Why I Homeschooled

When my husband asked me to homeschool my children we had just had our fourth child in four and half years. I was sure he was joking. I loved my school years, I had many friends and lots of fun experiences. Now, mind you, I did not have an understanding of academics nor did I care about my grades (I graduated with a 2.4 and was super proud of it), so that definitely wasn’t my reasons for homeschooling.

Thom talked me into going to Utah and attend a conference. There I asked everyone about how do the children get any social skills or meet friends in homeschooling. No one gave me a satisfying answer.

But, I did have a change of heart because of one line! “After graduating from college I still felt I did not have a good education.” That hit me like a ton of bricks.

I had graduated college with two degrees and I KNEW I didn’t have an education let alone a good one. I had felt dumb all my life and getting good grades in college did not help me fell smarter.

A question formed in my mind and stewed for the next two years, “Would I want my children to feel the same way?”

As a teenager, I remember a teacher asked me what I wanted to learn and after thinking about it for a few minutes I said I’d like to know where all these dates and events fit together, I would like to have a timeline to put all this information on. She looked at me as if I were a foreign object and went to the next person. From that day forward I never expressed my desires to learn or ask any more questions.

The thought of having an education where you could learn anything you wanted and be able to put stories, events, documents, and people on a timeline thrilled me. I thought if I’m getting excited about this then maybe my children would too. Let’s give it a try.

So I started . . .

My reason for starting homeschool was for individualized learning and to help me and my children remember what we’ve learned.

What are/were your reasons for homeschooling?

I’ll share with you what my reasons are now, in the next blog post.