s/o Are we honest enough with newbies about challenges?

[stutterfish]

One thing I have noticed in the past few years here is an increasing number of homeschooling newbies who expect to have little responsibility for the education of their child. These folk go into homeschooling, assuming that, like school, everything to be provided for their child, with minimal cost and inconvenience to themselves. Maybe changes in society have infantalised people and they now feel unable to do things for themselves? maybe the push for mothers to work and stick their babies in childcare from practically newborn means some folks are totally disconnected from the responsibility of parenting and education? Or maybe everyone is just used to being a customer and making demands of service providers? Truth is, I really don't know how to prepare these kinds of newbies (thankfully still a minority) for the challenges of homeschooling. Mostly I just want to yell at them to get off their butt, roll their sleeves up and interact with their child. I'm not sure that's what they want to hear!

 

[Guest]

I also find the OP a difficult question to answer because in my opinion, homeschooling really isn't hard. It has ups and down and all sorts of logistical challenges. It takes hours every day. I keep adding more students and am trying to not shortchange anyone. But that's not really difficult, it's just time consuming.

 

How to explain to someone that the difficult parts are more parenting related is tricky. It's the my-kid-is-in-THIS-stage issue, which comes out a bit in schooling. Not the schooling, but where life is at the moment. It's the budget. The house. The marriage. The sleeping! Homeschooling itself is the fun part of the hard, dealing with sibling squabbles and never ending laundry is the challenge for me. Balance. And communicating that accurately to someone else is doubly difficult, because their struggles likely won't look like mine.

Ditto this for me. Absolutely.

[lanalouwho]

Yes, I think people's challenges will be different.  

 

I wish I hadn't read a million times (here and elsewhere) that the anti-homeschooler response of "how will they socialize" was BS.  It is not, for us, BS.  It is very real and a serious struggle.

 

But if we had a community, or were church-going, or part of a co-op, or something, it would probably be a lot easier - and most homeschoolers go to church, so I think our situation is just not much like the average situation.

  

Like going to the dentist, socialization isn't a homeschool issue. If your child is the social butterfly they will be whether you homeschool or not. If your child is the strange geeky outsider, he will be whether you are homeschooled or not. Spoken as a person for whom school was just 12 years of torture because I was one of those weird homeschoolers who happened not to be homeschooled ever. My younger boys have lots of friends my oldest struggles.

Socialization is totally an issue for me. I'm a weird geeky introvert, and socializing is work for me. I was in public school for my entire education, and I never learned how to make a friend. I had friends only because I was around them every day, and after a few years we would start to talk. That is not an efficient way to make new friends.

 

My son is also a bit anxious in social situations. He has actually started to come out of his shell now that he's not forced to do it daily. Its easier for him to socialize once or twice a week.