I encountered this attitude quite a bit recently. I happen to have one gifted child, but I also have one who did fairly average in school for his K and 1st grade years. I get positive comments on the gifted child's achievements, but I get a lot of, "oh my, he needs to be in school, honey," type comments about my secondborn son.
I get comments all the time from family and friends about how they see why I am homeschooling my oldest son, but they don't understand why I pulled my second as well. My oldest has some obvious gifted ability. My second son has trouble reading, but is otherwise fairly average. All the time they tell me that my second son would have been better left at school. Either so I can concentrate on the gifted child or let the 'experts' work with the one who is a bit behind in his reading- I get all sorts of comments that boil down to - "gifted kids can be homeschooled because of the extra help they need, but regular kids should be kept in school." I think they'd even be on board if he were really behind in school, but not just average.
Why is this attitude so prevalent? Another thread had me thinking about this a bit; is it is the fact that some of the more positive homeschool stories in the news feature extra gifted kids? The ones taking college course material already, the 10 year old doing advanced calc, the first grader that can give you a full info-dump on every country in the world, the spelling bee champ. I think it's good PR to get this info out to the doubtful so they can see the success stories to homeschool, but I wonder if it's given some of the uninformed some fairly high standards to expect from a homeschooler?
For example, over the (US) Thanksgiving holiday, my ILs were asking them about what the kids were learning in school, what they were doing. They seemed quite amused by my gifted child talking about things he's learned or his advanced math stuff. But they seemed concerned when my second son was just kind of going, "We did stuff. Spelling tests. I looked at rocks." Obviously, we did more that that, and those answers would be seen as acceptable from him last year when he was in public school. But now, my relatives seem to be waiting for him to become Einstein or something because I am homeschooling. I guess it's just frustrating, because they don't see homeschooling as a choice for kids of all abilities- just something for those who are gifted, and if they are pulled, they should automatically become gifted magically or something.
Anyone else have to deal with this situation? How do you approach it? Because I kind of think it might hurt my second son's feelings a bit when he hears that people basically think he's too 'average'.
I get comments all the time from family and friends about how they see why I am homeschooling my oldest son, but they don't understand why I pulled my second as well. My oldest has some obvious gifted ability. My second son has trouble reading, but is otherwise fairly average. All the time they tell me that my second son would have been better left at school. Either so I can concentrate on the gifted child or let the 'experts' work with the one who is a bit behind in his reading- I get all sorts of comments that boil down to - "gifted kids can be homeschooled because of the extra help they need, but regular kids should be kept in school." I think they'd even be on board if he were really behind in school, but not just average.
Why is this attitude so prevalent? Another thread had me thinking about this a bit; is it is the fact that some of the more positive homeschool stories in the news feature extra gifted kids? The ones taking college course material already, the 10 year old doing advanced calc, the first grader that can give you a full info-dump on every country in the world, the spelling bee champ. I think it's good PR to get this info out to the doubtful so they can see the success stories to homeschool, but I wonder if it's given some of the uninformed some fairly high standards to expect from a homeschooler?
For example, over the (US) Thanksgiving holiday, my ILs were asking them about what the kids were learning in school, what they were doing. They seemed quite amused by my gifted child talking about things he's learned or his advanced math stuff. But they seemed concerned when my second son was just kind of going, "We did stuff. Spelling tests. I looked at rocks." Obviously, we did more that that, and those answers would be seen as acceptable from him last year when he was in public school. But now, my relatives seem to be waiting for him to become Einstein or something because I am homeschooling. I guess it's just frustrating, because they don't see homeschooling as a choice for kids of all abilities- just something for those who are gifted, and if they are pulled, they should automatically become gifted magically or something.
Anyone else have to deal with this situation? How do you approach it? Because I kind of think it might hurt my second son's feelings a bit when he hears that people basically think he's too 'average'.
. I don't care if one of them is more intellectually "gifted" than the other - their ability to homeschool is going to have a major effect for both of them being able to reach their own full unique potentials, and the one who is not so obviously intellectually gifted will be able to find his own gifts which might be every bit as impressive, not to mention important in his own life. The way I'd handle it is to be very assertive and just go ahead and let your mama bear intuition set the protective cushion you provide around your children's homeschooling boundaries. 
Lillian
