The Case for Homeschooling Your Children

By Faith Clarke Author, consultant & manager of Melody of Autism helping parents run family centered ventures while supporting special needs children.

What Is Homeschooling?

Homeschooling is any facilitation of learning that happens outside of the four walls of the school building; in your home, in your community, in classes that you’ve organized for your kids, on the playground, or at the museum. It’s helping your kids find resources, people, experiences, and classes that will help them be ready for their adult life. Most parents already do this, even when their kids are in traditional school.

Why I Homeschooled?

I wanted my kids to experience learning, living, and working with humans across a wide range of ages and stages in life. In summary, I homeschooled so that I could understand my unique learner and design learning experiences that catalyze their uniqueness instead of suppressing it, so that they could go as far as they wanted, dig as deep as they wanted, in any area that they loved.

Your Values Matter

The conversation begins with knowing your values about living effectively in the world and helping little humans prepare for life. Your thoughts on how your child will become ready for their life and whether the non-homeschooling options will help with this readiness will help you know if homeschooling is a good option for you.

If you’re considering homeschooling, something about the current traditional schooling offer seems to not fit your family, your kids, or your own values.

What’s Important to You and Your Family?

Make a list of what that is. Figure out your ‘must haves’ for learning and developing readiness in your child. Those will be the building blocks of the homeschooling experience you facilitate. There are so many benefits to the flexibility of learning that you could offer in your home school for your learner. This could be-

• The most suitable curriculum

• The best fit structure of learning times

• The variety of extracurricular activities

• Authentic and real-world learning

• Real work experiences/ apprenticeships

• Specialized therapy and customized, eclectic classes

How do we do this?

Homeschool depends on who you are and what your life is like. Firstly, determine when you would homeschool? For many, the school system also functions as child care while parents are at work. If you work a traditional 9 to 5 job, then you may not want to homeschool on a school day, you could homeschool on weekends and holidays. Figure out a schedule that suits your family.

What type of learning facilitator are you?

Figuring out your own style is really important because your kids won’t do well if you aren’t doing well. Are you the kind of person that feels more comfortable with the textbooks, workbooks, and curriculum guiding you through specific topics? Or are you more of a conversationalist who would love documentaries and short videos of interest that you and your kids will then discuss? Or do you just figure it out as you go? You might be the person that loves to be creative and hands-on. You could then outsource the more traditional lessons that you really want for your learners but just don’t want to do yourself. You could connect with other homeschoolers or join classes with a combination of learners to do those topics.

Resources

A wide range of homeschooling styles abound, the library, the internet and Google is your friend. Research the style that’s closest to what you want, and look at the resources that other parents and educators have already created that fit that style. Resources like audible and YouTube are invaluable and can add a variety of content and that pulls on the creativity of many amazing teachers. You don’t have to do this on your own. Homeschooling coops provide an opportunity for you to share with other homeschoolers. You contribute by teaching and your kids get to build community. Again, this entire journey is about knowing your learner and knowing what combination of guidance and self-directing they’re able to benefit from at any stage of their life.

The Legalities

It’s important for you to know the legal requirements for homeschooling in your area and to figure out what you need to provide to a government entity to make sure your home school is compliant. They’re many Facebook groups and other communities off-line that you could join that will help you in your area.

The Pro’s of Homeschooling

• Flexibility - you design a learning experience that fits your learner, your family routine, and your values.

• Variety - Having a learning experience that gives your learner a wide range of experiences within the community really prepares them for real-world interactions. If your learner resists traditional academics. Forcing students to participate in learning that feels irrelevant and that strips their developing sense of mastery and autonomy significantly contributes to the mental health crisis that we’re seeing in the world right now.

• Social-emotional development. Interacting in the real world, dealing with real situations give kids early, safe opportunities to build psychological capital and grit. These experiences don’t have to be contrived they just happen as humans live life together.

• The biggest pro for me is the relationship I built with my kids. I understand them really well and have been on the inside of formative moments I didn’t hear about them from the teacher or from my kids secondhand, I was there, and that’s made a world of difference in my relationship with them. Similarly, their relationships with each other, as sibling rivalry and quarrelling and competition just wasn’t there.

Some Cons to Consider

• Time commitment - For you, this may mean more time with your kids and more time away from traditional work. For some this is a pro for others it is a con.

• Working in traditional spaces and homeschooling younger kids is hard without help. Finding the support that you need might be more challenging. Daycare isn’t an option for many kids older than 4.

• It’s harder to participate in traditional school group activities like Sports and Music and Theater. You can do that but you have to put some effort into finding groups that are available to homeschoolers to create some of these experiences.

• Homeschooling can get expensive. It takes some effort to be smart about using publicly available resources, social media, and the Internet, and available free activities. It’s tempting to buy a lot of books and curriculum and to pay for lots of interesting classes but this adds up over time.

I have Homeschooled 3 special children who require ‘out-of-the-box thinking.’ I hope this helps.

For more Homeschooling advice - Faith Clarke blogs on: www.homeschoolingoutsidethelines.blogspot.com