Confessions of a 12-year Homeschooling Veteran

Ours is not an "academically rigorous" approach....

We aren't ahead grade levels. We don't get "SO MUCH" done. I don't know if the kids will go to college. (Oldest at 17 is currently IN college - taking a few online courses in a slow plod to get his associates while he is busy doing other things more in line with his passions and life goals.) I don't know that we care about college - certainly not about WHICH college. (If the kids care, great. We'll support that.)

So I was talking with other moms whose kids went all through school, whose kids have this drive and ambition to get good grades, to then pursue hard careers, and I found myself wondering "What are WE going for? What is the benefit of OUR approach?"

And here is some of what I've concluded - and I will probably draw other conclusions years later when we continue to see what worked and what didn't:

Where others might use words like "advanced," or "accelerated," to describe their school/homeschool desired outcomes, my words are actually, "slow," "intentional," "present," "creative," "imaginative." I won't argue that these words are BETTER. They are just different. That's an odd thought to mull over: I don't know that we homeschool because we think we can do it BETTER than the schools. We DO know we "do it" differently.

And when I consider my personality and my husband's, I also note that this may be the only way that actually WORKS (or that DOES work "best") for who we-the-parents are. We both are type A, driven souls who WANT the accolades, who WANT to be the best. AND we resent authority. AND we resent doing things for no obvious reason when they don't seem to be in the best interest of ourselves or our family. I asked him last night what he thought our family might be like if we'd never homeschooled. We both agreed we'd feel a lot more dissatisfaction with our children because most of them don't have the competitive nature we do. In other words, we'd want them to get A's, and we'd be bothered if they didn't care about grades. And because we would not be able to identify why an 8 year old needs A's to be successful in life, we'd be conflicted inside with the expectation our kids excel in the system, probably leading to more dissatisfaction with everything related to the system.

Checking out of "the system" may be the only way we could functionally support our kids being who they want to be, developing at a pace that works best for them.

I guess that is another word that pertains to our homeschool experience: "intuitive." Even more than my husband, I expect things that ARE right for my family to FEEL right. Homeschooling allows me to lean into this trait - to live a family life the way we do, without the structure and guarantees of the system, forging our own crazy path forward in some haphazard fashion for the adventure of it all, and for being true to our inner selves.

It's scary. And when I look at the security the system offers, and the sometimes-happy outcomes it produces, I do wonder "what if we are kidding ourselves? What if we are doing it WRONG?" And then the persistent, deeper, slower, intuitive me asks, "how can you do anything in life with any peace if you can't trust this?" and I just surrender to knowing that our "different way" might be the only way that works for us.