Homeschool musings

I really didn't want to homeschool. When my oldest son was 4 and kindergarten was coming up, I kept feeling like I should homeschool him. But I thought that was such a dumb idea. How could someone as unorganized as me and has so little experience with education homeschool their child? Not to mention everyone thinks homeschoolers are just weird and mostly unsocialized. So I sent him off to kindergarten. I figured I could just volunteer and be really involved in his education.

I volunteered in the classroom weekly. Most of the time I wasn't helping my own son. I got really good at cutting out stuff. I discovered that this wasn't rocket science. I was fairly intelligent, surely I could do this at home. So I took the leap of faith and started homeschooling my oldest son at the age of 6 for first grade.

We both hated it. Many times we were both literally in tears over Saxon math. And writing? Sheer misery. We had to get through all these topics or else he was going to get behind! And we never could slog through the required stuff to get to the fun part of reading aloud!

Luckily, I made a switch. I decided to do the fun stuff first. We STARTED the day with a read aloud book. And then I stopped making him do all the school work he hated to do. We found other ways to learn that he liked better. I stopped worrying about making him write three sentences to describe a pencil (which truthfully is incredibly borrrrring.)

I realized I'd been copying public school for lack of a better method. That simply doesn't work in homeschool, it's the fast road to burnout. My job is to help my children learn to love learning, and then they will learn anything they need to. I don’t have to kill myself trying to teach everything. But what about knowledge gaps? It’s not a problem, it happens in public school too (how did I graduate and not know hardly anything about history?) My other main job is to inspire them to become life-long learners, as learning opens the door to opportunities and fulfilling their purpose in life. Since I figured this out, I have not experienced burnout.

Fast forward 12 years. We stuck with homeschooling, and we almost always enjoy it. The oldest son has turned out just fine, even with the rough start and my imperfections in my example over the years. He's got an excellent character, he loves learning and is a disciplined self-studier. He performs in musicals and competes in mock trial and speech & debate tournaments for fun. He’s not strange (although I must admit he does enjoy mock sword fighting) and he can thrive in any social situation. The rest of the kids are going to be fine too!