Deciding to homeschool wasn’t a quick or easy decision. I do think it goes back to when Miles was in preschool at age 2 and his teachers told me he was “behind” on knowing his colors when he couldn’t recognize “rose.” I just remember thinking, ‘Really? He’s TWO! If this is what school is going to be like for him – this is not going to go well.’

My sweet boy has always done everything at his own pace. When he was little, he would learn to say a word, practice it for a day and then never say it again. We had his speech evaluated and they said he was not too far behind, but might benefit from speech therapy. But I just had a gut feeling that he would catch up when he felt like it. Thankfully, I was right. By 3 he finally started talking, and by 4 I was begging for him to stop, ha!

Add to that, Miles is a summer baby, which means, unless we red-shirted him, he would be the youngest in his class. With all that in mind, I could already see our future of teachers telling me he was “behind” and him getting frustrated and discouraged by being behind.

Around that time a few new friends we’d made were homeschooling families. So I started asking questions, doing research and talking to my husband. We watched some amazing videos about education and the way kids learn and decided to give it a shot.

I’m trying to be realistic about this decision, knowing we could scrap it and decide to do public school or private at any time. But so far, I really love this opportunity to watch him learn new things. I love seeing exactly what interests him and being able to focus on that! He loves our math curriculum (Shiller Math) and history (Story of the World) the most – so we tend to do that more than anything else (because I think 6 is still young to push workbooks and writing if they are not ready).  And currently he’s obsessed with volcanoes, so we read his favorite volcano book almost every day and watch videos. It’s amazing how many different science, reading and even math things I can incorporate into just learning about volcanoes.

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Left: Playing with his math manipulatives

The flexibility is also a huge draw! No dragging kids out of bed and off to school in the mornings. We can schedule our vacations any time of year, no worrying about getting behind in school because we can take ours with. And since we love living in the city, we didn’t have to worry about school districts when deciding where to live.

We were especially lucky that when we told our families we got mostly support and encouragement! Of course, we got the typical, “How will you socialize the kids?” question from well-meaning family members. I had one friend insist school was the best way to prepare kids for real life; she’s since had a child and is seeing many things from a new perspective.

But the truth is, homeschool today looks completely different then it did 20/30, even 15 years ago, especially when you live in a city with tons of resources. Our biggest problem right now is being home often enough to do our schoolwork. There’s almost always a homeschool event at a nearby library, the Perot Museum, the Dallas Zoo, the Arboretum, or a Meetup group gathering to learn or even just picnic at a local park. Or I’ll find a cool science video and we need to stop everything to see what happens when you soak eggs in vinegar (it’s pretty fun, you should try it).

But just like some parents decide to breastfeed over bottle feed, some moms work and some stay home – I know homeschooling is not for every family. Some kids thrive at school, like my stepdaughter who gets good grades and wouldn’t homeschool for anything (I keep asking her, she keeps saying no). We’re all just doing the best we can and trying our hardest to be good parents. I also like to say that I homeschool to protect my son from being bullied and to protect my daughter from bullying the other girls. My 3-year-old is pretty sassy these days! We’re working on that.

If you homeschool also, I’d love to hear what helped make you decide.  Or what’s your hesitation, if you’re on the fence?

If you have any questions for me about our homeschool days — don’t hesitate to ask!