6 Reasons Why I choose NOT to Homeschool
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I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about homeschooling, and I said these exact words:
“I don’t think I am the homeschooling type of mom.”
She responded, “I don’t think any mom feels like they are.”
It really got me thinking about why I don’t homeschool my kids, and I came up with a few reasons why it just doesn’t work for us right now.
Here are the 6 reasons why I’ve chosen NOT to homeschool my kids right now:
1.) We have a very affordable Christian School that is a few minutes away from our house. The class sizes are small (under 12 kids), and my mother in law is the principal. I know all of the teachers personally, and my kids LOVE going there. I pay roughly $850 per month to send three of my kids to school there, which in my opinion is a STEAL! If we did not have this option, I would have really prayed harder about homeschooling.
There are sports, extracurricular activities and fun school plays, like the Christmas play Kaylee was a sheep in this past year. And they actually use a lot of traditional homeschooling curriculum.
2.) I was NOT a good student. Growing up, I was a C student. I did not do that well in school, and much of it was because I have a horrible memory. If you were to quiz me on our US history, I would get a big fat F… seriously, I am not proud of this fact at all, but I cannot remember one lick of history. It was not until I got to college that I started taking subjects that I enjoyed and my grades started to improve. My first semester of college, I got a 2.4 GPA, and by my junior year, I was getting consistent grades around 3.5. I am smart, but have always had a hard time applying myself when I was not interested in what was going on around me.
3.) How in the world would I handle homeschooling, working full time, and a crabby 20 month old named Abby? I just don’t know how that could all work. I know there are many full time bloggers who also homeschool their kids. How in the world do they do it? Hats off to them. For real.
4.) I have the attention span of a two-year old. The thought of sitting down and teaching for three hours makes me want to SCREAM. I don’t think that would go over too well when I am supposed to be the teacher.
Have you watched the movie “Up”? You know that dog that gets so distracted easily – he yells “Squirrel” throughout the movie? That is me – ask anyone who knows me. If I have a BIG IDEA, I usually am in the middle of telling someone about it when I get another idea and totally move onto another topic.
5.) I need a lot of ‘me time’. I will say proudly that I am a great mom, but I also am a better mom when I work a few hours a day away from my kiddos. I may appear to be an extrovert, but secretly I love to be by myself. When Mark decided to quit his job and work with me, I had a hard time working next to him at first because he talked to me too much.
6.) I am NOT organized at all – the thought of picking out homeschool curriculum and having lots of papers around my house makes my skin crawl. I am a messy person by nature, and have to work SO hard to keep my clean presentable (which most of the time it isn’t).
I am not opposed to homeschooling in the future but at this very moment in our life, we have chosen not to. I’m also not against public schools at all either – our kids will probably go to the public high school.
Trust me, I’ve really thought and prayed hard about home-schooling, but at this point I just don’t feel like it’s my ‘thing’. It would become ‘my thing’ pretty fast if I thought one of my kids would do better because of it – but as of right now they are all thriving in the place where they are. But if that time ever comes, I know that I will have to change a few things about myself (which wouldn’t be a completely bad thing).
If you homeschool, I would love to know – how do you stay organized and motivated? What curriculum do you use?
COMMENTS
I wasn’t very organized or patient until we began homeschooling–God grew me as much as the kids, and gave me what I needed when I needed it. I would do it again in a heartbeat. They are little for such a short time, and the gift of being able to be “inside their heads” and knowing what/how they thought was a precious gift that really helped when they were teens.
Where we live, the home school community is critical of families who do not home school to the point of sin. Sure, they are presentable in public. But if you listen to the way they talk, listen to the disdain flow from their hearts, listen to the lies about public school families they spread, watch them compare themselves/their children to families in poverty (and feel proud of themselves instead of grateful)…I just think my children would walk away with a major heart issue that would be difficult to undo. I have seen adults raised in this environment say really unloving things about regular people. The product is disconnected to say the least. If I want to raise my kids to love God–and if I want what I’m doing to have eternal value–they need to be exposed to real kids in public school while they are young enough that our voices as parents are still the strongest, most influential ones in their lives. We can correct perceptions now, but not later when they are developmentally questioning our choices as a family. I am open to homeschooling my children when they are older, but not until they have had the chance to make friends with and be a part of a public school environment. I want them to be able to hear the lies and the lack of love, then choose not to let those take root.
Amen, mama! Thank you for this because this mamá of a new Kindergartener in PUBLIC school is feeling a bit of guilt. I was a teacher for many years and so, I was trained for homeschooling, right? Wrong. So many things you say here: about not being a good student until I studied the things I REALLY wanted to study (incidentally I scored at the top of my class in both of my Masters programs but was on academic probation my second semester in college when I studied abroad…go figure?). I, too, would pull my son out of school in a heartbeat if I saw anything that I was not ok with. I actually do see homeschooling in our future, just not right now. I’ve been a stay at home mom for 5.5 years and what Can I say, I need more me time.