Deciding to homeschool your children isn’t an easy choice to make; it requires a lot of planning, researching, and self-sacrifice if your goal is to help each child actualize his/her potential. You need to research to find the best curriculum to use for your family and also for each child’s individual needs. You can research on the internet, but it is invaluable to have experienced homeschool parents to discuss techniques and curriculum with. You need to plan assignments or at least figure out how many pages your child would need to complete a day to finish each subject by the end of your school year. If there are experiments or projects you need to know in advance to have the required materials on hand. Young children who aren’t yet able to read, and special needs children, require your individual attention throughout the completion of each assignment. A day teaching homeschool can actually be very stressful if several of your children are struggling to understand one of their subjects and frequently need your assistance.

The very first year I homeschooled my children, I began with seven students. The youngest was in kindergarten and the two oldest were in 10th grade. I was afraid the children would feel jealous or that I would be showing partiality if I began by only homeschooling some of them. I had been researching curriculums and speaking to other homeschool families for a couple of years before I was finally compelled to begin. Believe me, I felt sick to my stomach when I finally made the decision to begin, it seemed an overwhelming task and I desperately wanted to do it right.

We had just adopted our fifteen year old daughter a few weeks prior when, one day, she didn’t get off the school bus. I was frantic, calling all of her friends, trying to find her. In desperation I called the school, the counselor had seen her leave with two boys and she knew who they were and where they lived. She was unconcerned, felt it unnecessary to call me, and informed me that teenagers do this all the time and I should just wait for her to come home. That same school year, I had talked to the school principal about another one of my children not being challenged in class and I wanted them to consider promoting her two grades instead of one. They had a meeting without me and chose not to consider my request. I had a five year old child that could already read and write that I wanted them to place in first grade instead of Kindergarten. His birthday is in December, so if he had been born 19 days earlier he could have began school a year earlier, so it didn’t seem to be an outrageous request to me. The school refused to consider it. That was the final straw that drove me to homeschool my children the following school year.

Read more on older child adoption.

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Home school Links: AOP, Bob Jones, American School, HSLDA Membership Department

(C) Julia Fuller 2006