Why we homeschool: your responses

Thank you so much to all the homeschooling families who sent me their reasons for choosing this path. If you didn’t share but would like to explain your own reasons in the comments, please do. I would love to hear more of your stories!

A summary

I’ve decided to simply post the most representative responses, because I loved reading them and I think you might too. But that’s a lot of words, so here’s the short version of why you homeschool:

• It’s fun! You love spending time with your children (even though it’s also really hard), and you love learning alongside them.

• It’s efficient: why spend 6 hours at school when you can do the same work in half the time?

• You want more control over who your child spends their time with.

• There are safety concerns about school.

• The pandemic was a factor for many of you.

• For families with children with additional educational needs, home might be a better fit than school.

• Parents are concerned for both the physical and mental health of their children in school.

• Money. School can be expensive and homeschool doesn’t have to be.

• The freedom! Freedom to go to the toilet when you like, to go on holiday when you like, to study as much as you like and whatever subject you like. And so much more.

• For many of you faith is a central element in why you homeschool. At the home ed sports day we attended recently there were a lot of Christian families, and also a lot of Muslim families (and also a lot of families like mine, with no obvious religious affiliation). People from a range of faiths feel that the best place to ‘live’ that faith is at home.

• There was some concern about the ‘woke agenda’ (for want of a better phrase) being pushed on children in schools.

Our own story

I only ‘discovered’ home education as my daughter was about to start Reception (the year she turned 5). She settled in happily enough and I thought I’d missed my chance. But then Covid returned and we all had to homeschool whether we liked it or not. And we loved it! Largely because my priority was to get through a pandemic with the minimum of stress and the maximum of enjoyment, and doing the school activities via Zoom didn’t feature in my plans. I was confident we could cover the literacy and numeracy work in our own relaxed way, so we all just had a nice time being together. (Which isn’t to say that every day was familial bliss: we’re still a normal family living in a small space!)

When the schools reopened my daughter went back, and at school she was fine. But at home, at the end of each day and every weekend, she wasn’t. I suspect she was holding it together at school, and letting it all out when back in the safe space of home. At the end of one particularly difficult weekend, I asked her if she knew that some children learnt at home with their mummies and daddies. She said “I want to do that”. And we’ve never looked back.

For us, home education gives us the opportunity for both more breadth (we study more subjects) and more depth (we know a lot about particular things) than traditional school. Both children are easily overstimulated and hate noisy, busy places (like a classroom with 30 children!). I often find that one Big Day Out has to be balanced with a quiet day at home, and I can see that five straight days of being in school must have been completely overwhelming for my then five year old daughter.

At their ages (now 5 and 7) the required academics can be achieved in very little time, which leaves hours for free play. Their capacity for play amazes me, and I love that they have this opportunity for extended play, together.

We don’t yet have the hard boundaries between ‘work’ and ‘play’ that school sets up from early on. My children love a maths game in a way that I never loved a maths lesson at school. Of course, sometimes people just have to get down to work, and lots of things that are valuable are also boring and difficult. But so far the children, generally speaking, have an excitement and interest in learning that is sometimes dulled by school.

So that’s our ‘why’, in brief. Over to you…

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Why you homeschool

Ruth, UK, The Everything I Know

Why do we home educate? To answer that question, I have to start just over sixteen years ago when my eldest was a baby. After struggling with being mum to a newborn who didn’t seem especially happy and who didn’t take to breastfeeding without a lot of help and support, I ‘discovered’ what was at the time called ‘Attachment Parenting’; essentially, lots of carrying him around in a sling, being very responsive to his needs, feeding him whenever he wanted and having him sleep in bed with me. It seems like common sense now, of course, but at the time the prevailing idea was that babies shouldn’t be allowed to boss their parents around (Supernanny and Gina Ford were the two big-name ‘experts’). The more I learnt about ‘Attachment Parenting’, the more home education - in particular, autonomous home ed, sometimes called ‘unschooling’ - came up as a logical continuation to the way I was already raising my baby. I looked into it. I made friends online (and one ‘in real life’) who home educated. It seemed to make so much sense! Unfortunately, his father (from whom I’d just split, but who still had a lot of say in how I parented our son) was dead against it. In the end, my eldest went to school and stayed in school (he’s just finished his GCSEs and will be doing A Levels in college in September). Ten years after my eldest was born came my youngest. This time, my husband (in case it isn’t obvious, he is a different man to my eldest’s father) was open to the idea of home ed. I gave up my job (as a Learning Support Assistant in our local primary school - the one my son attended at that time) and became a full-time mum with a view to home educating our daughter. (I very much anticipated we would become unschoolers.) The worldwide situation when my daughter became of compulsory education age was very different to that when it had been my son. We were still emerging from a global pandemic. The world seemed to have ‘shrunk’ to a large extent. People were still wary of meeting up. Home education had changed, too; it was no longer the preserve of a small group of often quite radical people; it had almost ‘gone mainstream’, as many people who had done it reluctantly during covid lockdowns realised that actually, their children were happier at home. Home education became simultaneously less and more lonely; more people were doing it, but the reasons more disparate; more mainstream, but more individual, too. And my daughter was a very different child to my son. In quite a short space of time, home education turned from a choice we were trying to a necessity, as it became clearer and clearer that my daughter had inherited my neurotype (I had not long myself been diagnosed as autistic). If we had sent her to school, she’d have drowned without support from someone in the type of job I used to do (and it is a real battle to qualify for that kind of support). Her distress behaviour was often hard for other children around her too, and I have even seen children like my daughter being restrained as a last resort in school. It became obvious that school wouldn’t work for her. But also, unschooling wasn’t providing her with anything near the kind of structure and routine she needed in her life. With a little reluctance, we changed to a more ‘semi-structured’ way of learning, with a loose timetable, and even some morning ‘lessons’ (more like the type of one-to-one work I used to do with school pupils). She’s definitely been happier as a result. So ‘why do we home educate?’ doesn’t have a clear-cut answer for us. I have definitely found it more of a struggle than I thought I would, at times, and whilst simultaneously realising that my daughter wouldn’t flourish in a school setting. It means it feels like we’re doing it much more out of necessity than out of choice. But goodness me there are joyous moments too. My daughter has turned out to be a fantastic writer with a beautiful turn of phrase in her sentences; she is starting to develop special interests; she has a small but lovely friendship circle too. I do not know if home education will be a long-term thing, or whether, come secondary school, we might see if the nurture group at the school my son has recently finished has a place for my daughter. There’s a lot of uncertainty ahead! But for now, I’m sure this is right for all of us.

Shane Upchurch

My wife was 1 of 5 siblings that were homeschooled. I went to public school as both my parents worked full time and I remember hearing my Mom talk about the stereotypical homeschool child being awkward etc. so it never really got my attention until I met her, and surprise surprise, she wasn’t weird at all!

Through the years in talking to her about her experience with homeschool, especially as compared to the few years she did spend in the public school system it just sounded so fun, not to mention so much more efficient. The number one thing she was so confused about when she did finally go to school during her high school years is why it took so long. She had such a better grasp on time management and she couldn’t understand why school would often take 6+ hours when she could get through all the material at home in less than half.

It was her dream to be a stay at home Mom so she could raise our son and so when he came along, so did some other major World changing events (the pandemic) that made me step back and really look at my career path and what I wanted out of it. It was time for a change and I knew that whatever I chose I wanted to be able to support our family in a way where she could stay at home. At that time she was a full-time Occupational Therapy Assistant, so I made the jump to a new career path and it helped me to make that dream a reality.

It occurred to me one day that the amount of time a child spends at school is equivalent, if not more, in a day to what they spend at home, and so essentially they’re being raised by their peers and teachers, and I didn’t like that idea. Why have a kid if you have little sway over the culture and experience they have growing up that eventually leads to them becoming an adult? It just didn’t add up and again seemed weird to have a kid and then just send them away everyday for someone else to deal with. That was reason number 1 for me. I wanted us to raise him to be the adult we wanted to see more of in the world.

Secondly, the efficiency part I mentioned. I’m a product of the public school system, and I didn’t go to a great one so I knew what it had to offer, and I knew we’d have to try pretty hard to do worse. Both in terms of the quality of the education and in the breadth of the education. Like I said, my wife and her siblings were usually done with ‘school’ in 3 hour or less each day which meant more time for play, exploring, and adventures and we both felt like you learn just as much, if not more, through those avenues as you do looking at overhead projections or listening to your classmates stumble through reading sections of a text book.

Thirdly, just from a safety point of view it seems like a no-brainer that kids in any school these days are always at risk. Whether it’s a fellow student that’s been picked on too much or a crazy adult who isn’t right in the head walking in with a loaded weapon, it’s clear that schools are unfortunately prime targets for innocent victims.

Those are the 3 major reason that we’re going this route. To be honest, as an engineer I’m really excited to teach him about Math and Science too. My wife is an outdoor girl who loves books so she’s got most of the other subjects covered as well, and like I said it’s always been her dream so she’s ecstatic. That sums it up, sorry for the rambling.

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If you didn’t send me your ‘why’ but would like to join in, please add your own reasons for choosing to home educate in the comments. I would love to hear from you!

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Emily Hess

I  grew up homeschooled, but found myself a public school mom (and spouse—my husband is an assistant principal in a public high school). The little local elementary school we had our ASD diagnosed son in was a good fit for the first two years, but the last year has been hellish. A new classroom structure paired with weird district politics resulted in frequent meltdowns, expressions of despair, and early dismissals for my son. We received a letter two days after school ended that our son’s transfer hadn’t been renewed. My husband and I decided our son needed a break from the institutional school system, and decided to homeschool. 

I knew that homeschool was the right choice, but I was nervous. My own homeschooling experience hadn’t always been a good one; I loved school when mom eventually sent us. But as the summer has continued, I’ve made the realization that I don’t have to homeschool the same way my mother did (I prefer more structure than she had... against the grain, I know), and I’ve found myself getting excited as I assembled curriculum and made a plan. We’re homeschooling for the first time this year, and I’m still a little nervous, but also very hopeful. 

Katherine, home educating in Cambodia, Chronically Cross Cultural

So for us it was just the cheapest option. School is 100s of usd per month. More than we pay on rent.

Homeschooling can be pretty much free. Even if I bought the most expensive curriculum it would still be cheaper than school.

Before I realised this we had already looked into homeschooling for other reasons, language, location. But it came down to money. Since then we ve found we need the flexiblity around our health and work too.

Mary-Ann Horley, UK, Home Ed Resources Newsletter

I had always known homeschooling was reasonably doable as I knew a few young sportspeople who did it. 

Neither my husband or myself had a great time in school, and my parents didn't either, so we thought let’s not have a third generation have his life blighted by bullying and generally not fitting in. Maybe he would have been OK, maybe he wouldn’t, but you can't A/B test your child!

If we end up with a young person who is not afraid of people and genuinely looks forward to seeing his friends and meeting new people then it will have been worth it - it seems to be working so far.

We also both feel that there is not much in the education system for those who are intelligent but practical, and I am very progressive in some ways and traditional in others. No teacher wants me in there bending their ear every week about my pet theories and I have only one kid to consider not 30...

Marilu

My daughter has celiac disease, which for her comes with a lot of bathroom issues that are hard to manage at school. Rather than risk embarrassment or bullying, we are homeschooling her until her symptoms become more manageable.

Ruth Gaskovski, School of the Unconformed

Ever since our first child was born almost 18 years ago, my husband and I were fully dedicated to spending time with her, talking walks with her, reading to her, and tending her curiosity in the world. Our daughter would have been 3.5 years old when starting kindergarten, spending an entire day away at the school across from our home—a drastic change to the way we had been fully sharing our daily lives. It seemed intrinsically off to us to pass her on to another ‘authority’ at such a young age. As kindergarten is not mandatory in Canada, we decided to use the following year teaching her at home, while also learning as much about homeschooling as possible.  

While we initially shared many of the common concerns of parents embarking on this journey (will their academics suffer? what about socialization? what will the family say?), we found confirmation that homeschooling was a very possible - and even highly desirable - educational choice particularly in two books: Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Trained Mind and Susan Schaeffer Macaulay’s For the Children’s Sake. 

We decided that homeschooling was going to remain our educational choice for several reasons:

• We wanted our children to grow up with family and faith as their reference point, mother and father helping them to make sense of the world, ceaselessly answering all their questions.  As educator John Taylor Gatto aptly stated, “The curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life”. 

• It seemed that homeschooling offered both better academics and better socialization opportunities. Time was used more effectively, leaving more time for play. Areas of strength and weakness were easily identified and offered opportunity for accelerated learning or additional support as needed. Social play happened with children of a variety of ages, rather than in strictly segregated age groups, and our children also grew accustomed to interacting with adults and seniors on a regular basis. These insights led us to a simple answer whenever people asked us why we chose to homeschool: For better academics and better socialization. This often produced intrigue in the questioner, and helped us to dispel many of the falsely held assumptions about homeschooling.

• Homeschooling allowed us to pass on our native languages. Since they were born, I spoke to the children in Swiss-German, my husband and their grandmother (who lived with us) spoke in Macedonian, and all others spoke to them in English. They thus grew up fluently trilingual, which would not have been possible had our children been away at school all day.

• When they started entering high school age, homeschooling allowed our children to pursue specific interests that would not have been offered at a regular school. For example, our son was able to study Norse and Greek mythology, Arthurian Legend, and Medieval English Literature, while our daughter focused her high school years on languages studying German, French, Latin, and Chinese. 

• We knew that there is no neutral ground in education. All curricula, teaching, and learning structures come with a worldview firmly cleaved to them. We wanted our children to learn, not within a rigid, confined structure that encouraged conformity and automatic reaction to authority, but rather in a rich environment that would help them grow fully into their unique personalities.

• Finally, just like it is impossible to pinpoint why exactly it is you love your spouse after more than 20 years of marriage, our reasons for homeschooling have grown like an expansive, manifold network of roots that spread throughout all aspects of our life. In a world filled with uncertainty and upheaval, homeschooling has become for us a way of life for which we are immensely grateful, grounding us in family, faith, and reality. 

A mother home educating in the UK

To give you some context, our daughter is about to turn 6 and she has never been to a nursery or any other institution of the like. I just felt that no one (especially the underpaid, usually very young nursery staff members) would look after our only daughter the way we would. I wanted to potty train her myself and to give her lots of time with me in those formative years. I truly wish for her to be emotionally healthy and grow up without any major trauma. Psychologists tend to agree that adults with most complex issues are those who grew up without an emotionally present parent (mainly mother). My husband is rather conservative when it comes to family values and was happy for me to be the main carer and for him to be the breadwinner. Both of us believe this to be a solid family model so in a way keeping our daughter at home and not sending her to reception at the age of 4 (she is a July baby) was a natural progression. I was born and brought up in Poland where children used to start school at the age of 7 so personally for me to start school at 4 is rather early.

- I wanted for our child to have the freedom to eat when she is hungry, go to the toilet when she needs to go (without asking for permission), stay in a cozy home environment when it is very cold or make the most of the beautiful weather when spring comes. 

- I wanted for her little body to feel comfortable (sat on the couch under a blanket with a book rather then on a tiny spot on the carpet with her legs crossed)

- I wanted for her to be isolated/protected from those children who come from dysfunctional homes and display disfunctional behaviour and start inappropriate conversations 

- I wanted for us to operate on our own timetable (go on holidays when the prices aren’t sky high, visit places when they aren’t too crowded, sleep in when we feel like it)

- I wanted for our girl to learn as slowly/quickly as she is ready to without worrying about where her classmates are at

- I wanted for her to grow up without constant competition 

- I don’t like how much sugar kids get at school!

- I don’t like that at primary level in the UK kids are not taught by specialists. They are taught by people with a degree in teaching and class management, not a degree in any particular subject.

- I want for her to get enough rest, enough freedom of movement rather then constantly lining up, sitting still etc. 

- I wanted for her to be at home enough to learn all kinds of life skills

- I also truly believe that she can learn way more whilst with us without the pressure of tests

Here is a caveat... Our daughter wanted to go to school! When I heard this for the first time, I thought my heart would break. But after a few conversations, I understood what she needed and we found a group for her which serves as a school substitute and everyone is happy.

Robin, UK home educating mother

We chose not to put our boys (13 and 11) in mainstream schools because the educational system doesn’t follow the robust body of evidence about how young children learn (I’m a doctor, and my husband is a lawyer). The epidemic of poor mental and physical health among older schoolchildren is also a real concern to us. We’re fortunate to be able to live on one parent’s salary in order to offer our boys a wide feast of books and ideas and experiences. Most of all, we do it because it’s such a wonderfully rewarding (and intellectually stimulating!) life for the whole family.

Ben and Susie Wales, New Zealand

Homeschooling benefits our children and gives us joy. At home, we frame all learning in the context of our Christian worldview. The world and everything in it belongs to God. We see education as a lifelong pursuit of understanding God, His world, and His ways. There are also many other benefits to homeschooling. Our children develop their intellect through greater amounts of time spent in reading and imaginative play. We give focused attention to individual weaknesses while accelerating our children in their areas of strength. We form close bonds through communal learning and shared experiences. We also regularly collaborate with other homeschool families of varied ages; this reinforces learning as a way of life that transcends age. Lastly, our schedule is flexible: we freely take trips, visit friends, spend time outside, and rest. Homeschooling is challenging, but the clear benefits to our children and the deep joy it brings our family make it worth it. 

Mary Wall, S. Australia

I homeschool my children because:

*It offers them a freedom-filled childhood that the schedule and fit of school life doesn’t allow

*I love all the extra time with them

*They get to experience real life with me, day-in and day-out whether doing a weekly shopping trip, running errands or visiting loved ones

*I get to learn along with my children. The field trips we go on are often just as fun and enlightening for me.

*It is allowing them to deep-dive and spend time on their interest areas. For one of my children, that has recently been pipe organs, so these are often unexpected things that light them up.

*I can cater for their individual learning styles and take subjects at the pace they each need. No need for things like reports or testing that take the joy out of learning.

*I can prioritise wonder and try and install a life-long love for learning, leading to an adult that approaches all the world with interest.

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The photo for this post came from Sasha Freemind via Unsplash