Can I Handle Homeschooling?

I think it depends on if you LOVE to be with him when you are with him. It sounds like you already have some struggles without adding Schooling into the mix. I say this because I am NOT the sahm type. I love my kids dearly but it is just not me to be home 24/7 with them. I am a much better mom because I work outside the home. My kids have not suffered because I was not home every second with them. So maybe I'm in the minority but that's just my 2 cents. I think it takes a VERY special woman to be a sahm and on top of that to homeschool...even more so. So I guess this didn't help but thought I'd throw it out! Good luck with what you decide! :o)

Hi L.,
I find that one of the greatest advantages to homeschooling is that we have a ton of opportunities to work on character--theirs and mine! I highly recommend it. And, some people fit homeschooling in around their work schedules by doing some of the schooling in the evening. Who says it has to be done from 9-3? It can be so very hard when dealing with the issues you mentioned as we are inclined towards disrespect and impatience. But, the rewards are priceless!

Homeschooling isn't just what happens when you sit down and "force" your child to learn something. Homeschooling happens all day with your child, it's the little things you teach him...tying his shoes, how to be polite, maybe even the names of animals you see--a squirrel, a horse, a cat.

Homeschooling doesn't always involve forcing your kid to learn something he/she doesn't want to. Or making them do it your way. No wonder you are both frustrated! Perhaps he has a different learning style than the traditional. There are many methods of homeschooling, and usually one method of Public Schooling.

Added to that, you will probably be helping him with his homework in Public School.

Here is a website that goes over some of the methods of homeschooling:
http://www.home-school-curriculum-advisor.com/home-school...

Don't let people tell you that you don't have the "education" to teach your son. When one graduates high school, the diploma testifies that they know all the material a high schooler is required to know. If that is true, then they can certainly pass that knowledge on. If that is NOT true, well then the public/private high school diploma is a sham.

I would suggest you look at some of the homeschooling methods and pick the one you think would suit you and your son. There is still plenty of summer left, why not try some homeschooling now? It's good for him to keep his learning up in the summer anyway. I can suggest some wonderful homeschooling sites that have many free downloads. See if using one of the methods makes homeschooling fun for you and your son. It's great bonding! If not, then you know now and can enroll him in school in the fall.

Also, know you can pull him out of public school at any time and try homeschooling.

As with anything, get lots of info from all sources (not just the opinions of people who homeschool or those who heard of some family who had weird kids because they homeschooled) and do what works for you!

Good luck! And message me if you want any of those websites!

These are your words:

"He seems to get frustrated quickly with me, and I tend not to have patience with him when I am trying to teach him something, and he doesn't want to do it, or wants to do it his way (when he has no idea how), etc. I see him responding very well to instructors in classes he has taken (i.e. gymnastics, soccer, etc.) so I know he can perform in a learning environment, I'm just not sure he and I together as teacher and student would provide him with the optimal learning experience. I don't want him to hate education because he is dealing with me, and I don't want to damage our wonderful relationship by adding an adversarial dimension to it."

Do you really need to question this any further? The answer is NO. Why would you make your life miserable? Don't underestimate all public schools or your son's ability to thrive in them.

Personally, I would have killed my oldest boy if I had had to homeschool him, and possibly my daughter. I could have done it with my youngest -- he has the right personality for it (well, he did until he hit 16), but guess what -- they all did great and learned a lot in public schools.

I did put them in a charter school through 8th grade, which allowed me to participate in their eduction, without being responsible for it. I was in the classroom a lot, but then I got to leave.

Don't bother. It sounds like your son will do just fine, per the words: "I see him responding very well to instructors in classes he has taken."

I'm starting homeschool for my 5 year old and 3 year old this fall. I've been reading alot about Charlotte Mason homeschooling and it really seems to fit for my family. Since my oldest was born I've wanted to homeschool. I don't understand why children have to sit through 7 hours of school. Yes, some days are fun and most in the younger grades, but I would rather teach my children their morals and have them master their learning skills on their own...not be told how to learn. I think children need play time, I don't understand why their is such a push to learn how to read and write at such early ages.
If my child wants to attend public school, I have no problem allowing him (I might loose out to the school bus, he really wants to ride in one). And if he decides he doesn't like it, then I'll keep him home the next year. Some people flourish in the public school system, others don't. Check out http://simplycharlottemason.com/ and if it's a fit for your family, give it a try. Also, check out your state's law on homeschooling.

I teach. I've always thought about homeschooling my children, but I've realized that they would probably be much more well-rounded if they go to public school. I have nothing against people who home school and think that it is a great undertaking and should be respected and admired. I have seen where parents have tried and failed and their children suffer the consequences when they come into school behind where they need to be and end up a grade or two behind. Some people can do it and thrive at it, but not all people are cut out to do it. If you are questioning this much, maybe it's not the best choice for you and your son.

I have been homeschooling for fifteen years. I taught my daughter from kindergarden through the first year of college. I never went to college. She finished with 19 credits at age 17. There are four boys younger than her that are still home. My oldest finished Grad school by age 21. I think you can do it!

most of the 'nos' seem to come from the perspective of 'my kids don't learn well from me.' since the overall question has been thoughtfully addressed, and since this is a VERY common concern, i'm just going to talk about that.
this has also always been the case for me. i'm a good riding teacher, but my boys absolutely did not do well taking riding lessons from me. i had another teacher work with them and it was miraculous. it's a very common phenomenon.
this makes many people turn away from homeschooling, as they envision a neat little 'classroom' set up in the family room, with mom at the front with her pointer and blackboard, and kids politely raising their hands to ask stimulating questions.
this almost never happens.
i did actually do some fairly formal lesson-type scenarios with my boys, and they weren't utter failures. they didn't totally hate it and we all got something out of it. but it wasn't what i'd call a success full of squee either.
homeschooling seems to work best when it's side-by-side activities, and parentally-provided opportunities that the kids themselves dig into. 'teaching' is one way of providing an education, but it really does seem to work better in a classroom setting. most homeschoolers DO provide this for their kids from time to time in co-op or hybrid or community college venues, but when in the home itself it rarely works that well.
say you want to work with your little on basic math. you can get a workbook and a blackboard, or you can get out measuring cups and bowls, sand and water (or real ingredients and incorporate cooking into it!) and get down and play with him. it's the side-by activities in which it's really 'life' not 'class' where the real 'lessons' take hold.
if you are the best person to be his mother, you are ipso facto the best person to provide his homeschool education. i love the poster who said 'homeschooling is easy...parenting is hard.' it's so true. homeschooling is an extension of parenting, not something you *do* in addition.
rather than plan daily lessons for your child, why not try spending a day immersed in joyful, living, adventures. then at the end of the day, sit down and write down what learning took place. you'll be astounded. once you learn how to to turn life into education-ese you'll see how learning isn't something you plan, it's something you guide and facilitate.
you will develop a community of people who have cross-section of talents, and will figure out how to pool them. my kids were pretty blah on shakespeare until i hit on the idea to teach it to a bunch of kids here on our pool deck. now there is an entire little generation of shakespeare fanatics running around out there, with my kids easily quoting and using references in their daily jargon. and my boys had the delightful experience of learning forensics, hebrew language and druidawn from other mothers who enjoyed diving into those and other weird and wonderful subjects.
your master's degree is cool for you, but completely non-essential to homeschooling. i never went to college, i'm an autodidact. both of my kids are on the dean's list in college, and i'm a teacher now (funny how life gets turned upside down<G>.) the notion that you have to be good at teaching, and teaching every subject, in order to homeschool is completely off-base. i stink at math, but i was fully capable of providing a variety of good math curricula to my kids. when they entered community college they were still 'behind' (as are most of the high school grads who apply) so they took a couple of remedial math course, which they breezed through because by then they were completely self-motivated and capable of taking easily to direction in an area which they were interested in pursuing.
it works.
not all the time, of course.
but in those who want it to work, are determined and creative, and think outside the box, it works.
khairete
S.

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Hi, L.:

Check the web site of the PA Home Educators Association at:

www.phea.net

See if your questions can be answered.
If you can't, would your mom be willing to help out.
Good luck. D.

The MOST important thing to remember about Homeschooling is this: Homeschooling is EASY. It's PARENTING that's hard.

Like good parents, good homeschoolers I know question themselves. They ask the same questions that you're asking, and they do it fairly frequently... constantly reevaluating. They look at their children's learning styles and interactions with both themselves as teachers and with the other teachers in their lives (tutors, coaches, instructors, directors, etc.). I would be FAR more concerned about any parent or teacher who DIDN'T question their own abilities.

A few things to consider:

1) Just because you homeschool doesn't mean that you are the only teacher. As you said... there is your mother. BUT there are also a plethora of opportunities for outside education. I even know some HS'ers who NEVER teach, but "farm" everything out. For my son... we farm out art and music. He's also in the "school break" camps that happen year round. Here's a short list of ways in which a HS'er shares teaching responsibility by (in addition to being their child's teacher) as their facilitator:

- Outside Classes (art, music, science, languages, history, english, etc. )*

- School Break Camps (our kiddo like to alternate between drama, science, & sports camps)

- Online learning (the ranges from interactive websites - like discovery, discovery.edu, starfall, nat.geo.soc, pbskids, + 100's of others...to "virtual tours" of museums, archeological digs, etc... to organizstions like museums, govt agencies, etc that have online free educational pages for kids... to to actual online curricula like Plato Sciences, Time for Learning, etc)

- Computer "games" (Learning shouldn't be fun, should it? Seriously, games are a *tremendous* asset. 3 of our current/long term favs are ClueFinders, Carmen SanDiego, iSpy)

- Seminars & Field Trips (One off classes taught by orgs like Observatories, Museums, Factories, businesses, hospitals, universities... plus getting friends involved for having your child come be shown what they "do". We've had filmmakers, sound techs, a rabbi, computer programmer, video game designer, military, chocolatier, waitress, car mechanic, and a highschool kid really into robotics all take kiddo over the past 3 years to do projects with them. Learning happens EVERYWHERE... and seeing how real people utilize the skills he's learning, or teach him new ones are... just amazing opportunities. School really comes to life. And for kids, it's all exciting, whether it's a "sexy job" or not... because it's in the adult world, and they get to be a part of it)

- Movies (Yup... I will eat ramen before I cancel my netflix subscription. The documentaries they are making these days are better than The Matrix. I'm a pretty killer science teacher... but I'm no Carl Sagan or deGrasse Tyson... I also can bring dinosaurs thundering across the screen with the BBC, or make child-appropriate clips from dozens of amazing historical fiction. Troy is the most recent one, since we're studying Ancient Greece... but there are also such classics as Magic School House, and hundreds and hundreds of other titles that are all either educational already, or bring a 2 dimensional lesson to vivid color & 3d)

- Co-ops

* Just to note on outside classes. You can find tutors for individual subjects, but I personally prefer actual "classes". Music, Art, & other "electives" are easy to find. But for english, science, history... I tend to find they're advertised by speciality. Like shakespeare for Eng., or Pirates for history, etc. These classes are all over the place. GoCityKids or ParentsConnect are starting to make them easier to find, plus there are Homeschool Co-ops, Community Centers, Science Centers, living history museums, private companies...YMCA even does them as part of their "Kids University" after school program. In fact, MANY of these classes are found by looking up "after school" programs. We're doing Shakespeare this fall for "english" that's actually through a kid's DRAMA program.

2) SCHEDULES. Depending on how you look at it, we either HS 7 days a week or HS 4 days a week (we "unschool" over weekends and holidays and breaks). Most HS'ers are pretty similar in that they tweak their schedules to work with their own families instead of following what the schoolboard outlines. A few do 5 day weeks, but not a lot. There's no law anywhere that says that "school" can only happen M-F and must be from 8am-3pm. We do school in the car, at night, in the swimming pool, on hot chocolate breaks while snowboarding... at the dining room table, while on "vacation". You're already home 4 days a week. I don't know PA law (easy to look up), but there's no reason you can't do a 4 day week if your mum doesn't want to take on 1-3 days herself, even if PA requires a 180 day year. It just means doing school over the summer. Which I personally prefer anyway.

3) "BEST" takes awhile, and it's hard. Okay is easy... it's everywhere. My son can do well in any kind of schooling environment. Public, private, home, boarding. Pick a schooling system and he can do well. He could even excel and be happy in certain cases in EACH of those systems. But best? Best is elusive. We HS... so we look for best in THIS system... which is easier in that I'm not relying on others, and I can tailor to suit my son to a certain degree... and harder in that I'M the one who has to do the observation, footwork, research, and implementation (but that's also kind of fun). Homeschooling we've had good & great... but we've also had "Well THAT doesn't work" moments... and even had a "good" turn into a "best" by completely changing what we were doing to something else. And I've had what I thought would be perfect fall flat on it's face. It's all a learning experience. But schools do that as well... no one single way suits all kids... so they AS WELL AS WE are constantly experimenting. But they have to do it on thousands of kids and go off of percenetages as x % gets it this way, y% gets it that way, and they work on decades. We get to do it one on one, and can adjust without the approval of school boards and parents. ((HS joke: "What do you call a HS parent talking to themselves?" ... "A parent teacher conference"))

So take the idea of being his "best" teacher... and toss it out the window. You'll be best at some things... and not at others. You'll be the entire range from mediocre to good to great to best... but it WILL be a range. NO ONE is best all the time. Then you add in curriculum, and "best" really becomes a JOURNEY. Sometimes you luck out. Sometimes it takes awhile. Sometimes "best" changes. It's all very fluid.

But by MERELY seeking to be your best, and by paying attention to how things are working with your son... you'll be phenom. We all want the best for our children. But the secret is... none of us can do that 100% of the time. By HS'ing you're taking "best" under your own control, instead of crossing your fingers and hoping someone else will be. Even when you're farming stuff out, you still have control... because you can drop the class or the teacher if it's not going well. Rather impossible to do in Edu elsewhere until you hit college.

4) SOME useful links

http://www.homeschooldiner.com/guide/intro/approaches.html
http://www.homeschooldiner.com
http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/ (the content is on the left, commercials on the right)
http://groups.yahoo.com/ just search Homeschool + _________ (PA, Secular, elem/middle/highschool/etc., philosophy, etc.) for some really great "in the trenches" message boards

And here I went and wrote a "book" again. Sigh. Sorry. But as to your original Q... can you handle it? No way to know without trying. Can the 2 of you HS together? Of course! You're "responsible" but just see #1 for short list of teachers available for you to utilize.

HI L.,

I've homeschooled my two teenage daughters from the beginning. My oldest was an easy kid. I taught her to read and then we went from there. My second I actually had to farm out because she was so scared she would fail me that she wouldn't even try. A 23 year old homeschooled girl that lived down the street actually got her motivated. I've taken it from there. My sister who is a retired teacher helps me as well. It really is a family endeavor. My husband love history and gives them more lessons than I outline.

There's no harm in trying it. It's worked well for us. I hear people on this site that say they had rather gone to school but I don't KNOW anyone personally that has said that. I guess those are just my circles. I have used computer curriculum as well as workbooks and extra curricular activities.
Just a suggestion, get your mom to start out with the "sit still" kind of stuff and you follow through with the activities to solidify the information. After he's comfortable with the two of you working together try shifting roles at least every once in a while. My youngest actually does better with the computer curriculum which is more hands off for me. EVERY kid is different.

Hope this little bit helps!

M.

L., Thanks for posting such a question because I have the exact same concerns as yours and would have asked it myself too. I'm reading these great advices and info you have received so far. I am in the same shoes as you. I've never home schooled but always loved the thought of it. I felt it shelters my kids from learning the bad things or getting the negative influences that lots of kids out there are getting. Of course not all schools are bad and not all kids are have a negative influence! For right now, I don't have a choice to make. Both me and my husband have to work to support our family so my kids will have to go to school. But I think if I didn't have to work and we can afford it financially, I would try homeschooling my kids and see how it works out first. You just never know how it ends up unless you try.

You can certainly work something out with your mother. How does she feel about it? Would she be willing to be his other teacher? If so then I think you could have success. If it's coming from two people that he respects and loves then it carries that much more weight.

There are also homeschooling co-ops to consider, and private companies like Sylvan that can help keep you on track here and there. Once you get into homeschooling, and meet other homeschooling families, it just may click for the two of you.

My best piece of advice is to try it and give it a year or two. If it doesn't work out, you can always put him back in public or private school.

Just read your response, so I don't know that you'll see what I'm going to write, but here goes :)

I'm so glad you're looking into this! Choosing home schooling has been life changing for our family, and we see so many benefits. Definitely check out the laws and requirements for your state, but as a rule of thumb, our 1st year home school support group recommends 1/2 hour of seat work for each grade level maxing out at 1/2 a day for high schoolers (trust me the other half gets extremely full with extra curr. and jobs). There is so much to do (and learn) to maintain a family that goes beyond planned lesson work. It also would make sense that a diligent student could accomplish quite a bit without the typical school distractions (of course there are home distractions too...am constantly working on this) We're doing a little bit through the summer so that we have time to play when the weather is fine (Texas is beautiful in October and March :) and it saves with the frustration of starting frozen turkey in the fall. If you have a master's degree you can surely handle educating a younger child...We've a high school student on down to a 3 year old. Its good to pay attention to some of the pitfalls that cause people to quit; those are points that if you are determined, you can be forewarned, and find ways of addressing. But I know folks that are in your situation who've sent children off to university, not lost their sanity, and grown right along side their children. Blessings on your research!

It doesn't sound like the best fit for you. I love my kids, but i think they need to learn to be around other people and to take direction and learn from other adults and peers. that is why we choose public school. so far it's been great. I understand the sheltering thing, we don't have playdates with kids whose parents are right in line with my thinking, and i work really really hard to teach my kids the values that my husband and i believe in.

is your son an only child that might make it a little harder to homeschool, and you would really have to keep up outside relationships.

I'm not bashing, this is an honest question, those that have homeschooled, what has life been like for your children assimilating to the work force???

HI, I home-schooled my oldest through kindergarten last year. I actually had the EXACT same fears, but figured kindergarten was the best year to try if it was gonna fail :) It was pretty rocky at first, lots of frustration and butting heads and many tears on both sides. We tried several methods until we found one that truly worked. But when we did, it became a wonderful experience for both us. Now he truly wants to keep doing it, and so do I. Is it for everyone? no, but there's no reason not to try :)

Hi L.,

I can't speak to homeschooling because I didn't (but I am not anti-homeschooling - you have to do whatever works for you and your family). But I will say this - you talk about sheltering your son from the hazards of public school. I know that's not the only reason you want to homeschool him, but I do want to offer my perspective. There aren't drugs and bullying at ALL public schools and there may be drugs and bullying that your son is exposed to when you homeschool depending on the other activities he does or the kids in your neighborhood that he plays with every day.

A kid with low self-esteem who feels like a failure and feels like they don't belong will SEEK out these hazards regardless of the school they attend (or don't attend). Drugs, gangs, bullying, violence, promiscuity. All of those things exist in society and if he is the type of kid who is into that then he will find it.

Good luck with your decision. See what makes your kid radiate - if it's going to school with friends and a teacher than do that. If that doesn't work then do whatever you need to do for you son!