Thinking About Homeschooling Your Kids?

The recent headlines about where our school system is headed can and should be making you uncomfortable.  Never in the history of our country have we had so much forced into our classrooms that we, as parents, weren’t given a chance to weigh in on. Things we don’t agree with, things that make our skin crawl.   As parents, we have the RIGHT and responsibility to make those decisions for our kids.

If this describes your feelings and your kids are in school, I don’t think it’s a stretch for me to say that now might be a good time to consider homeschooling.

When people find out that we homeschool our kids, they often think that we are control freaks or we are insane.  I’m sure we might be either of those things sometimes, but really, we are just like you…parents who love our kids and want what is best for them.  Homeschooling is something that helps us do that.

We had these kids because we wanted them. We WANT to parent our kids.  We WANT to watch them grow up. We WANT to decide what is best for them. We WANT help them become who they were created to be.

The problem is that so many of those who work in the school system don’t see it that way.  They believe that THEY know what’s best for our kids.  How is that even possible?  They don’t know our kids like we do, and they certainly don’t love them like we do. There is a fierce love and protection that comes with being a child’s parent that no teacher or administration can even begin to copy.

It’s not as important that you are “highly educated” as it is that you inherently know and love your child more than anyone.  No matter what anyone says, YOU are most likely the best person to school your kids.  When it’s all said and done, it’s less about the curriculum and so much more about the people our kids become.  And this is where having our kids with us rather than in school for those 7-ish hours a day can make a huge difference.  

Homeschoolers have many reasons for homeschooling, but often they are similar.

Here is a list of reasons that we homeschool: 

We like our kids.

We want to spend time with them.

We want to be able to speak into their lives and help them grow into productive, healthy adults.

Life is full of hurt and disappointment that we have no control over, so we want the chance to protect them from the hurts and disappointments that are unnecessary.

We want to know what is going into their minds…values, perspectives, and viewpoints.  We want the chance to discuss them along the way.

We don’t want to miss out on each and every developmental phase…even the ones that are hard.

We want our kids to have a childhood, to be able to run and play, ride their bikes, chase frogs, engage in the world around them be that nature or people.  We sometimes want them to be bored, because boredom often spurs on creativity.

We want our kids to be able to find their passion as early in life as possible, and we want to help them reach their goals.

We want to mine out the gems that are inside each of our kids in a natural and unhurried way.

We want to run on the schedule that works best for our family, and we want to have time to BE a family.   We don’t want to hurry our kids through their childhoods, but savor it alongside them.

We want our kids to become life long learners, not just taking in information and spitting back out for tests, but actually enjoying the process.

We don’t want to teach to a test, we want to teach for life.

If most or all of these resonate with your parent heart, I encourage you to consider homeschooling.  It will be the journey of a lifetime and one of the most valuable long term investments you will make into your kids’ lives.  You are more capable than you know and so are your kids!  

NOTE: Durenda has been homeschooling over 20 years (8 kids) and recently published a simple, mercifully short book on homeschooling called The Unhurried Homeschooler.   For more encouragement, go check it out at Amazon!

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *