Spread the word!

I believe that homeschooling is an absolute joy and blessing to our family. Mr. C is gifted (in the academic sense of the word not in the every child has different talents sense) and the resources in public schools for gifted kids are limited, especially in the younger grades. A-Man has a variety of special needs and the special education in public schools is often understaffed and underfunded. On top of that, he has a fairly severe communication delay, which means that if he was in school for 8 hours a day, he couldn’t tell me anything that happened the whole day. Maybe I’m over protective but that’s not okay with me!

That said, every family, and even every child, is different, and homeschooling may not be the best solution for everyone. I do believe that God planned for our family to be homeschoolers and to raise our children in His Word rather than putting them into a school where they would have other people’s values and beliefs pushed on them all day every day, but I definitely don’t think that you’re sinning if you don’t homeschool! [I didn’t even think to mention that, but some people honestly believe it…]

When is Homeschooling not the Best?

When Your Heart Isn’t in Homeschooling

This may seem crazy, but I put it first for a reason. If your heart isn’t in what you’re doing than you won’t do it well. If you spend every “school day” dreading it, your kids will pick up on that, and they’ll start to dread it too. Homeschooling is all about igniting a passion for learning in our kids, not a checklist of assignments we have to do before summer comes. Don’t just go through to motions with your kids.

If You’re Homeschooling Because Someone Else Homeschools

You would think that this doesn’t happen ever, I mean, we’re all adults now! Unfortunately, we can still see that so and so homeschools and their kids are always well mannered and they speak four languages and want that for our kids. I’ll be the one to break it to you. Homeschooling does not give you perfect kids or mean that your family will be like their family, unfortunately. That could be its own post entirely, but lucky for me the talented Jamie from The Unlikely Homeschool already wrote about that and other homeschooling myths here.

If You’re Trying to Keep Your Children Young

This one is a little more difficult to explain. There are some people who want to homeschool to protect their children from other kids they may meet at public school. Our boys don’t play with toy guns, their games and tv are limited, and many many people would [and do] call them sheltered. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I am talking about parents who want to keep their children in the preschool stage for too long. Kids grow up, it’s just a fact. They test boundaries, they push buttons, they gain independence. That will happen whether they are surrounded by other kids or not. Homeschooling won’t keep kids from making no their favorite word or hiding bubble gum under their bed. Sorry.

I’m really curious. Do you think that homeschooling is best for everyone? What would you consider “bad” reasons to homeschool?

About Kaylene

Kaylene George is an autistic self-advocate, author, and mother of five, including one autistic child. She realized her own autism as an adult shortly after her son received his initial diagnosis. Suddenly the parts of her that seemed so “weird” to society had an answer. Since then, Kaylene has passionately shared about her experiences with autism from both sides of the great divide between parents and autistic self-advocates on AutisticMama.com.