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If your child is a night owl by nature, is that a valid piece of the puzzle in determining whether to homeschool or not?
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Is honoring your child's natural sleep/wake times something you considered when choosing to homeschool?Â
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Thanks for anyone who has BTDT and can share your experience.
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I am a 'night owl', actually I have a circadian rhythm disorder. I went through years of doctors, neurologists, sleep studies, medications, etc. trying to 'cure' it only to learn to accept it. In school I always got a lot of 'not working up to potential' comments. My parents could never figure out why I would do great in a subject one year and terrible the next year. I kept telling them it was because I can't do work in the morning. I was called lazy more times than I can recall. Even my husband called me lazy a few times when we were first married. He's an early riser so my sleeping in until 11 annoyed him, he wouldn't take into account that I was up until 5 and accomplished more than him the previous day on less sleep. I simply don't function well in the morning. If I have to get up before 7 I will just stay awake all night, it's easier. When I got to college I could take afternoon and evening classes and I did very well. The few times a class I needed was only offered in the morning I would have to explain to the professor my sleep issues. Two were understand and one was not. The two allowed me to do extra work to make up for missed classes. The other class I ended up taking an incomplete and making up the work over the summer.
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All that said, YES, I think being a 'night owl' is a very valid reason to homeschool. One of the reasons we homeschool is because our oldest is like me. She's only 6 but she frequently stays up until midnight then sleeps in late, that's what works for her. If I get her up early we get nothing done until her normal wake up time.Â
i think it is valid point. not sure if it would work as a only reason.we hs i think if i had chosen to send them to ps then i would be like so many families fighting bed time and wake up times. wake up is around 9am-noon bedtime is 11-2pm. we unschool but its funny around 10pm most nights they want to do "learning"
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omg :lol me too. if i have to be up early i just stay up all night then that night will a rare early night(sometimes i still end up staying up late so up like 48hours). i did very bad in school because i was up but not awake till hours after i got up. it was a battle for my mom everyday to get me up. i did poorly because my mind was not there.
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 I kept telling them it was because I can't do work in the morning. I was called lazy more times than I can recall. Even my husband called me lazy a few times when we were first married. He's an early riser so my sleeping in until 11 annoyed him, he wouldn't take into account that I was up until 5 and accomplished more than him the previous day on less sleep. I simply don't function well in the morning. If I have to get up before 7 I will just stay awake all night, it's easier. Â
Our schedule, even as homeschoolers, doesn't work with night owls.  But - I think almost any reason is a great reason to homeschool! 
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I'd like to take on a split schedule - stay up late, get up early, nap all afternoon! Â LOL
farm animals and work obligations make early mornings the norm here, but I can certainly see the attraction of alternate schedules!
I agree that pretty much any reason that comes into play for your family is an excellent reason to homeschool! But then, I'm kind of militant about it. :) I think whatever helps you function more happily and efficiently as a family is always going to be good for the overall well-being of everyone involved!
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I will also say that I was dealing with some health issues for a couple of years that really impacted my ability to function on, shall we say, a "traditional schedule" and things would've been pretty ugly if I'd had no choice but to try and get the kids to school every morning. No telling what kind of trouble we would've found if we'd been under that kind of daily scrutiny, with chronically late kids. Plus it would've been really unfair for them to deal with always being "that kid" walking in late, like I so frequently was as a child. No fun for anyone!
My dd is a night owl (sleep disorder) and I think homeschooling was a good decision because of that reason but it was not initially part of the reasons we chose to homeschool.
Fighting my dd's sleep pattern is very exhausting, stressful and wastes so much time. To me sleep is a very valid reason to homeschool just as you might for other health reasons.
I'd rather homeschool than force her to get up and go to school on too little sleep weakening her health and causing her to be cranky or fall asleep in class and then get her home and make her go to bed.
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My dd is a night owl (sleep disorder) and I think homeschooling was a good decision because of that reason but it was not initially part of the reasons we chose to homeschool.
Fighting my dd's sleep pattern is very exhausting, stressful and wastes so much time. To me sleep is a very valid reason to homeschool just as you might for other health reasons.
I'd rather homeschool than force her to get up and go to school on too little sleep weakening her health and causing her to be cranky or fall asleep in class and then get her home and make her go to bed.
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Yep.
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We decided to homeschool for one reason and now we see the benefit of homeschooling for tons of reasons.
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 I'm becomming a more "suctructured" homeschooler but one reason I do HS is to not be sooooo tight and run by the clock. MyDD though gets some things... and amound that is.
1) We do school first we might take breaks have fun ect but we don't go off and run around for hours with our friends till the "school work" is done
2) all her friends attend local brick and motar schools they will all be comming home sometimes between 2-3 pm depending on the day
3) HS for us averages about 3 hours of actually time a day (with breaks) and not including reading which we do at bedtime..
4) anyone insisting on being awake and UP past 9pm becomes Mommies helperÂ
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So my DD has come to realize we should start her schooling somewhere between 9-10amish so that my 12-1pm we are done.. This means she is free and clear to play by the time her friends are out of school.. SHe has learned this means shes should consider making the effort to actually go to bed sometime around 9-10pm which will give her body a natural wake up time of around 8-8:30 allowing her appropiate time to wake up get breakfast and gather herself before we start.
 I will NOT go wake up my child we start about 1-2 hours after sehs gets up but shes also knows the rules and adjusts herself for them..
 We also of course never limit LEARNING to just 3 hours a day.
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deanna
You don't need a reason to homeschool, apart from "I have kids and they need to be educated in some fashion."Â
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That said, I'm a very structured homeschooler and I still cringe at the schedule that kids adhere to our local public schools. My kids may go to public school next year, for a variety of good and sound reasons, and I want to cry just thinking of the 6:30 a.m. wakeup. Aaaaargh.Â
Our schedule, even as homeschoolers, doesn't work with night owls. Â But - I think almost any reason is a great reason to homeschool!Â
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I'd like to take on a split schedule - stay up late, get up early, nap all afternoon! Â LOL
farm animals and work obligations make early mornings the norm here, but I can certainly see the attraction of alternate schedules!
I love this idea. I want to do that too. I actually like getting up early but I don't, because I am a nightowl with a nightowl husband and one nightowl child. The other child is a little more traditional but even he is never awake much before 8am.
Yes, for us sleep is a reason to homeschool. Of course we would have homeschooled anyway (planning on it before conception) but I'm glad we are able to honour DD's natural patterns. Actually she isn't that much of a late riser, she's usually up before 9 (we know other similarly aged children who often aren't up before midday) but the idea of forcing her to be dressed, breakfasted, out of the house and able to converse with non family members by that time in the morning seems, well impossible.
Can I just say I love this?? We are really, really big into letting our children make choices and seeing the personal need for their actions instead of being forced to do something. I really like how you've given the personal autonomy back, with logical reasoning involved. Way to go, Mama!! 
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 I'm becomming a more "suctructured" homeschooler but one reason I do HS is to not be sooooo tight and run by the clock. MyDD though gets some things... and amound that is.
1) We do school first we might take breaks have fun ect but we don't go off and run around for hours with our friends till the "school work" is done
2) all her friends attend local brick and motar schools they will all be comming home sometimes between 2-3 pm depending on the day
3) HS for us averages about 3 hours of actually time a day (with breaks) and not including reading which we do at bedtime..
4) anyone insisting on being awake and UP past 9pm becomes Mommies helperÂ
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So my DD has come to realize we should start her schooling somewhere between 9-10amish so that my 12-1pm we are done.. This means she is free and clear to play by the time her friends are out of school.. SHe has learned this means shes should consider making the effort to actually go to bed sometime around 9-10pm which will give her body a natural wake up time of around 8-8:30 allowing her appropiate time to wake up get breakfast and gather herself before we start.
 I will NOT go wake up my child we start about 1-2 hours after sehs gets up but shes also knows the rules and adjusts herself for them..
 We also of course never limit LEARNING to just 3 hours a day.
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deanna
My schedule is a big part of why we chose to homeschool. I teach violin/viola in the afternoons and drive to rehearsals in the evening. There are some weeks that I leave the house at noon and get home at midnight. My kids are on a later schedule than most, partly due to my work hours. During my slow weeks (teaching only, no rehearsals), I get home sometime between 7:30 and 9:00. Their 10:00 bedtime gives me a little time with them after I get home.
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I hated the early morning school routine when I was a kid. 12 years of hating something was enough for me!Â
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One of the homeschool Moms in our community just wrote an eloquent blog entry about this very topic. She wanted to tell the world that hot breakfasts are the best part of her homeschool life.Â
We have a pretty normal bedtime I think with the kids usually asleep by 9 or 10 and they get up (on their own) usually around 8 am. My dd is a morning person and I never had trouble getting her up for school the few weeks she went but I still just don't like the idea of kids getting up at 6 am for school. If left alone she wakes up around 8 am ready to go. Why drag a 5 year old out of bed at 6 and expect them to be in a good mood ready to learn at 8 am? I don't like it. There are tons of good reasons for homeschool but they all come down to one thing 'what's better for our kids'. If it's better for your kids to be on a different schedule than that's a good reason.
Thank you all for your replies!Â
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I've been seriously considering HSing DS1, due to his personality and learning style. There is one charter school in the area which I might consider trying with him, which has multi-age classes, parent participation, yada yada.Â
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A good friend of mine who has a daughter the same age called to tell me that kindergarten packets are available for the school and asked if I wanted her to pick me up one, just in case. I said sure.Â
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I don't HAVE to start him in kindergarten this fall, even if we do PS.
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But thinking about the possibility of him being on a school schedule, and the HUGE changes in his (and my) sleep/wake routine sort of made me realize that it could be a problem. He's been at home with me since birth. He's been able to follow his natural sleep/wake cycles with no issue. But those cycles do not mesh with a PS schedule. He wake around 9am and goes to bed around 10pm...we chat for a while about the day's events and he falls asleep between 10:30-11pm. The thought of trying to somehow figure out a way of adjusting his wake-up time to be 3 hours earlier plus get him to be sleepy by 8pm just seems impossible to do without causing a lot of stress. I wouldn't even know where to start.
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I feel in my gut that HSing is the best fit for him in many, many ways. But this is the first time it occurred to me that entire routine of PSing would cause a huge, probably stressful, change to our otherwise stress-free sleeping/waking times.Â
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I hated the early morning school routine when I was a kid. 12 years of hating something was enough for me!Â
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One of the homeschool Moms in our community just wrote an eloquent blog entry about this very topic. She wanted to tell the world that hot breakfasts are the best part of her homeschool life. (I'd love to read this blog! Do you have the link?)
Me too. I hated it every. single. day.
I can remember in vivid detail the horrible feeling of having to get up too early. I'd lie there just begging for 5 more minutes. I'd have sold my soul to just be able to go back to sleep. I didn't start functioning well until around lunch time. I remember thinking that school wouldn't be so bad if it started at noon. I lived for weekends. If I never had to wake-up to an alarm clock for the rest of my life I would be so happy! ;)Â
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But that is me. I don't think he is as much of an anti-morning person as I am, but it is close.Â
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Lots to think about...thank you all again!
I have been working 2nd-3rd shift hours for 14 years. I am simply not...functional in the morning. My kids are also on a later schedule (basically because these are the hours I started them on since birth). So while it's not the main reason we homeschool, doing school in the afternoon is preferable to all of us.Â
right now our schedule revolves around my job, which has typical hours. while i was home with the girls on maternity leave, dd1 (in k at the time) was going to bed about ten and waking up at maybe 8:30. if i had let her follow a schedule on her own clock, she would have been up till maybe midnight and awake by 9:30. she's a total night owl, but doesn't sleep in much to make up for being up late. dd2 is in bed by 9 pm and up really early, and is a total morning person. dd1 and i are alike. i would stay up until 3 am if i didn't have to be up early! mornings kill me. if i'm ever able to be home with the girls again (crossing fingers), i'd like dd1 in bed about 10, dd2 in bed by 9, and myself about midnight- then we'd all wake up between eight and nine. i guess that's a pretty typical schedule! i'm homeschooling because i want to do what i feel is best for my girls, and things like daily routine, habits, and schedules are a part of that.
Well, people who oppose home school will tell you that it's not a valid reason. But then they probably will discount most of the other reasons you give them, too. 
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While we had other reasons for homeschooling, I will admit that a big one for us was in fact sleep schedules. Dh and I both do better on what we like to call "College Time." And since dh is self-employed, and I SAHP, that meant that as we were staring kindergarten down for dd1, the specter of getting her up at such an awful hour, and having to get her to bed soooo early at night, was very unpleasant. Dh's work schedule wouldn't change, so among other things, it would have meant that she wouldn't have seen her daddy much at ALL. Just briefly after getting home, doing her homework and eating supper, and none of the time interactive since he's starting to kick into gear with work by mid-afternoon.Â
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We had quite a few family members who were chortling over the prospects of us suddenly needing to keep "regular hours."Â So they were inadvertently reminding us frequently of one of the reasons we really were not looking forward to public schooling.Â
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So - we are homeschooling, and it's worked well for us. The girls are in bed most nights by 10pm, and get up between 8 and 9:30 in the mornings .... We don't usually start school 'til after 11am most days, mid-afternoon on other days (we're pretty unstructured about it, despite using a virtual school). The girls can build Legos with their dad in the morning, take a break to do something with him in the afternoon, etc., it's great.Â
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We have encountered some social challenges to maintaining our 'College hours," in that we have developed friendships with people who keep regular hours. The window of opportunity for play dates, field trips, parties etc. is narrower because our days start 3-4 hours later than most people's days. Sometimes I'm tempted to try to roll our schedule back by an hour or so. But then I wake up in the morning and thing, "No, I don't want to be up yet!!!" 
Wait, we need a reason to homeschool?
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And yes, I think it is legitimate if you feel that honoring your child's natural sleep/wake cycles and times of highest productivity is important. So, what is a valid reason to homeschool is different for every family, and no one person can tell someone else that their reason is or is not valid unless their reason crosses over to the sprectrum of abuse or neglect.
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Well, people who oppose home school will tell you that it's not a valid reason. But then they probably will discount most of the other reasons you give them, too.Â
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While we had other reasons for homeschooling, I will admit that a big one for us was in fact sleep schedules. Dh and I both do better on what we like to call "College Time." And since dh is self-employed, and I SAHP, that meant that as we were staring kindergarten down for dd1, the specter of getting her up at such an awful hour, and having to get her to bed soooo early at night, was very unpleasant. Dh's work schedule wouldn't change, so among other things, it would have meant that she wouldn't have seen her daddy much at ALL. Just briefly after getting home, doing her homework and eating supper, and none of the time interactive since he's starting to kick into gear with work by mid-afternoon.Â
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We had quite a few family members who were chortling over the prospects of us suddenly needing to keep "regular hours."Â So they were inadvertently reminding us frequently of one of the reasons we really were not looking forward to public schooling.Â
Â
So - we are homeschooling, and it's worked well for us. The girls are in bed most nights by 10pm, and get up between 8 and 9:30 in the mornings .... We don't usually start school 'til after 11am most days, mid-afternoon on other days (we're pretty unstructured about it, despite using a virtual school). The girls can build Legos with their dad in the morning, take a break to do something with him in the afternoon, etc., it's great.Â
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We have encountered some social challenges to maintaining our 'College hours," in that we have developed friendships with people who keep regular hours. The window of opportunity for play dates, field trips, parties etc. is narrower because our days start 3-4 hours later than most people's days. Sometimes I'm tempted to try to roll our schedule back by an hour or so. But then I wake up in the morning and thing, "No, I don't want to be up yet!!!"Â
I could have written nearly this exact post!! Nice to see another mom in the same shoes!! 
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