I am actually not asked this too often in public. I am blessed to live in an area where many people homeschool and my circle of friends and acquaintances includes a lot of homeschoolers. What I usually get in terms of "questions" are more like implications that I will have the same fate as someone else's children who were "weird" or couldn't get into college. Or that I must be weary because I am with my kids all the time. (That's another post altogether.)
My husband and I had always talked about homeschooling for a number of reasons. We really wanted to be the ones to teach our children our core family values. We hold a biblical world view and believe that young children should be trained that way so that when they are older they will have the same views. (Its a matter of eternity for us.) I have met people who say they are okay with sending their young children to public school and that maybe they'd homeschool in middle or high school... which seems backwards to me. I can see that maybe we'd choose or need to send them to school later on, but I would be terrified of that if we weren't homeschooling them now.
My children receive a richer and more personalized education than is possible in the school system in our area. I am a former teacher and my in-laws are retired teachers as well and we know that the schools are not set up for that sort of individualized education on a broad basis. We cannot afford to send our children to a private school and now that I am 3 years into the homeschooling thing, I can't imagine that I would want to even if I did have the money. I love being with them every day. I love watching the lightbulbs go off. Its similar to the reasons I chose to stay at home with them when they were babies. "I don't want to miss a thing..." (now you're singing it, right?)
We began the journey of homeschooling because my oldest son would turn 5 at the beginning of summer and could go to Kindergarten that fall (not had to - could). He absolutely loved learning as many children that age do.(and still does) But our school system is not equipped to teach active little boys in their bouncy little ways. I didn't want to damage that love by having him be told to be still and do "school-ish" stuff. He was already reading and I didn't want to keep him out of Kindergarten, so I continued homeschooling him. In our state we don't have to register with our local county until the year the child is 6 so I had a "freebie" year to try out homeschooling. If it was too hard or I felt like either of us were failing, well, I wouldn't have put him in regular Kindergarten that year anyhow so it didn't matter.
But we didn't fail. We LOVED it. Both of us. And his little sister in her pesky preschool ways. I let him dance around and recite his numbers and math facts. I was OK with hanging upside down to read books and other general fidgeting as long as he was willing to pay attention and stay focused (which is not the same as still or silent). We read a lot and chased whatever rabbits he wanted to that first year. When he wanted to learn about volcanoes, we checked out books and videos from the library and built our own volcano with plaster and exploded it. I have a lot of pictures of that time.
So when the fall rolled around I did register him with our county and our journey continued.
Its not always pretty. There are days when we get dressed right before Daddy gets home. There are days when I want to quit because it seems like they aren't "getting it". There are days when my toddler seems to make it impossible to "properly" school his older siblings. But its those days that I try to step back and remember why I do this. And I see my cute little babe chicks sitting there helping each other spell or draw and it makes my heart soar. So I take a deep breath and do it again tomorrow. Because tomorrow will be the day that my daughter has a breakthrough with her math and is so excited she jumps off her chair. You just can't trade that for anything... not even a bigger house with cable TV on two incomes.
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