Our homeschool story ~ part 2

A little disclaimer that I feel I need to share before I complete our story.  We are not anti-public school or anti-private school.  David and I both feel that the education of a child is a family’s personal decision.    Homeschooling is a decision that we have made for our family.  Please do not interpret our style of schooling as a judgement of any other type of schooling.  And that’s all I’m going to say about that… smile!

Please read part one of our story here. 

When we left off in our story, our oldest two boys were both in public school.  Our oldest was in first grade and having a wonderful educational experience.  Our younger son was just starting preschool and…

his experience was not so great.  He had just left a preschool at a local church that had been wonderful.  After two weeks in the new public school preschool setting, things were bad.  Our son had begun to regress on some physical skills that he had mastered years ago, he became withdrawn, and he became very angry.  And that was just very scary to us.

We felt we had lost our sweet little boy.

We talked with the teacher who just didn’t have a clue what we were talking about.  She just did not see these things that we were talking about other than, “Your child is just shy and very quiet”. 

We wanted our little boy back.  We wanted him to be happy again.  So we did the only thing we knew to do.

We prayed.

One day, I went to David and I told him that I felt we were being led to homeschool.  (Remember, he knew how much I did not want to homeschool.)  David told me that he was feeling the same exact thing.  When the two of us come together on an issue without even having talked about it…well, I can’t help but think that it is God leading us to it. 

We prayed some more about it…all the while, I was resisting it and struggling with it.  Finally, we made the decision to homeschool for one year and see what happened.  After that, we would re-evaluate and determine what to do.

And here we are almost seven years later and we are still homeschooling.

It has not been easy all of the time.  But I can tell you what it has done for our family:

• We got our little boy back.  He does not struggle with anger nor is he withdrawn any more.  He is a happy young man. 
• We are able to customize our children’s educational experiences to each child’s needs.  I am able to let those who need more time, have more time without getting left behind.  My children who need challenges are given challenges. 
• We are able to disciple our children through the years as we shape their hearts toward God.  We hope that the strong roots they are building now will help them to stand strong as young adults in the world.  Are our children perfect and will they be perfect adults?  No.  Homeschooling does not insure that our children will be “perfect Christians”.  Our prayer is that by being so in touch with our children’s personality struggles & strengths that we will be able to lead them to God who will show them how to use these strengths or overcome their struggles. 
• We have slowed down.  We are able to enjoy each other and get to know each other.
• I,as the teacher, have learned right alongside my children. 

These are just some of the reasons why we are a homeschooling family.  At first, we just did it to help our little boy.  But as the years progressed, we started to see the wonderful aspects of our learning lifestyle.  It is not always easy and we are even thought of as “weird” by some.  Honestly, I’ve done this long enough now that people would think I was “weird” if I didn’t homeschool.  (Someone was surprised the other day that my children had not always been homeschooled.)  Sometimes this lifestyle is hard and challenging but I am glad & thankful to be here with my kids and homeschooling them. 

And my kids are happy.

That makes it all worth the negatives.  ~smile~