One comment I hear quite often after telling people that I homeschool my two children is "I could never homeschool my kids!" This is usually followed by comments about how they lack patience and would "kill" their children if they tried homeschooling. Sometimes this is also followed by comments about how they wouldn't know how to homeschool or they aren't qualified to homeschool.
I completely understand that many people do not feel that homeschooling is the right decision for their family. I think the wonderful thing is that everyone is able to choose for themselves what they feel is best for their child and their family. Don't, however, say that you can't homeschool. It just isn't true.
All parents are homeschoolers. When our children are young, we encourage their first words, we read to them, we hold their hand as they take their first toddling steps. We point out things in the world around us. We have conversations with them. For some reason, though, once a child reaches 5 or 6, we suddenly come to believe that we are no longer qualified to teach them. That task becomes the purview of certified teachers. We ignore the fact that these teachers don't really know our children, that we are often unhappy with how our children are taught in school, that the teacher is responsible for teaching 20+ children, and that our children are only in school for about 6 hours per day (much of which is spent lining up, dealing with discipline issues, etc.). We have been told that school age children should be taught in a school and that only uniquely qualified people can teach.
In college, professors are not required to have any training in teaching. They are highly educated in their fields, but they have no training in educating others. As a result, some college professors are wonderful teachers and others are not. In my experience, I found that the ones who were the best were the ones who were truly interested in their students and took the time to really get to know them as people and then made the material relevant to them. Isn't that something that parents inherently do? Why is it that we don't think college professors need any training in education while elementary teachers do? Why is it that many believe that parents aren't as qualified as a college professor to teach? Parents usually know and understand their children better than anyone else does. They are uniquely qualified to teach in a way that is meaningful and memorable for their children.
Others have told me that they wouldn't know how to teach or what material to cover. This was one of my concerns when I first started homeschooling. I addressed this by purchasing a boxed curriculum package. I used a curriculum called BookShark. I ordered it online and the large box arrived at my door a week later. It included all of the required books and, best of all, a binder containing a day-by-day schedule of exactly what books to read and material to cover. All I had to do was follow their plan and check off what we completed. I knew, if we covered the prescribed material, we would have covered everything that my children would have covered in school that year. I ended up branching off from BookShark and tailoring my own curriculum after a couple of months, but that's another topic for another post. If you're nervous about covering what is necessary to keep your child on grade level, you can simply buy a curriculum and follow it.
Another concern that I hear even more often is that parents don't believe they are patient enough to homeschool their children. I'm here to tell you that I am not a very patient person and I have managed to homeschool my children for the last year without incident. Sure, some days they have tried my patience and I have yelled a bit. I feel bad about that, but I'm pretty certain I did no irreparable harm. Homeschooling has been a wonderful voyage of self-discovery for me. I have learned how to deal with frustration and how to look at the long-range view. I have learned that, if they are restless, unmotivated, and distracted, we can usually take a break and they will focus better later. I have learned that flexibility is key and I need to let go of some of my control-freak nature.
I've also learned that one reason parents have such a hard time believing that they could survive homeschooling is that they are currently only with their children after school, on weekends, and during the summer. After school, most children are at their worst. They have been confined all day and forced to sit still and focus on boring material for most of the day. They have been somewhat stressed and bored all day. After school, they can finally relax and cut loose. If, they've finished their homework, that is. That is why homework becomes such a battle. My daughter was certainly DONE with school work by the time she came home each day last year. She didn't want to deal with even 30 minutes more sitting still and doing work. I couldn't blame her.
The struggle you face getting your child to do homework is nothing like homeschooling. Homework must be done in the evening when a child has already been sitting still and focusing all day at school. Homework is the obstacle keeping them from relaxing and unwinding at the end of the day. Most homework is or feels like busy work rather than meaningful learning. I also found that homework was often confusing even to me. The directions were often unclear and, since I wasn't the teacher, I didn't know what to tell my daughter to do. When you are the teacher, you get to decide how the assignments will be completed. You also get to decide when your child has done enough and you don't have to force them to complete 30 practice math problems because some of the 25 children in her class need extra practice.
Weekends and summer are another time when non-homeschooling parents are with their children and are sometimes at their wits end. Again, this does not reflect how homeschooling would be. Weekends and summers tend to be unstructured free time. Personally, I've found that we do much better when there is some structure to our days. We need a daily plan. Left to figure it out for themselves, my children usually either spend too much time in front of screens, making me feel guilty, or they endlessly bug me to tell them how to amuse themselves. When we homeschool, we have a daily plan. They have certain tasks to complete each day and I usually have some time built in when I can get things done on my own while they are otherwise occupied. We have time when I am totally focused on them so that, later, they are usually happy to have some time to themselves.
Homeschooling isn't always easy, but it isn't as hard as you might think. I am not an overly patient person. I am not specially trained in education. I am, like nearly all parents, just passionate about ensuring that each of my children has the best childhood and the best educational experience possible. For me, the best way to do that for my children is through homeschooling. Others might feel that the best way to do that is to send their children to school. Either is a fine choice. Just don't tell me you couldn't homeschool.
Addendum: I do realize that some people are unable to homeschool because they are required to work long hours and need the childcare provided by school. I want to be clear that I'm not referring to being unable to homeschool for such reasons. I just wanted to point out that any parent who really wants to, has the ability to homeschool in terms of patience and qualifications.
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