We have four children and my younger three have been completely homeschooled. My eldest attended day care as a baby and toddler and private Christian 4K before we began homeschooling, then one month of DOD 3rd grade.
We have adapted and evolved as homeschoolers over the years, meeting the needs and desires of our kids with their changing interests as we moved every two to four years with the military. It’s been a lot.
As proactive as I try to be, anticipating issues that may arise, it didn’t really occur to me to have a plan or speech prepared if or when my kids asked to go to school. I mean, don’t lots of kids who attend public or private school ask to stay home all the time for various reasons? And those parents probably just laugh and tell their kids to hurry up or they’ll miss their bus. There isn’t even a discussion because school is mainstream and expected. Most families send their kids to school.
We try to have discussions rather than shut down questions, but sometimes it’s very hard to articulate if I don’t have preparation. I’ve said many things I regret and made egregious mistakes while parenting. I’m so glad we homeschooled and I would do it all again, with more confidence.
What if kids ask to go to school?
Here’s how we responded to our kids when they asked to attend public school.
Our eldest wanted to attend the DOD high school in Germany when she was about fifteen. We had a hard time during those teen years. Everything was a battle. I tried to reason with her. We had different educational values than other families. We had so much freedom and traveled and learned what and how we wanted. The school schedule wouldn’t allow any freedom or absences or tardiness. I reminded her how miserable she was in that month of third grade, how bored she was in preK. She just dug in her heels and did everything to thwart our final homeschooling years.
We were a bit isolated in our small German village, but used our free schedule to travel regularly around Europe and took plenty of day trips. She participated with a small drama theater on base and we did activities with the homeschool group. Her good friend attended the school; they would most likely have been a year apart and rarely seen each other during the school day, but that didn’t matter to my daughter. We had almost completed my homeschool agenda of academics at the time she wanted to attend school. She would have been repeating courses or wasting time. We discussed unfair dress codes and how she would have to remove her piercings and keep her hair natural colored, but she said she was actually ok with that, but she won’t do it at a job now. I also worried she wouldn’t take it seriously and drop back out at the first struggle or get into trouble at the school. We had a horrible experience during a middle school math week in Utah and I really didn’t want to give a public school any power over my child.
To me, it felt like she just needed to fit in and be mainstream. She felt she was missing out. She thought she would get to socialize and make more friends. She wanted to experience the milestones and social aspects of school – dances, clubs, graduation, prom. She did attend some dances in Germany and in Ohio when we moved back to the States. She even flew to Canada to attend prom with friends.
When we moved to Ohio, she started college early and worked part time and complained how ignorant her classmates were. She felt left out and overeducated and more grown up and independent than her peers.
My eldest is now twenty, almost 21, and still regrets she didn’t go to school. She feels like an outcast when her friends reminisce about school and she doesn’t know what their words and phrases mean so she can’t join in their conversations. She doesn’t feel special, but overeducated. She quit college and is working full time and moved out last November. She has said that homeschooling ruined her life. I feel awful. And there’s no way I can make amends or fix this.
While there are many, many things I wish I had done differently as a parent and teacher, homeschooling is still our choice as a family.
It’s hard when school is the expectation of society. People ask my kids, “What grade are you in? Where do you go to school?” and it becomes embarrassing sometimes. It seems more acceptable to homeschool after this last year, but it’s still odd and different. I realize we are in a unique circumstance in our ability for me to stay home to teach our kids. The pandemic certainly highlighted many issues with our society, education being an important one.
Our third child asked to attend school after we had lived in Ohio a few years. It felt like the same issues all over again. I was a little more prepared this time around to field the questions and manage the discussion. We affirmed them about their feelings. We expressed our family and educational values. We explained why we homeschool and why we don’t choose school. I further reiterated our freedoms with our schedule and curriculum. We discussed bullying, teacher control, discriminatory curriculum, gun violence, 20 minute lunch periods, public school timeline, overcrowdedness, lack of funding, unfair dress codes. We expressed concerns about how schools don’t protect or respect LGBTQ+ kids. They would probably have to keep their hair natural colored. I am very concerned about school violence and we really focused on those issues that have increased the last few years. They are more social than my other two kids at home, but school isn’t really conducive to socializing. School looks glamorous and fun on TV and in movies, but that’s certainly not reality.
Then the pandemic hit and I felt like I could breathe a sigh of relief because no one attended school for months. Our lifestyle didn’t change that much. While we couldn’t go out and that felt suffocating at times, we didn’t have to vastly adapt like school families did.
We have a hard time finding like-minded friends for myself and the kids. I refuse to compromise my values or put myself and my kids in a potentially dangerous social situation with families who express gun rights, white supremacy, capitalism, and homophobia.
It’s frustrating that many parents don’t allow their children to be active online. During the pandemic, my kids would have and could have developed some online friendships but many parents refuse their kids access to social media like Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, TikTok, Discord. I understand their hesitancy, but it makes it harder on teens who want friends.
We are now (possibly) over that hump. I think my kids are more on board now about homeschooling. We are striving to give our kids opportunities and experiences that wouldn’t be possible if they attended school. We’ve gotten back into our extra-curricular classes like art, aerial gymnastics, and baseball. Their neighborhood friend is coming back around and they just picked up where they left off. We aren’t so depressed and isolated like we were all last year.
As more people get vaccinated, there will be safer field trips, outings, get-togethers, park days.
My middle two kids attended an art camp for a week this month and were so exhausted getting up early and being out all day every day. I can’t imagine what it would be like if my kids were gone all day every day.
My youngest, our son, has no desire to attend school or co-op or homeschool activities.
Those who are raised with rules and parental control may blame their parents when their lives go off the rails because they had little sense of agency or responsibility as children. They believe children require external domination.
Iris Chen
Each child is different with different social needs.
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I’m sorry that your child feels she missed out but I think many people suffer from the other side of the hill syndrome. The other side must always some how have been better if only I’d had the chance.
I would have had… I would have done… The truth is nobody really knows if any of that would have happened. For many there is an idealized version of what the “social” side of school is like for kids from K-12. For all to many kids the reality is not nearly as great as the fantasy. There are always trade offs.
I also suspect post pandemic there will be fewer kids with the experiences your older daughter missed out on as it will take time for these traditions to resume even as kids get back to in person learning. Perhaps fewer people will remind her of those big events she “missed.”
yes, I do think more families will appreciate real home education as an option or not as weird as it once was.
I have homeschooled my children for 11 year, my oldest the only one to experience anything different. She struggled the first couple of years with wanting to be back and she (now done) sometimes expresses the feeling of having missed out of the social norms. Like you, we listen to and validate her feelings, point out the benefit to staying home as opposed to the cons of systemic schooling, and rationalize with her about why we’re making the choice to homeschool.
Beyond that, as a libertarian/anarchist, I also tried to focus on building strong, independently minded children who could learn to take the negative and turn it into a positive. Whatever they felt they were missing out on we tried to get to the root of what the real need was and satisfy it through creatively thinking up alternatives.
Also, I have long time been aware of groups like the Coalition for Responsible Home Education – made up of a bunch bitter, winey “homeschooling ruined my life” people now fighting for massive regulatory legislation. I shamelessly pointed my daughter the organizers bios and asked if life is perfect? Of course the answer is, “No”. Are there cons to homeschooling? “Yes”. Are there cons to public/private school? “Yes”. Are cons to everything? “Yes”.
How are you going to respond to the things in life that weren’t perfect?
Are you going to let it make you bitter, resentful, “victimized”, or depressed?
Or, will you find what you can be grateful for and turn it to your advantage.
She didn’t like what they allowed themselves to be consumed by and how it was causing them to want to use the government to affect everyone when not everyone has their experience. It was shortly there after that she turned her own attitude around and focused on the pros to her experience to her contentment.
But, I feel for you mama – my middle child doesn’t want to go to school, but also fights me on everything. Some people just have a strong will and rebellious streak and there’s a reason for it that will eventually aid them in their journeys. Good luck in your homeschooling and I hope your daughter lets go of her bitterness as I also hope, that as she grows she find experiences in life that actually make her grateful for her life experience.
Coming to you from the Creatively Crafty link party
some lovely thoughts to think about. Thank you!
Interesting read! As a former Elementary librarian in a big city in the Intermountain West it was interesting reading your perspectives on what public schools are. Many of your concerns were interesting because they reminded me of things that you see in the national news, not necessarily things you see on the ground in schools. While I worked in a high poverty school we had very little school violence, hair color was really not much of an issue, dress code was really more no deep cleavage and short-shorts. That can be really distracting in school. No gang t-shirts, no drug t-shirts. I can certainly see the benefits of homeschooling as far as being able to tailor curriculum to kids with their various needs or interests. Our 5th/6th graders had PE 5 xs per week, we had lots of great extra programs, music, arts, after school free classes (keyboarding, poetry, dancing, etc.) .
Sounds like there were lot of things that they missed out that are probably considered “normal” cultural things. Like you said proms, clubs, fun group activities. I know we had some people who pulled their kids out of our public school to home-school them, then eventually brought them back because they couldn’t really manage it very well. I think it’s just a personal choice but hopefully fear isn’t the overriding factor in keeping them home. And kids are going to grow up, move away and you will have an empty nest at some point, that’s the reality of life.
I was lucky that I worked in a school where I was able to stay home in the summer spring/ winter/ breaks with my own 3 kids. Those are great times! I however worked outside the home full-time so when they were in school I was working. You worry about your kids, then you call in sick to stay home with them when they’re sick and life goes on. I’m not going to get into the whole pandemic thing because that’s a whole different issue to me.
I think there are a lot of parents who are real concerned about online social media because there are lots of traps out there. Somebody that your child thinks is a really nice teenager in Arizona turns out to be a fifty-three-year-old pedophile. Or a scam artist trying to bilk them out of money to buy something, who knows? That’s one of the great things about seeing other kids in diverse groups is you can actually get to meet them, talk to them, get to know them and their families. At home there’s none of that. My experience has also been that some homeschooled families tend to have a narrow focus of interest. When they only socialize with those other homeschool families they’re missing out on a lot of other options. Hopefully as your daughter matures as she will understand that you were just trying to do what you thought was best for your family. Having three grown girls I know sometimes you have to sit back and watch the train wreck, so to speak, and they do figure things out over time on their own. Great post it’s nice to see something so honest!
I attended public schools and taught in public and private middle and high schools for ten years, so it isn’t fearmongering or repeating national conservative media about schools that have us keep our kids home for school. All my in-laws are public school teachers. I experienced a lot of issues as a student and teacher in a variety of school environments regarding gangs, dress codes, drugs, bullying, LGBTQ and racial discrimination. As a school librarian, you probably had a privileged position not having to deal with many issues that classroom teachers do. I knew and know many teachers who are either oblivious to school issues or part of the problem themselves.
We see many of our parent peers with a narrow focus of interest regardless of where the children do school.
There are ways to keep kids safe online and one of the easiest, cheapest, best ways is to have continued conversations and relationship with kids and teens rather than, or in addition to, parent controls on devices or refusing to allow them access at all.
I have seen multiple sides to schooling and internet safety with its dangers.