Why Homeschool

Monday, August 6—What led to your decision to homeschool?
Why do you do what you do? What brought you to homeschooling? What factors played a part in your decision?

At first the biggest thing for us was not being able to find a close private school of the same variety that Alice attended when she went to preschool. She went to a Montessori school that was about a five minute drive for us – the teachers were so great, the other kids were nice and the parents rocked. Here the closest school is at least a half hour or so away, not including the traffic. The cost of that school was also a factor because it was more then double what we were paying in Washington.

I toyed with the idea of homeschooling last summer and Chris and I casually talked about it. As a military family we know we are going to have to move around a lot, which means changing schools, resettling down, making new friends, etc. And considering I grew up in the same town, around my family and the same friends since I was four years old, the idea of my kids having to go through that for the entire amount of their school lives definitely freaked me out. Chris moved quite a bit as a child and teenager and doesn’t have very many good memories about it, nor does he have any lifelong friends. I know it’s not realistic for me to think we can have the same kind of life I had since the military is so different, but I wanted something for the kids to be able to hold on to – and as few ‘bad’ memories as possible.

It has to be said that we are living in the south where education is not that great. We are ranked at the bottom, have a horrible graduation rate and add to the problems in schools in general and it’s not a place I want to send my wonderful kids. After hearing a friend tell about all the problems she has with her five year old, the teacher, the other students, the getting into trouble every single week – I’m very glad we didn’t send Alice to public school last year.

So maybe a part of what influenced the decision is a bit of overprotectedness – and I’m okay with that. We will end up moving again and when the time come, we’ll reevaluate where we are in homeschooling and the schools where we end up and go from there.

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