HOw long till you are done homeschooling and what will you do then?

[BakersDozen]

Given how much I love the "Reset" button in life I have no idea how long I have left in my homeschool journey. Hopefully I have a long time ahead of me with a few more "resets". :) I also have no idea what I will do when there are no more "resets"...I don't even like to think about that right now because this is all I've ever wanted to do.

[kalanamak]

8 more years, around which time I hope to retire and float out to sea in a burning longboat.

[Laura Corin]

I finished two years ago. I took up a part time job as village postmistress, volunteered at the local medical school and for my choir, took a course to certify my computer skills, and spent a lot of time in the garden.

 

Then my husband was made redundant. I've been looking for a better job (the Post Office pays me minimum wage) but there are around eighty applicants for every clerical job at present. I went for a consultation with a career specialist, who said that all the areas that she would have pointed me towards a year or two before (public sector work using my home education background) were not hiring.

 

Husband has still not found work (more than a year later). We are okay financially but it's hard to watch our savings dwindle.

 

Laura

[Seshet]

8-10 years left, depending. After, I'm not totally sure. I've had several ideas over the years, but have yet to decide. I probably won't really decide until it's closer. I have no idea what life will hold at that point, what new interests I'll have developed, or what path I'll want to take.

[lailasmum]

I have another 14 years but am hoping to try and get back into doing a lot more for myself in the near future as I have had a huge realisation that I have got nothing separate from my kids at the moment. Anyway I am hoping to get back into photography, art or media or some combination of the three in the near future and hopefully be self employed or at least re-exploring very part time doing these things. Probably when the kids are finished being home educated I will travel a lot and move back to somewhere with a larger population and a bit more going on.

[Melissa in Australia]

I have been homeschooling for around 8 years, and think I have another 8 or so to go.

I am studying to be a primary school teacher and am hoping to start working as a relief teacher in about 4 years time.

[speedmom4]

We have homeschooled 12 years and I have 8 more to go. My idea for life after homeschooling includes going to the library, volunteering, spending more time with dh. Maybe even help dh with his business. Honestly it is very hard to imagine life after homeschooling. I have to remind myself that I'll still be their momma and they will still need me (sometimes) :blink:

 

Elise in NC

[Soror]

I'm not done having kids, so who knows. I don't ever plan on returning to paid employment (but who knows). We plan to do more and more homesteading projects each year and I have a pile of things I want to learn and hopefully I will be doing some volunteer work then(it hasn't worked out thus far with the age of my kids).

[Night Elf]

We have homeschooled for 11 years now. It doesn't seem like that long. The current plan looks like I'll be homeschooling about 3 more years if only ds15 remains homeschooling, or 4 years if dd14 homeschools again.

 

I don't have any grand plans. My life will be much like it is now. I do not have access to free or low cost classes. Even the junior college charges $500 mandatory frees before tuition is even assessed. The cheapest I could take one class is $800. I'm really bummed about that because I would love to finish my degree. However, I have decided to let that dream go because we have to save that money we were using for my college to pay for the children's college tuition. Even with loans, they'll still have to pay some fees and my youngest dd will need to pay dorm/apartment rent.

 

I would like to learn to sew, perhaps quilt. It sounds so neat but I have very little experience and no one to teach me. I know there are classes but I'm almost embarrassed to try. I don't even know how to hem, although I have sewn a few buttons! :tongue_smilie:

 

I'll likely continue to self-educate. I love curriculum. I still have lots of high school materials to work through. I'm certainly learning far more now than I did when I was in high school.

[Mommee & Baba]

Wow, I've got 14 more years. I have been homeschooling for 5 years. Seems like I'm a baby at this!

 

I haven't a clue what I'll be doing when I graduate my youngest. I imagine spoiling grand babies and gardening more. I'll probably do volunteer work as well.

[*Lulu*]

We are entering our 6th year of HS and, if youngest HSs all the way through, I am looking at 13 more years. My plan back in the day was to get my teaching certification for the state we now live in, and go back to teaching. I think I will have to wait until we get closer to that time to decide. I know for sure that I am hope to have more time for my hobbies, volunteering, and sleep. Since DH and I will only be 46 when we finish we plan to also do a little traveling.

 

Truthfully, I do all of those things now, and each year my children increase thier independence I increase the time I spend on these things. (Except travel, all our travel finds are tied up in educational expenses for the next few years.)

[Carrie12345]

We just finished our 5th year. Just as we were deciding to begin this journey, ds5 surprised us, elongating the plan. 3.5yrs later, ds1.5 surprised us, and really shook up our plan!

 

I have a good 16 or 17 years left. That's a lot more than the 9 I originally had in mind!

 

I suspect the younger two will switch to some form of "online school" in the later years because I'm hoping to crawl through my undergraduate degree and fight my way into grad school. I'm looking at psychology/sociology fields right now, and shooting for at least a masters by my 50th birthday.

 

I feel guilty thinking about taking that route with the boys, but that time line is weighing on me!

 

My "backup plan" is to just putter around the garden and volunteer in the community, which I would enjoy nearly just as much.

[Lizzie in Ma]

6 more years for us. I will go back to work. We have managed to do this all these years (11) but things have been very tight financially. Be nice to have a safety net and a vacation.

[nono]

12 years left. I'll be about 60 by then. :) What will I do then? Well, maybe I'll have a mid-life crisis and buy a sports car.

[hsmamainva]

I've been homeschooling for 17 years and I have 9 more years to go!

 

According to my oldest daughter, I'll be homeschooling my grandchildren. We'll see how that goes. ;)

[FaithManor]

I've been homeschooling for 13 yrs. I have six to go since we plan on homeschooling all the way through and do not have any other decent options close by. However, the last year of youngest ds's time before college will likely be spent with him involved more in volunteer work, exclusively MIT opencourseware classes, and traveling with him. He's one of those kids whose academic prowess runs WAY ahead of his emotional maturity and he has a very soft heart. He'd be ready academically to go to uni at 16, but he'd be eaten alive by the adults around him very likely. He is geared towards engineering, mathematics, and astrophysics and these are HIGHLY competitive fields. So, we will be holding back since we don't have a tier 1 uni less than 90 minutes from home. DD has commuted the 90 min. for two years to a large U of M extension campus and she handles that very, very well. We don't see that as a good fit for him. On top of which, he has his heart set on MIT and they just aren't known for accepting transfer credits. They want traditional freshmen. I expect I won't be doing any direct teaching at that point. However, since dh wants me to do some traveling with ds in order to help broaden his horizons and help him be more accepting of change in his world, I am really looking forward to that.

 

Once he's off to school, given there is a 9 year age gap between youngest and oldest, I suppose I could easily be a grandma by then. I plan on being helpful to dd if she is nearby and if not, at least visiting my grands often.

 

I finished this school year working part-time as a school guidance counselor for a local private school. I thought it would be very rewarding, but instead it ended in total and complete frustration. I worked my fanny off to help those high schoolers and I swam upstream against a sea of ignorant adults, but the reality is I don't think I made one solitary difference in a single person's life. Though the principal is begging me to renew my contract for next year, I am choosing to put my energies back into my own children and not squander them.

 

I still have my 3-Saturdays-per-month quilt store job (plus occasionally evenings when they are having a big event such as Shop Hop or the Northcutt Trunk Show). I'm not working this month because of dh's trip and a bunch of 4-H responsibilities and that's given me time to think about the job. I like it and I enjoy it. If it were up to the owners, I'd work a lot more for them. So, I could consider going full-time when ds graduates. However, I'm not certain I want to do that either. Secretly, I've really wanted to finish a Master's in Music (Theory and Composition or Musicology which is a combo of Music History and Music Theory). So, I have a sneaking suspicion that I might apply to grad school though I have no idea what I would do with the degree when I was done with it.

 

The first plan is to A. not cook for about 90 days - I hate cooking, worst chore of my life, and after that many years of feeding people, I think I'll take a vacation. :D and B. Relishing that fact that mount laundry will forever more be nothing greater than a molehill! :lol: (I have already warned the boys that there will be severe reprocussions for bringing home bags of dirty laundry on college breaks! SEVERE! I will personally make sure that they are always supplied with laundry detergent, softener, and quarters for the machines. Bringing home laundry will bring out the DARTH VADAR in me! :biggrinjester:

 

Faith

[PeacefulChaos]

Well, I have quite a stitch left - pink is only 3 so a good 15 years or so left. :)

But I do have a little bit of an idea what I'll be doing after. Well, at this point I think I do anyway - who knows, things change. :). But as of right now, I'm expecting that in the next several years I'll go back to school and become a respiratory therapist. I'll do night classes and whatever I need to in order to be able to do it and still homeschool the kids. Then, if it all works out the way i would like for it to, I'll work a few nights a week and dh can go back to school, hopefully not having to work at the same time. Then we will both have our jobs, but I'll keep working nights until I'm done with homeschooling. After that I'm not sure, but I'm assuming it would just be an extension of current life, just without kids being homeschooled.

I think that is what is going to happen at some point, anyway. But like I said, who knows, things change. :).

[OnTheBrink]

I've been homeschooling for 12 years and have 3 more years to go. I'll probably finish my bachelor's degree or something.

[laughing lioness]

21 yrs to date of homeschooling, 8-9 yrs to go.

I plan to write, continue teaching in some forum, garden, maybe get licensed as an M.F.T. (but I doubt it, unless we move). I would love to open a classical UMS. It will depend on where we live, where our kids are, if we have grands, if my dh is still doing his current schtick, etc.

[Marie131]

Well I am currently pregnant w/ my (probably) last child so I should be done in roughly 18 years. What do I plan to do then? Travel! :lol:

[Parker Martin]

I would guess that I have about twenty years to go.

 

Much could change by then, but my current plan is to either (1) tutor or get teaching credentials and teach or (2) find out where there is a need in the missions our church supports and fill it. For the second option, I'd be willing to become a nurse, doctor, engineer, teacher, contractor, ditch digger, or whatever. I'm not picky; whatever they need would be fine.

[Heather in OK]

My youngest will be in 2nd grade this coming year so I still have a while. :)

 

When we're done I'll hopefully be enjoying some grandkids and continuing my midwifery practice. :)

[momto2Cs]

I have 9 or 10 years left! After that, I'll probably keep working, hopefully teaching at the local community college.

[Vicki]

I been homeschooling for 26 years and have 2 more years to go. I would love to go back to school, maybe get a part time job, volunteer, and travel. I can't wait to see what doors God opens for me.

God bless,

Vicki

[J-rap]

Just one more year to go for me... But then I will continue "homeschooling" my husband. Once he is at a point where he can be involved in projects/jobs again, we will probably find something to do together. Maybe go on a speaking tour, write a book together, help our son with his film projects. We'll see!

[Negin]

7 or so more years to go.

Probably get back to work in our family business. And sleep, lots and lots of sleep.

I know for a fact that I'll cry a lot and have a mid-life crisis. I know that I'll be very depressed when they leave home. I dread that. They'll be leaving home right around menopause and hormonal imbalance. Not pretty at all.

 

Well, maybe I'll have a mid-life crisis and buy a sports car.

:iagree: :lol:

[Mama Geek]

Hopefully retire. I am 37 yo with a 2 yo. I have already had a career. I expect we will do lots of fun stuff with daughter and will continue to do so after she leaves the nest.

[JVA]

We just finished!

 

We hs for 24 straight years. I was 30 when we started with our twins. We had a newborn that first year. Baptism by FIRE.

All in all, we hs all 5 kids, anywhere from 2 to all 5 in any given year. We always viewed it as a privelege, both in economic terms, as well as spiritual ones.

We loved having lots of TIME with our children....it built strong bonds (our adult kids are good friends) and helped us work through personality differences. When you're together all day, you have no choice but to work at getting along. The academic superiority is un-rivaled, as well. Our youngest started at a classical, Christian highschool last year. My dh and I celebrated by 'retirement' and look forward to a new paradigm for the future (as in we're cleaning out the schoolroom. Anybody want some tables, desks and books?!) :lol:

[AngelaNYC]

I have 2-3 years left. That's when ds will start either 8th or 9th grade in public school. I plan to continue working part-time until I know he's settled in and doing well. Then I plan to work full-time.

[littlebug42]

I have 8 years left. After that, I plan to move into a different job at the hospital that would allow me to be at work while dh is so we can spend more time together. I would also do more community theatre work.