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The Imperfect Homeschooler |
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A Homeschooling Conundrum
I meet a lot of parents at homeschool conventions and speaking engagements, and I enjoy talking with them. But I especially like talking with those who aren’t homeschooling yet. They’re out doing research and considering whether this lifestyle is right for their children and for them. They’re usually very enthusiastic, and they have lots of questions that I’m more than happy to answer. But there’s one question that I can’t answer, as I recently discovered. It came from a woman with two children in public school (grades two and four) who wanted to pull them out to homeschool them. Homeschooling had always been her dream, but when her children reached kindergarten age, she put them in school because she was so intimidated by the thought of others’ disapproval. Since she’d made that decision, it had bothered her, and now she wanted to rectify the situation. Her husband agreed with homeschooling, she had educated herself on the various methods and resources available, and all she needed to do was start. There was just one problem: her kids didn’t want to do it. Her question: should she homeschool them anyway? Now I’m a homeschool cheerleader, no question. After twenty years of homeschooling, I’m a diehard. But after she gave me the details about her kids, I was not so sure homeschooling was the right answer for her. She said her kids both loved school. They had friends there, nice kids that she approved of. They both made straight A’s, and had teachers they liked a lot. They were involved in many school-sponsored activities and enjoyed them tremendously. In fact, each had expressed fear that she would force them to give up all of these things, and they were upset about it. But she still felt that homeschooling was right for them. While my natural inclination is to question what she said, I didn’t ask her. Instead, I thought to myself that it’s not hard to make straight A’s in school these days. Did she believe they were getting a good education? She didn’t say. I also wondered, were these kids happy with their friends or just peer-dependent? The subject didn’t come up. All she kept saying was that she just believed, deep in her heart, that she should homeschool them. |
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Cardamom Publishers P.O. Box 4 Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235 |
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It became obvious that this mom believed she had made a big mistake in sending her kids to school, and it had been bothering her for so long that she just had to do something about it. She missed them all day, and she loved the idea of doing projects with them, taking them places and just having fun with them while they were still kids. I thought about how sad it was that she had not listened to her instincts back when they were younger. Had she never enrolled them in school, homeschooling would be all they had ever known, and she wouldn’t have this problem. But that’s not what she did, and it made all the difference now. I never did answer her question, and I don’t know what she ended up doing. But I’ve thought a lot about what she said. Had she complained about the indoctrination of values she didn’t share, or of wasted time and little learning, I might have thought it was an issue of principle, but she didn’t mention any of those things. In fact, I never got the sense that she wanted to homeschool on principle. Instead, I keep thinking that it seemed like she wanted homeschooling more for herself than for her kids. Maybe she’s lonely at home, maybe she feels the years slipping away, maybe she feels her children slipping away…I don’t know. But she made it clear that it was her personal desire to homeschool that was driving her. Sometimes I’ve thought that if she waits until her children become disillusioned with school, as many kids do, she’ll be doing them a favor by pulling them out. She’ll find herself with kids who are eager to be homeschooled. But what if that day never comes? Some kids do like school. Maybe her children will always like school, too. So what’s the point of pulling them out if they’re happy there? Considering this woman’s situation has gotten me thinking about the reasons I homeschool, why I value it and why I promote it. Maybe her story has gotten you thinking about the same thing. So I ask you, how would you have answered this woman?
© 2007 Cardamom Publishers/Barbara Frank
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