The Dark Side of Homeschooling

(this blog has been written with kids who were previously in public school in mind.  I have no experience with kids who were homeschooled from the beginning, and do not know how that process works for parents or for children.)

   There is a very famous homeschooling woman who has become something of a guru for the community.  She has written bestsellers, has a website, has a forum dedicated to her methods.  I have read some of it, listened to her lectures and taken notes, and use some of her principles in my homeschooling.  But I can't stand her.

Why, you are asking, why?  Because if you listen to her, you will get the same impression you get from a thousand homeschooling books: smiling happy families, smiling happy kids, smiling happy parents.  The kids love it, these things all exclaim, all you have to do is pull your kids out of public school and you, too, can live your dreams!  This particular expert answers questions about what to do if your kids don't want to 'do school' with a line like: I have no idea.  MY kids, she says, would never refuse.

It sets new homeschoolers up with the idea that once you've met the legalities of homeschooling, once you've picked out beautiful curriculum and sharpened all your pencils, everything will be perfect.  The truth is.. well, maybe.



Homeschooling isn't for everyone.  It's easy to name some of the obvious reasons: scheduling problems because mom and dad both work; no motivation to homeschool; happiness with public school systems.  But the belief is that if you can, and want to, and maybe feel like you need to, that you will find a way.  And you will- believe me.  But it won't necessarily be as easy as signing your name to a form and slapping on a stamp.

Kids will be kids
Some kids don't want to buckle down, to follow orders, to do school work.  This might be why you pulled them in the first place, but at home you face the identical problems: Billy won't sit still, Sally snails through her math.  Just because you are the teacher now, doesn't mean your kids are clean slates.  I'm talking here, of course, about kids who were previously in public school and may have developed some bad habits to cope with boredom, difficulty with work, or whatever you can imagine.  If you warred with your kids when they were home before, Homeschooling will help- but it will take time.  Everyone has to learn new habits, new ways of interacting, new ways of getting the work done.  Homeschooling isn't like flipping a switch- everything doesn't smell like roses just because the workbooks are new and shiny. 

Old dogs learn slowly
You, too, will have to learn an entirely new set of skills.  Great teachers don't yell at their students when they can't focus.  Sometimes, you have to take yourself out of the equation, or realize you can't win the war so you have to let it go.  Mostly, though, if you were a public schooled kid, you might have to change your entire view of what learning MEANS.  Does learning only happen between the hours of 8:30 and 2pm?  Of course not!  But previously public schooled kids believe that play is something you do in your free-time.  Play doesn't mean learning.. except when it does.  You might feel like (as I did) school should take up 7 hours out of the day, but this is a really faulty translation to homeschooling.  Learning in a home environment means intense one-on-one, very concentrated information, no waiting your turn to ask your one question.  Kids learn fast, and learn a lot, just by having the opportunity to really explore a subject as thoroughly as they wish.  Table time is not necessarily the best use of school time- but that really depends on you AND your kids. 

There are no hard and fast rules
This one gets homeschoolers into trouble as well, I think.  There is no one right way to homeschool- and your methods will depend entirely on you, your kids, your teaching style, their learning styles.  What works for one of your children won't necessarily work for the others.  Homeschooling is all about adjusting, evaluating, and adjusting again.  This doesn't mean curriculum hopping, or automatically ditching something if you hit a rough spot, though.  I tell my kids, repeatedly, that if they fail to understand something at all then it means I didn't do a very good job explaining- you may not have to be so blunt if you aren't teaching perfectionists, but you have to be prepared to evaluate what you are doing and why it isn't working.  Mostly, I think, homeschoolers share a particular sensitivity for their kids (less likely to say Johnny is being difficult or defiant, and more likely to say hmm... he doesn't learn well sitting down).  We have a flexibility the public school systems don't have, but it takes more time than one might think just to get to that point.

I spend a lot of time reading body language.  That might seem like a decent skill in parenting, but in homeschooling in particular it really is the make-or-break part of our curriculum.  Random crying jags about nothing in particular mean the work is too hard, and I need to evaluate.  Gazing into space means I need to explain again.  This is just my kids- your mileage may vary.

Healing Wounds
One of the after-effects of public school might be emotional scars.  Maybe you know they are there when you start, maybe you don't.  When we pulled our daughter out, I knew she was dealing with some confidence issues, but I really had no idea how badly she had been hurt by her misguided teachers.  Kids with heart-wounds need time to heal before they are ready to really tackle something, especially something that they have had a hard time with in the past.

   And even if they aren't emotional scars, you may be like us: you may have trusted the public school system to teach your kids, then discovered what you thought your kids knew... they don't.  Straight A's in public school doesn't guarantee that your kids are getting what you would consider a Straight A education.  If you think about that for a moment, it makes sense: pedagogies change, materials change.  In order to teach algebra to Kindergarteners, something else has to go.  Different schools teach subjects differently, in slightly different orders.  All this translates to: your Straight A public school student may not be at grade level.  Trust me on this.


Create your perfect vision... then burn it
I read once that every new homeschooler should make a list of their homeschooling vision.  I would add to that though: burn your list.  Your vision will NOT take your children into account, no matter how much you initially think it does.

Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart.  It takes bravery and courage to begin, and tenacity to continue.  There are great days homeschooling, and lousy days.  There are days when you get twice as much done as you planned, your kids stagger you by repeating something word for word that you told them last week, that they mentally leap ahead in Math.  But there are plenty of days when you all call it quits, curl up under a quilt with cocoa, and read a great book instead.  That's all just part of homeschooling, and we aren't doing new people any favors by pretending that for OUR families, everything started great and stayed great.  New homeschoolers need to know they will encounter bumps in the road, and that they can work through it just like we did.  They need to know that sometimes many of us (most? all?) have visions of putting our kids on the schoolbus and having a blissful day of silence.  That doesn't make your homeschool a failure- and it doesn't out you from the club.  It just makes you.. human.  Educating our children is a monumental task- we can do it, but it doesn't mean the journey will be easy.  

Take heart, and know you will do an incredible job with your own, no matter how many obstacles you must overcome first.