Weighing In On Homeschooling

Many of you know that I homeschooled three of our kids; for those of you I’ve yet to meet – well, now you know it too. I didn’t start out to be a homeschooling mom; in fact, I actually told a friend of mine that I thought she was out of her mind when she told me she’d decided to go that route with her boys. Yet one more lesson in “be careful what you say” … a couple of years later I was calling her to ask if she’d show me how she did it. Fortunately, she granted me a whole lot of grace!

Up until that point, the two oldest had been in our local public-school system and the youngest attended a church preschool in our area. When I asked for my friend’s help, our son was finishing third grade and our daughter was finishing first grade. I began to toy with the idea because our son was being verbally and physically harassed at school and neither his teacher, nor the administration seemed to be concerned or able to help. It’s hard enough to watch your child be bullied and not be able to help; when toward the end of the school year he stood in our hallway at home, with tears running down his face, and begged me to homeschool him … well, it made the decision a whole lot easier! I told him that we would wait until I knew which teacher he would be assigned for the following year; there was one teacher on staff that I wanted him to have, but if he didn’t get her, I’d pull him out to homeschool him.

At that time my plan was to just bring him home and leave his sister in school. It wasn’t long before she came to me and said, “What about me?”

“I thought you’d want to stay in school. You like school, and you like your friends,” I told her.

“I hate school,” she responded. “It’s boring and too long.”

Suddenly the dynamic was changed. So, long story short, they did end up staying for one more year because they both were assigned to the outstanding teacher for their grade level. But that summer I began my education by attending the California Christian homeschooling convention – a two-and-a-half-day event with an overwhelming amount of information to absorb and curriculum to look at. And when they entered 5th and 3rd grade respectively that September, they did so in our kitchen. We made the decision to go ahead and let the youngest attend Kindergarten since she really wanted to. It also made it easier for me to get my feet under me with only two at home. The following September we pulled the youngest out also and never looked back.

Bottom line: for thirteen years, until our youngest graduated from high school, I homeschooled our kids. A couple of years after beginning, I volunteered to teach the Parent Education class at our academy and stayed on to continue teaching it for five years after our youngest had finished. It was one of the joys of my life!

Now, I told you all that to say this: if you are one of the millions of people in our nation right now who has suddenly found yourself thrust into the role of homeschooling parent, you have my sympathies. Our journey wasn’t a cakewalk and I not only chose to do it, I had somewhere between 18-24 months to wrap my head around it, educate myself, and prepare curriculum. In all the years that I spent around a multitude of homeschooling parents from every walk of life, with countless reasons they’d made the decision, I NEVER met one who picked up their kids from school on Friday and suddenly decided over the weekend to school them at home starting Monday! And, to be honest, in all those years I don’t think I ever met a parent who thought they had a lock on this thing … including myself!

SO, here’s my advice for right now: Take a deep breath and give yourself a break! You’ve been handed an incredibly daunting task, and no one said, “Your mission, should you choose to accept it …” They just told you it was suddenly your job. But, I, for one, have faith that if you love your kids, if you’re the one who taught them to feed themselves with silverware, how to use the toilet, and put on their own clothes … then you’ve got a pretty good shot at succeeding in this assignment also.