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I'll be honest. When I was younger, I had never thought about homeschooling.  I grew up in the early 80's when homeschooling was in its infancy.  When I remember my own compulsory education  it was boring, sometimes dangerous and mostly irrelevant to my life.

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As time went by and I was much older,  I gave birth to my incredible son.  As I held him in my arms, life took on a different meaning.  All parents know this feeling.  All of a sudden I began to see a very different world.  I saw a world that wasn't quite what I wanted for my little boy and one of those things I didn't want was compulsory schooling.  As he grew older, I mentioned this to my family and suffered the usual backlash and barrage of arguments and threats.

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I'm sure you know how this feels otherwise you wouldn't be here.  The threats thrown at you (and yes, they are threats) are in no particular order:  Your kid will never have friends.  Your kid will be weird and not be able to handle any social interaction.  How are they going to learn math?  Do you have a teaching degree?  Are you sure you are qualified to do this?  And my personal favorite, "How are they going to deal with bullying later on in life?  You learn to deal with bullies at school!"

 

(My rebuttal to that thesis statement is on my YouTube channel.)

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"What about their high school prom?!"

 

So, one day during their senior school year supersedes their entire 12 years of being forced to learn how to fall in line.

 

I didn't go to the prom and I turned out to be a functioning adult.

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So, here you are as a parent and you might be facing a similar situation.  You too, might have all of these questions swirling in your mind.

 

Well I'll tell you, I finally came to one conclusion: If public school can wrangle up 28 kids per one teacher and do some type of creative crowd control for 7 hours a day, I can do better.  I know I can and so can you.  I have 100's of stories but I will relay one instance for you.

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Due to my family's insistence, I enrolled my son in public school even though it felt completely wrong.  (We lasted one week, by the way.)  The first day of school, my son walked out of class and was caught wandering around the building without the teacher's knowledge.  I was informed of this insanity when I went to pick him up that day.  The teacher was actually angry at my then 5 year old son and I was informed that it wouldn't happen again.  I really did not want to take him back the next day but I allowed my family and friends to talk me into it.  "It won't happen again." They said.   "The teacher will keep a closer eye on him."   After a few more days, my son left class again without the teacher knowing.  Why was he leaving class?  Because, he hated being there and at the tender age of 5, that was his only way to cope.  I asked him what was wrong but could he give me a concise answer?  No, he was 5 years old!

 

I pulled my son out of school that day - even though, I was pushed again by friends and family to bring him back the next week.  He escaped the classroom TWICE and through the grace of God, he wound up back into the classroom. I was astonished by the amount of bullying and gaslighting I received.  It seems unbelievable now that I went against every instinct a mother has towards her child. And being told that, "I needed to release the apron strings" on my 5 year old only worked with me so far.

 

I did have one, dear friend, however, who homeschooled and she gave me the book, Dumbing Us Down, by John Taylor Gatto.  That book and my homeschooling friend gave me the courage to put my son into a "homeschool" charter.  He went one day a week for 3 hours and I sat in the parking lot watching the kindergarten door while organizing my business on my computer.  Yes, I became that paranoid after our public school experience.  It wasn't just the fact that my son left the classroom, but the lying, manipulation and betrayal I faced was something that was very difficult to get over.  I felt guilty and stupid and looking back, I still do.  

 

As far as the hybrid homeschooling situation, it worked for a while but I noticed some problems arising.  He, at 6 years old,  had other ideas about his education that included playing outdoors, running around at the beach and writing his name in the sand.  He loved the zoo where he learned to read and could observe science happening all around him.  My son was and still is extremely bright.  In fact, he would do math in his head faster than I could.  I would present him with a math problem but he would refuse to write it down.  Instead, he would think about it for a few seconds and then give me the correct answer.  He always had the correct answer.  Then because this "homeschool" was linked to the public school district,  the state testing came.  I was never told by his first grade teacher that parents can opt their children out of the state testing if they wanted to.  So I sent him into the class and it didn't go well.  He apparently, had to write out how he got the correct answers in math. If he didn't do this, well the answer was incorrect.  So, even though he was excelling in math and was able to do the problems correctly in his head, the school gave him a bad grade because he didn't write out the answers exactly the way they wanted.  They called this common core math. That pedagogical system blew me away and not in a good way.

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They would also give the students 3 different ways to come up one answer to a math problem.  If my son could do one way correctly and the other two ways might give him trouble, the problem was marked incorrect and he was penalized.  This occurred even if he came up with the correct answer!  I went to discuss this with the teacher and asked why were these questions marked incorrect when he clearly had the correct answer.  I received this statement:  "Well, we want the kids to discover which way works better for them.  It's individualized instruction."

Individualized?  No, actually it isn't.  You are making my son feel stupid even though he is coming up with the correct answer!  In reality,  if they understand how to solve a problem one way out of three, they solved the problem.  But school isn't going to let that happen folks.

 

Why?

 

Because they don't teach anything in school.  They indoctrinate.  What I experienced was 20 years ago and don't kid yourself, it's getting worse.  I am certain you have your own stories.

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This is why I am here to help you on your journey.  It is time to keep your children closely connected to his or her family.  You as a parent, will do a better job educating your children than the compulsory school system will.  I guarantee it.

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