What factored into your decision to homeschool

[lynn]

If you live in a good community with what is considered a good school system. How do/did your friends and acquaintances respond to your decision being that you do live a good area? How do you respond to them?

 

I plan to start hsing my 2 youngest this fall and this is the situation I am in. I am not concerned what others think about my decision. I am curious what kind of response others received.

[TN Mama]

We purposely bought our home for the top rated (in our community) school district. A great majority of my friends thought I'd lost my mind when I told them we were going to homeschool.

 

Yes, the school is excellent for many children. My daughter was not one of the many. I've had friends ask me after a year or two if I was going to put the girls back into the school. :glare: Nope.

[Briartell]

With having the two older kids, just explain that you been there down that. The answer that I loved most hearing from home school mom was that they could teach more in half the time PS takes and then they talk about the fun they have with their kids. It made logical sense to me and knowing that the mom loved it, made me a bit envious.

[DawnM]

Our schools are considered excellent as well. Great for us for resale value! :D

 

I still won't put my kids in there. I am not anti-PS, in fact, I worked in "the system" for 16 years.

 

We don't homeschool because the schools are bad, that is somewhat irrelevant to us (being in a good school area.) We homeschool for so many other reasons! Family bonding, values, and I don't care how good the school is, they are still catering to the masses and some will fall in the cracks.

 

I also don't feel I need to answer to anyone. This is a decision we feel strongly about and I refuse to defend our position to those who just want to criticize. If someone is genuinely interested I am fine with discussing it.

 

Dawn

[sarahbobeara]

#1 issue was all the griping I was getting from DD9 (she was 7 then). I got her grumpies in the morning and then her grumpies in the evening, followed by an 8pm bedtime. I felt like I really didn't KNOW her anymore and I was trying to hard to make her like me instead of being an authority figure. (Hopefully that makes sense!) Now I like being with her and I don't want to waste our time together by sending her to school every day.

 

#2 issue was the math investigations the school was using. My 2nd grader didn't know any math facts and was drawing representative circles for even simple math questions and it just drove me over the edge. After almost 2 years of homeschool, she is a math goddess! :lol:

[Alice]

We live in what is one of the top rated school systems in the country, which doesn't necessarily mean anything but I also know that most people are very happy with their local school. We also have many friends at a small private school that we think is excellent and that we could afford with some belt-tightening.

 

Our standard answer is that we are choosing TO homeschool. It's not that we are choosing NOT to do public/private school. There is a big difference in those two approaches.

[eternalknot]

I live in one of the state's top-rated districts. It's also a very affluent area, so for every kid not in our local public school there is a counterpart at a pricier outlying private school or boarding school. That makes my decision to forego public school seem less weird; lots of others are already doing it. We all live here for the amenities and community - the excellent public schools are just the gravy that help keep our home values (and property taxes!) high.

 

My child would do well at and be well-served by our local schools. My nephews attend the local public schools, and I socialize with a number of teachers and administrators from our district. I don't homeschool for academic reasons, and the level at which I discuss that depends on who's inquiring :) even left at that, though, most people will nod and at least pretend to understand LOL.

 

My husband was active duty when we started to homeschool. He'd cycle home from deployment but spend most of that time in the field training to go back out. The school district and I had different priorities in this situation. They were doing their job so I hold no ill-will, so I simply removed them from the equation.

[Guest]

If you live in a good community with what is considered a good school system. How do/did your friends and acquaintances respond to your decision being that you do live a good area? How do you respond to them?

 

I plan to start hsing my 2 youngest this fall and this is the situation I am in. I am not concerned what others think about my decision. I am curious what kind of response others received.

 

I did hear this initially from several people. One of my SILs said this often - she just could not imagine why I would "do all that" when I lived in a coveted school district. I told her at least a couple of times that she was missing the point; I wasn't trying to avoid a "bad" school. It was the lifestyle of homeschooling that I wanted, no matter what school district we were in.

 

FWIW, she never did really get this through her head. She just recently made a similar remark about someone else who sends her kids to private school, though she lives in "the best" school district. :lurk5: Whatever. To each his own.

[jec3113]

We have open transfer in our district. We left what many considered one of the best. The children were desperately unhappy and not learning. We lost all of our friends from the school. I think deep down folks know that it really isn't that great but don't want to make the kind of commitment it takes to homeschool and it makes them feel bad about themselves. If they only knew how awesome homeschooling really is! LOL Homeschooling is about so much more than just the academics. The freedom and closeness as a family is amazing. We know our children and they know us. It also allowed the children to explore music, dance and art, things they never had time for while in school. We knew that by bringing them home they could study at their own pace, learn subjects not taught in school like latin, science and history and they would be able to relax. No bullies, no foul language, and the freedom to be who they are.

[craftymama]

We've just moved into "one of the best school districts" though I don't know who decides that.

 

I homeschool because

- I like my kids and I like spending time with them.

- Ds is suffering from culture shock in many ways.

- We're military. We move.

- Ds is curious with questions above his grade level. The PS is not going to cater to him.

- Ds hates sitting still.

- Ds learns best through hands on activities. The PS is not going to cater to him.

- Ds does not need to be taught about domestic violence, illegal drugs, etc. since they do not touch his life. He is only 6. Some day, but not today.

- I don't want to have life dictated by the PS schedule.

- I want to.

- Ds likes it, mostly.

- I prefer to be the biggest influence in my children's lives...

 

When questioned though, I don't answer since everyone who asks seems to believe they are more qualified to speak to my life than I am.

[tricia]

PUrely out of the love I have for my kids and wanting to be the one who raised them and pass along my values. Of course over the years my reasons have been added to as the school system continues to fail.

[Guest]

Also, one little pet peeve of mine is that part of what makes a school district "good" is just the demographics of the neighborhoods that go there. So, for example, a "good" high school shows a high percentage of graduates going on to college, but wouldn't that be true of any area of the country where there's a high concentration of parents who are graduates? Same for high SAT scores - if you have a population of intelligent people who live in the area, that doesn't say as much about the schools as it does the genetics and environment the kids are coming from. Conversely a "bad" school has a high population of poor families, with single parents, who themselves did not graduate from high school or go to college and other demographics that make it less likely that the children will excel, no matter how the school "performs."

[SuperDad]

Yes, the school is excellent for many children. My daughter was not one of the many. ]

 

Our standard answer is that we are choosing TO homeschool. It's not that we are choosing NOT to do public/private school. There is a big difference in those two approaches.

 

Whenever the topic comes up about how good the local school are, I just tell people that my reasons for homeschooling have nothing to do with how good or not-so-good the local schools are.

:iagree:

[abbeyej]

The schools didn't really figure into my decision. And that's what I tell people. We home school for a variety of reasons, but most of them would hold true even if there were a nearly perfect school half a mile away on easily walkable streets. Especially in the elementary and middle school years. (A practically perfect high school that could flex and meet our every need? I might consider it. But there isn't one, so it's a non-issue.)

 

We home school for individualized education, the chance to study subjects not offered in the schools, greater family closeness and togetherness, flexibility. We've found many small and unexpected benefits to home schooling along the way -- for instance, when a child is terribly ill, we can focus on healing and not worry about getting behind in school, because we can make up the work at any time. Or even *sleep*. Now that my kids are approaching adolescence, I see a huge advantage to being able to let them sleep to a normal hour when many of their friends are suffering from *chronic* sleep deprivation. Or travel during the off season. Time to focus on outside activities (this coming year ds will be involved in a pre-professional ballet program for which many of the kids have to arrange special early dismissal from school, etc -- we can just work around it)...

 

There are all sorts of reasons why we home school. And very few of them have anything at all to do with our local schools.

[MrsBear]

Doesn't matter much how good the local district may be, it's relative, our state is ranked in the bottom 1/3 of the nation for schools. 'nuf said.

Edited April 8, 2012 by MrsBear

[nono]

I'm not in competition with the local public school. I do think they do a good job. I'm just generally opposed to the overall structure. :)

[Scuff]

We live in a terrible school district, which has it's perks in that most people only have positive comments. I did grow up in a great school district, though. And today there is a good amount of hsers there. The community as a whole values education, so people understand and accept when you choose alternatives.

[Sk8ermaiden]

I don't give one rat's patoot what any other parent does with their kids. Like, at ALL. But the previous poster who said that parents get defensive because they feel you are doing something for your kids that they aren't, or maybe they realize that even a "good" district has problems. That's why they push so much about it.

 

Since my kid is young I haven't had encounters with strangers. And my goal with my friends is to set them at ease and make sure they know I'm not judging them - or their schools. Usually I say something like, "I really have issues with standardized testing and the way it's taken over." So far problem solved. I haven't met anyone yet who doesn't have a problem with test prep taking over the school. If they mentioned private I would say it's an option, but it would require massive lifestyle changes and I'm not keen to do that if homeschooling works for us.

 

There are a million other reasons too, but that's a biggie and people seem to take it as less of an attack on them, their kids, or their kids' schools.

[fraidycat]

We're military. We move...a LOT.

 

I missed my kids. They whined about having to get up in the morning and get going. They came home exhausted and miserable with backpacks full of busywork for homework (that the teachers didn't even correct, just marked it as completed in their grade book). They didn't have time to "just be kids."

 

I have always had a love affair with office supplies (passed down from my Mom and my daughter is the same way). Now I have an excuse to feed this weird addiction to colorful paper, pens, pencils, markers, and cooler than cool tools. :lol: As a SAHM, how could I justify all these before?

[kathy_overman]

We moved to 3 miles to the neighboring state with 'great' schools just in time for Kindergarten. It went fine, and then after 1st grade our DS8 asked to be homeschooled. I thought he was crazy.:glare: (Now I wish we never moved because the old state had easy HS rules, PA does not.}

 

After year one of homeschooling, we love it. The list of reasons continues to grow. You made me stop and think - this first year I said we HS because DS8 asked for it. I think year 2 I will say, because we all love it.

 

I love:

 

 

• Selecting the curriculum
  
• Letting them work at their pace (typically ahead)
  
• The relationship we now have
  
• The creativity it adds to our lives
  
• That we can be active all day
  
• Passing on our values
  
• Sheltering them (in a good way)
  
• Exposing them to history, art, languages, nature
  
• All the neat HS programs they experience
  
• Watching them 'get' something new
  
• That I get to know them better than their old teachers
  
• That I get to help, direct and motivate them
  
• That I get to become a better person and mother
  
• The relationship the kids now have
  
• Making our own schedule
  
• Going outside when the weather is nice
  
• Watching them learn to love learning
  

Oh.. there are so many more reasons as this journey progresses.

[Splinter]

We live in a great area with great schools, but I started homeschooling two of my kids this year anyway. I love the school that my other two kids go to, but I'm happy with my decision to homeschool.

 

My youngest son's birthday is in December and he's in kindergarten this year (cut-off is December 31st). He really wasn't ready to start school at 4 years, 9 months - he has severe allergies that he didn't really understand and he's a little immature for his age. I didn't want to hold him back a full year, so homeschooling for kindergarten seemed like the best choice. When I told the kids this decision, my oldest son asked to be homeschooled, and it's worked out really well.

[Stellalarella]

I have loved teaching since I was a girl.

 

I went to college, got a degree in elementary ed and junior high English and science and I thought it was high time I enjoyed teaching my own children.

I will say my college degree in education has not been incredibly valuable to my current teaching. Most of what I know now has come from help and tips from this forum. :001_smile:

 

I became opposed to the constant, constant testing in our public schools. Also, our public schools only give elementary kids one short recess a day.

[applesing]

When our dc were preschoolers, we did a lot of research and chose to buy a house in a highly regarded district in our area. Eldest dc went to kindergarten, and we were disappointed with many things that took place that year. The thing that pushed me over the edge was that the teachers showed movies almost daily from November through the end of the year. My child was tired and grumpy, and she wasn't learning very much.

 

So our local school is the first reason that we looked into homeschooling. We have found that this learning lifestyle is a wonderful fit for our family, though, and our dc are thriving. We are all learning so much and are thankful for the time we spend together on this adventure.

 

We are probably one of three families in our district who homeschool, so when people ask, I often respond by talking about the positives of homeschooling and not the negatives of our school. I don't want to offend or isolate people who are just curious. At this point, we would choose to homeschool no matter what our local ps was like.

[Lisbeth]

I live in a wealthy, well-rated district. It is simple for us...we believe institutional schools are inherently inferior to one-on-one instruction. We also believe they use shallow and pc resources (textbooks, and bad ones at that.) The bell-ringing, the sitting still, agonizingly bored, surrounded by bad behavior, treated like inmates and/or perpetual children. Good school system is an oxymoron to us.

[Karen in CO]

I live in a terrific school district, but the traditional schools weren't working for my son. Here is a post I wrote years ago about what factored into our decision to homeschool him. After the first year, we've evaluated every year to see if this is still the right choice for each child. And my terrific ds is a senior in college with honors and an intern at the US embassy in Tokyo. The same traits that marked him for failure in public school have him thriving in college.

[Ellie]

I don't believe there's such a thing as a "good" public school. There may have been at one time, but in most cases, it isn't true any longer.

 

I've stood chatting with groups of people at church or other places, where we've talking about school in general; the others, who all lived in different parts of the city, would all admit that yes, public schools were really bad...except for *their* children's schools. Gotta wonder, then, where all the bad ones were...

 

So my dd went to a private Christian school, and I took her out of it because the structure and the extreme academics (all ABeka) burned her out by Easter.

 

I spoke to a MOPs group once about hsing, when I was just a baby hser, and someone asked me why I hadn't sent my dd to the local public school. I was trying to be diplomatic and said that I didn't have faith in it; someone asked why I didn't move, and I said it wasn't financially an option (still trying to be diplomatic and not criticize all public schools), and she said she supposed it just depended on my priorities. :glare: Really? I put my personal life on hold so I could teach my own children at home, and she was questioning my priorities???

 

Anyway, a friend began homeschooling because she sat knee to knee in her own home with Dr. Moore, and he convinced her that homeschooling was best for her children, not that it was better for her children than classroom situations.

[Sk8ermaiden]

I always just say, "It works for us and has worked for over 20 years."

 

Maybe in 20 years I can say that! :lol: After we've been at it a while I'll probably just say that it works really well for us and we enjoy it, but I'm just getting my feet wet and I expect I'll be getting these questions from friends until compulsory school age.

[chepyl]

My son was reading at a second grade level, doing two digit addition and subtraction, spelling out loud and they wanted to put him in prek. He would have been bored.

 

We own a business with a crazy schedule. It is easier to have him home as WWE juggle the business schedule. Plus, we get more family time.

 

He asked to be home schooled.

[FLDebbie]

Our local school is considered one of the better schools in our city. However, he was in a terrible class and the principal has a strict "no moving students" policy (alhtough shortly after I pulled my son he transferred three of the kids to other rooms...). My son has some learning difficulties, but since he's a good student, he got none of the extra help he was supposed to be getting. He was learning nothing and I was afraid of putting him behind for next year. We could have gone down the fighting the school route, but decided the best thing for everyone was to bring him home.

 

With the exception of one sister, everyone in the family agreed with our decision. I think that they understood my son's special needs and the fact that his class was horrible. My other sister is a pediatrician and she just wanted to make sure our son was learning what he should and we're not sitting around playing video games all day.

 

Another factor that I believe made my family not question us is that our other son is still in the school. So, they see homeschooling as a special need to homeschool for the one son. It is, but I love it so much I'm planning on keeping him home indefinitely. We're also considering bringing the other son home next year. I'll be curious to hear what they say then.

[Dmmetler]

What I've noticed in my area, and it's almost strange, is that people are almost apologetic about NOT homeschooling. Almost everyone states flat out that it's wonderful that DD is homeschooled, and that, as smart as she is, and as smart as DH and I are, that it's the only option for her (that, or specific private schools with tuition rates rivaling the salary from a full-time professional job)-while in the same breath seeming to say that it's not a good choice for their child because their DC isn't smart enough-or because they are. That is, homeschooling is a great choice for super-human parents with super-kids, but ordinary mortals shouldn't consider it.

 

I suppose I should be feeling good that they consider me qualified to HS-but it's kind of scary in it's own way-like I'm supposed to be Professor Xavier or something like that!

[AdventureMoms]

Well, one of the top reasons we're homeschooling is for schedule flexibility. Even the best schools can't fix that problem. Academics are another reason, but our local schools are not so hot there. Not terrible, but I'm quite sure I can do better. Flexibility, being able to fit the education to the child, even if she is way ahead in some areas but behind in others is a big one for me, and even a really good school is likely to have a hard time with that.

 

Another top reason at this stage is that I'd prefer for my 3yo to learn her social skills from me and other adults (or kids who are adequately supervised) rather than from a whole room of 4yos. I think that's a structural issue with schools, especially in early elementary.

 

Plus she is not-yet-4, and academically ready for K, but socially very much a 3yo. Next year I could put her in PreK, but she can't go to kindy until the year after. By then she's likely to be bored. I remember being bored for most of my school career, and I don't think it was a healthy way to spend 13 years of my life.

[LMD]

I agree with the PP - how good or not the schools are didn't even factor into our decision. There are some good schools around here, that in another life I'd be happy to send my kids to. I just tell people that when I really looked into homeschooling I fell in love with the lifestyle.

 

dmmetler - I'm running into that attitude too, and neither my children or I are that smart! I must be super-woman to homeschool :001_huh: My DH about falls over laughing :glare:

[SonshineLearner]

We live in a spot where others drive their children here, from out of district. When the school is right for my son.... I'll sign him up in a heartbeat. I really get tired of turning off the tv.... (No Electronics!!! If it needs batteries or a cord...it's a NO!) I'd love somewhere for him to be... even just play... for a few hours a day. It's not the "schooling" that's hard... it's the other bit of time! :)

[Shellers]

I started homeschooling my DD16 last year. She was having some medical problems, missed a lot of school, and her high school would not put her on Independent Study (we had a doctor's note but the school said Independent Study was full). I had no other choice except to homeschool her.

 

I pulled my son out of public school in November. He has severe dyslexia and his school wasn't teaching him how to read. He had an IEP, was in special ed for six years, and at the end of 4th grade he was reading at a 1st grade reading level. :confused:

 

Supposedly my son's school is a good one. Up until I pulled him out, I had my kids in this school continuously since 1995.

 

I could careless what anyone thinks about me homeschooling. My daughter's panic attacks are gone and my son is finally learning how to read.