Why not home schooling? - Page 3

[PancakeGoddess]

This is definitely a great thread. We've homeschooled everyone (13,10,3.5,1 until this month! In about 3 weeks my 13yo will start middle school. For us, homeschooling has always been better for the normal reasons - academic freedom, more moderate amounts of time with peers, getting to spend more time with each other, etc. But this year, he wants to try it out, and after a lot of discussion, we're going for it. I'm open to any suggestions for a kid who's never done school and is jumping in at 7th grade.

[HikeYosemite]

Not to stray too far from the OP, but in response to PancakeGoddess, my son chose to go to 7th grade this year after homeschooling. He previously tried one semester of 5th grade--jumping in at the same time your son will be doing. He is not a naturally organized person, so keeping track of homework, etc. has been a bit challenging for him, though the 5th grade experience helped. When he tried 5th grade, he hated it at first, then he got used to the daily rhythm and it became a bit easier. He is shy and has also found middle school to be a hard place to jump in socially (7th grade is the second year of middle school here) since many of the kids already have established their friendships. He enjoys being around kids his age some of the time, but the peer pressure to fit in and wear the right clothes, the ubiquitous unkind teasing, and the insensitivity of many kids can be a bit stressful for him. (These things can also occur among homeschooling peers, but he was not subjected to it all day long.) A more outgoing, charismatic friend of his has had an easier transition.

My son did surprise us with straight-A's the first quarter, despite spending about 17 hours/week on homework nights at football practice and games. (The football schedule was ridiculous, and his sudden lack of free time was very stressful for him. I don't advise such a transition!) He gets excellent comments about his behavior from teachers, and his 5th grade teacher said he was the "most appreciative" student she'd ever had, out of over 500 kids! At home, our son has not been the most cooperative of our children, so these comments rather surprise us. It seems that homeschooling can lead to better behaved, more respectful kids--i.e., kids who are not influenced all day long by their peer group but by nurturing adults. But school can also, paradoxically, prompt a child to put on their best behavior for the teacher.

Originally Posted by PancakeGoddess

This is definitely a great thread. We've homeschooled everyone (13,10,3.5,1 until this month! In about 3 weeks my 13yo will start middle school. For us, homeschooling has always been better for the normal reasons - academic freedom, more moderate amounts of time with peers, getting to spend more time with each other, etc. But this year, he wants to try it out, and after a lot of discussion, we're going for it. I'm open to any suggestions for a kid who's never done school and is jumping in at 7th grade.

[mrs_oli]

Wow! This is an interesting thread. My 13 yr old son is starting 8th grade next week as well!!! He has been homeschooled since 2nd grade. My other children will enroll in school next Fall. Maybe we can start a new thread on transitioning from homeschooling to brick and mortar? I'd love to go on this journey with others that are in the same boat.

Homeschooling has been a great journey for us, though I'm realizing that we need to make changes.

I believe homeschooling is wonderful and the majority of people we know that homeschool love it, and are thriving. I have many reasons as to why we won't be homeschooling anymore, it's tough to sum it up...lol I can say that I am looking forward to my kids having new experiences, and hopefully I will learn to relax and just make the best of it. I'm trying to focus on the positive but will deal with the negative as it comes up.

So basically, for us, my kids will go to school because the structure and routine will work better for us, I'm tired of driving the kids all over town every day to attend the wonderful HS classes and activities. Most of their friends go to a brick and mortar. Homeschooling is a lifestyle and we just aren't living that way anymore. I can't seem to embrace the unschooling life, which I totally envy others that do. I guess we are just a "schooly" family after all.



It's a tough decision, every family is unique. After homeschooling for several years, I'm finding that the toughest part of transitioning to them going to school is just admitting that it's what we want to do. But that's the beauty, you can always change your mind

[~Megan~]

We actually do plan to homeschool next year. DD is in half day Kindergarten because I wanted a little break from two kids. My little ones weren't getting along well and were fighting a lot. I had started part time work and was just tired.

Dd loves school, we have a great teacher and is doing well.

I think that full day, hard book studies, will be too much for her though so next year we start homeschooling.

We are also having a third child and I won't be working outside the home so I'll be here anyway! I do think homeschool is best for most children (though not the best for all parents! its a lot of work) and its what we want to do.

[meowee]

I gave up homeschooling my kids except for one (and might end up homeschooling another when she is old enough). You have to make the decision based on the child. It can be hard to keep your own emotions and attachment out of it. But my girls were bored, unwilling to do even basic academic work, fighting with each other (2 were fighting so badly that it had become abusive), they are very outgoing and the homeschooling community where I live is very small. No matter how hard I tried to find friends for them, it just fell through.

I tried public school but withdrew DD because she was being bullied. The next year I tried a private school with very strict behavior rules. They are thriving. I've told my DS that if he wants to go to school, he can, but he wants to keep HSing.

I wish I could say it's nice to get a break during the day, but I really don't get a break. 2 kids are still home and waking up very early each morning to get the other kids to school is rough.

My advice is, look at your schooling options, and look at your homeschooling options. Make T charts with the pros and cons. Visit the schools your DC might go to.

[mommy68]

Originally Posted by PancakeGoddess

This is definitely a great thread. We've homeschooled everyone (13,10,3.5,1 until this month! In about 3 weeks my 13yo will start middle school. For us, homeschooling has always been better for the normal reasons - academic freedom, more moderate amounts of time with peers, getting to spend more time with each other, etc. But this year, he wants to try it out, and after a lot of discussion, we're going for it. I'm open to any suggestions for a kid who's never done school and is jumping in at 7th grade.

I have an older one in 7th this year but he has been at this school for two years now. We homeschooled him before that. We're actually thinking of taking him out next year for 8th grade and doing online schooling at home, lol. He likes being in school outside the home but it's very tough with 8 classes per day, lots of homework, stressors that he doesn't need. Plus I want him home for the last few years of schooling. He enjoys being home. He hates going back to school after vacation days off and summer vaca.

[mommy68]

Originally Posted by s_kristina

If you read the rest of my post you can see that my own dd works well for other adults, but will not work for me. Would it be doing either of us any good to keep her at home? Same with my brothers once they went back to PS things changed drastically. Sometimes ideals of keeping kids away from whatever "bad" influence the parents see in PS is actually damaging to the kids. I'm all for being able to pick schools and situations that work for each family, but I don't think hs is best for every situation.

I'm not sure why you are pointing me out. I said all kids are different and not all can H/S and not all can go outside the home to school, just depends on the child. I don't know your whole situation since I don't live with you. I was just giving a general opinion on the idea of H/S vs schooling outside the home.

[~threemoons~]

This has been a really good thread. thanks for all the input!

[raksmama]

we tried home schooling but for us it did not work for 2 reasons:
One,ds does not like being taught by my husband and me. He learns better from other people. This makes me sad. I am a dance teacher and I am always told how well I can explain and how patient I am, but my own son does not like it when I show him how to do anything.
The second reason was I found we were too isolated. ds is very social and we live in a town where we have no family. We have only been here a few years and we don't have many friends.
I have friends from my La Leche days (before we moved) that home schooled.
It worked for many of them. Some have stopped.
If I had lots of money I would have my son tutored privately, not at school and I would spend the rest of the time doing enriching activities with him like taking him to museums, traveling with him, many other things which we already do with him but we would do more often.

[dannic]

I was HS, in private and public schools growing up. HS-til 3rd grade, private s-3-5, hs-6&7, skipped 8th and went to public HS. Having tried it all, (LOL) I am excited to HS my own kiddos. Looking back, I felt the most secure and learned the most at home. I was very social and had lots of friends. If we hadn't moved to a small rural community during the 7th grade, I probably would have continued. However, the girls were very tight (having gone thru all grades together) in the small town way, and I decided to go to high school as a way to gain friends.
We are using the approach as outlined in A Thomas Jefferson Education. Good luck with your decision!

[mamabeca]

Originally Posted by s_kristina

As a teen I saw my brothers be hs and refuse to do any work for my mom so they simply did not learn a thing. My dd has a very similar temperment and won't work with me on anything. If I try to get her to go over the lists of words he sends home it becomes a huge frustrating mess for both of us.

This is me and my dd. She's 9.5 and is SO willful, it would lead to a lot of in-fighting if I tried to hs her I think. Unschooling probably wouldn't work super well for ME, my expectations are hard to let go of. She is a curious, very VERY active little person, and had some behavioral issues that school was able to help with, more than I could. She just really pushes against me very hard.

With her at school during the day, our time out of school is quite happy! I remind her to do her homework, if she has some, but otherwise, all her home-learning is based on stuff we both like doing - from mummies to gardening, it feel great!! If I had to do it all day long, teach her spelling and maths and so on, it would just be more than I'd be comfortable doing w/out getting 'on' her about her learning curve.

[HikeYosemite]

I've tried to figure out why some children really balk at being taught by their parents. My son can be like that--especially now, in adolescence, but it has been there to some degree all along. Maybe because he is extremely strong-willed, stubborn, proud, but also shy, he reins in his pride when some outsider tries to teach him, but he is comfortable resisting when his parents try to tell him what to do. (The same with showing good, cooperative behavior at school.) For example, when he is at piano lessons (Suzuki, which requires parent involvement), he is very responsive to the teacher. But if we try to advise him on proper technique, etc., at home, he puts up a fight. So we told his teacher we basically leave him alone during his practices. There may also be the "stranger in a white coat" factor, as my FIL calls it--that is, when we are more willing to believe something a stranger tells us than we are willing to believe our family members, even if our family members might know more about the subject. A prophet is not without honor except...in his own household.

One thing that some non-homeschoolers might not know is that families who successfully and completely unschool--that is, let their children take the lead in their own education--don't run into this problem, at least theoretically. There are many threads in the Learning at Home and Beyond section about this. We tried unschooling to a degree, and it worked well in the early years; but as my son got older, I became uncomfortable with his degree of aimlessness. He had symptoms of dyslexia: he was a late reader (almost age 10 before he willingly got absorbed in books), had lots of trouble with spelling, didn't want to write anything, and didn't seem interested enough in anything to pursue learning it on his own. He did enjoy listening to us read to him, and books on CD, etc., and he had great auditory recall. Maybe everything would have worked out fine with unschooling, had I been more patient. When he had occasional unschooling moments--deciding with a friend to coauthor a book, making a great discovery on his own, etc.--they were the best. But one just has so much time in a day to read to three different kids at three different levels and with three different interests. (My middle child is much more a self-directed learner, though we give her reading/spelling support due to dyslexia, and my 6-yo is still in the "sponge" stage.)

Some self-directed kids excel dramatically with unschooling. They take the reins and learn all kinds of amazing things, and it can be hard not to compare a less self-directed (or less ambitious) child to them. But with the benefit of hindsight, I do see where unschooling has worked for all of my kids. On the other hand, competition with other kids can also motivate some children to learn. Now that my son is in school, he says he isn't willing to do any additional educational stuff, so we'll just have to disguise the learning aspects of our activities even better!

Sorry to ramble on so long again; there are so many things one can say about school vs. homeschooling! If the social situation would work out better for us, and if my son decides he wants to pursue learning on his own (to homeschool again), we would go back to it. School has definitely not made our lives less hectic!

Originally Posted by jalilah

we tried home schooling but for us it did not work for 2 reasons: One,ds does not like being taught by my husband and me. He learns better from other people. This makes me sad. I am a dance teacher and I am always told how well I can explain and how patient I am, but my own son does not like it when I show him how to do anything.
The second reason was I found we were too isolated. ds is very social and we live in a town where we have no family. We have only been here a few years and we don't have many friends.

[Erin+babyAndrew]

we recently (this week) put our 4 yo in school. We were thinking about hsing, but with a really great school just blocks away we thought we would give it a try. DS is thriving there, he loves it. It is a French Immersion nursery program and he goes 5x a week, afternoons. It's enough of a challenge to keep him busy and he gets a break from being home with his almost 2yo brother all day. His teacher will be the same lady in September when he goes to kindergarten. He'll be in the same classroom with the same kids too. The school has a very good reputation and since he loves it there, I can't hold him back. I also believe there are effective and not so effective ways to homeschool. If our only options for public school were questionable, we would hs for sure, but with this good school right here we can't say no. For us, when he is older if public school starts to not be right for him we will reconsider. For now though, it's good for my kids to get a break from eachother, and ds1 is really enjoying school.

[Lillian J]

In regard to children who don't like to be taught by their parents, there are obviously wide differences in temperament from child to child, but I think a lot of that is just normal. There's a book that made a great impact on me when I first started homeschooling, because I didn't open it until after my husband and I had both been seeing what, to us at the time, seemed like the most amazing phenomena. Our 8 yr. old seemed to be constantly learning things as if out of the thin air. I have a vivid image of him walking through the living room one afternoon and mentioning something that I had no clue how he'd learned - and I went straight over to the shelf and pulled the book out: I Learn Better by Teaching Myself. I stood there in the kitchen devouring it - and laughing out loud at myself for not having picked up on some of it sooner. The author, a mom of two, had experienced some of the same things we had, and she had found it all so remarkable that she'd written the book.

I think a lot of it is that parents and teachers both tend to over-teach things that they could just tell their children about - but they find it more unnatural coming from their parents. If your child wants to learn how to fly a kite, you don't set up a lesson plan and make him practice increments of the experience before letting him just get on with flying the kite. But we've been brought up to think of the 3Rs and certain academic subjects need to be parceled out in tedious formats that aren't that respectful to the child-person's innate ability to learn in his own way. I think a lot of children see right through our elaborate notions of how things need to be taught, and although they don't have an articulate philosophical argument about them, they do often react nonetheless.

My own child happened to have a pretty relaxed and agreeable nature, but we certainly had our own clashes in the beginning over this kind of thing. Here's an example I included in an article about our homeschooling journey:

One day, for example, we started out on a long drive in the car, and I handed him some little books I wanted him to read to me while I drove - Little Bear, and Frog and Toad books. We hadn't been "working with reading" for a while, and I was getting anxious about it, so I thought we could make good use of the time on the road to "catch up." He was disappointed, and said he'd planned on reading his Nintendo Power magazine on the trip. I insisted that we needed to "work on" his reading. We went back and forth. If my anxiety had been registered on a meter, the needle would have been banging on the high end! We were "behind." I wondered what had ever made me think we were capable of homeschooling? Finally, he whined, "Well, can't I just read you my Nintendo Power?" Anxiety rising, and assuming he was just looking at pictures in that magazine, I called his bluff with, "Fine! You do that!" Well, he did. He opened the book and began to read long, relatively technical passages with multi-syllable words. He had taught himself to read beyond the Little Bear, and Frog and Toad, level because he wanted the information he could find in books that required more advanced reading. By the way, I've heard a number of other moms share almost identical stories. Lillian

[ccohenou]

I always thought I would homeschool - I hated school, and even successfully lobbied to be let out to unschool. But as time has gone on and I have met with the realities of myself and my kids and the drag it is to be poor, I'm not homeschooling because I don't want to. I don't think I have the temperament for it, and I don't want to be at home for the next 15 years. I think if I did it anyway out of allegiance to the theory, we'd all be miserable.

On the plus side, schools seem to have improved a lot since I was in them. And the ones I have visited, and that my stepdaughter has attended, have really seemed to integrate some of the positive points of homeschooling - inquiry-based learning, child-centered environments, and differentiated instruction to meet the child where she is. Now I am concerned about finding the best possible fit for my kids so that they can have a good school experience - something I didn't think was really possible before I saw some of what is out there.

[LynnS6]

Why not?

1. I am temperamentally unsuited to it. I teach adults well. I don't teach children well. I lack the patience.

Or as someone else eloquently put it:

Originally Posted by EFmom

Homeschooling would be my particular version of hell.

2. Our son in particular does not take direction well from us at all. Some of it is the factors that someone else posted about - he's willing to set aside his pride, he's willing to believe strangers, he's willing to make a good faith effort for anyone other than his parents.

I think that hsing would be very bad for our relationship right now.

3. My kids are currently thriving in a school environment. Ds learns in a very 'schooly' way. He likes order, structure and sameness. Hs would work best for him if it looked a lot like regular school. Dd is in a Reggio Emilio preschool (3x a week) and our church preschool 2 afternoons a week and is thriving. She too likes predictability and structure. And she's an extrovert. She likes the social interaction. Dh (who would be the one with the primary daytime responsibilities) works from home and is an introvert. It'd be a bad match.

4. I believe there is value in going to school, in particular a public school, beyond the academics. Our ds is in a class of 22 kids - 6 are European-American, the other 16 are not. No matter how hard I try, I cannot recreate that dynamic in any meaningful way in a hs community where we live. Why? Because there aren't many Hispanic, Asian-American or African American families that homeschool in our area (are there anywhere?)

And I'm seeing direct benefits from this already. Before school started (it's ds' first year there, he's in 1st grade), ds wanted nothing to do with after school programs or learning another language. This winter, he has the opportunity to take Spanish classes (the majority of kids in his school come from families where Spanish is the first language), and he was eager to do so. Before he had exposure to kids who spoke Spanish, he wasn't interested. Now he is.

Ds is learning how to get along with and respect kids from many more varied backgrounds than he ever would have at home or in a private school (given where we live).

5. Personal background - I come from a family of (public) school teachers. My dh went to small, religious private schools and came out with a mediocre education at best. (Great music instruction, horrible math). I went to public school and got a much more well rounded education.

I am worried about high school, but there are options programs (a science magnet, an International Baccalaureate Program), and I would consider private schools there too.

I won't rule out hsing, but for me, it's an option of absolute last resort. If the schools cannot meet my child's needs, we'll consider it. But, for now they can, and my kids are doing well. And I'm not tempted to throttle them on an hourly basis.

[hhurd]

Originally Posted by LynnS6

Our son in particular does not take direction well from us at all. Some of it is the factors that someone else posted about - he's willing to set aside his pride, he's willing to believe strangers, he's willing to make a good faith effort for anyone other than his parents.I think that hsing would be very bad for our relationship right now.

My son reacts the same way to any attempt by dh or I to "instruct" him in anything. I wish I understood why, but that pretty much rules out homeschooling for us.

[mommy68]

Originally Posted by PancakeGoddess

This is definitely a great thread. We've homeschooled everyone (13,10,3.5,1 until this month! In about 3 weeks my 13yo will start middle school. For us, homeschooling has always been better for the normal reasons - academic freedom, more moderate amounts of time with peers, getting to spend more time with each other, etc. But this year, he wants to try it out, and after a lot of discussion, we're going for it. I'm open to any suggestions for a kid who's never done school and is jumping in at 7th grade.

I have one that is coming home from middle school so I'm on the opposite side of the fence. I hope it goes well for your child.

My son reacts the same way to any attempt by dh or I to "instruct" him in anything. I wish I understood why, but that pretty much rules out homeschooling for us.

my youngest DD is this way. She loves school and is very social and likes having a "teacher" and loves her as well. I can help with her homework but that's about it. BUT I can say after homeschooling my other children in the past that when they are in school it's easier to say you can't do it because they are stressed after being in school all day and don't want to learn more when they get home in the evening. You get them at the worst time of the day. But when they are home all day for several weeks and have time to decompress they will listen better and you can teach them the way it fits best in your schedule and for their style of learning.

[HikeYosemite]

We have seen some ethnic diversity in our homeschool groups over the past 7 years: African-American (some adopted, some not), Asian-American, interracial marriages, immigrants. In school, our son sees more ethnic diversity overall, probably because there are a lot more kids, but the percentage of minorities seems to be lower than in the inclusive homeschool groups we've taken part in. He also sees a lot more divorced families and latchkey kids in school.

Our homeschooling community has usually offered the benefit of interacting with a broader age group. But it seems that the younger children enjoy this more than the oldest ones in the group. (Is this more distinctly an American kid thing?) Right now, our group is great for people with kids ages 5-7, which we have in abundance, but not as appealing to some of the older kids. There is definitely a much smaller social base to choose from in homeschooling, and that can make it harder for one's kids to find friends.

Originally Posted by LynnS6

Why not?
4. I believe there is value in going to school, in particular a public school, beyond the academics. Our ds is in a class of 22 kids - 6 are European-American, the other 16 are not. No matter how hard I try, I cannot recreate that dynamic in any meaningful way in a hs community where we live. Why? Because there aren't many Hispanic, Asian-American or African American families that homeschool in our area (are there anywhere?)

And I'm seeing direct benefits from this already. Before school started (it's ds' first year there, he's in 1st grade), ds wanted nothing to do with after school programs or learning another language. This winter, he has the opportunity to take Spanish classes (the majority of kids in his school come from families where Spanish is the first language), and he was eager to do so. Before he had exposure to kids who spoke Spanish, he wasn't interested. Now he is.

Ds is learning how to get along with and respect kids from many more varied backgrounds than he ever would have at home or in a private school (given where we live).

[meowee]

Originally Posted by LynnS6

4. I believe there is value in going to school, in particular a public school, beyond the academics. Our ds is in a class of 22 kids - 6 are European-American, the other 16 are not. No matter how hard I try, I cannot recreate that dynamic in any meaningful way in a hs community where we live. Why? Because there aren't many Hispanic, Asian-American or African American families that homeschool in our area (are there anywhere?)

Minorities go to private schools too. My DDs attend a private school that is 95% minority.