Fourteen years ago I began my journey of homeschooling. It was not something I planned or that I was looking forward to, in fact I had been somewhat anticipating the “break” from my dominant son to spend time with my quieter daughter while he was at kindergarten. And, though my son did go to kindergarten for a year, it was his last in the public school system. This blog is the story of those years as a homeschooling family; our successes and failures, our frustrations and rewards. When I started to homeschool I found very little information about the process, and though that has changed a great deal, I still find myself answering the same questions when I mentor new homelearners as I had when I began. Hopefully this blog will address those questions, as well as encourage and inspire home learning families. I call us “homelearners” as well a “homeschoolers”. The first term is the more applicable, but the second term is the more popular. This blog could also fit the title “Confessions of a Homeschooling Mom!” because I am no expert, and can only share my observations and conclusions, limited as they are!

Reasons to Homeschool?

For as many families as there are homeschooling, there are reasons to homeschool. Many choose to homelearn for reasons of faith, others are anti-establishment, others are disappointed with the system and how it is failing their child, and still others feel they can better meet the needs of their child at home. For whatever reason you choose to homeschool, share it wisely! I was little prepared for the reaction my choice received! I had thought I would have the support and understanding of family and friends, but I was sadly mistaken. Unfortunately people perceive your choice to homeschool as an unspoken criticism of THEIR choice to send their children to school. I was flabbergasted by the extent to which people would harass me for removing my son from school! I advise you not to share your reasons for homeschooling because no matter what you say, your listener will apply it to themselves and will attempt to justify what they are doing, will do, or did do, or what their daughter/friend/sister/second cousin decided to do with THEIR children. Then they will attempt to shoot holes in your reasoning, and finally to catastrophize your choice to the most extreme point imaginable! I had one friend tell me my kids would end up as “dumpster divers” because they would be unemployable, and this when they were 6 and 4! Believe me, unless you feel VERY safe with the person in question, provide your reason by saying: “We feel it is the best choice for our family right now!” If they persevere, then add, “We are excited about it, we want to give it our best shot, and we are hoping for the support and encouragement of our friends and family!” If they STILL persevere after that, then say, “How about them Canucks?” Hopefully they will get the message!

My Reasons to Homeschool!

Reason #1

My choice to homeschool goes back many years, probably back to the birth of my son, but I won’t bore you with my birth story. Suffice it to say, it was traumatic, but our beautiful boy was fine, though different. I say this with some hesitation, because at the time whenever I brought his behaviour to the attention of a health professional I was told it was all within the parameters of”normal”, that is until he was one year old. But, to back up a little, when he was first born and in the arms of the paediatric nurse she was moving him from side to side in front of her body, tightly swaddled, his little face still pink from exertion, and she said loudly to the room in general, “He’s tracking me!” One by one everyone there held him and moved him from side to side, and gasped and smiled in amazement and looked at me as if I had done something clever. Apparently, my son had focussed on the face of the nurse and was following, “tracking” her with his eyes, something most children only do after a few weeks of life. He was born “profoundly gifted” though I was not to know of this until he was assessed by the professional in our school district when he entered school. He was my precious boy, and though I knew he was different,  I simply wanted to know the best way to love him and to meet his needs. By the time he entered kindergarten, he could count, did rudimentary math, knew all his shapes (even a dodecahedron), colours, could read (he had begged to be taught, though he objected to the learning process, in retrospect I should have known what I was getting myself into with homeschooling) and he understood complicated concepts like “light years” and “scientific method”. He also had a very sarcastic and cynical sense of humour, a little unnerving in a child of 5!

Reason #2

My second reason was more a result of frustration. Before Chris started kindergarten, I met with the teacher to prepare her for life with my son, I thought it only fair and was not sure myself how public schooling would work for Chris. I started to tell his teacher that Chris was a little unusual, but before I got any further she interrupted me with a wry face and said with a sigh, “Every parent who has come in here today has told me their child is ‘special’ but it is my job to fit all these ‘special’ little people into one classroom environment!”

“But they are special, they are all special, every child who walks through your door is special!!” I sputtered, yes I admit it, I actually sputtered like Daffy Duck!

She sighed and said sarcastically, “Yes, yes, they are all “special”, however in most communities where we don’t have such a prevalence of career Mums, the kids are all just ordinary kids! Now, how can I help you with “your”, special, kid?”

I know it is hard to believe but that is how the conversation went, and needless to say it was not an auspicious beginning to our school year! Within the first few day of class the teacher was asking me to stay and meet with her and the school counselor to discuss Chris’ behaviour. Apparently she had asked the children to make a large self portrait to put around the edge of the classroom, Chris had said “No”, so she had asked what he would like to do, he had said he wanted to go to Creation Station, she had said you can go there after you draw your picture. He had taken a black crayon, given her a steely glare, and without moving his eyes from her face he had drawn a harsh scribble across the page, handed it her and said “There, a self portrait, are you happy?” She had sent him to the “Thinking chair” where he spent a lot of time there during that long, long year, and then she had conferred with the school counselor. I tried to explain, “He doesn’t think like other children!” But they could not grasp my meaning, and it led to a highly disruptive and disturbing year for all of us. I wasn’t looking for “special” treatment, Chris had been rude, but I also wanted her to understand HIS frustration with the exercise since it would avoid future conflicts.

Reason #3

My final reason is perhaps the most serious. From the moment Chris was born, the world did not feel safe to him. He was only happy when he could hear my heartbeat, and I became an expert in household chores with the snuggly attached. We had to bear the “slings and arrows” of well meaning friends who told us “we” were the problem, and that all we had to do was (fill in the blank)! I was once comforting Chris away from a crowd of people at a party and I overheard a couple say, “We will make SURE our kids can sleep anyway; they sure spoil him!” It was hurtful, and I admit I tried everything with Chris. I discovered that among many things, crowds, loud noises, rough surfaces, shiny objects and music bothered him but that a loud fan in his room helped him sleep, and a solid routine and constant cuddling were essential. Kindergarten was very hard for him. He cried at the door to class, had to be pulled away from me, wanted his stuffed friend with him always though the teacher soon put a stop to that, and he began to have trouble sleeping. He had always had night terrors, but now these escalated to full blown panic attacks so profound I could smell his fear from the other room. He began to chew the sides of his nails, so badly they bled. His eyes were sunk in deep shadows, and this was when school was merely a half day! Once they had a substitute teacher and Chris was nearly hysterical about going into class, I turned to the woman next to me, another teacher in the school who happened to have a child in Chris’ class and said, “I don’t know what to do!! If I take him away he will think all he has to do is have a hissy fit and he will get his way, but I don’t want him to see school as a torture chamber!!”

She looked at me kindly and said “I always say it’s best to do what is in your heart.”

I sighed and picked up Chris and held him close. “If I did what was in my heart”, I said bitterly, “we wouldn’t even be here!”

She smiled and said words which would change all our lives, “Sounds to me like you should be homeschooling!”.

I started to look at what homeschooling was and what it meant, but was not sure I was ready to take on the responsibility.

For the last month of school the children attended for a full day. I knew it would be a disaster so I asked to speak to the principal. We sat down in an amicable mood but I got more and more frustrated. I asked if I could bring him in for half days still, I was told no, that they were attempting to prepare the kids for Grade 1, so then I said I would keep him home on Wednesdays and perhaps Fridays, depending upon how he did, she said that would become a problem, so I asked “Why?” She said that he would miss too many days of school. I said “Why is that a problem?” Well, apparently he would miss too much of the curriculum! I thought, “Seriously! This is kindergarten!!” But I answered her , “So why would that be a problem?” She said absenteeism would become a problem. At this point I was getting frustrated, all I could think was “For WHOM  is this a problem?” Instead I said “So what does THAT mean?” Then she said that ultimately it would mean expulsion. I do not exaggerate! I think she was perhaps trying to set a precedent for future problems, but by then I was so incensed by her ludicrous inference that a child in kindergarten could be expelled for missing days due to stress, that I picked up Christopher’s file which was on her desk and to which she had referred several times as we discussed him, and marched out of her office saying with great finality, “CONSIDER HIM EXPELLED!!”

The Beginning

And so began our life as a homeschooling family. Of course when I came home in tears and distress, my husband was equally distressed at what I had done! He was not as convinced as I that this was what Chris needed, but I had burned bridges behind me, and I stepped out in faith that this was the best choice for our family at the moment. In retrospect, now that I have reached the end of 14 years of homelearning and both the children have thrived and are attending university, that it was the best choice I could have made. Both our offspring are happy, positive, creative, helpful, motivated, driven, intelligent, and messed up no more than the rest of us. This blog is a glimpse into those many years and how they shaped us as a homelearning family. Both my children say they will homeschool their own, and really, what greater measure of success is there?