Why did you start homeschooling?
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I know for as many homeschoolers that there are there are that many distinct stories why. So, why did you start homeschooling and is that why you continue to homeschool or have your reasons changed?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by journey2learn on -
Before I even was pregnant, I knew I wanted a natural birth and to homeschool...It has been such a blessing to be able to teach my kids. Of course, filled with moments of self-doubt and occasional visits to the local school website :-)
I continue to homeschool, mostly because of my initial convictions, but also now because of my full-time employment. My husband and I are houseparents at a boarding school. Our time alone with our kids is when the boys are in school. It is priceless to have these times. And we are able to flexible for taking vacations, etc.
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Permalink Reply by TooManyHats on -
Well, I thought homeschooling was done by crazy people - really, you would never catch me homeschooling my kids. So, yet again God showed me the error of my ways and I am soooo thankful.
We did send our oldest to a Christian school for K it was here that I began to see that me and administration just did not mix (I questioned things, presented ideas, sometimes demanded things, and was a pain in the rear to the admin). We then sent her to the ps across the street and I was able to hold it together, was even the volunteer coordinator for the PTA, for two years. My dd was always teacher's pet and loved by all in school.
I KNEW with every ounce of my being that my second child would be best served in homeschooling. He was in speech at the ps the year before he was to enter K. When it came time to enter K, I was told he would lose all speech services if he was not enrolled. So, we enrolled him - worst move ever accept it solidified that ps or traditional school in general was not the place for him. He is twice exceptional (highly gifted and learning disabled). The school was clueless what to do with him and they were the so called experts! It was a very tough year and had we continued with traditional schooling for him it would have broken his spirit.
On top of that with two of my three kiddos gone during the day, I missed them terribly. I wanted my family back.
So, with dd entering 3rd, ds entering 1st, and a 4 year old at home we embarked on our homeschooling journey. YIPPEE!
We conitnue to homeschool because I see what strong, independent, confident children homeschooling produces. They get to be who they are and develop their own interests without being forced into a box. My oldest flew the homeschool nest in 8th grade to pursue her passion of opera (there is a school of the arts near us with what I beleive is the only opera conservatory for this age in the country). I miss her during the day, but see that the self-assurance she possess due in part to homeschooling is one of the reasons she chose this path. My two younger ones and I are still at it and will probably be through graduation, unless they have other plans (although the youngest one plans to homeschool college - LOL).
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Permalink Reply by Christine on -
There are so many reasons I started homeschooling. Mostly because I decided to homeschool when I was still a teenager. My older sister was homeschooling her kids, and after reading some books, magazines and such (this was before the internet was widely available(yes I'm THAT old)), I decided right then, that's what I was going to do with my kids. My mom and sister always asked me what I would do if my husband didn't want to homeschool. I would say, either he'll agree, or we won't be together for long. LOL! Well, he agreed, but we still weren't together for long. I ended up getting divorced when my youngest was 2 and oldest was 4. We moved in with my mom and oldest sister, and they helped me to homeschool. My reasons have not changed, but more reasons have been added. Everytime there's a school shooting, every time there's a child molested by a teacher, every time the school systems fail our children... more and more reasons are added to my whys. But my original why, was because I wanted to be there for my kids all the time.
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Permalink Reply by Rebekah on -
When our first was born, we were living in a really bad school district and made the decision then that we would be homeschooling if we were still there when my now oldest was ready for school.
By the time he was old enough to start school, we had moved and the school district was better, but only slightly. In Illinois, kids don't have to be in school until they are 7, so we figured we'd start out homeschooling and if it was an issue by the time he was 7, we'd make the decision then.
Best decision we ever made. EVER! We love homeschooling and how it fits into our crazy, hectic schedule. We love that we are such a very close family because of all the time that we can spend together. And I love that I'm *there* every time they learn something new or experience something for the first time. I can't imagine missing out on so many firsts just because they were in public school. I guess I'm just "selfish" that way. ;)
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Permalink Reply by Tsoniki on -
Short answer: we are military, move a lot, will continue to move a lot, and I didn't want my kids to have to change schools every year.
Adding to the short answer: I grew up and lived in the same place for 20 years - I didn't move until college. I lived around my entire extended family - really, everyone was within two towns, my Grandma next door to me, Aunt and Uncle a mile away, cousin next door, Aunt and Uncle and their kids in nearby town, etc. I grew up with the kids of people my parents grew up with. My oldest friend is someone I met when I was three or four years old!
Since we are a military family I knew my kids wouldn't have that same lifestyle and I wasn't exactly sure how to adjust. So I did send our oldest, DD, to a preschool, but only for about three months before we moved. I've kept her, and our son, home since. It works with the life we live now, but I am not against putting them back into school down the road. In addition to living around my entire family, the majority of them are involved in public education. :)
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Permalink Reply by JennK on -
The joke around our house is that there are at least 1,236 reasons why we homeschool, and the list grows the more we do it and the more we see/read/hear about the schools.
We pulled the kids out of school in the middle of second grade. There were several reasons at the time. The kids weren't being challenged, and they were being punished (like loss of recess, teachers screaming, etc.) for being ahead of the class. They were spending endless hours reviewing and preparing for standardized tests instead of learning anything new. Their teacher was proselytizing to them and trying to force them to pray before/after school (we're not Christian, and yes, this was a public school). They wanted to medicate my son so instead of being bored and telling the teacher about it, he'd be bored and just sleep at his desk. The teachers would start something new, like writing in cursive, and then they (the teachers!) would lose interest and just drop it in mid-stream. They switched from real math to Everyday Math and started marking the kids wrong if they used the "old" algorithms to correctly solve problems, but they'd get full credit if they answered incorrectly using the new methods.
Within a week of starting homeschooling, my son had stopped biting his nails and was more relaxed. My daughter started reading for pleasure again (she'd given it up because the teacher confiscated books she brought to school, saying they were too tough for a child her age). Since then, we've found thousands of other reasons why homeschooling is a better choice for our family, and the list just keeps growing.
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Permalink Reply by Texasholly on -
I would have laughed hysterically at anyone suggesting I would be homeschooling a few years ago. Now...there is no going back. I have three boys. Boys have a lot of energy. Schools don't seem to be prepared for this. I have no idea why!
My boys deal with some sensory issues that could easily be diagnosed as other things. They need to be outside running around ALOT.
We feel very lucky because we found a part-time classical education school near our home that we love. My second grader goes to school two days a week and we homeschool the rest. I am fully homeschooling my 5 y/o right now and my 2 y/o loves coming along on any learning adventures.
I love the freedom to pack up and spend the day at the park, zoo, museum, mall, etc.
The boys are building bonds of brotherhood that just warms my heart...if they don't kill each other first.
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Permalink Reply by JoAnn on -
I was interested in homeschooling when my eldest was old enough for kindergarten but not sure about it mostly for social reasons. My daughter is very social and I thought she'd probably be happier at school. Then her best friend at the time went to kindergarten without her due to age cutoffs and she wanted to go too.
Finding out that she couldn't, she asked me to teach her to read. I wasn't exactly sure how to go about doing that until I found an alphabet workbook and phonics workbook at Costco. The alphabet one was packaged together with a handwriting one and the phonics one was packaged with a math one so I had to buy all four. We did the alphabet and math ones and then moved on to the phonics one while finishing the math one. By the time I could register her for kindergarten, she was reading second grade level chapter books and doing math at a 1st-2nd grade level (adding and subtracting with regrouping). Knowing she would be bored in kindergarten, I took her completed workbooks to the school to ask the principle about starting 1st grade instead and was told I had to call the district office.
The district office told me "the best you can hope for" is for the kindergarten teacher to monitor for a month and then decide what to do with her. I figured one of two things would happen: either she would be happy with all the friends around her and she'd be kept in kindergarten to learn nothing or she'd be accelerated and would be the new kid in class where all the cliques had already formed and they'd know that she was the smart kindergartner that got moved up (and a prime target for bullying). With that lose-lose option, I chose to just continue teaching her at home.
Meanwhile, my youngest was in public preschool for speech and learning delays. He caught up after I corrected a medical issue the doctor's couldn't find but still had attention difficulties. I knew that if he were placed in a classroom, he'd get left behind. He absolutely cannot pay attention to a teacher at the front of a group. He needs one on one attention to even hear what a teacher is saying.
The reasons continue to grow as time goes on but that's how we got started.
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Permalink Reply by Lori on -
I didn't want to homeschool - what?? Yes, you heard me right, I was scared to death. Our 3 older children who not homeschooled, they attended a Private (Christian) School and a Public High School. When we adopted our youngest, we had her tested (this is where the problem started) and they told us that she was developmentally delayed (no surprise there, she had been in a crib for 3 years in a foreign country). Anyways, we started her in the school program, therapy sessions, I am sure you get the idea.
Three years later, they tried to tell me that she needed to be medicated. WHAT? My ped never considered it nor did her therapists so why the school. Red Flag... At our very last IEP meeting, they told me about all the things that she can't do (now mind you that my daughter is sitting in the room listening to all of this) and I am arguing with them that she can. The last and final straw came during the meeting when they wouldn't qualify her for summer school, yet (according to them) she doesn't retain information. Again Red Flag... I had been praying about this for a year, because I was tired of battling the system. When they looked me straight in the eye and said that I had no other choices, I snapped. WRONG, according to the State of IL, I have one other choice, HOMESCHOOL.
And that is my story. After lots of praying and some tough times, we are doing it. She can read, write and do math problems. She is my inspiration each and every day.
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Permalink Reply by Peggy Alvarado on -
I started homeschooling because my daughter is not a morning person at all. And I mean literally not a morning person. We tried earlier bedtime, earlier wake up time, later wake up time, changed our eating habits, vitamins, etc, and nothing helped. I actually had to stand her up every morning while trying to wake her. Now while homeschooling, she wakes up on her own, refreshed, happy, and ready to learn (well ... after she eats, checks her emails, etc ... lol).
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Permalink Reply by Ashtyn on -
My son is 14. When he was around 2 I noticed there was something going on with him. I took him to his doctor who said he was just a boy and I was worrying for nothing. He was a picky eater. He would go 4-5 days without sleeping. His body had to physically collapse before he'd sleep. He was excessively hyper. He liked to collect things and was obsessive compulsive. He didn't speak until he was three, but by the time he was five he was reading Shakespeare. My mother's intuition knew there was more going on, so I took him to other doctors. One said that if I put food in front of him I wanted him to eat, he'd eat it because he wouldn't starve himself. He really didn't know my son well! Another said I was a bad parent and all his problems were my fault.
By the time he was about to enter Kindergarten I still had no answers. The school district was good and he had a very caring teacher. She'd sit with him at lunch and cut up his food trying to get him to eat. She could almost always get him to try a bite of food. She also made the class conscientious of his problems and all the kids really helped him out. I had told her at the beginning of the year something was going on. She said that all parents worry about this, but it was probably nothing. Within the first two weeks she'd sent home an ADHD checklist for me to fill out. Well, the school tested him and did an IEP. They said they thought he had Autism not ADHD. That night I got online and narrowed down what I thought he had on the spectrum. I came up with Aspergers Syndrome. It was no surprise to me when he was finally diagnosed with that.
We moved during his first grade year and the district was horrible. I went in before we sent him to school to explain his needs to the teacher. She asked me to send in information to read on it, so I printed out over 50 pages of information on Aspergers and problems kids with AS have, especially in a school setting. She later told me she never read them. The school gave him an IEP and tested him. They said he was advanced in every subject for his age, but was socially behind. No big surprise there considering what AS is. His teacher responded by saying she wanted him in Special Ed full time. Special Ed was in a trailer next to the school. The kids referred to it as the derogatory R word trailer, and my son knew having to go there was viewed as bad to the other kids. I knew he was advanced and didn't need to be in Special Ed, especially full time. The teacher didn't want to deal with him or his learning style. So, I only agreed to part time Special Ed, and we'd see how it went from there.
My son was bullied by a kid in his class. He actually tried to bully him and put his hands on him in front of me. That was a major mistake. The teacher never believed my son when he told her the kid hit him and tormented him. He was "special needs" after all (in her opinion). She said the answer would be to put him in Special Ed full time. My son came home crying every day, begging not to go back. Special Ed gave him work way too easy for him and he was so bored he refused to do any of it. They sent home stacks of work at a time and told me I had to get him to do it.
Finally, two major events happened right around the same time. First, my son came home with wet paper towels on his forehead. The bus driver told me he'd thrown up earlier in the day and no one had ever called me to tell me he was sick. It was the day they count kids for state funding and special needs children net more money so they didn't want him to leave or he wouldn't be counted. His temperature was 103-104. I was livid. I was searching for a way to get him out of the school. I also was having meetings with the administrators every single day. His teacher refused to talk to me about it because I refused to put him in Special Ed full time. She was too busy getting her Masters to worry about any of the kids she was teaching.
The second thing happened right after the sick thing. My son came home from school. He was despondent. He refused to talk. He wouldn't let anyone touch him to hug him or hold him. I had to work on him to get the truth out of him. Apparently lunch was a disaster. He didn't want to eat the food, so he was punished. The school strapped gloves on his little hands and gave him chemicals and a scrub brush. If he wasn't going to eat he had to clean the cafeteria. I was so furious he never went back. I considered suing the school but my son's mental state wasn't good and he would have had to relive everything. To this day he gets upset even thinking about the school and often mentions the bully who used to try and beat him up. We pulled him out at the end of first grade and have been homeschooling ever since.
He is now in Eighth Grade. He has also recently been diagnosed with Bi Polar on top of the AS. It makes learning quite challenging, but I'd never send him back. If I have other children (and I'm planning to) they will all be homeschooled from the start.
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Permalink Reply by Ann Duncan on -
I initially homeschooled because I didn't like what I saw in public and private schools.
Now, I homeschool (unschool, actually) because not only do I like what I see in public and private schools even less than before, I have come to a profound respect for children and their ability to learn. And I believe that even well-intentioned teachers get in the way of that learning.
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