Should I Stop Homeschooling?

For years I’ve said a handful of absolutes about my homeschooling experience.

(I do like to speak in absolutes, although I am working hard to remove them from my vernacular. I know they are not helpful, generally speaking.)

Two of those absolutes are this:

1. I will make a decision for each homeschool year for each kid on a case by case year by year basis.
2. No homeschooling parent (and no teacher, maybe no human) should make life changing decisions in February.

And yet.

Here I am, having just spent most of February pondering and thinking and researching and looking into a wide variety of Other Options beside homeschooling for one, if not two or more, of my currently homeschooled children.

Also.

The idea of doing something different for each child is far more painful and complicated than I suspected.

You know what?

I still don’t know what I am going to do.

But I do know that I have thought, I have prayed, I have had heart to heart conversations with my children, with parents who send their children to private school and to public school, who have continued to homeschool and everything in between.

And I don’t know.

Homeschool has been about a lot of things in different seasons for our family.

When I started this journey with Riley when she was entering fifth grade, it was for a completely different reason than why I homeschool currently.

Back then, it began as both a practical matter and an act of desperation.

At that time we were paying a lot of money for a private school education, adjusting to life with a baby and beginning the processes of adopting another baby. Riley was falling behind at school, spending hours at the table doing (or not doing) math homework and writing homework and declaring herself unable to learn.

I was waking up babies from naps for a long drive to school and car line and spending our brief family time in the evening fighting over the times table.

Something had to give.

I had previously been employed at that same school as their English teacher and for me, the idea of homeschooling was radical. We were living in rural Virginia on the framily farm and I didn’t know one single person who was homeschooling.

I had zero plans to be in it for the long haul. I planned to take one year and pursue some sort of creative hybrid of natural learning and reading through all of the Little House on the Prairie books together. Our family needed a Win. We needed happier afternoons and less tears.

At some point during that year, Riley learned to love reading again and we laughed more than we cried. Babies stayed asleep for long afternoon naps and they turned into toddlers and Bergen joined our ranks.

And we never did return to school in quite the same manner again.

We certainly have done a variety of options. We’ve worked through a series of co ops and Riley even spent a couple years at a different private school.

There have been seasons of dreamy homeschooling experiences. Cutesy Pinterest living. Dr. Seuss days at the zoo when our meals (served in muffin tins) coordinated with the books we were reading. Math tutors that became family. Nature Walks and the most delightful nature journals and integrating poetry in formats darling enough to make Charlotte Mason swoon.

Field trips that educated without any of my prodigy even knowing they were learning. Family read alouds and memories based around novel characters and kids who pretended to be historical heroes.

Those sepia toned memories are precious and so sticky sweet in my mind that I almost can’t stand their taste on my tongue.

Although I started this whole shebang without any thought of educating all six of my children for their entire school careers, somewhere along the way I developed a genuine philosophy of education with roots and wings and a thousand arms.

In truth, from then to now, from no idea to a solid ideal, home education has always been about one thing for me.

Relationship.

Relationship between my children and myself.
Relationship between my children and their siblings.

And, most importantly,
Relationship between my children and knowledge.

Relationship between my kids and what they read and what they write and what they see and what they think.

During the past month or so I have felt like a pendulum is swinging in my mind.

At one minute, I’m certain every child in my home needs a different structure, a different teacher, a different everything. And in another minute I want to finish what we started, put more good books in their hands, help them find the right steps and the right direction.

There are a whole heap of factors at play here. Older kids. Learning struggles. Personality types. A greater professional workload for me. A new curriculum I chose for this year that hasn’t been entirely what I had hoped it would be.

After one conversation with a friend I am reminded that home education is just ONE path, it’s just ONE way for school to work. And if the idea of educating my kids is my idol, I’m in dangerous territory. I don’t want to idolize the idea over the reality. I don’t want to sacrifice my kids on the altar of What I Had Hoped.

And after another conversation I am reminded that February kind of sucks for everyone. That we all want to quit All The Things in February. That sometimes letting decisions and bigger pictures work themselves out is not a bad idea. That a simple restructuring can solve a lot.

I think the bigger truth amid all of the noise is this — the kids are all going to be okay. Whether I homeschool next year or send all five of them in five different educational directions, we’re going to make it. They will grow up. They will learn. They will receive diplomas. They will go to colleges and jobs and internships and wild adventures and most importantly, they will be humans who have relationships with what they have learned and what they have yet to learn.

My question of next year and what it looks like remains unanswered. But it helps to refresh myself on what is true.

These kids – charming and wild and unpredictable, selfish and self-serving and prone to look out for number one, funny and kind and ludicrous – they are not mine alone. I am not their savior and I cannot rescue them from all of life’s struggles and woes.

This homeschooling decision, while it weighs heavy on my mind and my heart and while its repercussions will echo through our daily routines and structure next year, is JUST a decision.

I once heard Susan Wise Bauer speak at a conference. I’m certain I’ve shared this tidbit before. She’s an education and homeschool guru. She’s excessively well educated and has written many books. At this conference, she stressed the importance of relationship. She said, and I quote, “It’s JUST education. It’s JUST school.”

So while it all matters deeply and while I care profoundly about my children and the education I have given a significant portion of my life to create for them, I also know that it’s okay.

Homeschool.
Private school.
Public School.
Co-op.
Online learning.

I’m working hard to hold it all with open hands, to avoid the absolutes, to turn each corner as it presents itself and to maintain that key focus …. relationship.

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