In 2020, during the world-wide Corona Pandemic, thousands of people tried homeschooling. This was my advice for their experiment, for perhaps merely the dozens that saw it:
"There are things about choosing to homeschool that make it a hard choice, AND there are things that make it the wrong choice. Don't confuse the two."
The fact is, I believe with all my soul that everyone CAN homeschool. I may be the last person on earth to try to persuade you you SHOULD homeschool. Those aspects of your life that would make it hard, and those aspects that would make it the wrong choice are unknown to me.
I may also be the last person on earth to try to persuade you about HOW to homeschool. Your child is as unique as your choice of how to go about his or her education. What works for one child - what works for MY child - may be an utter disaster for yours. This is true even among siblings. How could I ever hope to instruct an unknown parent on what is best for her child?!
But I do believe that as a parent, YOU know best. You understand best your child's needs. You understand your own capacity to meet those needs - even your inability to meet the needs yourself. Or in other words, you know when you need to call in outside resources. Those outside resources might be as big and comprehensive as a whole k-12 education system. But the resource could be as simple as a phone call to a friend whose advice leads to a shift in your understanding, or a great idea about how to approach those unmet needs.
So I want to raise my voice up against the outside and inner voices telling you you can't homeschool - that the only resource for any and all unmet needs is a 13-year-long system. Because the simple truth is this: YOU CAN HOMESCHOOL.
I know you can not as some theoretical exercise, nor in a disengaged indifference of a stranger. If you WANT to homeschool, if you believe it might be best, if you want to hope that it will lead to better outcomes for your family, for your children, then I am cheering for you! I want you to succeed! I will cheer your successes, but MORE importantly when you stumble, fall, and feel the fear of failure, I hope you hear ALL the voices that believe you can succeed, and hear them all the more clearly!
The following quotation has been attributed to many authors, but its message is WHY I share my homeschooling experience:
"A friend is someone who knows the song of my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails."
That you CAN homeschool, AND find success, peace, and joy doing it is my lived experience. If the desire to homeschool is the song of your heart, let me sing to you a story of my own stretching, my own fears, my process and joy and happiness. Let me add my voice to your voice inside that believes you can do this. And let this chorus grow and be heard and make the world a better place one childhood at a time.
