Power Struggles in Homeschooling: Independence Without Surrendering Expectations

ByHomeschool OT

Most homeschool parents want the same thing: to help their children grow in responsibility, independence, and the skills they’ll need for adulthood.

But what happens when growth turns into a battle?

How do we maintain expectations without creating constant power struggles?

As both an occupational therapist and a homeschool mom, I’ve found that many power struggles aren’t really about laziness or defiance. More often, they’re a clue that something isn’t working as well as it could.

In this article, I’ll share three questions I ask when a struggle keeps showing up:

• Is this a skill problem or a will problem?

• Who owns this responsibility?

• Am I attached to the outcome or the method?

These questions won’t solve every challenge, but they can help us move from frustration to curiosity. And that shift often changes everything.

Understanding the Mismatch: Skill vs. Will

One of the first questions I ask when a power struggle starts is whether I’m looking at a skill problem or a will problem.

As parents, it’s easy to assume a child is choosing not to do something. But many times, the real issue is that a task requires skills that are still developing.

Take writing, for example. A child may struggle because handwriting is physically demanding. Another may have difficulty organizing ideas, getting started, or holding thoughts in working memory long enough to get them onto paper. Some children become overwhelmed by the emotional vulnerability of sharing their ideas with others.

The behavior may look like refusal, but the underlying challenge is often a missing skill.

This is why occupational therapists look beneath the surface of behavior. Before asking, “How do I get my child to do this?” we ask, “What might be making this difficult?”

When we identify the skill that is getting in the way, we can begin providing support rather than escalating the struggle.

Who Owns This Responsibility?

The second question I ask when a power struggle starts is: Who owns this responsibility?

This question has challenged me more as a parent than almost any other.

One of my sons spent this past year studying zoology. He created lapbooks, learned about classification systems, visited multiple zoos, and eventually convinced our family to get a pet snake.

What I’ve noticed is that every once in a while, I find myself asking, “Have you held the snake today?” or “When was the last time you checked on the enclosure?”

And then I stop and realize something.

The snake belongs to him.

He was the one who wanted the snake. He was the one who researched the snake. He was the one who agreed to take responsibility for the snake.

Yet somehow, I occasionally find myself carrying the mental load for an animal I never wanted in the first place.

I think homeschool parents do this all the time.

We remind children about assignments that belong to them. We keep track of materials they should be responsible for. We worry about deadlines, projects, and chores long after our children are capable of sharing that responsibility.

Before long, we’re working harder than they are.

Now, this doesn’t mean we leave children to figure everything out on their own. Responsibility develops gradually. Children often need reminders, routines, and support while they’re learning new skills.

But there is a difference between supporting a responsibility and owning it.

One of the goals of homeschooling is helping our children grow into independent adults. That means gradually transferring responsibility as they demonstrate readiness. It won’t happen perfectly, and there will be mistakes along the way, but those mistakes are often part of the learning process.

When I find myself in a power struggle, I often ask whether I am carrying something that actually belongs to my child.

Sometimes that simple question changes the entire conversation..

Am I attached to the outcome or the method?

The third question I ask when a power struggle starts is whether I’m attached to the outcome or whether I’m attached to the method.

As homeschool parents, it’s easy to carry assumptions about what learning is supposed to look like. Many of us grew up believing that paying attention meant sitting still, that reading happened at a desk, and that learning should follow a predictable path.

The challenge is that sometimes those assumptions create struggles that have very little to do with the actual goal.

Take reading, for example. If a child is resisting reading lessons, I want to know what we’re actually fighting about. Are they struggling to read, or are we spending most of our energy arguing about where their body is while they read?

Over the years, I’ve worked with children who learned best while standing at the kitchen counter, swinging outside, walking around the room, or listening to an audiobook while following along in the text. In each of those situations, the learning was still happening.

The goal was literacy.

The method looked different.

One of the gifts of homeschooling is the flexibility to separate the two.

If my goal is for a child to learn history, do they need to demonstrate that knowledge through a five paragraph essay, or could they narrate what they’ve learned? If my goal is for a child to communicate ideas, is writing the only option, or would dictation allow them to focus on developing their thoughts while continuing to build writing skills separately?

Sometimes the expectation is exactly right. What needs to change is the pathway we use to reach it.

When we become attached to a particular method, we can accidentally create power struggles that distract from the very thing we’re trying to accomplish. By keeping our focus on the outcome, we gain the flexibility to support learning in ways that fit the child in front of us.

In many cases, that simple shift is enough to turn a battle into an opportunity for growth.nd ultimately building toward independent written work. Over time, frustration recedes, mastery builds, and children internalize skills—they do not merely comply out of willpower.


Maintain the Expectation. Change the Support

As I was finishing this article, I found myself looking at a picture of my son receiving a Student of the Year award. Moments like that have a way of making you pause. Not because of the award itself, but because of everything that came before it.

Like many children, his path has not been perfectly straight. There have been challenges, frustrations, skills that took longer to develop, and plenty of moments when it would have been easy to focus on what was not happening yet. Looking back, I am grateful we did not respond to every struggle by lowering expectations. I am equally grateful we did not respond by pushing harder every time something became difficult.

Instead, we tried to adjust the support while continuing to believe growth was possible. Sometimes that support looked like extra practice. Sometimes it meant accommodations or flexibility. Other times it meant giving a skill more time to develop while continuing to provide opportunities to learn and grow. The expectation remained that he would keep moving forward. What changed over the years was the support.

This is one of the most important lessons I have learned as both an occupational therapist and a homeschool mom. When a child is struggling, our choices are not limited to lowering the expectation or forcing compliance. There is often a third option. We can maintain the expectation while changing the support.

That support may come in the form of a visual schedule, a movement break, direct instruction, co-regulation, or breaking a task into smaller steps. The specific strategy matters less than the mindset behind it. We are looking for ways to help a child be successful while continuing to develop the skills they will need in the future.

Power struggles often leave us feeling as though we must choose between preserving the relationship and encouraging growth. In reality, the strongest growth frequently happens when children feel supported, understood, and challenged at the same time. We can recognize where they are today without assuming that is where they will always be.

Years later, when we look back on moments of growth, achievement, and increasing independence, we often realize that the support we provided along the way was not lowering the bar. It was helping our children learn how to reach it.

OT Perspective: Growth is Supporting, Not Forcing

Power struggles are a normal part of parenting and homeschooling. They do not mean you are failing, and they do not mean your child is incapable of growth.

The next time you find yourself stuck in a battle over a lesson, a chore, or a responsibility, try getting curious before getting louder. Ask yourself whether a skill is missing, whether the responsibility belongs to you or your child, and whether you are focused on the goal or a particular method.

More often than not, those questions reveal opportunities for support that we couldn’t see when we were focused solely on the behavior.

As both an occupational therapist and a homeschool mom, I have learned that growth rarely happens through force. Children develop skills through practice, support, and opportunities to take on increasing responsibility over time. Our role is not to remove every challenge, nor is it to push through every struggle. Instead, we can look for ways to maintain expectations while providing the support our children need to be successful.

Homeschooling gives us a unique opportunity to do exactly that. We can adapt the environment, adjust the method, and provide scaffolding while continuing to believe in our children’s ability to grow. Over time, those small adjustments often lead to the independence, responsibility, and confidence we hoped to nurture all along.

OT is IN #98: How to Raise Expectations Without Power Struggles in Your Homeschool

In this episode you’ll hear about:

  • Defining Success and Challenges in Homeschooling
  • Encouragement for parents to define “success” for their own families
  • Recognition that listeners may be pursuing a nontraditional educational path
  • Parental questions about raising expectations without causing power struggles
  • Sarah Collins’s current family homeschooling dynamics (older children graduating or not homeschooled, youngest still at home)
  • Understanding the Roots of Power Struggles
  • Parents balancing desire for independence/responsibility with understanding individual children
  • Common research interests in neurodiversity, learning differences, and diagnoses
  • The challenge of distinguishing when to support, accept, or expect growth
  • Expectations exceeding the child’s current skill set
  • The child ready for more independence than the parent is comfortable with
  • Environment not supporting the child’s success (focus on method over needs)
  • Balancing Acceptance and Expectation
  • Importance of finding a middle ground between acceptance and expectation
  • Risks of having only acceptance or only expectation (limited growth vs. frustration/conflict)
  • First Mismatch: Expectations Ahead of Skills
  • “Is this a skill problem or a will problem?”—reframing perceived defiance
  • Detailed analysis using writing as an example:
    • Potential motor, cognitive, or social-emotional challenges
    • Misinterpretations leading to mislabeling skill deficits as character issues
  • Importance of curiosity and skill identification for productive responses
  • Second Mismatch: Independence and Ownership
  • Struggles when children want more independence than parents give
  • Personal example: child’s new responsibility for a pet snake
  • Parental tendency to take on ownership and responsibility that should belong to children
  • Micromanaging vs. micro-noticing; consequences for child development
  • The importance of clear ownership and natural consequences
  • When parents give responsibilities before children are ready (e.g. technology/phones)
  • Power struggles tied to misplaced responsibility
  • How assumptions about learning environments create unnecessary struggles (e.g., sitting at desks, taking notes)
  • Son’s late literacy development and eventual academic success
  • Asking correct questions: what is the learning outcome versus the method?
  • Flexibility in reading methods—standing, listening, moving while learning
  • Main point: focus on outcomes, adjust methods as needed
  • Occupational Therapy Perspective on Challenging Tasks
  • OT’s role: breaking down tasks, identifying underlying skill gaps
  • Parents are not expected to have all the answers—value of another perspective
  • Origin and ongoing purpose of Homeschool OT coaching and support

Links and Resources From Today’s Show

Thank you to our title sponsor for this episode, CTC Math. You can check out their FREE trial here.

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