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Why Homeschool?

Growing up, I loved school. I was good at it. A people-pleaser from the start who lived in a home where the adults vacillated between impossible to please or downright indifferent, I knew I could count on school to be the place where my efforts were validated and appreciated. I became friends with several teachers, babysitting for their children, participating in the clubs they advised, and seeking help as I applied to colleges.

Being a teacher was my dream. I wanted to inspire young minds, ignite a love for learning, and help kids discover their interests and passions just like some of my favorite teachers did for me. But the job wasn't what I thought it would be. Sure, I loved my students, and we did some incredible projects together. I was nominated for (and won!) several accolades, including a Disney Creativity in Teaching award, and was awarded grants for projects that helped facilitate things like self-publishing a book of stories my students had written and throwing a launch party at a local bookstore, sponsoring a rookie musher in the Iditarod and learning to sew the special booties the dogs wore to protect their paws from the ice, and painting a life-sized game board on the ceiling tiles of my classroom so the kids could “play the room.”

More and more, though, instead of spending most of my days nurturing curious minds and fostering creativity, I found myself required to administer an increasing number of tests, formative assessments, and screeners. My focus was forced to shift from building up kids, so they knew how to learn and achieve incredible things, to fixing problems, addressing deficits, and overcoming challenges. I had to find out what was wrong with each kiddo so I could figure out how to fix them. I hated it, but I didn't know there was an alternative at the time.

I left my teaching job to write full-time from home, thinking I'd work while my kids were in school, and then be there for them at the end of the school day to spend the afternoon and evenings nurturing their love of learning. Looking back, I can see how I was setting up the perfect situation for a future of homeschooling. I was taking on freelance assignments, writing books for teachers, parents, and kids, and had time during the day to make meals from scratch and bake cookies for an afterschool snack.

As I researched for my assigned freelance projects, text book chapters, and classroom resources, I began to read work by John Taylor Gatto, Diane Ravitch, Charlotte Mason, Sir Ken Robinson, and more. My kids were these itty-bitty, curious beings whom I wanted more for, but didn't know what else to do besides send them to preschool, then move them on to our public elementary school, and enrich their brains and creativity once they were back home. It took watching my son Trevor's love of learning fade to wake me up to other options.

The Gift

When we walked out of that school for the last time after stopping by to grab a few things Trevor had realized were in the classroom, and with permission from his first-grade teacher to say goodbye to the class, we ran into his kindergarten teacher in the hall. She asked if Trevor was going home sick, and he told her that he was going to be homeschooled from now on.

I braced myself for her comments and was surprised when she bent down to give him a hug, then give me one in turn. She had tears in her eyes when she looked at us and said, “this will be a great thing for you Trevor. I can't wait to see all you do. Please keep in touch with me.” She gave me another hug and whispered that I was doing the right thing for him, and then walked toward her classroom.

Over the years, we've had a mix of positive interactions like the one with Trevor's kindergarten teacher, and negative ones from others. I kept the kids in focus and did my best to let all opinions roll off my back in those early weeks as I knew in my gut we were doing the right thing, but still didn't know other homeschoolers. It wasn't always easy, and I'm much better about ignoring naysayers now.

Homeschooling has been the greatest gift I didn't know I needed. There have been so many advantages to bringing my son home, keeping the other three home, and learning alongside them for all these years. We're closer than I can imagine us being if they'd been gone all day, five days a week. They appreciate their siblings, and our family truly enjoys one another. But there are so many more advantages to homeschooling than just my own personal love of spending time with my family and engaging in a child-focused, strengths-based, creativity-rich, and critical-thinking fueled homeschool.

Cognitive Advantages

My sweet kiddo Logan struggled in a lot of areas when she was young. She was a sensory seeker, and always needed more. More movement, more noise, more stimulation, more, more, more. As we tried to figure out how to help her in the early years, she visited an occupational therapist, a child psychologist, a physical therapist, and others. The preschool and elementary years were filled with appointments, therapies, play groups, and supports to allow her to receive the help she needed in all the different areas in which she struggled.

She was eventually diagnosed with an alphabet soup, including sensory processing disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, dyslexia, and auditory processing disorder, while also displaying signs of creative giftedness and ADHD. She's a puzzle.

Because we homeschool and have the flexibility of designing our approach to learning to fit the kids we have, and by the time she came along, we'd been doing it a while, we decided to take a better late than early approach to Logan's education. All those appointments took time and effort and energy. Sometimes we'd be out of the house for hours and hours, five days a week. The other kids would do their schoolwork in the lobby of whatever office we were in while I entertained toddler Isaac and Logan met with her therapists.

The last thing she needed when we returned home was more work after her therapists worked on fine- and gross-motor skills, handwriting, worry, anticipation, input for the sensory seeking, and talked her through whatever big, scary things were currently keeping her up at night. And her dyslexia made it difficult for her to do work independently as reading and writing were tough, especially after using her brain so diligently at her appointments.

Instead, we gave her time to play once we returned home. We set her loose in the backyard with her brothers and sister, the neighbors who were home at the end of their school day, and the dogs. We put aside the math, handwriting, language arts, science, and history. All formal lessons were tabled, despite the current (Dad) and former (Mom) classroom teachers worrying she was “falling behind” her same-aged traditionally schooled peers, academically.

We didn't drill and practice math facts, have her write paragraphs, fill out lab manuals, or prove she could read through a list of sight words. Instead, we bought her art supplies and showed her how to look up drawing tutorials online because she loved to draw and imagine. We encouraged her to tell us stories and draw them while we wrote her dictated words on the pages of the little blank books she filled. We let go of the need to push, plug the holes in the content areas, and leaned heavily into the things she loved to do, was good at, and where she wanted to be.

Was this easy? No, but she thrived. When it was time for therapy or to work on the at-home exercises or tasks, she jumped in with enthusiasm because she'd spent so much time on the things she was good at, and her confidence soared.

Homeschooling isn't just an alternative to traditional education; it's a dynamic and flexible approach that you can tailor to suit your kiddos' unique needs and interests. One of the most obvious advantages of homeschooling is being able to personalize your children's academic experience to meet their individual needs. If your child is having difficulty in certain areas, is highly gifted, has ADHD or another learning challenge, or has any other neurodiversity, homeschooling can be adjusted to adapt to those needs. You and I can modify the curriculum so it fits our kiddo's preferred learning style, ensuring that our child receives the necessary support as well as the necessary challenges in order to flourish.

It puts us in the driver's seat when it comes to our child's education. We can handpick the curriculum and resources that best resonate with our child's interests and learning style. This means our child can progress at a pace that suits their individual readiness, rather than being...