I’m Risha Howard, an Entrepreneur and Homeschooling Mom of Four, and This Is How I Am a Parent

Risha Howard considers her family to be something of a unicorn – a homeschooled, black, vegan, Christian family with a deep entrepreneurial spirit. She and her husband Ron – school sweethearts hailing from South Chicago – lived overseas for many years while Ron played basketball professionally before settling in Fort Wayne, Indiana, about 10 years ago. They now have four children: Chloe (13), Peyton (9), Nola (5) and Justin (2).

I recently spoke with Risha about everything from home schooling and managing toddler tantrums to her and her family surviving the death of George Floyd and the ensuing racial injustice protests.

They are like the parents of Rishi.

You are starting your ninth year of homeschooling at a time when the pandemic has made many parents think about it for the first time. How did you decide to go down this path?

Yes, the point is, it was never my plan. Not only was it never my plan, it was actually a concept that I never thought was right for us because my experience with what other homeschooled families looked like when I was younger was not for me. perfect. I went to public school from K to 12 and so did my husband and we had a really good experience with that. This made us thick-skinned, and in such an environment there is much to learn; especially in the south side of Chicago, you’ll be ready for pretty much anything.

But when we got married, he played basketball professionally abroad, so every year we found ourselves in different countries, and we had three options. We could either split up the family, as many basketball families do – I could spend up to 10 months a year with the kids. But my husband did not have a father, so he thought that this would never happen to us. Another alternative would be for us to enroll them in schools abroad, but that would mean that we would find a new international school in another country every year.

So the last choice, which was the best for us, was homeschooling. At first we thought it would be like this until he left the game, but every year we found that it was a great blessing for our family. We have an intimacy that is unlike anything I’ve seen before. The level of trust and communication between me and the kids – I know it’s because we’ve spent this kind of time together all these years, just really learning about each other.

What is a typical homeschooling day like? Or is there no such thing as an ordinary day?

One thing I really appreciate about living at home is that our typical day is probably very different from that of the next family because it is based on what was happening within the family at that time. One thing we realized even after my husband retired was that there is no alarm clock. When my children wake up, our day begins. I feel like this is one of the few benefits you can have as a child: you don’t have to get up to work. Thus, they can enjoy this sensation of summer all year round. They wake up when they wake up and then we start.

What I love is that if one of my kids is really in love with something, we can swap the schedule, you know, like we’re going to work harder tonight because I can see that you really have some enthusiasm. it. It brings you joy and you learn, so why not stick with it? We can change plans as much as we see fit.

And in other cases, if I notice that on this day someone is too nervous or he just needs to remove energy, we can adapt, because in our day there is a lot of flexibility. And this is something we don’t compromise because I believe it’s very good for everyone and their mental health. I don’t have to follow this pattern that has been laid out because that is the whole purpose of the house. We can make changes and you can have your own culture that you created for your family.

We see many examples of this culture on your YouTube channel, 6 Howards . You now have about 2000 subscribers; I’m curious about what prompted you to open this channel and who do you hope to reach through it?

I like to describe my family as something of a unicorn because a lot of people have the misconception that a family that looks like ours and acts like ours doesn’t exist. You may know what you think a homeschooling family looks like, or you may know what you think the Black family looks like, or what you think a South Chicago family looks like or what a Christian family looks like. family. We are all rolled into one.

I have seen very few families like mine, but I feel that God created us that way because He knew that we have so many unique things that we can love and be loved by many people from different demographic groups. I personally really enjoy watching YouTube vlogs and following other families on YouTube, and there can be great homeschooled families or, you know, really cool vegan families. But I just never saw anyone with a certain set of characteristics that we had. So, we realized that there is a place for this.

I think it’s refreshing to come to a channel like ours, where you see the Black family, where you see the family where the parents came from the hood, but were able to build something for themselves. Where do you see a family that does not stray from their belief system and shows what they came from, what they overcame and how it happened. Most people are really excited about our content – and it doesn’t hurt at all that our kids are really big characters.

As far as I understand, you are also business owners. Could you tell us a little about this?

This would also be the ninth year of our sports camp. It originally started out as a summer camp back in 2012, but later moved on to winter camp and other special events. We didn’t have a summer camp this year because we didn’t think we would ever forgive ourselves if any of those children who grew up in our large family became infected with COVID. We’ve done such a wonderful job in the eight years we’ve had so far, and we’d love to get back to it, but we’ll see what happens or how we get out of this particular business.

We also have a vending machine company; we only serve vegan food in our vending machines and they are here in the Fort Wayne hospital systems. It was really cool and it was something that was born out of our family’s transition to veganism and the disabilities when you’re in an environment that calls for vending machines.

Then we have a clothing line called It Will Happen . It’s all about promoting a positive attitude towards whatever you pray for or work on, you can achieve that, and it will continue to do so as long as you keep pushing for it. So it was really great to watch people wear this product and share with us what they think is going to happen. Sometimes it’s about work, sometimes it’s about health or financial freedom, or the things they try to overcome in their past due to trauma. This opened up the opportunity for us to really talk a lot with a lot of people.

Yes, I also sell real estate, and my husband has two corporate jobs. He works for the Indiana Pacers, working in their front office for the local Gatorade league team here in Fort Wayne, for which he retired, and he also works at the hospital here.

So you guys are busy.

Yes, we’re busy, but it’s a lot less chaotic than what people probably imagine, because the really cool thing is that I don’t do anything that my kids can’t get involved in. My kids designed a vending machine – they pulled out a topical design. We let them be a part of everything with the camp; they grew up in the camp. All this is related to their education. Some of the subjects they have been taught are very different from what most children learn. They know all types of really weird things like how to send an invoice or how to edit and upload videos with Final Cut Pro. Things that you think young children will never know.

I watched one ofyour recent video blogs in which you talked about how you felt the need to take a long break from social media around the beginning of May. And then, of course, at the end of May, George Floyd was killed and the protests started and spread across the country. Could you tell us a little about what prompted you to take a break then and what was that time for you?

I’m going to go a little deeper here, but as my prayer life intensified in the last quarter of 2019, I kept telling my husband that I felt the need for things to come. I felt that I needed to be really hard in prayer, that something was coming, and I didn’t know what it was, but that it would take a really serious prayer life. Well, we entered 2020, and this feeling not only did not subside, but also gained strength. It grew stronger every day. I didn’t know why, I just felt this heaviness, I just knew that I needed to be in prayer. So I wasted this time drowning out all the other voices.

And indeed, things started to happen, and I think it was important that I had time to pray about these difficult issues. I also think it was important because so many of the voices that were there at the time – and still exist – are voices that are going to tear people apart, and it’s just something that we don’t want to perpetuate as a family. It’s enough. So I feel like it was protection. He kind of removed me and strengthened me. And now that people kind of burned out, I didn’t burn out. And I can, as it were, convey all the forces that I have at the moment.

How do you and your husband talk to your children, given their different ages, about everything that is happening in our country now?

They are all four years apart, so, my eldest, we can talk to her. She has always been extremely emotionally mature for her age. So with her, my husband and I can sit down and talk to her, how can we talk to each other. But then my second child; she has a much more sensitive heart. So there is much that she does not yet have complete information about. We tell each of them everything they need to know that will not crush their spirit.

It’s a delicate balance: you want your kids to know what’s going on, because they need to know, because that’s exactly what’s going on. And these are things that, if you don’t solve them, will repeat themselves. But besides, they are children, and they have that innocence that you want them to hold on to. I don’t want my children to go to therapy because of this. I don’t want my children to have nightmares about this. So we are trying to find this balance.

I have another question that is completely off-topic, but I have to ask it because you are raising your fourth baby right now: What is the best way to deal with tantrums? You have to have gimmicks – otherwise, at the moment, you are just immune to their effects.

In this department, all my children were different. My elder has always been a negotiator; she will tell you all the reasons why she should get what she wants. This kid … he is the one who will fall to the floor. There were times when I literally pulled out my phone, looked at it with the screen and said: “I want you to look at what you are doing right now”, and on his face would be this expression: “Oh yeah, this looks crazy.” … And I was like, “This is how you look! This is how people will look at you; you need to understand how you present yourself. ” People don’t like that I talk to my kids like they’ve grown up, but that’s why they are so eloquent and able to express their emotions so well.

I’m not one of those who like to scream. I’m not going to strain because your frontal lobe is not where it should be yet. The best I can say is just the choice of battles. My son has been wearing the same pair of rubber boots my friend bought him for three days now. He takes them off only for bath and sleep, that’s all. I do not care. He can wear these rubber boots until he outgrows them, I don’t care; I do not choose this fight. But if he means something, like the other day when he called his sister “stupid,” that’s what we should have talked about.

I’m not trying to raise perfect kids. They just have to be good people. It is necessary. You must be a good person; the rest will work itself out.

You can check out the Howards’ It Will Happen clothing line here , as well as watch other videos of Rishi and6 Howards on YouTube . Here are a few of my favorite video blogs to get you started:

• Vegan grocery shopping trip
• How to Stop Sibling Rivalry
• 10 tips to get kids to eat more vegetables
• Tour of Rishi’s “prayer room”.

If you have a suggestion for someone we should interview for a future How I am a parent article, please send an email to mwalbert@lifehacker.com with the subject “How I am a parent.”