It’s that time of year. Parents are wrapping up another school year with their kids. Hopefully this was a fantastic year but sometimes parents are faced with the challenge of making difficult educational decisions for their children’s future school career. Perhaps your child is struggling to keep up. Perhaps the social experience of school was painful and difficult for your child. Perhaps your child has shown gifts that their current school is not prepared to support. Maybe your child has been diagnosed with a learning disability or ADHD and you question the diagnosis or the treatment. There are many situations that lead involved parents to analyze and restructure their children’s learning environment.
Some parents find themselves faced with the desire to homeschool after a particularly rough year in the school system.
There is good news for potential homeschoolers. The number of families choosing to homeschool one or more of their children is increasing every year. Now there are local support groups almost everywhere offering friendship, fieldtrips, mentoring, support, co-operative learning opportunities and information to those willing to look.
Some parents wonder if homeschooling is legal, how they should go about making the transition and whether they are qualified to teach their own children. These are complicated questions as each state has their own homeschooling laws and restrictions. There are no states where homeschooling is not an option, however. Some states, such as Michigan, have no restrictions or requirements at all. Others require annual testing, a predefined curriculum, and registration and portfolio maintenance and teacher oversight. A parent considering homeschooling can do the research on their own but it is often easier to join a local homeschooling group or online email list and ask questions. Other parents will have already done the research and will have the experience you can rely on.
Most parents find it surprisingly easy to teach their own children. There is a certain sense of freedom that comes in being able to learn where you want, when you want and how you want. It invigorates parents and children, alike. Children are more free to learn at their own pace, even if it means working more slowly on writing while accelerating several years ahead in math, for instance. There are so many curriculum sources available now that parents can chose exactly what works best for their own children or even make their own. The Internet offers thousands of free worksheets and resources for homeschoolers.
There are some big ways that homeschooling will change your life. Being prepared for them, up front, will help the transition for you, as the parent. Having your kids present all of the time can be a difficult transition. We are often used to going to run errands alone, going to meetings or doctors appointments alone, having quiet time to ourselves during the day. Many families still continue to do these things but shift the timeframes in which they do them. Others incorporate their children into these real life situations as a teaching tool.
Parents often worry about socialization. This can be a real concern if you have a very social child and you are not a very social parent. Homeschooling parents have to make conscious efforts to create social opportunities for their kids. Joining a homeschool support group that meets locally for park days, field trips and activities is an easy and fun way to build homeschooling friendships. If this is not available to you, keeping your children active in sports and other extracurricular activities in your community is a wonderful way to keep kids in touch with other kids. Likewise, if you live in a neighborhood full of kids, your children will have built-in playmates after school hours just like they used to. The flip side of the socialization coin is that children who are homeschooled often get to experience real life day-to-day social interactions that other kids miss out on while they are in a classroom. This means being exposed to different ages, different temperaments, different social situations and experiences. Homeschooled kids tend to communicate easily with adults because they are not simply exposed to them in an authority capacity during their days. Not to mention the benefit of keeping kids away from peer pressure and bullying that is so prevalent in schools these days.
If you are considering homeschooling and still on the fence, my advice to you is to give it a trial run. Homeschool over the summer and see how you all feel come September. You do not need to make a choice now; you do not need to make a choice by the first day of school! You can make a choice to send your child to school in September and pull them in October. You can make a choice to keep them home but re-enroll them after a few months if it doesn’t work out. Your decision does not have to be permanent. Many homeschooling families consider homeschooling on a year-to-year or even semester-to-semester basis which takes a lot of the pressure off and actually makes homeschooling more enjoyable and less intimidating.
For more information about homeschooling, see the homeschooling blog here at Families.com