When I talk to people about homeschooling, they often say, “I could never homeschool because…”. I understand what they are saying because many of the same reasons nearly kept me from homeschooling. I almost didn’t homeschool because I felt alone. I almost didn’t homeschool because I didn’t understand my options. I also almost didn’t homeschool because I thought my family would not approve. Here is my story.
When I decided to homeschool my kids, I was really worried about how my family would react. I was certain they would not approve. I was sure they would think I had lost my mind. It was not my parent’s reaction I feared; it was my siblings and my in-laws. My mother was deceased and my dad was easygoing. However, my brothers while many were younger than me were pretty pushy, authoritative, and plain old bossy. There was surely going to be an argument involved with I took my kids out of school.
I took me months to get up the nerve to tell my brothers my plan. First, I called the brother who is pretty much the font of all knowledge, and he does not hesitate to let you know it. “I am not sending my kids back to school in the fall because I want to try homeschooling”, I said. After a few minutes of silence, he finally said, “well, I know you would not do that without researching it first”, so I’m sure you’ll do fine.” That was it?! “I did all of that worrying for nothing”, I thought. That conversation gave me the nerve to call the brother we affectionately referred to as “father”, as he thinks he is everyone’s father. When I told him, he just said, “there’s nothing that you’ve done in your life that I didn’t think was a little crazy, but you still manage to make everything work out fine. This won’t be any different”.
Of course, it was not that easy with everyone in my family, but these were the two people whose opinion I most valued and whose reactions I most feared. I was certain that ‘father’ would call the department of social services and that “the font of all knowledge” would drag me into court and try to take custody of my children. None of the sort happened. Negative reactions included my relatives suddenly developing an interest in my kids education asking how are they doing, when they had never asked before, and my younger, immature brothers calling me an idiot.
It turns out that my own mind almost kept me from homeschooling and not my family at all.