When my daughter was nearing the end of her preschool years, I became acutely aware of other stay-at-home moms around me getting ready to send their little ones off to kindergarten.
They spoke of the tears they had as they let go of that little hand, watching their child disappear into the classroom.
As I imagined myself dropping my own daughter for full-day school soon, I wondered, does it have to be that way?
My husband and I had never come to a concrete consensus about school options, but it was kind of assumed we would just send our children to school. I mean, our two older kids (my stepkids) already went to public school and had no desire to try home-schooling.
When we moved to our current home in Nebraska over 5 years ago, I knew my (then) 3-year old daughter needed to make friends quickly. Even as a toddler, she had always thrived when she had little friends to play with.
So I enrolled her right away in a preschool two afternoons a week and she loved it. The following year, when her preschool class met three times a week she still couldn’t get enough. It was clear that she benefited from regular socialization.
Naturally, I just assumed we’d send her to school for kindergarten.
I was delighted that our new town offered a private Christian elementary school. In fact, I used to drive my daughter by it point out her “new school.” She was excited for kindergarten and I was excited for her.
So when it came time to register my daughter for school, why did I have a change of heart?
No matter how much I believed that she would love school, I couldn’t shake that feeling inside me that was screaming, “But she’s YOUR child. Is this what is best for your child? Will you miss watching her learn and grow all day?”
And so I asked myself questions.
How much of her life will I actually miss by sending her to school for 7 hours a day?
How much will her character be influenced by others as she grows up?
Will she be too tired and cranky at the end of a long school day for us to see the beauty in her character?
Will our family become yet another over-scheduled, rushing-out-the-door family who lives for the weekends?
But I still wasn’t convinced homeschooling was the solution.
I had a lot of doubts:
Would my teaching skills be good enough? What if I couldn’t explain concepts to her or we fell way behind the standards for her age?
Would my strong-willed daughter listen to me if I tried to be her teacher? I already knew how much she fought me on everything else!
Would we would be able to stick to any kind of a routine if we tried to home-school?
As a stay-at-home mom, I had never been ultra concerned about routine. I knew enough about myself to admit our daily schedule was pretty relaxed. Without realizing it, I had pretty much allowed a child-led day, but it worked for us.
We had never had a set bedtime or nap-time or mealtime schedule. Sure, we did plenty of learning, building, baking, reading and art projects at home, but it was never super organized.
So because of this irregularity and freedom in our schedule, I worried that my daughter would associate being home with free playtime, and thus formal learning would not happen.
It didn’t help that I had memories of my poor mom trying to give me piano lessons. I remember myself whining about it being too hard and wanting to give up – and even lying down on the piano bench – while she tried hopelessly to get me to play my pieces.
In the end, she gave up and signed me up for private lessons. She had come to the conclusion that sometimes it takes an outside teacher to get a child to focus and learn…in an environment outside the home.
I wondered if that would happen to us, too.
So if we attempted to home-school, would days go by where I’d lament, “oops, we didn’t get homeschooling in again today?”
Yet, that feeling of considering homeschooling kept coming back to my mind.
Thankfully, my husband was supportive with either option. But I had to know if it was God speaking to my heart about homeschooling or if it was just my maternal desire to want to keep my children close to me.
Or worse, I wanted to make sure my fear of letting go was not driving my decision-making.
So I started praying and listening to the wisdom of past and present home-school moms.
This is the message I kept getting from home-school moms:
1. If you have even had a slight desire or curiosity about homeschooling, try it.
The worst that can happen is you decide it’s not for you and enroll your kids in school the following year. But if you never try it, you may regret it.
2. The beauty of homeschooling is you don’t have to emulate public school to teach successfully.
Learning can be done all the time, and often without the child even realizing it. Suddenly driving in the car, family mealtimes and random moments throughout the day become prime teaching times to introduce new topics and reinforce subjects you have already discussed.
I also learned how many curriculum options we had to choose from. I came across amazing curriculum plans, fun books and even CD or online options that were available for teaching to the learning-style of any child.
3. You can go at your own pace, find your own routine and explore what learning environment works best for your family.
You want to start your home-school day a little later today? No problem. Get it all done in 2 hours and enjoy the beautiful day outside, meet friends at the park, or go on a nature walk? Great!
4. As your child’s primary teacher, you have ownership about what information your child is being fed.
As a Christian, I could rest assured my children would be presented a biblical worldview and not a secular worldview. Homeschooling allows the parents to nurture and grow their child’s love for God and His amazing creation.
5. It is common for kids in school to begin to value their classroom teacher as the ultimate authority.
Sometimes those authority figures can sway our children away from trusting our authority or God’s authority in their life or even having a godly perspective.
However in a home-school situation, the parents often retain that authority with less outside resistance. That helps maintain a healthy hierarchy of respect at home, as well as fostering a friendship between the parents and children.
6. You are your child’s best advocate.
If you see your child struggling in one area, you are able to spend extra time there and sometimes even turn it from a weakness into a strength. Likewise, a strength or an interest can be nurtured even more than a typical classroom setting would allow.
A meltdown over math doesn’t mean failure; it means over-stimulation or frustration TODAY. Homeschooling your child means you can put it down for the day and pick up something that the child enjoys until he/she is ready to try that new math concept TOMORROW.
7. At home, your child will not be forced to wait in endless lines, eat cafeteria food, be stuck inside four walls at a desk and conform to the learning ceiling of his/her classmates.
Now, I realize this sounds ultra critical of school institutions. It is not meant to be. In fact, I am endlessly amazed by amazing school teachers and staff who give and give of their time, talents and energy to invest in our young people.
However, they are working with what they have. If they have 25 children in a classroom and orderliness to maintain, there will be both learning deficiencies AND gifts that become difficult to properly address.
Think about it: Parents of multiple children know how easy it is to sometimes overlook the needs of a quiet child when there is a more demanding child who requires immediate attention.
How much more is that magnified when one teacher is responsible for the needs of an entire classroom filled with different personalities, various learning styles and possibly behavior issues?
8. Homeschooling creates a sibling bond. “Ha,” you might say. “There would be no learning going on if we home schooled – only me having to referee all the fighting!” I get it and I think every home-school mom has days like that. I know I have!
But the good news is, you are the primary referee during the day. If you take the time to deal with the heart (sin) issue instead of just addressing the behavior issue, many problems can be solved earlier on.
9. Another bonus of being home is that our children are not just being socialized with children of the same age all day.
Home-school kids tend to be around their siblings and other children of various ages at co-ops or activities all day. Instead of being segregated by grade or age, they will naturally learn to get along with children of various ages and abilities.
At home, children will observe an older sibling learn a concept and oftentimes catch on, too. Or they develop empathy for small children as they help out a younger sibling.
So, as you can imagine, with all the obvious benefits, I was becoming pretty convinced of the reasons FOR homeschooling.
I was encouraged by other moms to not let a bad day determine our homeschooling outcome, or feel locked in forever by a curriculum choice that wasn’t working for us.
It was freeing to know WE could determine the flow of our day, not an outside authority. I would be able to experience the joy my children felt when they learned to read or master a difficult math concept, just like I had been able to watch them take their first steps and say their first words.
But I still couldn’t shake my original feelings about the socializing aspect.
In fact, when my father in law heard about our ultimate decision to home school, socialization was one of the areas he criticized. His remark was “Sure, your kids might have to get along with each other, but they will need to have friends outside of the family, too.”
After I rattled off all the activities my kids were involved in to reassure him (and myself!) that they were most definitely being socialized outside the home, I stopped to ponder his statement.
I thought of my father-in-law. In his eighty years of life, I wondered if he kept in contact with his elementary school friends. Sure, I know he had former work colleagues and neighbors with whom they still kept in touch here and there.
But the people he made a point to talk to regularly on the phone or visit in person? Those were his sisters and his in-laws. His family. His siblings.
It was like God used my father-in-law’s own life to re-iterate the importance of siblings and family to me.
Friendships in life are important, no doubt. But not at the risk of neglecting relationships at home, even those days when it turns into WWIII in the living room.
I have never had the intention of isolating my children. Rather, I have had the intention of creating an environment where they could become allies. And I have been blessed to watch them play together, encourage each other, and cheer one another on when they master a tough skill.
Contrary to my father-in-laws’s concern, since we started homeschooling a few years ago, I have actually had to make sure find a balance between socializing and schooling. Who knew there would be so many social options for home-school families to participate in?
In fact, between home-school co-ops and other home-school-organized activities, church, music and art lessons, sports and play dates, I think my kids get more freedom to socialize during the day than school children at recess!
People always ask me if we will home-school through high school.
The short answer is: I don’t know where God will lead us in the future, but for now this is clearly His will for our family.
He has:
Confirmed my initial questions and given testament to my inner desires.
Comforted me when I have been ready to give up.
Given me strength to carry on when there is a crying or whiny child, a counter full of dirty dishes I can’t get to, or a week where we don’t accomplish as much schoolwork as I’d like.
Because even on the hardest days with tears, and arguing and piles of books and art supplies strewn across the dining room table, it is a blessing to watch my children grow in their knowledge of God and the world around them.
It’s a blessing to study a subject with my kids and then talk about it afterward to make sure it’s truly getting ingrained in their minds. It’s a beautiful thing for them to be excited about learning, because at home, there is learning is all around us.
My daughter may be strong-willed, but God has given me the opportunity to mold her daily. She knows my heart is for her. Even when we butt heads, we can cuddle on the couch afterward with a book and that makes everything better.
I am thankful that, not only has our bond grown as she has had to rely on me as her primary teacher, but she has personally grown in her ability to control herself. In fact, once we got past the difficult hump of learning to read, she has become so self-driven with her schoolwork and takes pride in explaining to Dad what she has learned each night.
And, through this process, it’s been neat to see my husband grow to appreciate the quality of education our kids are getting and the freedom that homeschooling allows us.
At the end of the day, we can all agree that education is important.
Whether a family decides to home-school their children or send them to school is between them and the Lord.
I make no judgments either way; it is truly an individual family decision. I have friends whom I respect dearly who stand behind public or private school 100%, and I am happy for them.
But for my family, I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to choose homeschooling, and I am grateful for the flexibility and beauty it has brought to our lives.
