Facing Criticism for Your Choice to Home School

For anyone who is considering home educating their child or children, one of the biggest obstacles (and scariest) you will face will be family. 

Well-meaning family members and friends will not understand your choices. Our society has been brought up to see school as a certain norm: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the government-ordained school location. Anything that falls outside this box is hard for us to wrap our minds around. 

Even the most understanding and open-minded family members and friends will express doubts to you.
This happened to me, and still happens. 

At first, my husband and I kept our thoughts about homeschooling to ourselves. The closer the time came for our oldest to start school, we began getting more nervous. 

We were already committed to the idea, but we hadn’t told our families. 

Eventually, the subject came up and I just mentioned to my parents that we were considering homeschooling as a possibility.

We began hearing the typical concerns: What about socialization? Do you really know how? How are you going to know if he’s learning? 

We heard from my in-laws: But you’re not a teacher! Those kids will never learn to read! Kids need to be in school with other kids and qualified teachers! 

At first, it was hard to ignore the nay saying. Eventually though, we decided to not give answers to the questions. We would simply say “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine.” 

No, our parents aren’t bad people, they just didn’t know much about homeschooling and didn’t know how to deal with their kids walking a different path. 

It took a couple of years, but we let the home schooling speak for itself. 

One afternoon, I was at my parent’s house and my brother was there also. He had a set of instructions for installing a furnace. He called over my seven-year-old son, Kage and jokingly asked him to read the instructions for him. 

Kage picked them up and began reading out loud. My brother and my Dad were amazed.