Holy Crap, I’m Homeschooling Again

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I never thought I would be a homeschool mom. I actually think this is one of the topics my husband and I talked about before we had kids and we were serious about not being a “homeschool family.”

I never had anything against homeschoolers, but I always felt that there was a stigma around people who homeschooled. I just assumed that everyone who homeschooled was wearing Birkenstocks, homemade clothes and grew their own food. (Joking. Well, kinda…) I was so used to public schools that I didn’t see why people would choose to keep their kids home with them and learn in any other way.

That is kinda how things are though, right? When you don’t know enough about something, it is easy to just assume things which half of the time, are nowhere near to be true. 

However, I guess I am eating my words because I am officially a homeschool mom again and honestly I can’t say I hate it.

Last year, with pandemic life, back and forth with virtual and all of the unknowns, my family thought it would be best for us to homeschool the kids and get a little more free time with them.

We actually had the BEST year of our lives. We got to really enjoy the kids, we got to travel with them, we got to experience things for the first time with them and we got to learn with them. 

Even after a year of homeschooling, I didn’t yet call myself a homeschool mom. I was just waiting out the pandemic and hanging with my kids longer than usual. 

We actually put our kids back in school with the hopes of a normal year in September. We were so excited for them to experience public school like my husband and I had growing up. However, we realized that maybe there isn’t one education for everyone and there isn’t just one way to raise a family and help your children learn.

We made the hard but also easy decision to homeschool another year this year. We decided that we wanted more time with our children, we wanted to travel more while we can with them. We want them to learn about places while they stand in the footprints of who they are learning about and we want them to learn in a way that feels comfortable with us. 

I think that it can be scary to branch off and try something new. Especially as a mother, you are always trying to do the very best for your kids and so going rogue with a decision like this may feel uncomfortable.

For us as a family, it was important to keep socializing and meeting people like we would in the schools. To continue to do that, we enrolled our children in sports for each season, we participate in local homeschool pods and groups and we jump at opportunities to learn with other people.

We have rearranged our work schedules and have made the time for our kids and their schooling. It is not exactly the easiest plan, however, it can be done. So many people have messaged us along the way of our homeschool journey. Questions like, how to unenroll your child, how to record your schooling, etc. We found all of our answers here on this website.

My biggest advice that I would give to someone who is either newly homeschooling or wanting to: Give yourself grace. This is a learning experience for both you and your child and there is no right or wrong way to teach your child. A lot of children learn differently and so it is okay if your experience looks completely different than someone else’s.

I choose to believe that every mom is just doing their best and that absolutely includes me. I am simply doing my best in a crazy world and hoping that my kids at least learn kindness, gratitude, compassion and together we’ll learn how to do common core math.