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I never imagined I would ever write a post about a decision to homeschool my child. We’re a dual career family, having paid for full time childcare for two kids since they were infants, including a nanny for two years. We heavily rely on the “it takes a village” approach to raising our family.
When the pandemic descended a year ago, just the amount of groceries we went through to feed both kids at home shocked me. I don’t think I had ever been that fully responsible for feeding my own kids since they were nursing. Case in point, when preschool changed the breakfast time a couple of years ago, I was like, what? Now we have to feed her breakfast ourselves before we drop her off? In general, we were perfectly happy to farm out the early childhood education and whatnot to the professionals.
All this to say, I never aimed to home school, never thought it was even a possibility for us, and have never even been a stay at home parent. But now everything is different.
What's In This Post
Why I started homeschooling in 2020
When our son started Kindergarten in the fall of 2019 I was so excited. Myself a nerd, I loved school and was pretty darn excited for him start this new chapter of his own young life. My memories of elementary school are truly of a charmed life and I wanted that for him too.
A few months in, he was the kid earning discipline checkmarks, unable to sit still on the “learning carpet” (now a dirty word in our house), and started complaining that he didn’t like learning, was bored, and his favorite “subjects” were recess, lunch, and gym. My teacher’s pet nerd self was wholly disappointed and a bit broken hearted.
I knew my inquisitive animal nut kid, despite his challenges with focus, attention and sitting still, loved learning and it felt like school was crushing that. This was the first time I started googling about homeschooling. What is it? Is it better for kids with certain struggles? Could it be possible for us?
COVID-19 pandemic
Then you know what happened next. Schools closed, my job went full remote for the foreseeable future. At the onset of the pandemic, I got my first real glimpse of my son’s academic life through the virtual class meetings and such. I was able to observe what was being taught, noticing what things he resisted and how he struggled to pay attention (granted, these were extenuating circumstances for all). But what I mean is, I started to understand him. And I started to understand how to help him succeed.
First, it was reading. He claimed he already knew how to read and didn’t need to do it. Umm, no. In reality, he found it difficult and preferred to avoid trying.
So I learned about reading levels. I ordered up every Wild Kratts (his fav show) and National Geographic easy reader book on animals from our local library. Peaked his interest, check.
I made him paper reading badges to earn a gold star every time he finished a book. A full badge earned him a 3-D wood animal puzzle. Incentive, check.
Along with reading, I ordered a variety of workbooks to keep him busy and productive while I was working.
It was rewarding. I loved seeing him succeed.
At the same time, dealing with the school’s online systems and virtual class schedules along with my work schedule was a giant pain. I’d be shuffling my meetings so my son could ignore his teacher for 30 minutes on Zoom. Didn’t feel super efficient.
I knew the upcoming 2020-2021 pandemic school year was likely to be a roller coaster. I needed to be able to control my own work schedule. And I knew I was capable of teaching him 1st grade myself, whereas other families wouldn’t have that luxury and may really need that school spot when and if school could open for limited capacities. So long story short, we pulled him out of public school and made the decision to homeschool in the summer of 2020.
What I liked about homeschooling
Customized & efficient curriculum
There’s just no arguing the point that providing one-on-one instruction tailored to a child’s level for each subject is far more efficient than group classroom instruction. When I came across a post breaking down the traditional school day to instructional time spent for a fair comparison of planned lesson time at home school, it came down to less than 2 hours a day. This jived with a recent chart provided during the pandemic to tame parents’ fears of how much time their kids should be “doing” school. So, realizing these efficiencies, of course the academic advantages of homeschooling are super attractive.
Customizing the activities to your kids’ strengths and weaknesses is also ideal. To turn the tide on getting my boy to read, I ordered him books in his favorite topics (animals, nature, rocks) and we read every day. I bumped up the reading level of the books I checked out at the library each month. Six months later, he was reading above grade level. One full year later, he’s reading the first Harry Potter book (albeit slowly) that he received for his 7th birthday, which is probably two or more grade levels above. (BTW, the book he received is this awesome hardback illustrated version I didn’t even know existed- very cool!)
In introducing and teaching sensitive but crucial topics, such as racism, early American history exploits, war, etc., I as a parent can fully control that narrative. This is a very powerful and important responsibility.
In addition, we have the ability to build in additional important curriculum, like learning Spanish, personal finance, business principals, and Bible study. These things can all be done in addition to traditional school, of course, but it’s very natural to work them in when you’re already setting up a homeschool routine. Santa brought microscopes for Christmas so we’ve been adding in some microscopic inspections of various objects and slide drawings as well- so much fun!
Freedom!
This is probably the most attractive feature of homeschooling for me. So. Much. Flexibility.
A big goal of mine with leaving a traditional career someday soon is to create time freedom. To sleep when I prefer to sleep, to work when I have optimal focus to work, to stop wasting time commuting to a cold office, and to choose my own priorities through my day. To live outside of a cookie cutter, forced to consider my own time more carefully and live intentionally.
Freedom to travel
I learned when we started public school Kindergarten that attendance at public school is kind of a big deal. You have to have permission to take off to the grandparents house for a week in the middle of October. And even still you’ll be getting emails from the truancy officer to ensure your child is not at risk. Don’t get me wrong- these systems make sense. But the fact is that in this season (having kids ages 5-18), life revolves around the school calendar.
Freedom in the daily schedule
And life revolves around the bell schedule. The mornings getting my son to school by 7:30 were pretty torturous. He’s a night owl, not a lark. Same for us, his parents. Dragging him out of bed, packing a lunch, trying to leave early enough so that we could walk to get in some exercise… or facing the dreaded car line. Launching him out the car door with his backpack, lest we mess up the car line flow, even if he was in tears over the shoelace disaster we had rushing out the door… I know it will get easier with him getting older. But sheesh.
Those months were not our optimal morning routine. It felt like taking the least favorite part of my adult life (the morning rush) and heaping it into a young child’s lap as well. By contrast, letting him wake up naturally between 7:30 and 8 and building our own routine at home this past year has been quite lovely.
Freedom for weather and life
When it was snowy or when spring popped up, I could cancel school and let him play outside all day during this past homeschool year. Though social interactions through 2020 were slim, the amount of time my son has spent outdoors has been unparalleled. If family comes to visit or we’re away visiting them, we can do some schoolwork during that time, or not. I control the homework and fit it with our life.
Geographic freedom
And what happens when we’re ready to move to land? I don’t know yet whether that’s two years or ten years from now. But a decision to homeschool would make that transition pretty seamless.
If I establish my own flexible work structures that allow me the freedom to travel, move, or whatever, a decision to homeschool fits with this because it has the same flexibility. Going back to public school will set limits on that flexibility for many years ahead.
Watching him learn
Seeing your kids discover the world is always a rewarding experience. Watching them light up with pride when they “get it” learning something new is even more fulfilling. When you’re the one who got to help deliver that learning? Awesome.
This past year I’ve beamed with pride at the state flag he made from construction paper, that I shared with all my coworkers of course on Zoom meetings. I text blasted his math test scores to the grandparents the minute I graded them.
What can I say? I’m both a lifelong school nerd and a proud Mama. It’s been a wonderful and surprising role to have in my child’s life.
What I don’t like about homeschooling
Fighting
I can be an effective teacher and my son can be a productive student. But very frequently, we can also be a mom and son losing their patience, being disrespectful, taking advantage of the more flexible structure, etc. So basically instead of my son being forced to respect a teacher in a classroom, I have to take that on myself. And I’m not a perfectly patient Mom or teacher. So, arguing, yelling, it happens and is definitely not enjoyable when it does.
No time to myself
These days, I am very rarely alone. I used to spend two hours a day alone in the car commuting. Definitely don’t want that commute back. But my introverted sanity is definitely suffering from constant accompaniment.
If we continue to homeschool, this is a long term commitment to have a lot less time to myself. Less time to build my businesses. Less time to repair my health, rather ravaged by the stress levels from the past year. Less time to build up my own hobbies and friendships, things I wanted to someday focus on after achieving the time freedom created by a transition away from a traditional career.
More expensive
During a time when I’m planning a major financial transition from leaving a six figure salary with benefits to build my own income, the additional cost to buy school materials, pay for private enrichment experiences, etc. seems a bit like a poor plan. That said, the supplies aren’t terribly expensive- I probably spent about $400 on such things for this past year. Enrichment experiences (camps, classes, etc.) are substantially more, but completely within my control to use or not.
Sending our son to mainstream school would maximize my time to build my new income earning potential, while minimizing unneeded costs. The income potential is a much more significant piece of this financial picture than purchasing some curriculum sets. So this is where it’s really about identifying the life vision and making the money work to support that. I definitely can’t make a financial case for our family choosing to homeschool. Rather, I’ll have to make the finances and business activity work to additionally incorporate homeschool if that’s the direction we go.
My learning curve
I am a DIYer at heart and also hold a PhD in the life sciences. So, while I am not a teacher, I know I’m capable of learning things, including learning how to teach elementary school. (I do have experience teaching college students, but somehow that feels quite different…) But of course, that comes with my own learning curve. I might go about getting him to learn writing in the wrong way, and then another wrong way, until we figure out I was skipping too many developmental steps or something. A trained teacher could probably spot the problem immediately. My kid has to deal with me figuring this out. So that is of course a limitation.
No charmed elementary school life experience
I have fabulous memories of my teachers, friends, and experiences in elementary school. I wanted that so badly for my own kids. And we do live in a delightful neighborhood with, by all accounts, excellent public schools. It saddens me if my child would miss out on this. And it’s an added challenge (and expense) to replace it with something equal or better. For example, this makes signing up for organized sports, clubs, and enrichment camps and classes all the more important to have those structured shared childhood experiences. But that’s of course time and money.
And perhaps the charmed elementary school life of the 1980’s in my memory is not reproducible anyway. The world has changed. Schools must have much stricter oversight of access and visitors, common core standards must be upheld. My (admittedly likely very delusional) memory of elementary school was having a party all day long for Valentine’s Day and Halloween. Now they don’t even call it Halloween. And the party we parents got to come in and host was 15 minutes of “fall themed” snack. Not at all how I remembered partying it up!
But still, the development of independence outside the home among peers seems like a difficult to replace feature of traditional school. Whether it’s getting in trouble on the playground together or mastering multiplication together, there’s something to be said for those young relationships memorialized in the back of your third grade yearbook.
What next? Decision to continue homeschool or not?
My work situation has changed dramatically to where I’m actively planning to leave and start a new season building an entrepreneurial career in 2021. So, now I’m at a crossroads. I could absolutely continue to homeschool if we believe that is our best choice. And I knew on some level I would be at this crossroads when I first made this decision a year ago.
Homeschooling my now 7 year old son has been the most satisfying experience of the past year. And, other than missing friends (more of a pandemic issue than school per se), he claims to have enjoyed Mom as teacher as well.
The thing is I think I knew I would like homeschooling. And I was glad to have an excuse to try it out. But now being faced with no more “excuse” to need to homeschool, do I let it go? What is the choice that supports the best life for our family, including us as parents and our children and their futures?
Everyone’s going to be in a weird place with school in 2021. So transitioning back to the public school system now is definitely the easiest choice to go back to mainstream. If we continue with homeschool, when does it end? Another year? Until junior high? High school? It’s a real question mark for me how long we would do this. And it’s also a question whether this would then also become the best choice for our youngest as well. We never set out to be a homeschool family, so looking to the future for life after COVID (which isn’t even over admittedly) is all new territory.
Being prepared for life’s curves
I think about breaking the life cookie cutter and I’m all in for continuing homeschool. But am I going too far leaving my career, starting my own businesses, and becoming a work at home parent and homeschool parent all in the same year? That would be a far cry from the life I was living a year ago. But that kind of faith, trust, and ‘go for it’ also drives me.
It feels a little like the question I used to face when I told friends I wanted a natural birth. Everyone asked “Why????” as if I needed a strong reason to make such an atypical choice. With that, I finally learned I didn’t have to justify it. A friend taught me to say instead “Why not?”
Ultimately, these unforeseen life decisions are exactly why you keep your financial plan flexible. You always want to be open, in your heart and your bank account, when new opportunities or challenges arise. We just never know what is around the next corner.
When I actually have a decision to homeschool or not, I will provide an update. For now, I hope this may help you with your own decision process in building your best life. Particularly as we all begin to look towards recovery from the pandemic together. And for anyone contemplating homeschooling, perhaps my completely undecided (ahh!) point of view gave you some unbiased fodder to consider.
Update August 18, 2021: So apparently “after COVID” is not a thing (yet? ever?). But COVID aside, we’ve decided to continue with homeschool another year. It’s something we’ll evaluate one year at a time, but I’m excited to keep it going again this upcoming year! We’re going to hit math hard and build in some formal art classes at a local studio as well. Math is currently my son’s “core curriculum” weakness (relative to reading and writing), and art is probably his biggest strength, so there we go. The beauty of homeschool- ability to customize.