Parents: Why have you chosen to homeschool?

Question

...please include the country you live in.

Answer 1

I live in the US where I know we are very lucky to be "allowed" to home-school.
One of my main reasons to teach my children at home starts with the fact that I have been their sole teaching/care-provider for at lest 5 years and nearly 6, but suddenly they are old enough to send off with a stranger (yes, I know I would get to know the teacher throughout the school year) to be taught about things that I am not there to hear.
As well as the fact that there would be another 20-25 "little teachers" who would expose my young and innocent child to things that I have purosfully tried to not to expose them to. (Such as, certain cartoon characters, super heros, divorce, and other un-happy things.)
I don't pretend to live in a perfectly happy world, but neither do I see a need to expose my child to everything in the world at such a young age.
The next reason is so that I will know what they are learning. I wonder how many kids come home with homework and end up trying to explain to the parent how the teacher taught it to them, so the parent can "help" them with it. Yes, I know that parents can be involved in the classroom and such, but with more than 1 child (3 to be exact) that would still leave me missing out. I really like knowing what I am teaching my child and being able to steer it in the direction I see him/her learning as well as what tends to be more important.
Most curriculum is set up for children to spend several hours a day learning, with many other children. A one on one atmosphere is so much more condusive to learning. Children pick up on facts faster and are much more capable of understanding them the first time when the teacher is able to explain it directly to the child.
Those are just a few brief reasons to home school, but they are all genuinely mine.

Answer 2

From the US

It isn't a religious reason or an attempt to isolate them. We do attend church but we also keep a very active social schedule for them involving sports, music and art lessons...etc. We involve them in multi-cultural activites in our community and they have a wide variety of friends.

We don't follow the normal "summer break" schedule. When it is convenient for us we take some time and have a break or a vacation. Vacations can also turn into field trips and learning opportunities.

There is alot of padding in the grades we have found in traditional schools and have found that at the rate our children are progressing they will have finished the equivalent of the 12th grade somewhere between age 12 to age 14.
When this occurs, they will take their GED and attend our local community college until they are 18 and can make their own choices.

Homeschooling is not the isolated, backwoods-type experience that it once was. Our local YMCA even has a 3 times a week physical education class for homeschooled students. It's great. There is more support for it than you might imagine!

Answer 3

I live in Houston, TX in the USA.

Originally we began homeschooling because the public school kindergarten was not meeting the needs of our son and we could not afford private school. He had gone to a really strong montessori preschool and was ready for 1st grade, but by the time they tested him (after weeks of me pushing for it) it was too late for him to be moved up. There were no options except to leave him where he was, and that was not working because he was so bored I knew it was only a matter of time before there were behavioral problems (he was asked to put his head down and wait for the rest of the class to finish for 45 minutes at a time, and the teacher would not allow me to send extra work, nor would she give him any)

We fully intended to try again the following year, but when we dicussed advanced placement, again it was the run around. "Oh, we aren't enrolling right now and you have to be enrolled to test for advanced placement. I am sure that he will be fine next year." Well, we were not holding our breath. The whole thing soured us the the schools in our area (even though they are well thought of) and homeschooling was going so well we kept going.

Now we are finishing second grade (really 3rd since that is the curriculum we are doing, but he would be 2nd in public school because of his age). I have seen other parents get frustrated with the schools, I have heard horror stories from mom and mom in law who are public school teachers, and I have seen the behavior and attitudes of kids who are with peers and adults who are not family way more than with family, and have decided we will always do this. Tyler is social, has friends (some homeschool, most not) and is far beyond what he would be doing in school. As long as that is true and we can financially afford for me to stay home and buy the materials, we will continue.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

THe US..

Originally we started homeschooling our daughter for two basic reasons. The first stemmed from the processing disorder our daughter has. This makes it very difficult for her to exspress herself in written form, take notes and in general makes any form of written work extremely difficult. The school did not feel this learning disability was severe enough to qualify for additional services. Secondly, our daughter was on the recieving end of serious bullying because of her race (she was the only white child in a class of 28). The school would respond when I complained, but it did nothing to stop the bullying or abuse. By the end of first half of the year, my daughter was having panic attacks, early symptoms`of an ulcer and was totally ostracized socially by her entire third grade class. It couldn't continue so we pulled her out to homeschool until we could move into a better school district.

Well, we've moved and my daughter has decided she loves homeschooling too much to go back to school. Homeschooling lets us adapt lesson plans to her strengths while finding ways to work with her learning disabilities. She has made a large circle of home schooled friends and tends to have activities three or four days out of the week. Being homeschooled gives us more freedome to pursue her interests in theatre and photography since we are done school work by 200 in the afternoon and there is no homework. It also gives our family flexability to travel when the opportunity arises! My daughter is happier than ever, working above grade level in every subject but one and will be starting a year long, twice`weekly workshop where she will be part of a group that writes and produces a play or film.

Answer 5

I am from the USA and I homeschool my son because he has special needs in the form of Aspergers Syndrome a form of Autism. We tried regular school and he did not learn a thing.
He is seven and wants to different languages. He helps cook has his own garden and thrives here. I found a great homeschool on line school & a homeschool group that meets so the kids can make friends (moms too). The only way I would put him back in school is if we moved back where my cousin teaches and if he wanted too. We have a well rounded day. And since he can't handle noise to well we go to muesuems & such while regular kids are in school.

Answer 6

I am in the U.S. My 3 girls started out in public school because I thought it was a small school it couldn't be to bad. Boy was I Wrong... They went in above average and by the time I pulled them out they were struggling severely. It is a long story on why I pulled them out . Also the public schools get money for every child and all they see are dollar signs NOT a child. But the main reasons are:
1. I could do a better job and it be more relaxed and focused on what each child needs.
2. We could as a family spend more time together.
3. We could focus on different areas they needed or wanted more in.
4. I will admit we could teach them our morals values instead of the public schools.
5. We don't have to worry that someone is getting to our children who is abusive. Believe me it happened in the public school.
6. We can relax and focus on Life not the school system schedule. We were living our life around the school schedule you had too. Because the kids were told they had to be at all this extra stuff.

It was the best decision we ever made for our family.

Answer 7

We live in Australia and I have homeschooled by youngest two boys for the last year. We pulled the older boy out first as he has aspergers and after three and a half years of trying to keep him in the school system decided enough is enough when he started coming home and threatening to kill himself, he was 8yo. The younger one we pulled out half way through grade one as he was vomiting and hyperventilating on the way to school. It is the best decision we could have made. They are both calmer and happier and that flows on to the rest of the family. It gives us the flexibility we need with the boys and they are finished by lunch time and then they can do more interesting things. Homeschooling started out as a neccisity but now is something I do by choice. They are involved with a gymnastics club and do swimming as well as socialising with friends on a regular basis so they aren't at all isolated socially. They are learning lots of life skills they wouldn't have learnt at school. My 17yo went through the school system and if I had known more about homeschooling when he was young I would have homeschooled him as well.

Answer 8

My parents and I live in the U.S.A. My parents decided to homeschool me because we were moving across the country from a small town of 800 people to a much larger city (the high school had more students in the graduating class than my school had in pre-kindergarten through Seniors). The school was trouble. The teachers didn't care. There were a lot of drugs and gangs. I only had two years of school left. I was able to work. I met a lot of people there. I preferred homeschooling to public school, truth be told.

Answer 9

I can answer this because I AM a home schooled kid. I actually asked my mom to put me in home schooling half way through middle school. It has nothing to do with other kids or bullying as one may think. There were a couple reasons. One, I was doing really bad in school because I was focused more on friends and boys and other things like that. I still have a social life and hang out with friends, but at home I can concentrate like I wasn't able to in a classroom full of my friends. Second, I need more TIME! I basically went to school four 6 hours of the day, then came home and did homework for the rest of the night. How was I supposed to find time to do sports, extra-cirricular activities, or even just relax? I think ALL kids deserve to goof off for a while during the day or else whats the point of BEING a kid? Anyway, being home schooled I have more time for EVERYTHING! I sleep more, eat better and more balanced meals (try eating lunch at school then you'll see what I mean), I had MORE time with friends because of my free schedual, and I am doing soooo many activites: I love sports and anything to do with animals and can't even begin to name all the different activities im involved in without writing too much. As for homework, instead of it taking over my life, I now do all my work during the day and don't have any homeowrk, whereas in school it was frowned upon when kids tried to do homework before they got home. They WANTED the kids to spend a couple hours everyday doing homework..ugh. All in all home schooling helped me to pursue my dreams, and love life more than ever. I know that sounds corny, but I'm just trying to get the point across that the home-schooled kid image of the "nerdy loser with no friends" is totally wrong. I still have so many friends that I see all the time, do my school work, chores, activities, and live a less stressful life.

Answer 10

USA
I understand that in Germany, parents recently lost an appeal to legalize homeschooling, so thank goodness I live in the land of the free, not the land of the fascist!

Reasons:
1)Academically highly gifted children. My children will not be limited by the pack mentality or forced to work "in groups" which is just code for mass mediocrity.
2)My children requested it, and I was financially free to quit working
3)Abuse and negative socialization. I experienced it, and I would not wish that kind of torture on a suspected Al Qaida member... And have you ever seen the good kid "bringing up the others to his level" or does it always seem that the lowest common denominator dominates?
4)Indoctrination. See comment about Germany above. I choose to think freely rather than be told what to think by someone who is far less intelligent than I am. (Well, most of the time...some ps teachers are extremely smart. Most are not. When I was in 3rd grade, I recall purposefully mispronouncing words because that was how my moronic teacher thought they ought to sound. How awful for an 8 yr old)
5)Culturally off grid. Okay, I will admit I am a bit of a rebel. But I don't want my kids to be pop culture savvy. I want them to be more familiar with Bach than with Britney. So call me crazy. I don't want my kids becoming mini consumers to be exploited by the next commercial enterprize. Sorry big guys.

Answer 11

I live in the US.
Violence, there is too much bullying and violence on school grounds.
Sexuality, many schools have inadequate sexual education, they promote condoms but don't properly teach about the human sexes.
Religion, the lack of religious, moral and ethical education.
Academic, most school have been lowering their academic standards, their goals, their expectations.
Social, there is pressure to conform to the group, the contacts are only with same-aged groups.
Emotional, lack of caring and respect, lack or true interest and involvement in the lives of the young person.

I find that home-school allows freedom and academic growth without damage to the psyche. You can individualize subjects, levels, speed, etc to fit the child without "labeling" them and stigmatizing them. A loving supportive environment is good. Be sure to include other contacts, of other ages and involve the child in outside events.