Why Homeschool, Why Not?

The question I'm asked most often as a homeschool mom is, "Why?" When my oldest child was preschool age (and an only child) I always emphatically declared that I would "NEVER homeschool." Now I had different reasons for this but it was mainly because my precious baby and I butted heads more often than not AND because homeschool children are weird. Isn't it lovely when God has us eat our on words?

By the time my oldest was 4 and I was pregnant with baby #2 I became friends with a group of moms that were mostly homeschoolers. While this helped me drop my "homeschoolers are weird" misconception, I was still sure that it wasn't for us. Until it came time for Daniel to actually start school. At that point, I had quit work to stay home with him and Isaac as well as babysit. Daniel had gone to daycare before I stayed home and he HATED it. Unfortunately, we had called daycare "school" which had made him develop a very negative connotation of school. I remember clearly my husband looking at him and saying "School is a part of life, you have to go." My immediate thought was, is it? This was the very first time I considered homeschooling.

My husband wasn't crazy about the idea and I wasn't totally sold myself so we made a pro and con list and eventually decided it wouldn't hurt to try. Because Daniel had a fall birthday and was on the older end of the age range for kindergarten and already very prepared, we decided we couldn't screw things up too bad. If it was all a bust, Daniel would enter public school in first grade and hopefully not be behind. Our poor little guinea pig first born, you can tell we were so hopeless full of faith in ourselves!

Fast forward.

We've been successfully homeschooling for over 4 years now and have added another baby to the bunch. Overtime, very little of our original pro-con list has remained the same. Our pros list has gotten a lot longer and doesn't stay neck and neck with the cons anymore. When we started, we didn't realize that Daniel has childhood migraines. Being at home and in control of his schedule helps us do a little more to keep better control of his headaches. Overall the kids just have more time altogether and since I was already a stay-at-home mom, we didn't have to make a change or sacrifice in income. The socialization fear has died as the kids have close friends in all sorts of different school situations. They're involved in church activities, homeschool activities, sports, and scouts. In fact, sometimes I wish they were a little less "socialized" as their schedules can be exhausting. Don't get me wrong, my kids are probably still a little weird but considering I'm their mom, there probably isn't much we could do about that.

So really my "why" is better answered with "why not?" It works well for our family and we mostly love it. I'm not going to lie and pretend there aren't times when I'm ready to call the school board and say "sign 'em up!" but those days are few and far between and honestly generally have more to do with mom's hormones than anything to do with kids and schoolwork. I don't mind people asking us questions about why we homeschool or anything about homeschooling. I'm never offended because I remember not so long ago being a major Judgy McJudgeginson on the subject myself. Truthfully our answer is kinda boring, though. No, we aren't anti-public school. Nothing terrible happened to make us "pull" our children. I'm not interested in keeping them in a bubble to "protect" them from society. I have so many friends and family members that are wonderful educators in our local school system. If things ever change in our family situation and we feel that our kids will be better off in public school we will put them there with little to no reluctancy. But for now, we won't fix what's not broken.