Podcast
The Raising Lifelong Learners podcast helps parents — especially homeschooling parents — encourage their differently-wired kids to learn, explore passions, cultivate creativity, and become fascinated by the world around them. Join host Colleen Kessler — educational consultant, gifted specialist, author, and speaker — for interviews, audioblogs, tips, and encouragement to help your differently-wired kiddos become lifelong learners — children who know that they can find the answers to anything they want to know if they can just view their world with play, passion, and fascination.
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Executive Function Hacks: Getting Neurodivergent Kids Moving in Homeschool Settings
The scenario is familiar to so many of us: “Go get your math so we can get started.” Ten minutes pass and there’s still no math, and possibly not even a kid. Socks are tossed across the room, a book beckons from the bedside, the LEGO pile has drawn them in. You remind (patiently, at…
Homeschool the Child in Front of You: Adjusting for Neurodivergent Learners
The promise of a new school year can fill us with hope—new curriculum, sharpened pencils, detailed schedules, and all the Instagram-perfect plans for our homeschool days. But it doesn’t take long for the reality of actual, real-life kids—messy, complex, differently wired children—to barge in and shatter that vision. If you find yourself staring at the…
When Curriculum Fails Our Neurodivergent Kids (And What to Do Instead)
You have the beautiful basket, the carefully curated booklist, and the latest, greatest interactive workbook that promised to finally unlock your child’s love of learning. You reorganized the shelves, printed the planner, and even bought the watercolor pencils. But it’s only October, and the “perfect” curriculum is already sitting untouched, while your child refuses to…
Navigating Criticism as a Homeschool Family: Finding Your Calm Confidence
You know that moment—the one where you’re at a cousin’s wedding only to be cornered by a distant relative who asks if your kids will ever be “normal” or return to “real school.” There is a particular sting in the questions that come from the people who love you, especially when the choices you’ve made…
Creating Home Systems That Support Executive Function for Neurodivergent Kids
Raise your hand if you’ve ever asked your child to “just get started” on a task, only to find them spinning in circles, paralyzed by too many choices or distractions. Or, maybe you find yourself regularly reminding everyone where things go, and still, it’s a scavenger hunt every morning trying to get out the door….
Navigating Parent Burnout While Homeschooling Neurodivergent Kids
Homeschooling takes everything you have. Homeschooling a neurodivergent child takes everything—and more—you didn’t know you could give. So often the conversations in parenting circles center around how to support our children, how to advocate for their needs, how to adjust and accommodate and scaffold each day so they become who they’re meant to be. But…