Why We Chose To Homeschool
For the first 20+ years of my life I thought homeschoolers were weird. I knew one boy who was homeschooled growing up, and I thought he was…different {in retrospect, I realize it was his parents who were odd, but that is a story for another day}. In my mind, they didn’t get to do things like play basketball or go to prom. Two important life events in my teenager head.
Fast forward to when I’m 25. I’m pregnant with a little boy, and we move to the suburbs from our little city home. I yell from the rooftops that my little {still not born} baby will follow in my footsteps and attend Catholic school. I pooh pooh what everyone says about tuition thinking they are overreacting. There is no way it can be that expensive to send a child to school.
Then one day a very newborn Samuel and I were spending a hot summer day at the library. They had a brand new tuition guide! I’d prove all of those people who said preschool would cost $7,000 wrong.
Just kidding. No I won’t.
Oh, you were expecting me to say that we decided to homeschool because I’ve always dreamed of grading papers and teaching my own child long division? That is the opposite of how our decision went. We live in a not great school district. I’m not going to mince words and pretend that it is awesome, because it isn’t. The area where we live is good, but I’ve got issues with a few things {redistricting, anyone?}. Public school has never been an option for us. It was Catholic school or homeschool, and since homeschooling doesn’t cost $11,000 a year it won.
I can’t pick a single moment where we decided to homeschool. It was a process. We started out saying we were going to homeschool preschool. We could so do that. Then we added on kindergarten. I mean we’re both English majors, and I have a MBA, we’ve got this. We settled on keeping Samuel home until first grade. If we made it three years, and he didn’t need therapy by then because I had driven him crazy, we would celebrate.
Then I won tickets to the SouthEast Homeschool Convention. We went thinking we were set. Except we weren’t. That conference showed us we can homeschool even longer. Suddenly we were thinking that we could handle grade school too. I’d handle the main subjects, and Nathan would handle art {I can’t draw a stick person. Nathan has illustrated comic books…so yeah}. We bought the Heart of Dakota preschool program and a homeschool planner, and decided we had three years to get our acts together. We’re so on top of it. We would dominate homeschooling, and I’d probably win awards for being so awesome at teaching him how to use scissors and his alphabet.
photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography
Since then I’ve spent a lot of time researching homeschool, teaching styles, learning styles, and star-ing blog posts in my Google Reader. I’ve printed out worksheets {I have a folder called “future homeschool materials.” I’m hyper-organized, people.}, and I’ve bookmarked even more. The next three years are about us learning. It is overwhelming how much information there is, and I’ve taken it little by little to decide what I think will work for us and what won’t. I realized early on that if I let myself get overwhelmed I’d never get anything done.
When people start talking schools, and I say I’m homeschooling most people are shocked. I’ve heard everything from “you don’t look like a homeschooler” {What do homeschoolers look like, and why can’t they wear Lilly Pulitzer?} to “won’t you get sick of your kid?” {No, because obviously he’s super fun.} Most people think I’m crazy. Funny, because I always thought homeschoolers were crazy too. If it doesn’t go well? There’s always wine and ice cream.
Stephanie is a SAHM to one energetic little 10 month old boy named Samuel. She and her husband, Nathan, live in Roswell, Georgia, but are from Pennsylvania and Ohio respectively. Stephanie was not homeschooled, and she admits she thoughts homeschoolers were weird for the first 90% of her life. She writes The Brunette Foodie, a food blog for everyday families, and you can find her on Twitter and Facebook. Loves: a good book, volunteering, Jesus, and running. Dislikes: spicy food, bugs, and Atlanta traffic.
“For the first 20+ years of my life I thought homeschoolers were weird”
I think this is true. I can’t wait to begin being weird myself next year 🙂
I enjoyed your post. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for having me! This was such a fun piece to write.
LOVED THIS!
I can so relate! Before we had kids we were all set to send them to public school, and then we moved. To an area that doesn’t have a great school system. What to do?
Sophie just turned three and we can’t afford any of the preschools in the area, so I’m going to homeschool for for preschool {and I hope} continue aftewards. Seriously nervoous about this. I have 3 months to get my act together and a hubby and is kind-of of board. Oh well, life’s a journey, right?!?
I fought homeschooling kicking and screaming. I don’t drink wine, or any alcohol, so I just have to like my kids. I thought homeschoolers were weird too. That is why I fought it. Our oldest made it to the 6th grade in public school! On the positive, 3 of our 6 will never step foot in a ps classroom. 🙂 Great post!
i can sooo relate to this post! i thought hs-ers were totally weird too 🙂 but i think you’re right…odd parents can produce odd children too 🙂 now i’m happy to be homeschooling…so glad i changed my mind!
Oh wow we have alot in common. I live in Jasper GA right now but we are moving to Savannah in the fall. I will be homeschooling son 4 and daughter 5. Im orginally from PA. Are you going to the expo in June? I already got my tickets going all three days and very nervous.
Great post Stephanie! It’ always nice to see how homeschoolers found their way to their calling. I love seeing the journey. Thanks for sharing!
Oops! *It’s…my ‘s’ is sticking on my keyboard 🙂
I love your voice with this! So many times people think that there has to be some deep rooted, philosophical reason behind why you are homeschooling, but that is not always the case. You are a great example of that! We started homeschooling because school was just not cutting it for our daughter. We did not have some deep rooted religious reason, we were not try to buck the system, our daughter was just being failed and we figured we couldn’t do worse than they were!
Eating ice cream while drinking wine isn’t bad, is it? I do that, but them I’m weird. We homeschool our daughter too because we’re in a not-so-good school district and private school is too spendy. We did go through private pre-k and tried public k until we ran into three-day out of school suspension during the seventh week, and a vice principal who suggested medicating our daughter would be a good route. I don’t remember thinking homeschoolers were weird. I remember the stigma of kids who dropped out of “regular” school and had to go to Gateway. They were thought of as worse than “weird.” It took quite a few years to chip away at my skepticism of homeschooling. I found a couple of sweet mentors who homeschool their children, and we now love our whole lifestyle of education. It’s amazing how confidence will present itself right when we need it, in a friend’s encouragement, in a conference, in educational websites, and in blogs. Thank you for your blog.