Fear of homeschooling
Months ago, I’d admire families who teach at home with distant awe. It’s the ultimate parental involvement. Something surely I would never be able to do for my kids.
It wasn’t that I didn’t believe homeschooling would be good for my kids. I was just questioning whether it would be good for them to be taught in our house. By me!
Truth must be known that I have more heart than skill when it comes to teaching. Then there is that patience thing. I like to teach by showing. When the learning isn’t happening “fast enough” I have a tendency to grab the bull by the horn and do it myself, leaving the poor learner staring at me as I just blew their grand finale.
Besides, if we had all three of our kids learning at home, that means that all three siblings would be in the same room. A lot.
Don’t get me wrong. We are a family who loves each other. We also love spending time together. But I often say that family is like cheese cake: Best enjoyed in small doses because it can be too rich.
The last thing I wanted to do was to rock the sibling boat, by making them become classmates too.
Then something changed.
I put all my biases, my fears and insecurities, and I hurled them out the window.
After hanging out with my homeschooling friends—both live and on the net—I started to suspect that neither I nor my kids needed to be perfect to learn at home. I mean good and bad days happen at “regular school” too, right?
Besides, one doesn’t need to belly flop, full Monty into the commitment either.
One can dip yer toes into it. Sample your way into it. See what you like and what the kids think is (dare I say it?) fun. No need to un-enroll your kiddos from a program that your happy with unless you want to.
What better time to do it than summer time.
School is out anyway. We are all together. Trying new stuff in the summer is simply what we do.
Although we set out to do most of our learning online, we have found that we enjoy visiting the library, going to the museum, using text books and props, learning new musical instruments—even story writing and animation!
Funny thing is that the kids and I had decided to home school math only this summer. Look where it brought us. We are also learning that most of those preconceived fears were mostly unwarranted—even the phobia about not being a good enough mom for homeschooling.
Oddly enough, we have had less sibling squabbles than ever, a happy mom, and a moderately clean house (I’ll take it!).
While plans are still for all three of my rug-rats to head back to their respective schools this fall, it will not be business as usual. Learning at home will continue and I feel more confident in operating as their teacher’s support for homework and such. We also know, that should the benefits of learning at home start outweighing their traditional programs, we have another choice. And it’s a good one.
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