feelings, needs, or developmental capacity to influence what happens because the adult's authority settles the question. You may recognize phrases like, "Because I said so," "Don't talk back to me," or "Children should be seen and not heard." Mistakes may have been met with punishment, lectures, criticism, shame, or consequences designed primarily to make sure the behavior didn't happen again. That doesn't mean every parent who ever said "because I said so" had an authoritarian household, and it certainly doesn't mean we need to go back through our childhoods assigning labels to every interaction. We're talking about patterns. At the other end is power under, which can show up as permissive or, in some circumstances, uninvolved parenting. Here the adult may struggle to confidently occupy the leadership role at all. Boundaries can become very loose or disappear because conflict feels unbearable. A parent may silence their own needs, avoid upsetting the child, or allow the child to make decisions they aren't developmentally ready to carry. Sometimes this happens because a parent doesn't feel confident in their own leadership, especially when holding a boundary or making a decision their child doesn't like creates conflict. Sometimes they're exhausted or unsupported. Sometimes maintaining peace feels more manageable than staying present through a child's anger or disappointment. And sometimes people who experienced a lot of power over as children become very uncomfortable exercising power at all when they become parents. They know exactly what they don't want to recreate. They're less sure what belongs in its place. When you're trying not to become your parents This is where I think things get particularly interesting for those of us trying to parent differently than we were raised. Maybe you remember what it felt like when your opinion didn't matter, so you are deeply committed to listening to your child. Maybe punishment or shame was common in your home, so you don't want your child afraid of you. Maybe emotions weren't welcome, so you've worked hard to create a home where feelings can be expressed. Those can be really meaningful shifts. But sometimes, in our determination not to use power over our children, we become hesitant to use our power at all. Your child doesn't want to leave somewhere, and suddenly holding the boundary feels controlling. They're furious about a screen limit, and you start wondering whether maintaining it means you're ignoring their needs. They don't want to do something you've asked, and you're caught between, I don't want to force them and I also don't think an eight-year-old should be making this decision. You can end up bouncing between the two ends of the continuum. You hold everything tightly until the fighting becomes unbearable, then give in. You accommodate and accommodate until you're resentful or overwhelmed, then suddenly become much firmer than you intended. Neither position feels quite right, but the alternative can be hard to imagine when the models most familiar to us are adult controls child or child controls situation . There is another way to think about power. Power with doesn't mean giving up our leadership role Power with can sometimes get confused with stepping out of the leadership role altogether, letting the child decide, avoiding limits they don't like, or believing that honoring a child's voice means we can't make a decision they disagree with. But our children need our leadership. They are in our care, and we have a responsibility to protect them, advocate for them, create appropriate structure and boundaries, teach and guide them, and support needs and skills they aren't yet able to manage entirely on their own. Power with doesn't ask us to give up that leadership. It asks us to consider how we use it . Good leaders don't need to control or micromanage the people they're leading. They create safety, provide direction and support, listen, make thoughtful decisions, and help the people in their care become increasingly capable of thinking, problem-solving, and making decisions for themselves. Our child's perspective can matter without determining every decision. Their feelings can be welcomed without changing every boundary. We can be curious about what's driving a behavior while still addressing the behavior. We can recognize developmental limitations while continuing to teach skills and hold appropriate expectations. Sometimes leadership means holding a boundary our child really doesn't like. Sometimes it means intervening for safety or making a decision because that responsibility belongs to us. And sometimes good leadership means listening to our child, considering information we didn't have before, and realizing that we need to change course. We can say no without needing our child to agree that our no is reasonable. We can also acknowledge when we got something wrong, take accountability, and repair. Power with makes room for both people in the relationship while keeping the parent grounded in their responsibility to lead. We're not using our leadership to control who our child is or make every situation easier for us. We're using it to support, guide, protect, and help them develop the skills they'll gradually take ownership of themselves. What feels normal isn't necessarily what you've consciously chosen Last week, we talked about determining the values you actually want guiding your parenting. This is one reason that work matters. You can consciously decide that mutual respect is important to you and still feel something flare inside you when your child says, "No." You can value emotional honesty and still have a strong urge to shut down your child's anger. You can believe children deserve explanations and still hear, "Because I said so!" come out of your mouth when you're exhausted. You can value collaboration and then panic that you've become too permissive when your child doesn't immediately cooperate. Sometimes there's a gap between what we've consciously decided matters and what our bodies and brains learned through years of experience. What we grew up with often feels normal long before we've decided whether we agree with it. And the opposite can happen too. If you were hurt by the way power was used in your childhood, anything that resembles authority may feel uncomfortable even healthy, grounded authority. So when you notice yourself struggling with your child's refusal, disagreement, anger, or need for support, the question isn't always simply, What parenting strategy should I use here? There may be an older question underneath it: What did I learn was supposed to happen when a child behaved like this? Fear has a way of pulling us toward the ends Power over and power under can both become particularly tempting when we're afraid. We worry that our child won't be able to function in the world. That we're coddling them. That they'll become entitled. That other people are judging our parenting. That we're losing control. That we're failing them somehow. Fear can make control feel necessary. But fear can also make conflict feel intolerable. One parent responds to, I'm losing control of this situation, by tightening their grip and trying harder to control the child. Another responds to that same feeling by backing away from a boundary, silencing their own needs, or handing a decision to the child because staying present in the conflict feels overwhelming. And the same parent can do both at different times. That's why I don't think these categories are particularly useful when they're treated as identities. I'm a power-with parent. My mother was a power-over parent. That parent at co-op is permissive. Human beings are more complicated than that. These are patterns we can move into and out of depending on our stress, support, self-awareness, history, skills, and what is happening in the relationship. You may recognize all three of them in yourself over the course of a single day. The goal isn't to prove that you always operate from power with. It's to become better at recognizing when you don't. You don't have to erase where you came from to choose where you're going Understanding how you were raised isn't about putting your childhood on trial. Your parents had histories too. They were influenced by their families, cultures, communities, beliefs, fears, resources, and whatever understanding of children was available to them. You may look back and feel tremendous gratitude for much of what you received while still recognizing patterns you don't want to continue. You may also recognize things that hurt. Both can be true. What matters now is that you're no longer the child simply absorbing someone else's model of what parenting is supposed to be. You get to examine it. You get to notice what you want to carry forward, what you want to leave behind, and what you may need to learn because it was never modeled for you. And when you catch yourself moving toward power over or power under, you don't need to turn that observation into another reason to criticize yourself. You can get curious. What feels threatened right now? What am I afraid will happen if I don't control this? What makes holding this boundary feel so uncomfortable? What did adults do when I behaved like this? Because power with isn't a parenting identity you earn once you understand the concept. It's something we practice and return to. Sometimes that means loosening our grip enough to hear our child. Sometimes it means finding our footing and confidently using our leadership to hold a boundary, make a decision, or provide the structure and support our child needs from us. And sometimes it means realizing that the parenting response that feels most familiar to us isn't necessarily the one we want to keep choosing.

If I asked you what matters most to you as a parent, you could probably give me an answer pretty quickly. You might say connection. Respect. Kindness. Faith. Independence. Responsibility. Honesty. Family. Maybe you want your child to grow into someone who is compassionate, confident, resilient, or willing to stand up for what they believe in. But then Tuesday morning happens. Your child refuses to start the lesson you planned. They snap at you when you remind them of their chores. Their sibling walks through the room and suddenly they're arguing about something that seems completely unrelated. You're looking at the clock because you need to leave in forty minutes, the lesson still isn't finished, and now you're wondering whether you need to be firmer because lately it feels like nobody listens until you've asked five times. In those moments, the question of what matters to us can become much less clear. Not because we've stopped caring about our values, but because parenting rarely asks us to live them under ideal conditions. It asks us to live them when we're tired, embarrassed, worried, rushed, frustrated, or staring at a child whose behavior is bringing up every fear we have about whether we're doing this right. We're always parenting from something Every parenting decision comes from somewhere. When you decide that a behavior needs a boundary, you're using something to determine that the boundary matters. When you decide to give your child more autonomy, you're making a judgment about what matters. When you require an apology, change a homeschool expectation, intervene in a sibling conflict, insist that something gets done, or decide that something really isn't worth fighting about, you're drawing from beliefs about children, relationships, responsibility, respect, learning, family, and the kind of person you hope your child becomes. The tricky part is that we don't consciously examine all of those beliefs before we use them. Some came from the way we were raised. Some came from school, church, culture, social media, parenting books, or people we respect. Some developed because of experiences we've had with our particular child. And some are connected to fears about what will happen if we don't respond a certain way. So we can find ourselves parenting from a belief without ever stopping to ask whether it actually reflects what matters most to us. Maybe you were taught that respectful children don't question adults, but you also deeply value raising a child who can advocate for themselves. Maybe independence matters to you, but you find yourself stepping in quickly whenever your child struggles because watching them struggle is uncomfortable. Maybe you value connection and emotional safety, but when your child becomes angry, your own nervous system becomes so activated that ending the behavior feels more urgent than understanding what's happening. Then we find ourselves parenting from a belief without ever stopping to ask whether it actually reflects what matters most to us. And when we notice that happening, it gives us an opportunity to get curious about where that belief came from and whether it's one we still want guiding us. Values get complicated when two good things collide A lot of parenting decisions would be easier if there were always one obviously correct value at stake. Usually there isn't. You may value both kindness and honesty. You may value your child's autonomy and your responsibility to lead them. You may value perseverance and knowing when something genuinely needs to change. You may value family connection and personal boundaries. You may want your child to respect other people while also wanting them to question authority when something feels wrong. You may value academic growth while also believing that your relationship with your child matters more than completing today's worksheet exactly as planned. These aren't necessarily contradictions. They're tensions. And homeschooling gives us opportunities to bump into those tensions constantly because so many roles overlap. You're the parent, teacher, boundary-holder, safe person, schedule-maker, advocate, and person trying to figure out whether your child needs encouragement to persist or permission to stop. Consider a child who becomes overwhelmed during a difficult lesson. If perseverance matters to you, you might feel strongly that they shouldn't simply quit whenever something gets hard. That's reasonable. If emotional safety and responsiveness matter to you, you may also recognize that pushing a child whose nervous system is completely overwhelmed isn't necessarily teaching perseverance. Now you're not choosing between caring and not caring. You're trying to figure out how two things you care deeply about can coexist. Fear can sound surprisingly similar to a value This is where I think the conversation gets especially important for parents of kids with big behaviors. Because when behavior is intense, repetitive, public, disruptive, or simply exhausting, fear can become very loud. If I let this go, they'll think they can get away with everything. If I help them with this, they'll never become independent. If I don't give a consequence, they won't learn. If they talk to me this way at eight, what will they be like at sixteen? If my child can't handle this now, how are they ever going to function in the real world? Those fears don't mean you're doing anything wrong. They're often connected to very real hopes we have for our children. We want them to become capable. We want them to take responsibility. We want them to have healthy relationships. We want them to be able to function in a world that won't always accommodate them. But fear tends to rush us toward the future. Values can help bring us back to what we're actually trying to build. If responsibility matters to me, I can ask what responsibility developmentally looks like for this child right now rather than reacting from fear that helping them means they'll never become responsible. If respect matters to me, I can get more curious about what I mean by respect. Is respect immediate obedience? Is it speaking to each other with dignity? Does respect move both directions in our family? What do I want my child to understand about respect when they're eventually an adult in relationships of their own? And that's why getting clear on our values requires more than choosing the words that sound right. We have to think about what those values actually look like in our relationships with our children. Sometimes the behavior distracts us from the bigger picture When you're living with a difficult behavior every day, it makes sense that stopping it starts to feel like the goal. You want the morning arguing to stop. You want your child to stop screaming at their sibling. You want them to stop fighting every transition. You want to be able to say it's time for school without the entire house becoming tense. Behavior matters. Sometimes it needs immediate intervention. Sometimes there are boundaries that need to be held, skills that need to be taught, environments that need to change, or expectations that need to become clearer. But behavior can become so consuming that we start making decisions around How do I make this stop? without asking the larger question of What am I actually trying to build? Those questions can lead us in very different directions. If my only goal is to stop my child from arguing with me, I may prioritize whatever produces the fastest compliance. If what matters to me is raising a child who can disagree respectfully, listen to another perspective, advocate for themselves, and remain connected through conflict, then I have a much longer developmental goal. That doesn't mean I allow my child to speak to me however they want. It means I'm thinking beyond eliminating the behavior in front of me. I'm considering what I want them to be learning through our relationship. Your values give your parenting somewhere to point Last week, we talked about intentions: deciding how you want to show up when parenting gets hard . But eventually we have to ask where those intentions come from. Why do you want to remain curious? Why does connection matter? Why are you holding this particular boundary? Why are you asking your child to persist here but choosing flexibility somewhere else? There isn't one universal list of values that every family needs to choose. And even families who use the same words may mean very different things by them. What's useful is becoming more conscious of what is actually guiding you. Because there will be moments when your child's reaction makes you question yourself. There will be parenting advice that sounds convincing but doesn't sit right with you. There will be situations where two things you care about seem to compete with each other. There will be seasons when something that worked before no longer fits the child in front of you. Values don't remove that complexity. They give you something to orient yourself toward inside of it. And perhaps that's the more useful question when you're deciding how to respond to your child's behavior . Not only, How do I get through this moment? But also, What matters to me here, and what am I hoping my child experiences and learns through the way I lead them? Because we're not only trying to raise children who behave well in front of us. We're raising people who will eventually carry what they've learned about themselves, relationships, responsibility, conflict, boundaries, compassion, and respect into a life of their own.

There are probably disruptive parts to your day with your child that you can predict before they even happen. You know which demand is most likely to bring resistance. You know what happens when it's time to turn off the iPad. You know that going to fun places can go beautifully right up until the moment you say it's time to get in the car. You may even find yourself bracing before you've asked your child to do anything because you've lived some version of this moment enough times to know where it could go. And when you expect something to be hard, it's natural to start thinking about what you want to happen. I need him to get through homework without melting down. I need her to stop whining when it’s time for her chores. I really don't want another fight about this today. Those are understandable goals. But they all have something in common: their success depends, at least partly, on another person's behavior. I've started thinking much more about what happens when we enter those same moments with an intention instead. Goals and intentions aren't the same thing Goals are useful. I have them in parenting, homeschooling, my work, and plenty of other areas of my life. But goals usually point us toward an outcome we're trying to reach. We want to finish the homeschool lesson. We want everyone out the door by 9:00. We want our child to learn to speak respectfully when they're angry. We want bedtime to become easier. We want siblings to make it through playtime without fighting. The difficulty comes when we unconsciously turn those outcomes into the measure of success. If the lesson ended in a meltdown, I failed. If my child screamed when I held the boundary, I must have said it wrong. If they refused to get into the car, my approach didn't work. If I stayed calm and they still escalated, what was the point? Parenting becomes especially frustrating when we're measuring ourselves by an outcome we don't actually control. Your influence matters tremendously. You can teach, lead, structure the environment, hold boundaries, offer support, adjust expectations, protect safety, and build skills over time. But your child is still a separate human being with their own nervous system, thoughts, preferences, developmental capacities, emotions, and choices. An intention brings your attention back to the part of the interaction that actually belongs to you. Who do I want to be when this gets hard? Imagine that you're about to start a lesson your child has been resisting all week. You could walk into it focused almost entirely on getting through the work. You may already be watching for signs that your child is going to refuse, calculating how much you need to finish, and thinking about what you'll do if they won't cooperate. Without realizing it, your nervous system may already be preparing for a battle that hasn't happened yet. An intention changes the question. Instead of wondering, How am I going to get through this lesson? , you begin deciding, How do I want to show up while we're doing it? Maybe you want to remain curious when your child struggles instead of immediately assuming they're avoiding the work. Maybe you want to be flexible enough to notice when something genuinely isn't working. Maybe you want to lead confidently without becoming controlling. Maybe you want to remember that your child's frustration isn't evidence that you're doing something wrong. The intention doesn't tell you exactly what will happen. It doesn't guarantee cooperation. It doesn't make your child suddenly love long division. What it can do is give you somewhere to return when the moment becomes difficult. Because the hard moment changes us, too It's much easier to imagine the parent we want to be when everyone is regulated. Most of us aren't standing in the kitchen alone thinking, You know what I really want to do today? Lose my patience over handwriting. The difficulty is that your child's behavior affects you. When your child rolls their eyes after you've explained something for the third time, refuses the request you were sure was reasonable, screams that they hate homeschool, or falls apart over something that seems incredibly small, your nervous system is receiving information too. Your own history, fears, expectations, beliefs about respect, worries about your child's future, and even what else has happened that morning can suddenly become part of the interaction. You aren't responding from a parenting book. You're responding as a human being inside a relationship with another human being. That's one reason intention can be so powerful. You're making a decision about how you want to participate in the relationship before you're relying on your most activated self to figure it out. That doesn't mean you'll always do it. You won't. Neither will I. But there's a meaningful difference between expecting yourself to magically respond well in every difficult moment and having already spent time considering the kind of parent you want to practice becoming . Intention gives you another way to measure the moment This has changed the way I think about success in parenting. If my only measure is my child's response, I can do something I'm genuinely proud of and still decide I failed because my child remained upset. Maybe I listened. Maybe I stayed grounded. Maybe I held a boundary that needed to be held without shaming or threatening. Maybe I noticed that what looked like defiance was actually overwhelm and changed the task. Maybe I realized safety required me to intervene immediately and did that calmly and confidently. My child still might not like what happened. They may cry. They may be angry with me. They may need more time than I wish they needed. They may not make the choice I hoped they'd make. An intention lets me ask a different set of questions afterward. Did I show up in a way that aligned with the parent I want to be? Did I stay connected to what mattered to me even when the interaction became uncomfortable? When I got pulled away from that, did I notice? Could I repair? That creates room for accountability without requiring perfection. Because setting an intention isn't promising yourself that you'll never yell again, never become triggered, or always know exactly what your child needs. If we turn intentions into another standard we can fail, we've missed what makes them useful. They're a direction. You don't have to wait for the hard moment to decide So much of parenting can feel reactive, especially when you're homeschooling a child with big behaviors and emotions. You're solving the problem in front of you while also trying to teach, feed people, answer questions, manage transitions, regulate yourself, support your child, and somehow remember where somebody put the math book. It makes sense that we fall into automatic patterns. But we don't have to leave every decision about who we want to be until the moment we're already overwhelmed. Before the homework starts, before you leave for co-op, before you tell your child screen time is over, before you walk into a part of the day that regularly stretches both of you, you can begin thinking about the part of that interaction that actually belongs to you. Not How do I make sure this goes well? But How do I want to show up, even if it doesn't? Your child will still have their own experience. You will still have yours. There will still be moments you handle beautifully and moments you wish you could redo. But over time, those small decisions about how you want to participate in the relationship begin to shape something much bigger than a single difficult homeschool day. They begin to shape the parent you're becoming.

If you homeschool in Florida and use a Step Up For Students scholarship, you may have noticed something confusing: PEP and FES-UA are both scholarship programs, but their annual education requirements are not the same. This is especially important if you are trying to figure out whether you need a homeschool evaluation, a standardized test, a portfolio, or some combination of these. The first thing to understand is that your scholarship program and your educational enrollment option are not necessarily the same thing. The difference between PEP and FES-UA The Personalized Education Program (PEP) is a scholarship program in which the student is registered with a Scholarship Funding Organization rather than with the local school district as a home education student. The Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA) is also a scholarship program, but FES-UA students may participate through different educational options, including a Florida home education program. That distinction is important because the annual assessment requirements are different. What are the annual requirements for PEP? If your child is participating in PEP , you do not complete the Florida home education annual evaluation simply because you are homeschooling. Instead, PEP has its own annual assessment requirements. Step Up For Students states that PEP students must take a Florida Department of Education-approved norm-referenced assessment or the applicable statewide assessment, and the results must be submitted to the Scholarship Funding Organization through EMA. PEP families also have an annual Student Learning Plan (SLP) requirement. So, for PEP: PEP annual assessment ≠ Florida home education portfolio evaluation. This is one of the most important distinctions for PEP families to understand. Do PEP families file a Letter of Intent? No. Because PEP is distinct from a Florida home education program, PEP students do not establish their educational status through a district Letter of Intent. Florida Department of Education guidance specifically states that PEP students are registered with the Scholarship Funding Organization rather than the school district. Step Up For Students also instructs families who transition from a home education program to PEP to terminate their home education program once the PEP scholarship is funded. What about FES-UA? FES-UA works differently. A child receiving FES-UA can participate through a Florida home education program . The current FES-UA handbook states that a home education program is one of the options that can satisfy Florida's regular school attendance requirement, provided the parent has filed a Letter of Intent with the local school district. If your child is participating as a home education student , Florida's home education requirements still apply. That means the family must follow the requirements under Florida Statute 1002.41, including maintaining the required portfolio and providing an annual educational evaluation. So does a FES-UA child need an annual evaluation? If the child is participating through a Florida home education program , yes, the home education annual evaluation requirement still applies. Florida law gives home education parents several evaluation options, including: A portfolio evaluation by a Florida-certified teacher A nationally norm-referenced achievement test administered by a certified teacher A state assessment administered under the conditions specified in the law An evaluation by a licensed psychologist Another valid measurement tool mutually agreed upon by the parent and superintendent Step Up For Students also identifies annual home education evaluation fees as an eligible FES-UA expense, subject to the program's requirements.

If you are getting ready to homeschool in Florida, one of the first questions you may have is: “Do I need to tell my school district?” “When do I file a Letter of Intent?” “Where do I send it?” If you are establishing a Florida home education program , you do need to notify your local school district. But the process is much simpler than many parents expect. What is a Letter of Intent? A Letter of Intent is the written notice you provide to your local school district stating that you intend to establish and maintain a home education program. Florida Statute 1002.41 requires the notice to be: In writing Signed by the parent Submitted to the superintendent of the county where you live Include the full legal names, addresses, and birthdates of the children who will be enrolled in the home education program The district must accept the notice and register the home education program when it receives it. When do I need to file my Letter of Intent? Florida law says the notice must be filed within 30 days of establishing the home education program . You do not need to wait until the beginning of a traditional school year. If you decide to begin homeschooling during the year, the same 30-day requirement applies. Once the district receives your notice, the district registers your home education program. Where do I send the Letter of Intent? Your Letter of Intent goes to the school district where you reside , not to the Florida Department of Education. The Florida Department of Education specifically directs families to contact their local district home education office for Letters of Intent and other home education records. Each district may provide its own form or instructions for submitting the notice. For example, Miami-Dade County Public Schools provides an optional Home Education Program Notice of Intent form. While you can send a written letter, the Letter of Intent can be as simple as an email with the required information or completed template such as the one we provide here . What happens after I file the Letter of Intent? Once the district receives your Letter of Intent, you will be notified with confirmation of that record, and your home education program is registered with the district. From there, Florida's home education requirements include maintaining your portfolio and completing an annual educational evaluation. Your portfolio is your family's educational record. Florida law requires it to include a contemporaneous log of educational activities and reading materials, along with samples of writings, worksheets, workbooks, or creative materials used or developed by your child. The parent determines the portfolio's content and must preserve it for two years. What if I have a PEP scholarship? This is where things can get confusing. PEP is not a Florida home education program. PEP students are registered with a Scholarship Funding Organization rather than with their local school district. Florida Department of Education guidance specifically states that PEP is distinct from the home education program established under Florida Statute 1002.41. If your child receives PEP funding, you should not file a Letter of Intent to establish a home education program . If you were previously registered as a home education student and then receive PEP funding, Step Up For Students says you must terminate the home education program and/or withdraw from public/private schooling in order to receive your scholarship funding. This distinction is important because your annual requirements change depending on which educational option you are using. What about FES-UA? FES-UA is different from PEP. A child receiving the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES-UA) may participate through a Florida home education program. The current FES-UA handbook specifically lists a home education program as one of the options that can satisfy the state's regular school attendance requirement, provided the parent has filed a Letter of Intent with the local district. So, if your child has FES-UA and is participating as a home education student , you will file a letter of intent with your district. A little about the work I do I'm Amy, a Florida-certified teacher, parenting coach, and former special education teacher with more than 15 years of experience working with children. Through The Empowered Parent, I provide Florida homeschool evaluations and also support homeschool families navigating big emotions, challenging behaviors, motivation struggles, and learning differences. I work with families throughout Florida virtually, so you do not have to find an evaluator in your own county. My goal with evaluations is to make the process clear and manageable while respecting the fact that every homeschool and every child looks different. What should I do first? If you are establishing a Florida home education program, start by contacting your local school district's home education office and submitting your Letter of Intent within 30 days of beginning your home education program. You can download a template here . Then, make sure you understand the portfolio and annual evaluation requirements so you are not scrambling at the end of the year. If you are unsure whether your child is considered a home education student, PEP student, or FES-UA student participating through home education , that distinction is worth sorting out before you file paperwork. You can explore my Florida homeschool evaluation resources here . And if you are already enrolled in a Florida home education program and need an evaluator, you can learn more about my virtual homeschool evaluations here: https://www.theempoweredparent.us/homeschool-evaluations

If you homeschool in Florida and use Step Up For Students, it can be surprisingly easy to get confused about what you're supposed to do at the end of the year. Do you need a portfolio evaluation? A standardized test? Do you send something to your school district? Do you upload something to Step Up? And what happens if your child is enrolled through an umbrella school? The answer depends on something that isn't always obvious: How is your child legally enrolled? Two families may both say, "We homeschool and use Step Up," while having completely different annual requirements. Understanding which category your child falls into can save you from completing the wrong requirement or discovering at evaluation time that your school district doesn't actually have your child registered in Home Education. First: "Homeschooling" Doesn't Always Mean Home Education In everyday conversation, we use "homeschooler" to describe children who learn primarily at home. Legally, however, Florida families can educate at home through several different enrollment structures. Your child might be: registered with your school district in a Florida Home Education Program; participating in the Personalized Education Program (PEP); enrolled in a private school, including some schools commonly referred to as umbrella or cover schools; or using FES-UA while enrolled either in Home Education or an eligible private school. Those distinctions matter because they determine which organization is responsible for your child's enrollment and what annual requirements apply. Traditional Florida Home Education If you establish a Home Education Program under Florida law, you file a Notice of Intent with the superintendent in the county where you live. The district registers the Home Education Program for purposes of complying with Florida's attendance requirements. A Home Education Program is not a school district program. Each year, the parent must provide an annual educational evaluation demonstrating educational progress appropriate to the student's ability. Florida provides several options for meeting this requirement, including a portfolio evaluation completed by a Florida-certified teacher. The annual evaluation is filed with your local school district. So, in the simplest terms: Home Education Program → registered with your district → annual evaluation submitted to your district. If you believe you're enrolled in Home Education but your district says it has no record of your child, that's something you'll want to resolve with the district's Home Education office. What Changes if You Use PEP? The Personalized Education Program, commonly called PEP, is different from a Florida Home Education Program. PEP students are registered through their Scholarship Funding Organization (SFO), not through their local school district as Home Education students. In fact, a student transitioning from a district-registered Home Education Program to PEP should terminate their Home Education status with the district. PEP also has its own annual requirements. PEP students must complete an approved annual assessment, such as a nationally norm-referenced assessment or statewide assessment, and submit the required results to Step Up For Students. Families also complete an annual Student Learning Plan (SLP). A portfolio evaluation is not required nor should one be submitted to your school district, as your student is not registered in your district when using PEP. In simple terms: PEP → registered through the scholarship program → annual assessment submitted to Step Up What About FES-UA? FES-UA, the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities, is a scholarship. It does not by itself tell you whether your child is legally enrolled in Home Education or private school. For the 2026–27 school year, Step Up states that an FES-UA student must meet Florida's attendance requirement by being enrolled in either: an eligible private school, or a Home Education Program for which the parent has filed a Letter of Intent with the local school district. FES-UA + Home Education If your child uses FES-UA and is registered with your district as a Home Education student, you continue following Florida's Home Education requirements. That includes your annual educational evaluation. A certified-teacher portfolio evaluation is one of the options available to you, and the completed evaluation is filed with your local school district. So: FES-UA + Home Education → registered with district → annual evaluation goes to district. FES-UA + Private School An FES-UA student is instead enrolled in an eligible private school. If your child is legally enrolled in a private school, the private school is responsible for the student's private-school enrollment and attendance requirements. Your family must also follow the applicable requirements of the FES-UA scholarship program. For FES-UA students in grades 3–10 attending an eligible private school with scholarship funds, the current FES-UA handbook requires an approved standardized assessment and identifies several ways the requirement may be met, including: - a nationally norm-referenced test; - a statewide assessment; or - an annual educational evaluation under Florida Statute §1002.41(1)(f). The current handbook also provides an exemption from standardized testing when standardized testing is not appropriate for a student's disability. STEP UP HANDBOOK HUB So: FES-UA + Private School → enrolled with the private school → follow the FES-UA annual assessment requirements; documentation is submitted according to Step Up's current requirements. What About an Umbrella School? "Umbrella school" is a term homeschool families commonly use for certain private schools that enroll students who receive much or all of their instruction at home. However, "umbrella school" is not the legal category that determines your requirements. What matters is how the organization legally enrolls your child. If your child is enrolled as a private-school student, your child may learn at home while legally being a private school student rather than a student in a Home Education Program under Florida Statute §1002.41 . In that situation, you generally follow the requirements that apply to that private-school enrollment rather than the annual evaluation requirements of a district-registered Home Education Program. If your child also receives a scholarship such as FES-UA, be sure to check the requirements for FES-UA students enrolled in private school, including any applicable annual assessment requirements. The Question I Want Every Florida Homeschool Parent to Ask Instead of starting with: "Do homeschoolers need an evaluation?" start with: "How is my child legally enrolled?" Then ask: 1. Am I registered with my county's Home Education office? If yes, you should have an active Home Education Program with the district and will submit an annual evaluation. 2. Is my child a PEP student? If yes, PEP has its own annual assessment and SLP requirements, and your child can not be registered as a traditional Home Education student with the district. 3. Does my child use FES-UA? If yes, determine whether the student is participating through Home Education or an eligible private school. 4. Is my child enrolled in an umbrella or cover school? Find out whether that organization is your child's legal private school. If so, don't assume traditional Home Education requirements apply simply because instruction happens at home Before You Schedule an Evaluation  If you're planning to use a certified-teacher portfolio evaluation, I recommend confirming one simple thing first: Is my child currently registered with my county as a Home Education student with my district? If you're unsure, contact your county's Home Education office before evaluation time. This is especially worth checking if your family has: switched scholarship programs; moved between PEP and FES-UA; enrolled in or withdrawn from an umbrella/private school; previously filed a Home Education termination or withdrawal; moved counties; or changed enrollment options during the year. A five-minute check now can prevent a lot of confusion when your annual deadline arrives. Need a Florida Homeschool Evaluation? I provide supportive virtual portfolio evaluations for Florida families participating in a district-registered Home Education Program. You're welcome to book before your portfolio is complete. I'll keep track of your evaluation timeline, send reminders when it's time to submit your portfolio, and once your evaluation is finished, I will submit the completed evaluation paperwork directly to your school district for you.