homeschooling parents...?

Question

What have challenges have you found in homeschooling your children?

also,

What things have you found easy or rewarding that have been a (pleasant) surprise?

Answer 1

Challenges...very briefly: Keeping "on schedule," because it's way easy to take days off here and there and suddenly you haven't done a lesson in six months. (Ok, not really that bad, but if FEELS like it!)



Finding a program that works for your kiddo can be hard; you need to understand HOW your child learns. Some kids learn best by HEARING things and watching other people do them. Those kids generally do GREAT in regular school, because the system is set up that way and their natural learning style fits right in. Other kids to best when they get to work with a concept hands-on for a few hours at a time, or they only seem to remember something if it's connected to a physical action. Those learners do quite badly at school, because they're required to sit quietly and passively and take in information without touching and experiencing it. Your idea of geography (for younger kids) might start out with you pointing out places on the map, much like a teacher in front of the class. Ultimately, you may end up putting pieces of tape on an inflatable beach ball printed up like a globe, and tossing it to your kid, asking them to identify which continent is under the tape.



For a teenager, you might start with a Science Biology textbook, but find out that doesn't work, and end up with a kid who is working as a lab assistant to a grad student, taking a frog census at the local nature preserve or getting up at 2 a.m. to turn over the turtle eggs in the lab's incubator.



Other than that, putting up with your friends, neighbors and family howling about how you'll ruin their lives is often a pain in the butt. For some people, getting out of the school mode of thought is nearly impossible.

Answer 2

The attitudes and assumptions of others unfamiliar with homeschooling, or unaware of its variety and advantages, can be a challenge.

My son's aptitude for many aspects of education has actually been a challenge in those areas that don't come so easily to him, because he's unaccustomed to having to struggle to master something.

Which brings me to the pleasant surprise: our major issue has been writing. He learned to read at three and made amazing progress immediately after begining, and has been very discouraged that his efforts at writing have not gone as well. Perhaps as a result, until quite recently it's been a struggle to get him to do anything involving a writing implement: he has also been uninterested in doing anything but scribbling.

The pleasant surprise? Just in the last two months he has turned a corner. All on his own he's begun drawing robots (his favorite) and is now branching out to snowmen and spaceships. Without any prompting he will sign his name to these drawings, or write "love" or "to mom" or "to dad" as well.

The unschoolers are right: kids will do these things on their own time frame, and often at grade level despite having been "behind" for years.

Answer 3

Well when we first started, the challenge was breaking our previously formed misconceptions about home schooling. We had only ever known one home schooler before our family started considering it, and she was a pretty bad example. Luckily, we discovered that three of my good friends from fencing class were home schoolers (never would have guessed), and they gave us a lot of valuable information and directed us to a local home school group that has been wonderful for us.



As we got into it, I think the most challenging thing was....hmm, I want to say it was writing up all the course syllabuses for Florida State University when I applied, but that wasn't hard. Just a bit time consuming since we didn't start as early as we should have. The most challenging thing was probably explaining it to new friends who asked (both mine and mom's) and then being met with all those ridiculous questions "Do you have any friends?" "Do you ever talk to people?" "Will she have to get a GED?" "Do you have a teaching certificate?" "What about the prom???" and so on.



The most pleasantly surprising thing.... wow, there are a lot. I think for mom it was how much she learned about me in the first few months when, you know, we actually had time to interact with each other. For me it was how much freedom and opportunity I had to experience life to the fullest, and how many interesting things I never had time to do when I was in school, and how welcoming universities are to home schoolers.