Any veterans here who have hs their children successfully?

[blessedmom3]

 

 

Do you have any words of wisdom and inspiration for us,who are not too sure what we are doing?

 

Did you ever want to give up or thought you were not doing enough for your dc?

 

If you had a gifted/bright child, has she/he finished high school earlier and how did you proceed with that?

 

Would you do anything differently?

[serendipitous journey]

just bumping -- and suggesting you search for posts by 8FillTheHeart, who has homeschool grads AND a preschooler in her home -- plus all the stages in between. She has a lovely and sane perspective, and has experience with academically advanced children.

[Starr]

There are things I might have done differently. I'll always think I could've done more. But in the end she's getting honors in college and is very happy. Mostly I miss her terribly. I loved our home school life and the flexibility it gave us. Don't panic, just re evaluate regularly and remember the curriculum being used is better than the perfect one at the store. :grouphug: It can be done.

[Lucy in Australia]

Don't know if I qualify as a veteran but my 17 year old is just about to start civil engineering at college with plans to continue to university. I homeschooled him ( and his brother) the whole way through. This is what I now know:

- I wouldn't have stressed so much in the early years

- If the curriculum I'm using is working well, it doesn't really matter if there's a brand new fantabulous one on the market that EVERYONE is raving about.

- Writing is very, very, very important. If they don't like doing it, it's even more important :laugh:

- Following their dreams and passions is great, but there are basics that everyone needs to cover.

- Mentors are wonderful people. An adult that you trust implicitly, who cares about your child and is willing to impart knowledge and spend time with him is very precious.

- Not sure of your religious beliefs, but for me, committing my children, myself & our homeschooling day to the Lord each morning is vital.

[Lucy in Australia]

Also, if you hang around the High School board & search a little, you'll probably find a few threads about what worked & what didn't.

[Elfknitter.#]

.

- Writing is very, very, very important. If they don't like doing it, it's even more important :laugh:

 

This really stands out to me...

[SFM]

:bigear:

[Ellie]

We started hsing in 1982. It never occurred to me to put my dc in school because I wasn't doing enough. Both dds began taking classes at the community college when they were 14, and both did quite well.

 

If I had it to do over again, I would probably not do anything different overall. :-)

[Catherine]

I agree with Lucy's advice about writing. In general, hammer away at the weaknesses, which will be limiting to their futures in a way that lost potentials won't.

 

I agree with reading 8FillTheHeart's postings. In general the high school board is good to look at. I homeschooled one child from seventh-high school and he is now in college. I am also teaching his younger brother, who at 11 has never been in school. The difference is striking. My younger son is so happy, mature, and well-adjusted compared to his brother at 11 (who had only been in school up to that point-and was miserable there) that I really think that curriculum, choice of subjects, etc. matters far less for them than just not being unhappy all day. Those 2 boys are both 2e and I think those kinds of kids, or any that are "square pegs," are often very unhappy in conventional elementary and middle school. The kinks are getting worked out by high school and they might do OK in conventional high school.

 

I have wanted to give up many times, when I thought I was not doing a good enough job, or my child or I was unhappy, or I saw schooled kids who are successful. Listen to your instincts. SWB posted something very courageous recently on her blog about regretting that she did not put one of her kids in school. You know your child, your family, and your situation better than anyone else and you will know what is best when the time comes.

 

Finally, for a confidence booster, read the college board acceptance threads. They bouyed me greatly on some dark days.

[wapiti]

If you had a gifted/bright child, has she/he finished high school earlier and how did you proceed with that?

 

 

No vet here, but you might ask on the Accelerated Learning board.

 

Note there is a big difference between finishing high-school-level work earlier and actually graduating earlier. Gifted homeschoolers who graduate at the usual time (17/18-ish) have great opportunities to attempt higher level work in high school, thus significantly improving their college applications and increasing their chances of acceptance for elite colleges/intellectual programs of study and scholarships!

[lllll]

..

[serendipitous journey]

...

I have wanted to give up many times, when I thought I was not doing a good enough job, or my child or I was unhappy, or I saw schooled kids who are successful. Listen to your instincts. SWB posted something very courageous recently on her blog about regretting that she did not put one of her kids in school. You know your child, your family, and your situation better than anyone else and you will know what is best when the time comes.

 

Finally, for a confidence booster, read the college board acceptance threads. They bouyed me greatly on some dark days. ...

 

 

I couldn't find that blog entry ... could you link it? I'd love to have her perspective on this ...

[beaners]

 

I couldn't find that blog entry ... could you link it? I'd love to have her perspective on this ...

 

 

I looked it up after I read this thread. You want the December 19th video on the blog.

[redsquirrel]

Oh, when you said "veterans' I thought you meant actual military veterans.

 

If you mean long time homeschoolers who have taken their kids through high school, then there are many on this board and not on this board. Just spend some time on the High School forum reading what folks are saying.

 

But, I have ask you, what do you mean by 'successfully'? That is going to mean different things to different people.

[blessedmom3]

Red squirrel,

 

I mean dc who were successful in a career or college.

 

I'd appreciate a link to swb's post if anyone has it.

[serendipitous journey]

..

I'd appreciate a link to swb's post if anyone has it.

 

 

Here is the link; scroll down and watch the December 19th video. She doesn't give details; this entry is esp. interested in what she's learned as the mother of homeschool grads/older children; she does talk about burnout too. I think it is an excellent use of time to listen.

[DianeW88]

This is my 18th year of homeschooling. I have graduated 2 of 3, both of whom are attending college on scholarships. In a nutshell: Work hard. Taking days off when you should be doing schooling gets you behind. Expect more from yourself. Expect more from your kids. The baby ISN'T the lesson...your older kids should not be taking time off because you're too tired from having small children. That is doing your children a disservice and it will come back and bite you. "No matter what I'm doing, it's better than what the kids in PS are doing" is NOT true. Don't let your kids get too far behind. You can't make up grades 5-9 in one year. Teach writing. Teach advanced math. Teach lab science. Get off the internet and educate your children. You are IT as far as their schooling goes. No one is going to pick up your slack. When you homeschool, you have taken on the responsibility of an entire school system to make sure your children are skilled and ready to live independently. You don't have the luxury of being lazy about it. Your children's future success and happiness depend on what you do today and tomorrow, and tomorrow after that. So do it. No excuses. It is worth every minute that you will put into it. The labor is intensive, but the rewards are incredible! I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. It has been an amazing journey, and seeing my oldest children now getting straight A's in college and thanking me for being brave enough to do what hardly anyone else was doing in 1993 humbles me and fills me with gratitude for the gift of homeschooling in my life.

[SarahW]

This is my 18th year of homeschooling. I have graduated 2 of 3, both of whom are attending college on scholarships. In a nutshell: Work hard. Taking days off when you should be doing schooling gets you behind. Expect more from yourself. Expect more from your kids. The baby ISN'T the lesson...your older kids should not be taking time off because you're too tired from having small children. That is doing your children a disservice and it will come back and bite you. "No matter what I'm doing, it's better than what the kids in PS are doing" is NOT true. Don't let your kids get too far behind. You can't make up grades 5-9 in one year. Teach writing. Teach advanced math. Teach lab science. Get off the internet and educate your children. You are IT as far as their schooling goes. No one is going to pick up your slack. When you homeschool, you have taken on the responsibility of an entire school system to make sure your children are skilled and ready to live independently. You don't have the luxury of being lazy about it. Your children's future success and happiness depend on what you do today and tomorrow, and tomorrow after that. So do it. No excuses. It is worth every minute that you will put into it. The labor is intensive, but the rewards are incredible! I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. It has been an amazing journey, and seeing my oldest children now getting straight A's in college and thanking me for being brave enough to do what hardly anyone else was doing in 1993 humbles me and fills me with gratitude for the gift of homeschooling in my life.

 

I totally agree. I'm not a homeschooler (yet) but I was homeschooled and, eh, sometimes I regret it.

 

My mom was one of the types to think "if I take the kids with me to the grocery store, that counts as Home Ec and Economics!" and "the kids are always playing in the woods, that's science!" and, worst of all, "my kids read tons of library books, I don't need to do grammar/spelling/writing books with them!"

 

Um, no.

 

I may like nature, but I have only a rudimentary ability to identify between a maple and an oak. I read about composting and get completely lost because I never learned a lick of chemistry. I didn't understand the difference between nouns and verbs until I took Greek in college. I may be able to write well, and received many accolades from my college professors for the clarity of my prose, but I don't understand why I write the way I do, and really struggle to edit the papers of others. And thank God for spell checker, my spelling is actually pretty atrocious. And don't even get me started on my relationship with mathematics....

 

I was able to fudge through college by virtue of just being bright, but quickly ran against my limitations in post-grad work. I don't have the ordered timeline, the ability to memorize, or the logical categories to delve deep enough into any subject in order to truly master it.

 

If you want your kid to learn how to shop at a grocery store, take care of a baby, and appreciate looking at birds at your birdfeeder, great. But PS kids can learn all that stuff too with a mildly-interested parent, and also have 30 hours of instruction every week.

 

Don't get me wrong, I think there is value in creative learning. But we don't expect kids to re-invent the wheel before they can ride in the car; there's nothing wrong with recognizing that kids don't know what they don't know, and they probably won't be able to figure it out without some direction. No kid is going to learn Economics by just holding their little sister's hand around the grocery store, sorry.

 

I am recognizing, now, when I am looking to embark on teaching my own child, just how much this will require from me. I need to learn what exactly an "addend" is, and how to use it. I need to expect more of my own self before I can ever expect my child to have an adequate education.

 

I can ramble on about my criticism of homeschooling, and common practices that I think are unhelpful ("independent learning" for Jr.High/Highschool being one), but, the reason why I am so attracted to TWTM/classical approach is the emphasis on learning foundational skills from an early age. Whether rote memorization works or not is up to the kid's individual learning style, but I think people who water down this principle and take an "osmosis" approach to learning core facts are short-changing their kids.

[NotSoObvious]

This is my 18th year of homeschooling. I have graduated 2 of 3, both of whom are attending college on scholarships. In a nutshell: Work hard. Taking days off when you should be doing schooling gets you behind. Expect more from yourself. Expect more from your kids. The baby ISN'T the lesson...your older kids should not be taking time off because you're too tired from having small children. That is doing your children a disservice and it will come back and bite you. "No matter what I'm doing, it's better than what the kids in PS are doing" is NOT true. Don't let your kids get too far behind. You can't make up grades 5-9 in one year. Teach writing. Teach advanced math. Teach lab science. Get off the internet and educate your children. You are IT as far as their schooling goes. No one is going to pick up your slack. When you homeschool, you have taken on the responsibility of an entire school system to make sure your children are skilled and ready to live independently. You don't have the luxury of being lazy about it. Your children's future success and happiness depend on what you do today and tomorrow, and tomorrow after that. So do it. No excuses. It is worth every minute that you will put into it. The labor is intensive, but the rewards are incredible! I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. It has been an amazing journey, and seeing my oldest children now getting straight A's in college and thanking me for being brave enough to do what hardly anyone else was doing in 1993 humbles me and fills me with gratitude for the gift of homeschooling in my life.

 

I'm going to get this tattooed on my forehead! Ok, of maybe just print it off and put it on my wall for a while.

 

Sometimes I get so bogged down thinking that I assign too much work (I don't) or that embracing the homeschooling lifestyle means it's ok to skip this and that and just cuddle. I never feel good about it and you pretty much summed up why.

Ok, off the Internet and onto spelling! Thanks for the kick in the butt!

[Lang Syne Boardie]

Great post, SarahW. I'm glad you've joined us here.

[Anne in CA]

This is my 15th year of home schooling. I home schooled my son, my middle child, from preschool up until he earned a NARHS diploma when he was 15. He began CC at 16 as a regular student. Because of his NARHS diploma I was able to enroll him as a regular student without the home school restrictions that otherwise would have been placed upon him in Oregon. He only did 12 credits a term for the last year and a half because he has had wrestling and Boy Scout activities that kept him busy. Last night he spoke at a church function and someone told me they were amazed at how poised he was. So, all in all, for him, home schooling has been a wild success. He would not have done well in ps as he is very bright and would have been in constant trouble with his need to question everything.

 

What I would do over for my son is that I would expect more from him than I did. I also would have spent the money for more activities than I did. We were in a lot of debt when ds was younger and I sacrificed too much with my children to pay off that debt. Looking back I should have delayed paying off debt and put him in activities that would have challenged his intelligence.

[LynnG in Arizona]

I love what Diane W wrote and agree with it so much!!

 

Let's see . . .

 

My eldest two are homeschool graduates; I started homeschooling them in the 4th and 6th grades, respectively, and continued through high school graduation. They attend two different universities and are both in their honors program. One was awarded a full academic scholarship, and the other was awarded a partial academic scholarship. I am now homeschooling my second group of kids, who are currently in kindergarden and first grade.

 

Here are some random thoughts and opinions:

 

 

I know it's popular to say that education isn't the filling of a bucket, it's the lighting of a fire. Well, I suppose we can all agree with that to a large extent . . . we all want our children to WANT to learn, to be intellectually curious.

 

But the reality is that, yes, education is ALSO the filling of a bucket to a large extent. Or an even better metaphor, perhaps, is that educating your child is a lot like eating an elephant. So it really is best to make sure you're taking lots and lots of bites, one way or another. It's certainly ok to be flexible; this past year, I homeschooled for much of June, July, and August while my husband was deployed, and then we took off much of October and November to relax as a family, travel, and visit extended family. But it wouldn't have been ok (for us) to have taken ALL that time off (five months straight) and just reassure ourselves that "oh well, we're still way ahead of the public school". There are ways to be flexible AND dilligent, and we aim to be both.

 

I am a huge believer in reading aloud to my kids, at all ages, and have been inspired in that area by The Read Aloud Handbook. Similarly, I always gave high quality literature (the "very good" and the "classics") a prominent place in our homeschool.

 

I outsourced a lot when my students were in high school; I especially recommend The Potter's School and Pennsylvania Homeschoolers. I found it helpful for a variety of reasons: getting my girls used to firm deadlines and other teaching styles, and letting them take specialized classes from experts in that field. It also came at a good time, as I had their two little siblings in less than two years . . . and my time was understandably consumed with nursing, changing diapers, and toddler supervision. I didn't want the education of the older two to be negatively impacted because we had two more children. Of course there were the inevitable effects (many of them positive), but to put it another way . . . I didn't want to just slow their education down to a crawl for months/years on end just because I had two babies in a short period of time.

 

I agree that writing is vitally important and a critical component of a good education. I also think that it's one of the hardest subjects for a homeschool mom to teach, perhaps because writing is so personal. I found it to be incredibly valuable to start outsourcing their writing instruction right around high school . . . or around puberty, when those mother-adolescent relationships can become very prickly.

[mo2]

This is my 18th year of homeschooling. I have graduated 2 of 3, both of whom are attending college on scholarships. In a nutshell: Work hard. Taking days off when you should be doing schooling gets you behind. Expect more from yourself. Expect more from your kids. The baby ISN'T the lesson...your older kids should not be taking time off because you're too tired from having small children. That is doing your children a disservice and it will come back and bite you. "No matter what I'm doing, it's better than what the kids in PS are doing" is NOT true. Don't let your kids get too far behind. You can't make up grades 5-9 in one year. Teach writing. Teach advanced math. Teach lab science. Get off the internet and educate your children. You are IT as far as their schooling goes. No one is going to pick up your slack. When you homeschool, you have taken on the responsibility of an entire school system to make sure your children are skilled and ready to live independently. You don't have the luxury of being lazy about it. Your children's future success and happiness depend on what you do today and tomorrow, and tomorrow after that. So do it. No excuses. It is worth every minute that you will put into it. The labor is intensive, but the rewards are incredible! I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. It has been an amazing journey, and seeing my oldest children now getting straight A's in college and thanking me for being brave enough to do what hardly anyone else was doing in 1993 humbles me and fills me with gratitude for the gift of homeschooling in my life.

 

I just printed this to put inside the cover of my "teacher binder."