Homeschooling Part One: When I Lost My Mind

I thought that I would do a series of posts related to our homeschooling.  Many of you have expressed an interest in the whys and hows of our education choice ("why do we do it?" "how do we do it?" "how much of a drinking habit have I developed because of this choice?" etc...).  Since it is a very broad subject and I don't want to risk completely boring you by writing one super long post about it, I've decided to break things up into smaller posts.  So...where to start? How about the beginning.

If you had asked me years ago if I would consider homeschooling my children I would have laughed. Hard. Really hard.  Why on earth would I do that when I could send them away for most of the day and make it someone else's problem to educate my child? Even before I had kids, I could see the merit in one day having them spend time in school. Peace! Quiet! "Me" time!  Then one day I found myself the mother of a school-age child and suddenly the decision wasn't so easy.  As with many aspects of motherhood, how I thought I'd do things and how I've actually ended up doing them has often been very different.

 One day my mom invited me to attend a Catholic Homeschooling Conference with her. We sat and listened to a couple of different speakers relay their experiences with homeschooling.  We also browsed the huge room filled with every educational book vendor imaginable.  But I was skeptical.  My mind was fairly closed when it came to this homeschooling business. I pictured denim skirt wearing, passenger van driving, country living families who never left the house and had only enough social skills to attend a yearly conference.  SO not me.  Not that there's anything wrong with denim skirts.  Or vans.  I have both.  Also, a house in the country sounds really nice.  But I digress...

A seed was planted that day.  During the three years or so after that conference I thought a lot about homeschooling.  It was an idea that crept in and out of my mind until I decided I needed to learn more about it.  So I read various books and articles and talked with whoever I could find that had experience with it.  I also attended another conference on my own during the year that my oldest would start kindergarten.  The most important thing I did, however, was pray.  My prayers mostly sounded something like, "really, God? HOME schooling? I don't know about that..."

Like I said, I was skeptical.  It went against the "norm."  The idea of being responsible for my children's education was scary, to say the least.  But through all of my reading, research and prayer one thing became clear - I AM responsible for the education of my children.  The choice to send school-age children outside the home for their education doesn't absolve us of our responsibility as parents.  WE are the primary educators of our children.    And through the graces that come with the Sacrament of Marriage, we are given what we need to follow through with this.  Now, that doesn't mean everyone has to home school their children.  But really, we all do - it's only a matter of to what extent.  The day we become parents is the day that we start teaching our children.  It starts with things like learning the difference between day and night to using silverware to sharing with others.  Whether it's through concerted effort or purely from our example, our children are always learning from us.

So after MUCH prayer, research etc... I decided to do it.  I home schooled my oldest for kindergarten, then after a year in public school began homeschooling again for second grade. I currently home school all of them - third grade, first grade and preschool/kindergarten.  Is it easy? No. Is it the right thing for our family at this time in our lives? Absolutely. Will I continue through high school? No idea.

That's the fairly long-winded answer to the question of when I arrived at a decision to home school.  As for the "why?" and "how?" - you'll have to stay tuned for future posts to find out my answers to that!

Thanks again for reading and, as always, I appreciate your comments!  I hope you're all having a great week!

~ Dori