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Question- How did you come about on your homeschooling journey?


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I chose to homeschool before I was married and before I had children. I read "For the Children's sake" by Susan Shaeffer Macaulay. I used many of the principles of Charlotte Mason at the private school for gifted where I taught and with my niece and nephew whom I watched a couple of times a week. When I got engaged to my dh, "Are you willing to homeschool" was a deal breaker question for me.

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Pardon the ramble, but I feel terrible. It never occurred to me until my daughter taught her kindergarten class at age 4. I was going to continue practicing law but abandoned it to teach my daughter. Now I am also teaching my younger two children. Apart from the gifted school, which I am occasionally drawn to on those days like today when I feel as though I can't do it anymore (understatement), there is no school that will meet them where they are. I wouldn't trade it for the world, but days like these make me realize this is not my strong suit. The discouragement and isolation can be overwhelming.

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My daughter was reading easy chapter books like Junie B Jones and Magic Tree House and accurately doing multiple digit addition and subtraction with regrouping problems prior to kindergarten. The school district refused to test her for placement other than kindergarten. That was not an option so I never put her in school.

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Hm. Well, my main reason for homeschooling is academic. Homeschooling was always on my radar, but when DD reached 3 and I started looking into preschools I realized no where would be able to meet her needs. She is at least a little advanced in all subjects, but is a typical 4 year old socially/physically. The only school in my area that would be acceptable is a private Christian school, but since I'm a single mother, there is no money in the budget for that.

 

Homeschooling it is! :D As we've spent more time at home learning together, we have both come to really love it. She may or may not go to kindergarten for a year while I finish up my degree, but if she does, she'll be back home the next year.

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We started homeschooling for medically necessary reasons. The kids can't survive (literally) in large uncontrolled areas like ps. However I am so glad we were forced down this path b/c I have learned that my dd9 would have been one of those problem children who hate school and flunk out of everything and hate learning and hate themselves b/c they are ridiculed and and and... She had some LDs that I was unaware of at the beginning and HS has been a blessing to us all but especially to her. Because I can keep her home and school her according to her style, she loves learning and is excelling instead.

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DS begged me to homeschool him for most of 1st grade. Long story, old, abrupt, lazy teacher, academically unchallenging. We did a dry run for a month over the summer to see if we could both do it. We haven't looked back, and as a matter of fact, I also pulled my DD out of K almost 2 months ago.

 

Try the dry run. Actions speak louder than words.

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My oldest is very bright and very very hyperactive. We knew he was a handful by the time he was 2 or 3. As he approached school age and failed in an early learning center (too hyper), we knew we were going to have to do homeschooling or medication. As it turns out, we do both homeschooling and medication, but I'm able to adapt to his schedule and needs much better at home so that is what we do.

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Our local public school was not an option when my boys were young and we knew it would be impossible, or at least very difficult, to send them to private school. Also, several of our friends were hsing & it seemed like a good option. Glad we did! Our oldest son has some attentional issues & would have been lableled in ps.

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I looked at the schools in my area, and the price of private. Then I started remembering what a freak I was in school, and how depressing it was, and how it killed my curiosity and made me fear my peers. I remembered assembling a Visible Horse with my brother...playing with an old chem set...reading about diagramming in an old book and trying it on my own when I was ten. Learning could be so much better than what I'd got in school. So I looked into it. I got more excited. I found WTM and I heard a great big AH-HAH in my head, and two years later I started K4.

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Anyone willing to share their story? I am really having to convince DH about HSing as an option. This has gotten me to thinking about the many different reasons people decide to homeschool. Thank you.

 

 

I have always wanted to homeschool but Dh was opposed.

 

Then our twins reached 7th grade and he stated thinking about it. We are in our 2nd year of homeschooling our twins for high school.

 

The reasons we homeschool are varied:

The high school we are zoned for is horrible academically and environmentally. We enjoy the flexibility and variety of options to achieve our twins high school education.

 

Ds#1 is highly gifted with special needs (ADD, Asperger Syndrome) and we got tired of the school system not doing what they should for Ds. Ds has very high goals but struggles with meeting goals as he needs to learn self discipline. He needs a lot of guidance and redirections while giving him an challenging education to meet his border line genious IQ. He plans to be an astrophysicist and we are trying to help him along his goal path. So far it is a struggle and very exhausting-LOL.

 

Dd is bright and talented and she hated school. She felt that she was wasting her time and was tired of the drama that went on at school instead of learning. She also competes nationally in martial arts and wants to work on a music career. She doesn't have enough time to train in martial arts for 20 hours a week, plus two music lessons a week, and two band practices a week while attending high school. So she homeschools.

 

Ds#2 is in 6th grade ps and likely he will homeschool starting next year.

 

Ds#3 is in 4th grade ps and likely will continue with ps for another 3-4 years. Not sure if he will ever be homeschooled (he has ADHD and Autism spectrum). He is bright and for the most part mild on the spectrum but he has some special challenges that I am not sure I can handle while homeschooling him. He definitely is too much of a distraction for the twins when he is out of school and they still need to do their schooling.

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Our journey started with a conversation with our church pastor. I told him something like, "I don't feel called to homeschool." He responded with, "Do you feel called to public school?" I was like, :confused: huh? No, I didn't feel called to public school either, and so I told him. He proceeded to explain that he and his wife would have to personally feel called to public school to put their kids in public school. I was like, "ah, ha!" So, hubby and I decided to homeschool. We reassess our reasons all the time, and our current #1 reason is that with all we know about the subject, it seems like the best option available to us.

Edited by JenniferB
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We have not decided for sure yet (~90% there), but what led me to seriously investigate it was my concern over the push to do academics in Kindergarten and hearing stories of K kids coming home with 30 minutes of homework a night! I was also concerned because I remembered being bored in school ~2nd grade and I want to make sure my kids have a life-long love of learning and don't learn to hate school!

 

Johanna

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We started originally due to my oldest already reading fluently when he barely missing the local kindy cut-off. By the time they would have let him start kindy he was doing second grade work, and still couldn't sit still to save his tail. (Several years later, that hasn't changed.) I was redshirted and hated it; I couldn't do that to my own kid.

 

We reevaluated when our second was old enough. She had special needs and would have considered a classroom to be sensory torture. She was slow to warm up to academics, but has blossomed on her own terms at home.

 

When the third child became old enough we added his books to the RR order without even considering any other way of doing kindy.

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Anyone willing to share their story? I am really having to convince DH about HSing as an option.

 

My dh was not on board, either. I am in my 9th year of homeschooling now. :D

 

My oldest was very precocious. When she was 18 months old, I took a book out of the library called "The Big Book of Home Learning" by Mary Pride. I had not a thought in my head towards homeschooling; thought that was what unusual Bible-thumpers did. ;) At the time, I was thinking towards Montessori education, but it was soooo expensive. As I read through parts of Mary Pride's book (which I pulled out thinking I was looking for ideas of what I could do with such a gifted little girl), there was a statement in there that went something like this: "You could buy the entire K-12 Calvert School curriculum for less than what it costs to send one child to the Calvert School for one year." That statement really started the wheels turning!

 

Debates with dh really did not go well. Also, at the time, we didn't know anyone personally who homeschooled. This did not help my case. In retrospect, I went about it very bull-headedly and I made the likelihood of dh coming around much less. It was a major blunder that I regret. Ultimately, I told him a decision had to be made, as she was 4 and whatever road we were taking, we had to start down it soon. He very grudgingly allowed me to "try" homeschooling.

 

Although it all worked out in the end, I deeply regret my bad start with dh. I did not have a quiet spirit about it and it bit me in the butt. I should have prayed more and fought less (or none).

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My older son had problems with daycare, pre-school and private school teachers for four years out of five. It wasn't that he was difficult, naughty, etc. It was just personality differences or they way they did things that just didn't work well for him.

 

As an example, his daycare workers vacuumed under his crib while he was in it and scared him to death. He had severe hearing issues due to many ear infections (had tubes) when he was little, so loud noises could freak him out. We found out when he became afraid of our vacuum at home. We talked to them about it; they promised they'd stop, but then I caught them doing it still, later....

 

I actually brought him to pre-school late for a year so that he'd miss out on his "homeroom" class with the most hateful teacher on earth. And she had a son, too, so I never did manage to figure out why she was so ugly to all the little boys.... After he wasn't in her class any more, she was nice as could be. Go figure.

 

While his kindergarten teacher was a lovely woman, we had to have extensive testing done at the end of K because she wanted to hold him back because he didn't draw stick figures for her that had noses and eyelashes! He hated drawing stick figures. He was actually into art at the time and I still have some wonderful work he did at that period. But he did NOT want to draw stick people, LOL. In fact, he attended an art camp for gifted kids the summer after K and had a fabulous teacher and came home with an entire portfolio full of great art work of fish - something he WAS interested in at the time.... In fact, many of the things they did in K he thought were just dumb. He was bored. How on earth could we hold him back there another year?

 

We moved mid-way through his first grade year. His first teacher was a complete Harpie who I caught haranguing him because she had missed a day at the beginning of the week and asked him on a Friday if he had been there that day or not and he couldn't tell her. Ummm, duh, first graders usually have no sense of time past and present. How on earth was he supposed to remember at the end of a week if he had been there on a day at the beginning of that week? Besides, that was the job of the substitute to take roll, not his. And there was much, much more.....

 

His second teacher was a woman too incompetent to handle her class of less than 20. Due to her mishandling of a simple thing, some major problems developed between him and a little girl in her class (not really with her, but with her intrusive, weirdo mother). By the end of school, he was crying on the way there every day and saying that he didn't understand why things couldn't just be okay. I didn't understand either.... That was the very last straw for me on what seemed like it had already been quite a long journey for such a little man.... That's when we began to homeschool....

 

My sister lives in Iowa and her own son went through several years in elementary school - I'd guess 3 out of 7 years (K-6) when he had teachers who were just awful to him. And they had even held him back a year before he started school due to his summer birthday. That's just not a good average, in my opinion.....

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My main reason for wanting to home school is because of what sending my dc off to ps did to us as a family. When my oldest started 4th I started feeling like I was loosing her; I felt the same way with my second oldest. They hated the school that we moved to from CO and both had really horrible teachers. Their frustration manifested itself in escalated emotional outbursts from dd11, and dd13 started distancing herself emotionally and physically from the family. Everyday I felt farther and farther out of touch with them and they were not getting along with their siblings like they had in the past. The two oldest treated their siblings (and dh and I) like the kids in ps treated them; smart a-- remarks, teasing, bullying, inconsiderate behavior...it was awful. I felt like we were all strangers (and not very nice ones) living in the same house. I also resented the amount of time ps stole from me; not just during the day but almost every night and up to 5 hours during the weekend. Both of their teachers were big on convoluted projects that required the parent to get involved. They said it was their way of insuring parent involvement with their children in the community. :glare: So, instead of spending time together baking, playing games, doing crafts, etc., I had to spend hours creating posters and display boards that my dc had no interest in at all.

 

My second reason, although only slightly less important, was the academics. My dd11 was passing math with As and Bs but I could tell she wasn't understanding or retaining a lot of it. When I questioned the teacher about it she told me not to worry about it because she would probably eventually catch up once she did pre-algebra.:confused: WHAT! Dd13 was bored to tears. I asked several times about her being given more advanced work and was told that they didn't have time and that if I wanted to challenge her then maybe I should work with her at home.

 

I love having my dc home with me all of the time. I miss them when I go shopping by myself.:tongue_smilie: I really love how close we have all become again. My dc, even though they range in age from 13 to 2 play together all of the time and really take care of each other. My oldest two have found themselves again are kindling a more mature relationship with dh and I now. There is a lot of respect going on in our house whereas 2 1/2 years ago there was none at all.

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I was perfectly happy wearing my business suit and climbing the corporate ladder. I had one step-dd that was starting K and was prego with ds. Late dh decided that he did not want another baby/small child in daycare and persuaded me to stay home. I thought it would be 5 years, ds would go to K, and I would be back on the career path.

 

In order to make my staying home possible and to get step-dd into a small town school, we moved. Step-dd was doing great in ps and I had never really even heard of hs. We started attending a wonderful church and soon noticed that some of the teenagers were different...in a good way. Every single one of the ones that I had noticed, I later found out were hsed. It still didn't really occur to me that this was something we could do.

 

After a year of this, I suddenly felt led to at least check into what this hsing stuff was all about. I talked it over with late dh and he told me to research it and get back with him. I did and later told him that I was convinced that it was the best way to educate children. But, we still didn't necessarily feel like it was what we were supposed to do. We would receive strong opposition from his parents and we knew we would need to be strong in our decision to withstand it. So, we went to a meeting of our local hs group. Before getting out of the car, we prayed that God would show us what we were supposed to do...without a doubt.

 

In that meeting, every person stood up and gave one reason why they were happy that they hsed. In all of the meetings I attended after that, I never saw them do anything even similar to that again. I know it was for us. When we left, we both got in the car, looked at each other, and knew that this was what God wanted for us. So, I started hsing step-dd for 2nd grade and we knew that it was a way of life for our family, not just a way to educate THIS child.

 

Late dh passed before any of the other dc were of age to start hsing. Step-dd went to live with her mother and went to ps. I was blessed to be able to continue staying home. When it was time for each of the others to start school, I never even considering ps. This is how our family does things and I do not plan to change it. I am not so naive to think that God may not change that plan at some point though.

 

When I met my new dh, kids were in 4th, 1st, and K. I made sure that he had no problems with hsing and that he would agree to hs any future dc.

Edited by mothergooseofthree
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I have been a homeschooling fan for years and years. Way before this year (our first on this journey).

 

DH was convinced by listening to me present the case calmly and repeatedly. He is not much aof a reader, so giving him books or articles wouldn't have helped.

We discussed the pros and cons of HS as well as public school and private Christian school. For us both content and methodology are huge strengths of HS. For me just being with my kids (who are miracle babies after a long IF struggle) is such a joy - I would hate to not see my 5.5 yo for 7+ hours a day.

 

We decided to try it this year and see how it goes.

Like a pp, I say, try a road test!

 

Talking to other HS dads, especially those who might have initially had reservations, was also a tremendous help and encouragement for him.

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It was always on my radar because of how horrible my own school experiences were. However, I was terrified of messing it up and my husband was pretty adamantly against homeschooling, so off to public school kindergarten went my oldest. She's a very social, easygoing kid, and her experience wasn't horrible in the sense that she had a bad time - it was just completely academically unsatisfactory. When she was reading novels before turning 5, they were still practicing the alphabet. The teacher wouldn't give her anything more advanced to do, and it was, essentially, a waste of time.

 

She enjoyed the activities and playing with the other kids, so we left her there despite the lack of challenge and I did more academic stuff with her at home (it was only half day kindergarten). As first grade approached and I started thinking about her being in a classroom ALL DAY, without the kindergarten fun and with the same lack of challenge, I knew it wasn't going to be pretty. Meanwhile my husband had met some coworkers who homeschooled and really changed his tune about the whole thing. We started to discuss it more seriously, but I was still really scared.

 

That's when they announced the introduction of full day kindergarten in my province. We looked at our toddler son, and knew there was NO WAY we'd ever be willing to send him off to full-day K before his fourth birthday (K here is two years, starting in September of the year you turn 4). That gave us the shove we needed to just jump in and get started.

 

This is our first year. It's going great. Not nearly as terrifying as I expected. ;)

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We're not there yet either. Our DS is only a toddler, but we've been talking about it in a what if kind of way since before he was born.

 

Both of us are intrigued by the possibility of tailoring to a child's ability level. My DH had a hard time learning to read and had a teacher who would laugh at him when he stumbled over "easy" words. I read early and was often bored in school and, eventually, learned that I could do the bare minimum and still pass.

 

Up until recently DH had a work schedule that was non traditional, so he liked the idea of not being tied to the school's schedule as much. That's not as a big an issue now, but it's still something that is a plus. It's still easier for him to get vacation in fall and spring, as opposed to summer or Christmas time.

 

Now we're in a school district that has a lot of issues. There are charter schools, but they have long wait lists and the district/school board are somewhat hostile to them.

 

He liked the idea of being able to hands on/unit study type things. He was concerned about how we'd provide social opportunities, how I'd handle art/music, and if it would be too much for us to handle. Particularly me. He thinks it sounds really hard to be a mom and full time teacher. That concerns me too. :tongue_smilie:

 

One thing that has really won him over is that we have a public school run program(not run by our district, but available locally) that provides a one day a week school day. They do art music, PE, languages, and some other academic stuff. I've only talked to 2 people who do it, but they have very positive things to say.

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Anyone willing to share their story? I am really having to convince DH about HSing as an option. This has gotten me to thinking about the many different reasons people decide to homeschool. Thank you.

 

My dd attended an excellent charter school in a top district in our state (I'd put her on the waiting list when she was 3 years old). We knew no one who homeschooled, but I'd heard about a distant cousin who hsed her 10 kids. They lived in the woods and had no phone. (Ha, I don't know how accurate that was, but that was the family story.)

 

An internet friend hsed for religious reasons. I read a book on hsing while on vacation and was somewhat intrigued. Dh picked it up because he had nothing else to read and was hooked.

 

We briefly discussed it, and he finally called my bluff: "Why don't you pull her out during Christmas break instead of waiting until summer?" So I did; she was in 1st grade. I cried for two weeks, sure I was ruining her life, or at least her chances of ever getting back into this school.

 

Dh kept thinking we'd send the kids back for middle school. Then high school. Now he says they'll go back over his dead body. Or mine. Or both.

:lol:

 

Seriously, the decision to hs is the second-best decision we've ever made for our family, second only to making the decision to follow Christ (which happened after we began hsing). It's a life-changed, and we have never and will never regret it.

 

If your husband is unsure, you might check with your local hs groups for any parent meetings that you can attend. They might have a Q&A session every month or so, or monthly meetings. Or look at attending a curriculum fair or hs convention in your state (spring is not that far away!). My dh's initial hesitation came from thinking that hs kids would be nerdy. Those fears were relieved when he saw that the parents and kids were as normal as anyone else.

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I've always known about homeschooling since I was a kid. We moved a lot and I went to 12 different schools K-11 (I graduated a year early). I got to see a full spectrum of what the public school had to offer over 5 different states. I was not impressed as a kid. In fact, I never did like school. I was always advanced academically and I was always very bored.

 

During a particularly bad school experience around my 5th grade year, my mom strongly considered taking me out of school to homeschool me for a while. When she thought on it though, she didn't think there was any way I would allow her to teach me without fighting her ever step of the way. That, and she wasn't incredibly patient when it came to things like that. Because she didn't think she was personally capable of homeschooling and I always thought I was like her, I figured I wasn't capable of homeschooling either.

 

Fast forward several years and my best friend/neighbor and I walked to the library together every week. She was pregnant with her first and my daughter was a few months old. She would talk to me about how she planned to homeschool her son, and I thought it sounded wonderful. I always thought homeschooling sounded wonderful, but I didn't think I could do it personally. But I became fascinated by the subject and started researching everything. Slowly my paradigm shifted and I began to see the possibilities. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I am different than my mother. I am a much more patient person than her. Also I have the benefit of starting from the beginning, so my kids never know any different. Then, when I read the WTM, it really clicked for me. I always wanted a systematic, rigorous education for myself, and now I knew how I could give my children one.

 

My husband was a much harder nut to crack. He was lucky enough to have the benefit of an excellent public school education. He was also very concerned about the social aspects. While he conceded that in theory the education I was suggesting was superior than one a school could offer, he didn't know if I was personally capable of doing it. This didn't upset me because I originally had the same fears as well.

 

At this point our oldest daughter was a year old, and I still had several years to go before we had to make a decision. I knew if I backed off and just mentioned things here and there and continued to be dedicated, that eventually he'd come around. It was just something totally foreign to him and he wasn't thinking about it the same way I was.

 

Now, although he still thinks he's somewhat against it, he's actually almost completely on board. He doesn't fight me or get upset anymore when I mention it. He even talks about the great things we can do when we homeschool. Because I've promised to take it a year at a time, it's not as threatening to him. Also, for some reason, letting him come up with a name for our school really won him over. He's a huge Beatles fan and right now he's leaning towards Abbey Road Grammar School.

 

So for my dh, slow and steady has won the race. By the time I start teaching our daughter things formally, he'll be totally on board, both in theory and actually. I'm so excited to start this adventure.

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My DH wasn't necessarily on-board, but he wasn't against it, either... he just wasn't sure how *I* would handle it, because I am 100% in charge of my son's education, and he knew that would be stressful for me. I always knew DS wouldn't do well in public school, so we tried a private school for preK and kindergarten because of the smaller class size (and great curriculum). He still didn't do well, and I was so frustrated with it all when a friend handed me her copy of WTM. I read it, loved it, and actually thought I could *DO* it, so we brought DS home after kindergarten. We're in HS year #2 now, and he is flourishing. DD still attends the private school. She is quite happy there.

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My older dd was in a Montessori preschool at age 4, and it was just a terrible year. Her teacher wasn't that great, the class was crowded, and there was a bully in the room as well. The entire year was spent navigating this one child's aggression problems. Half the kids in the class were terrified of this kid, including my dd, who'd been punched in the stomach by him hard enough that she vomited afterwards. She was 4 or 5 at the time. My dd began regressing and trying to sneak away from the class and the teacher told me it was because of me: that my drop-off was too long or something. (???)

 

I was also unimpressed with the school's curriculum. For the Christmas show we all got to watch 25 kids singing/mumbling some sort of invented song about Martin Luther King Jr... sung to the tune of Bingo. I have this on DVD. The song went: "There was a man who had a dream and Martin was his name-o..."

 

I kid you not.

 

My dd said she found the lessons (when she got them - which was apparently only rarely) were Boring. That it was all BORING. She hated it. One day, I went to pick her up early and she was cowering in a corner of the room, her hands clapped over her ears, rocking back and forth. I knocked on the window and the aide came out and told me not to worry, that my dd always did that during story time. No big deal. (???!!!???) It turns out that they didn't read the story at story time. They played a CD instead, and when the beep sounded, they turned the page. My dd hated the beeps. (Sensory issues.) They didn't read the story themselves because they had to use their own voice to reprimand all the children for doing whatever it was the kids were doing that was wrong.

 

Meanwhile... I was secretly reading about homeschooling. And wondering how I'd ever convince my dh I wanted to try it. There was this charter school that educated in the classical style that I'd really wanted to get my kids into, but the waiting list was years long. Then I found WTM and realized I could just teach the classical model myself. Who knew?

 

I stewed over all this for 2 months before I said something to my dh. And he was all: Really!?! Would you??? That would be SO AWESOME!!! Then he spent a small fortune outfitting a school room for me. Again: Who knew?

 

So, five or six years later... here were are: homeschooling.

 

Who knew? :)

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We didn't really have a choice. The PS was not meeting Ds's needs or ours and we weren't getting any support from administration. He'd already lost a semester of his education and we couldn't wait to see if things "improved" which they didn't. So we pulled him out of school and went for it!

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We started by default- shortly before we were to move to NYC after my DH's graduation from business school, his employer-to-be called and asked if he would be willing to take a position at the San Francisco branch instead. DH jumped at the chance and we wound up moving here in July. Every pre-k program I called had no spots available (this was back in '06 before the economy went into the toilet). So I started homeschooling for pre-k and looking into kindergartens for the following year.

 

6 months later HS was going well and our school search was not. DD was reading Magic Treehouse type books by then and the only GATE school cost $23k per year per child. DH was very skeptical about HS but agreed to give it a trial year.

 

Every year about February he makes noises about putting the kids into a traditional school. I've made some concessions in the past to get him to agree to continue HS (administering the ITBS even though it wasn't required, switching from filing the private school affidavit to enrolling in a virtual charter) but this year he is the one really pushing to continue.

 

I pray that we will be able to continue HS as well but things are still very much up in the air at the moment.

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After 2 years of trying to resolve the bullying my ds was putting up with on a daily basis and the fact that my ds developed trichotillomania from the stress and spent 4th grade with no eyelashes my dh realized that we needed to do something. I had wanted to hs and he was opposed. After the eyelashes he agreed to bring our kids home for a year and get ds emotionally healthy. After all, we couldn't screw him up emotionally any more than the school did. After the first year we decided we liked it. It was really working for our family and 3 years later we are still at it.

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I'm not sure when I consciously decided to homeschool, but I think it was before we had our first baby. I lived with my in-laws for 3 months before dh and I got married, and I heard an earful about the public school system from my MIL, who was a teacher. I'm sure she has no idea she influenced me so much in that direction! She was always talking about all the stuff that went on in her school, but didn't really hear herself saying how terrible it was (does that make sense?). It's like there were all these problems that the teachers see that the parents and students don't see, but the teachers themselves gloss over it and just say, "oh well." They even had an opportunity to give their honest opinions of their principal in an anonymous survey, but all the teachers gave him flying colors because they were afraid to say what they felt. :confused:

 

I also have 2 SIL and a BIL who teach, so I hear a bit now and then from them, too. ETA: between MIL, SILs & BIL, that's 3 different school districts.

Edited by gardening momma
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Oh, I remember those days! I had to convince my dh too - slowly.

 

My dd was starting to read at preschool age, so we decided to keep her home and 'just' do preschool there, knowing that it would save us quite a bit of money too. Then when kindergarted came around, and since it's not mandatory in my state, my hubby decided she could stay home for kindergarten...but had to go to school after that.

 

Well, we are currently in our 9th year of hsing and we just continue to go year by year. My dh and I discuss how the year is going and what we're going to do the next year, usually in January or February.

 

If you can show your dh that it's working, by having a 'trial year' he may be much more open to the idea.

 

Good luck to you :)

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Anyone willing to share their story? I am really having to convince DH about HSing as an option. This has gotten me to thinking about the many different reasons people decide to homeschool. Thank you.

 

Fall of last year ('09), DH tells me he wants us to consider homeschooling our two boys. (3rd and 5th grade at the time) They were both doing great in school, very involved with friends and activities there, and I was very involved also with the teachers/parents re: school activities, being a "room mom" and even writing stories on the school's behalf for a local paper. Oh and fundraising too, as it was a private school.

 

So I was like, "huh?"

 

We visited my brother and sister-in-law in NYC last December -- they've been enthusiastic homeschoolers for a decade, and they wanted to know (enthusiastically) have we decided in favor of homeschooling yet? (NO!)

 

I really had my doubts. I figured, nothing was broken, why were we fixing it? Nobody getting bullied, everyone's happy, heck, most of our social life were people whose kids went to that school.

 

Seriously, I had to ask for a sign from God that we were supposed to homeschool. I even gave Him a deadline -- I needed to know by the end of the school year!

 

So i guess we were the opposite of many -- my husband (the non-teacher) gung ho, and me the opposite.

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We knew even before we had kids that we wanted something different from the public schools that had bored and failed to challenge each of us. But at that point I was researching innovative private schools.

 

Then when our older child was a toddler, I found myself really loving her moments of discovery. I started to wonder why I would want to turn over that wonder and excitement to someone else.

 

When I got up the courage to mention it to my husband, I was surprised to find that he was totally into the idea.

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I had heard about it in my early 20's when a homeschooler came through my register at work. I'm sure I made all the usual stupid comments ;)

 

Anyway, a few years later I was pregnant with dd and was wasting a lot of time online. It was the sort of pregnancy where mooching online was what I did when I felt *energetic* so I had plenty of time to read. I remembered about homeschooling, did some research. I found the WTM site, got very excited and ordered the book. Then I spent the next two years telling dh all the cool things there were to know about homeschooling, occasionally supplementing with bad things about the local schools, gleaned from the local paper. He was teaching and gradually started coming home with tales that ended up with "yay for homeschooling." Oddly, that was before he even agreed to it. I think one day he must have noticed that his mind had changed. :lol: When I found out our second was a boy, I actually shook my fist in his face (I blame hormones:001_huh:) and told him we were definitely homeschooling now because schools aren't nice to boys! He just removed my fist from his personal space and told me to :chillpill: because he'd already agreed to all this and why don't I go sit down and have a nice cuppa or something.

 

He couldn't care less if I homeschool or not, but he's happy to go along with it. You can't expect a guy to be thrilled with the benefits when all we've done is 3yo kinder with a barely verbal kid, but I think he'll be more enthusiastic when they actually reach school age ;) and he finds he's able to be more involved than other men can be. Most men don't seem to know what their families get up to during the week...

 

Rosie

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I didn't even consider homeschooling until my middle child was halfway through 2nd grade, and he was completely falling through the cracks despite everyone's best efforts. I realized I couldn't do any worse and could possibly do better, and it was the best decision I ever made.

 

The next year I homeschooled dd for 8th grade because her middle school didn't even try to challenge the kids and she was languishing. She had a decently rigorous year at home (compared to PS at least) and we identified ADD, and now she is having a FANTASTIC freshman year. She is a much more dedicated student and mas much better study skills.

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Bomb threats. Yes, you are reading this right. BOMB THREATS.

 

Ds19 was in first grade at a Christian school in a small (VERY small) city in NH. A pipe bomb went off in the state library and ALL surrounding buildings were roped off and closed down. All but ds's school.:glare: It TOTALLY freaked me out and I pulled ds from school that day and since his tuition was paid through January and he had been in school only 6 weeks, I decided to get his materials and school him at home. I couldn't BELIEVE it when we finished everything in 45 minutes, and I was spending two hours on the road, one each morning, one each afternoon, getting him to school!

 

I homeschooled him until the 9th grade. He and younger ds went into ps but I pulled my girls out. My experience with my boys in ps has shown me that I will not be putting my girls in ps for high school. So as long as I am able to, I will be schooling until my youngest is done, and at that time I will be 58.:svengo:

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dh was homeschooled, so i was the one who needed convincing:) he would have supported me either way.

 

i liked the idea of homeschooling until i had my children...then i honestly wasn't sure i could handle it. we moved a lot and dh was away with work for months on end and i didn't think i could survive without a break. our last move was the spring before ds1 would have started k. i was able to get him into this really nice preschool for the mornings and he was there for the last 8 weeks of the spring semester. at the parent teacher conference she told me he was one of the most demanding children she had ever had in her (20+) years of teaching and skirted around the ADD conversation. i imagined him next year in a full day k, bright but "a problem" and thought that if i kept him home i could teach him the basics in much less time, give him room to bounce off the walls and work on his behavior at home as he matured.

 

he is reading frog and toad, sometimes upside down, halfway through his k year. (he is an older k, 6 in nov)

 

i would recommend taking a 'trial year' like pps have suggested, so it doesn't seem like such a permanent change then take each year as it comes.

 

it is important to have support from your spouse, so i would also try to figure out what worries him about it and address those fears.

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My husband was reluctant in the beginning too...now you'd think it was HIS idea. :D

 

I never ever thought I'd homeschool before kids. I was going to put my kids in day care and go back to work...then my daughter was born and suddenly I just couldn't be away from her. And I guess it just naturally progressed from there. When she was about 2 1/2 i started thinking about homeschool. It was weird because we knew hardly anyone who homeschooled- only my aunt and her kids were "off". Needless to say, Hubs wasn't on board at all. Over time I just started sharing more and more than I learned...and he became more receptive.

 

Our main reasons are academic.... we want our kids to not have to fit into someone else's box where one size does NOT fit all but is expected to. Our daughter works in various grade levels and we like that she can go at her pace. We are also big apologists and do not want our kids force fed only one side of the coin. We want to expose them to all sides and give them the tools to "own" their beliefs. That and I used to teach in PS and I have seen the decline myself and don't want that mess for our kids.

 

Every year we find new reasons why it is a good fit for us...but those are the main ones.

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DH had been trying to talk me into home schooling since oldest was in Kindergarten. I had never even heard of home schooling before he brought it up. The private school where dd was thriving ended up going belly up when she was in third grade. We put her in another private school, but she was having headaches and stomach aches every day. There were a few girls who were bullying her. She was unable to make any new friends. I volunteered so much time there I was able to see a lot of things that made me uncomfortable. She was bored with the curriculum as well. The teacher had her teach the jingles to the class from Shurley English every day, along with the question and answer flow, which she knew backwards and forwards. She finished the quarter and I removed her.

 

I was so afraid and sure I was going to ruin her education. Thankfully my best friend had been her second grade teacher and she gave me everything we needed to continue a classical curriculum. I didn't even know what that was. She showed me her scope and sequence and her lesson plans and said you can do it!

 

Here we are 8 years later and loving it!

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I had friends with older kids who homeschooled. I checked out a bunch of books from the library and read about it. I decided it was a good idea. I talked to dh about the idea. He resisted for awhile, but then he read a book about classical education and agreed that it was a good option for our kids. None of our kids have attended public school. Our oldest attended a neighborhood preschool during the year that dh and I were discussing whether or not to send her to kindergarten. Academics are our primary concern. Religion had nothing to do with our choice (although we are Christian).

 

Our oldest has ADHD (and I think our third might as well). A classroom would have been torture. I'm sure we would have ended up pulling her out anyway.

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We felt very led to homeschooling. I had a friend who homeschooled, so it was sort of on the radar, but when my youngest approached school age, I decided to go ahead and send him to PS.

 

He had an *amazing* kindergarten teacher, but homeschooling was still floating there in the back of our heads. Weird things started happening and I was seeing HSing everywhere I went it seemed. But after a lot of prayer, I felt like my son needed to go back to PS and so we put him into first grade. First grade was good, his teacher was very sweet and laid back (she'd let the kids take off their shoes, keep a container of water in the classroom, etc.) but he seemed to have a lot of free time in class and I just hated how much he was gone from me all the time.

 

In the meantime, my daughter was approaching kindergarten registration and she was adamant, adamant, that she absolutely wanted to be homeschooled. She's very advanced for her age, and boredome was a real concern, but I seriously considered sending her to the same kindergarten teacher that my son had. In fact I would have, because she is honestly THAT good, but we revisited the issue in prayer again and this time felt that homeschooling was the right thing for us.

 

So here we are, halfway through our first year! And LOVING it!

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I guess I'll add our story, too - what a lot of responses you got!

 

My two oldest kids went to public school until our oldest was in 1st grade - the boy was in Kindergarten.

 

Kid #1 is gifted, was winning essay and art contests in 1st grade, scored in the 99th percentile on standardized testing, played several instruments, was writing music, I was getting phone calls from the school "Oh, we're so proud to have your daughter, etc"...

 

Kid #2 was being pulled out of class to work with the special ed lady. :glare: I was also getting phone calls from the school asking me to come and get him because he was going into the corner and "putting himself down for a nap". Now that I have had several 5 yros, I know that he was not ready for school - developmentally. I think 5 is way too early to start formal academics - especially for boys. My son's confidence just plummeted that year and he was constantly saying things like, "Will my teacher like me if I can read?" and stuff like that. 'Twas heartwrenching. He didn't want to go to school and basically would start crying when it was time to leave in the morning.

 

Anyway, I started researching homeschooling for my son - because I could see the direction this was headed in. :glare: We also happened to be moving into an area that had some of the worst schools in the country (and we were coming from one of the top schools in the country). I pulled them both out to "reluctantly homeschool".

 

During the first summer, I could tell this was the lifestyle for us! :tongue_smilie: My kids are doing incredible. The boy who was being removed from class every day to work with the special ed lady is catching up to his older sister in math, has a TON of confidence and was recently the most outspoken team member in a science jeopardy competition. Kid #1 is probably about 1-2 grade levels ahead. Kid #3 is working through a Kindergarten curriculum and is doing incredible, too (I would've gotten phone calls from any school she went to...:glare:).

 

In other words, we like it. We plan to homeschool through high school. All 4 of my kids are very content with our lifestyle. Kids #1 and #3 are very eccentric and I think they can be themselves without constantly looking for peer approval.

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We had only been dating a few days when dh told me he wanted us to breastfeed and homeschool our children. I remember thinking that I guess that meant we were getting married, lol.

 

Dh went through the French school system, all the way to an engineering degree, and hated it. He wanted the kids to learn through projects, and not lose their creativity.

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