Last week I had a familiar conversation with a Mom at a birthday party that I’ve had at every birthday party I’ve gone to over the past four years. It goes like this…

Mom: So what grade is your son in?

Me: Fourth.

Mom: Oh, mine too. Where does he go to school?

Me: (okay, here we go…) We home school actually.

Mom: (awkward) Ohhhhh… (Pause… silence… looking wildly around the room for escape… need to fill the silence…) …I could never home school my kids. I don’t have the patience. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

Me: (awkward) Ha, ha, ha, ha. Yeah… well… I didn’t have it either before I started.

Mom: So do you have a background in education?

Me: No. I don’t. (if only she knew I didn’t even finish college… think I’ll keep that to myself at this point.)

Mom: (afraid for my children) Ahhhh. Wow. Huh.

Me: (silence… staring at my shoes)

Mom: Do you have some other home school families that you do activities and things with? (Please tell me you are socializing your children) I have a friend that home schools her kids, and that’s what they do.

Me: Yeah, there are all kinds of great classes and home school groups we’ve been involved with in the area.

Mom: (so even though they’re probably going to be socially retarded, ideological zealots, and limited to an elementary school education for life, at least she isn’t keeping them in cages.) That’s great. That’s really great. (searches the crowd for her son, pretends to notice something that needs her attention…) Oh Dylan! Hey Dylan! I’m sorry, if you’ll excuse me… (wanders away)

Though uncredentialed mothers home schooling their young children has been a traditional form of education the world over, since time began, these days in America a large group of mothers and educators are appalled by the idea.  By today’s standards, most American adults view anyone who is uncredentialed by an institution of higher learning as “unfit” to properly teach their own children beyond the age of five, without assistance from a professional. Those of us who are teaching our children at home, know as well as the matriarchs who taught their children before us, just how false this line of thinking can be, and what kind of wonderful success can be achieved through passionately and purposefully choosing to teach our children at home.

It is abundantly clear through the repeated conversations I’ve had with Mothers and educators of public school children, who question my decision to home school, that they are confused by, and sometimes even disgusted with, this decision we’ve made for our family. I think this mostly comes from people who know very little about home school and all that it means and entails. Part of the opportunity that can be shared through this blog, and so many like it written by home school mothers, is to open our doors and offer an honest transparent look into how and why we home school, the privileges and obstacles of the choice, and what goes on in our little residential classrooms. Hopefully such openness and communication will be a contributing factor in what should quickly be becoming a more widely understood and appreciated education option in our society.

I am an advocate of home school because so far it has worked wonderfully for our family, and many other families I know. But what I’m also a proponent of, is a “Parent’s Choice” in the education of their own children. I have the greatest respect for parents who have spent a lot of time getting to know what educational options are out there, and have used that information to make a very wise and purposeful choice as to where each of their children will spend a great majority of their adolescence learning. If your children are in a public school, private school, or home school because you are trying your best to ensure they get an excellent education with excellent mentors who are passionately investing in them, and inspiring them to greatness… I applaud you.

I in no way adhere to the idea that home school is the best choice for all families, just as I in no way adhere to the idea that public school is the best choice for all families. Each child, each parent, each family, and even each season of life has specific needs and priorities which dictate the details of what educational methods are the best choice for that particular time in a child’s life. Thankfully these days, in most areas of the country, parent’s have a fantastic number of educational options to choose from for their children amongst public schools, private schools, charter schools, online schools, and the traditional home school method.

And to open up the dialogue and give you a glimpse into why a mother like me would choose to home school her children, here is a growing list of reasons why home school is the right choice, right now, for my family:

-          I have been given the tremendous privilege of being able to stay at home with my children and not have to go to work, therefore I have the time and opportunity to invest in guiding their educations.

-         It is paramount to my husband and myself that our children understand every aspect of this world, and their lives, with the Bible as their foundational line of truth by which all other information is compared and tested. Home schooling provides a greater opportunity for instilling and reinforcing that worldview as it pertains to each academic subject.

-          I love the quantity of time my children get to spend building strong relationships with each other as siblings, playing and learning together daily.

-          There are so many positive opportunities for social interaction with peers for my children, through our church, family friends, recreational sports leagues, and community home school groups and I like the separation between academic time, and social time, as opposed to a distracting convergence of the two.

-          In public and private schools, curriculum, teachers, headmasters, and overall school philosophies change often, which can create a very choppy education with huge learning gaps in the spectrum of content covered.

-          I like being able to set up a comprehensive learning plan for kindergarten through twelfth grade for each of my children and to administer it knowing they will get a congruent education that wont leave gaps in their learning.

-          I love being able to provide my children with an education that has it’s foundational cornerstone starting in kindergarten, in the study of God, man, and history. It is not as important to me to enforce the memorization of dates and facts as it is to understand the stories of heroism, honor, villains, tragedy, loss, hope, service, sacrifice, goodness, and so on, so that my children’s education is about learning from the past and making excellent decisions for the future.

-          The opportunity to provide an education which caters to each of my individual children’s gifts, strengths, weaknesses, and interests.

-          I love to teach and doing so comes easily and naturally to me.

-          I love to continually expand my own education and I enjoy learning about how to best educate my children.

-          I like having the opportunity to discuss history, literature, philosophy, politics, science, and religion with my own children each day through what they are learning, as opposed to allowing such an engaging time with them to be enjoyed by an outside teacher.

-          In a private or public school I have no control over who my children’s mentors will be each year, including the teachers and the textbooks.

-          I love being able to hand select excellent, passionate, and inspiring mentors who have chosen exceptional curriculum and whole books as their teaching tools, to teach my children in the subjects I cannot personally cover with them adequately.

And don’t get me wrong… the decision to home school is not without it’s obstacles. For example:

-          While there are social benefits to choosing home school, such as limiting things like negative influences, peer pressure, peer induced materialism, bullying, and social distractions during the academic school day, it has been a challenge to provide opportunities for strong peer relationships. There are plenty of activities my children attend with other children their age, but the lack of repetitive free time with the same children each week has made it more difficult to find a “best friend.” We finally found one great family with many similarities to ours, and children with equivalent ages who we were spending regular time with each week, and then they moved out of state. Now we are back at square one in trying to find other families with young children to form strong bonds with. We are accepting applications. (That last part about the applications was a joke.)

-          It is a challenge keeping home school kids physically active. They are not walking distances from class to class each day, running around on a playground for an hour with peers at lunch, and attending an entire period of P.E. While my children are actively involved in community sports, they are still behind in the number of hours each week spent involved in vigorous outdoor activity.

-          If either of my children ever become personally passionate about a particular team sport they desire to pursue competitively into high school, we will have to consider whether putting them into a public or private high school for the benefit of a sports team becomes a priority.

-          Competition, creativity, and social awareness are all aspects that create refinement in individuals through the constant contact with and emersion into social groups. It remains to be seen in our household if the depth of interaction needed to create well adjusted young adults, can be attained through a more limited exposure to peers, than the “dog eat dog” social structure of cliques and competitiveness, experienced in a typical American school, which is in some ways preparatory for life in the real world.

These are the kinds of obstacles we home school moms face, and lose sleep over at night, as we ask ourselves, “Am I doing the right thing?” I am confident that every mother, no matter what type of schooling she has chosen for her family, faces her own list of gray-hair-inducing obstacles that she worries about for her children. For each of us, in this way, the struggle is the same; to set priorities and pursue the best options we can, to meet the most important needs of our children first, and work as hard as we can to overcome the obstacles they include.

What form of education have you chosen for your family, and why is it best for them? What are the benefits and what are some of the obstacles your children face in their educational environment? What keeps you pressing on in the path you’ve chosen?

7 Responses to “Why On Earth Would Any Mother Choose Home School ???”