“Should we Homeschool?”: Some Thoughts on Discerning Home Education
Where I’m Coming From
I’m often approached by parents who are considering embarking on the path of home education. They want some advice about whether not homeschooling is “right” for their family, and they know I’m a fan of home education, so they ask me. (Also, my work is to help people discern their unique God-given lives.)
You might say it’s a (15+ years) hobby of mine to read about homeschooling, especially from the mother’s perspective.
Having never actually homeschooled myself or anyone else, my personal experience is limited… but with that said, I’ve known / met / followed many families who have chosen to homeschool, and I’ve been observing those decisions for decades. I’ve helped homeschool other people’s children, and I’ve taught, tutored, and nannied in various capacities.
I should add that I was lucky enough to attend a high school that taught a true classical curriculum, and I believe that a classical education, coupled with practical skills, is crucial for every person.
So what follows is a summary of my observations, the lived experience of others, resources to help you discern, and some questions that you may want to take to prayer and discussion with others. I don’t think there’s really a “right” (or wrong) to homeschooling itself. Instead, I think it’s more helpful to consider it in terms of “fit”: is this a good fit for our family in this season?
The Big Picture
What is education? What is its purpose? The answers you have for these questions will serve as the foundation to any discernment about home education.
If you believe that education is the imparting of information for the purpose of eventually gaining employment, that’s radically different than believing that education is the shaping of a person (mind, heart, soul) to be disposed to love what is good, true, and beautiful in this life and be prepared to live that love in the next.
If you believe that your child will learn most things in the first 18-22 years of his or her life, that’s really different than believing that your child will spend the entirety of his or her life learning. Having to know most things by age 22 comes with a very different sort of pressure than knowing that you have a lifetime to learn.
If you’ve never thought about these big-picture ideas, I’d suggest that you start by reading The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy L. Sayers. (It takes some concentration, but that fact alone may reveal how many of us suffer from the modern plague of inattention!)
Additionally, have you taken time to discern what your particular family’s goal for home education is? Some families simply want to do more life together. Some want to avoid the cultural propaganda present in so many schools today. Some prefer to not have a commute, or have extra time for sports, farming, hobbies, etc. Some want to be able to tailor their child’s learning to their particular needs, rather than have him or her be a cog in a classroom of 25+’s wheel.
Success vs. Failure
If you have a clear sense of what education is and is for, then you’ll be a better judge of whether or not your child is succeeding or failing. If he can’t add 6+7, is he failing? Or does he just need more time / a different way to learn? Who sets the timeline for him?
You’ll also be able to measure your home education experience by your particular family’s goals, rather than someone else’s. If the main reason you homeschool is to have more time together, are you having more time together?
When you’re clear on your own goals and mission, you can use that as a guide for checking in on how you’re doing.
Imparting Information vs. Learning With
The parents I see who are most worried about home education feel that they themselves are not capable of imparting all the information that the state has decided their child needs at a certain age.
They try to replicate ‘school’ at home, following a particular curriculum slavishly and for many hours a day, often seated at one spot. They feel pressure to be the teacher (aka the one who knows everything) rather than thinking that their child can learn in many ways from many sources.
They also feel directed by and tied to tests of various kinds, usually state-sponsored tests that dispense various forms of “accreditation.”
The parents I see who are most happy about home education feel that they are learning alongside their child. They don’t worry about whether or not they know more; only if they can muster the energy to be curious and learn with.
They use curricula as an aide when it is, and abandon it when it isn’t. They see education done in the whole of life and know that some days will be filled with baking or reading or walking in the woods, while others might be full of math sheets and phonics and spelling. They’re also willing to ask for help - either from their local community or online or from books and resources from experienced home educators.
Tests are seen as helpful in a secondary kind of way: the test itself is nothing but a tool to gain a necessary “stamp of approval” and can be treated as such, distinct from true learning.
Hours and “Subjects” in a Day
I do not know any happy or successful homeschoolers who spend 5+ hours/ day doing “school work” (with perhaps the exception of high school students who are dedicated to certain subjects).
With young children 30 min- 1.5 hrs a day is plenty, with time gradually increasing with age. But most do ‘schoolwork’ in the morning and have the afternoon devoted to activities, hobbies, rest, chores, etc.
Subjects can be combined so easily! And the most veteran homeschooling moms do this regularly. They gather children of various ages and read aloud, let’s say, a story from history. Older ones will read more about the time period on their own. They might write an essay on the subject or do a bit of work on their world history timeline. Younger ones might copy out a passage from the text, or draw a scene from it, or give an oral summary (“narration”) of what they heard. Little ones might have a coloring page with a character from history on it… or they might scamper off to play blocks.
Different seasons (years, months, weeks) might have different emphases. If the big picture is to help your child love learning and foster their natural curiosity, then it’s ok to have a season where there’s a new baby or a family member needs a lot of help, and science falls to the wayside - the lessons in learned in service of others take primacy in that season.
Similarly, some ‘subjects’ are best learned in more creative ways than popular curricula of workbooks and textbooks. Some families focus on math primarily through games, for example. Most children are more keen to learn to add and subtract while playing a game than doing a worksheet. In later years, children may find themselves keen to learn from actual practitioners in their fields - they may want to learn woodworking from a carpenter or cooking from a chef.
Interaction and Discipline
The biggest real challenges I’ve seen homeschoolers face have nothing to do with popular concerns over sociability or meeting state education standards. Most homeschool kids are the same level of “weird” they would be, whether or not they would have gone to school, only without the bullying. Most homeschool kids have statistically better levels of knowledge as measured by tests.
The real problem is actually for moms (it’s usually moms) who find that spending all day every day with their beloved children, and needing to coax them to do spelling and math on top of eating their greens, is an exhausting prospect! The burnout can be very, very real.
To that end: any happy homeschooling mother I’ve ever met, seen, or read about, makes quiet time and rest an essential part of every single day. The children are trained, from an early age, to be able to mind themselves. They can read, draw, do something quiet, or go outdoors, but they must - absolutely must - leave their mother alone. I have never seen anyone ‘succeed’ aka be happy homeschooling if their children do not possess the skill of ‘entertaining’ themselves. (And even with mandatory quiet time, it can still be exhausting!)
A corollary to that is that I haven’t seen a happy homeschool mother who doesn’t rest, herself, during the day. Rest looks different for each person, of course! For some it’s reading a book, for others, baking a cake, for others, staring out the window and hearing nothing but utter silence. Sometimes, it’s a nap. But mothers who don’t rest - who tend to use any ‘down’ time to do more, whether it be household chores or more school prep - often end up really burnt out and unhappy.
The happiest families I’ve seen have a sense that everyone pitches in and is responsible for the home and spaces in which they dwell. (Of course, no one is always happy about doing chores every time they need to be done! But overall, there is a sense that being a family in a home is a shared communal life.) Children are entrusted with tasks at an early age and given real responsibility.
This is something true of almost any child I’ve ever met: they can sniff a faker! So don’t have them do things that don’t actually matter. Let them make dinner, clean up, plan a meal, make a shopping list, build a bookcase, wash the car… let them do the things that need doing to make your house function, even if, at first, they don’t do them very well because they’re learning. Let them see you taking joy in a clean countertop or freshly-folded laundry. Let them learn the satisfaction of a job well done, and above all, let them take the consequences of their own shoddy work!
Boys, Girls, and Dads
It may not be popular to say, but boys and girls are different. They just are! Families with an eldest boy are almost always different in ‘vibe’ than families with an eldest girl, because the eldest sets the tone. Of course individual children are always individual, and not all girls and not all boys are the same. What follows are generalities: you know your child well enough to know if they fall outside the general pattern, and you can account for that accordingly.
Boys are generally very physical. It’s part of their design to need to move, a lot. They have seemingly limitless energy at times and while this is seen as a problem or even cause for medication in our modern culture, it’s actually a gift from God. Can you imagine if all that boy energy could be harnessed for good? In service of other people? Your job is not to crush your boy’s energy but to help him channel it well. Generally speaking, that means that sitting for long periods is simply not the best way for him to learn. (Think 90/10 or as they grow, 80/20, ratio of running around to sitting still in a day.) One of the joys of homeschool is that you can practice multiplication tables with your son while he is swinging upside-down and he will probably remember them better. Boys especially need things to do - not busy work, but constructive things. Those without farms will have to get creative!
Girls tend not to be quite so rambunctious, but do tend to be more emotionally attuned. This means that for a young girl and her mother, things can go very well or very badly depending on the day! The challenge of course is to help your daughter learn to process her emotions well, and not get overly caught up in yours. (Again, all of this depends on the girl!) She will need friends as she gets older - these do not need to be girls of exactly the same age, but the greatest gift you can give her is to help her find, in the words of Anne of Green Gables, ‘a kindred spirit.’ (For some girls this will be a sister but for many it won’t.)
Because most mothers are the primary homeschooler, it can’t be overemphasized how important dad is, even and especially if he isn’t around all day. Dad needs to be interested in what is happening, and as involved as possible. This is especially true as children grow older. Learning can’t be associated only with mom. As boys grow, they’ll reject it if they don’t see dad’s involvement.
They’ll also begin to push the boundaries a lot more as they get older. Many homeschooling families find that somewhere between 11 and 14, boys really really need (1) more dad time and influence and (2) more outside authorities. Girls need this too, but in a different way. The pre-teen and teen years lend themselves to slowly expanding the child’s world of influence. These are the years where the more you can bring in family members and trusted adults, the better. Does Grandpa like history? Great. Maybe he can take over history for the year. Do you know a woman who has her own business and could use a responsible apprentice? Your child has the benefit of being available during daytime hours!
Taking the Long View with Regular Discernment
Another thing that can frighten parents is the idea of making an educational decision for their child “once and for all”. Remember: you can always change things if they aren’t working. At the same time, it’s important to take the long view and not quit on your worst day.
When you start, give yourself a set period of time to just live the decision you’ve made, whether it’s homeschool in general or a particular curriculum or activity. Then, revisit it at the end of that time period with your particular family goals in mind. (Of course sometimes you will know right away that something isn’t working, but usually it takes a little while.)
If children are coming out of ‘regular’ school, they and you are going to need a lot of time to de-tox and readjust your expectations of what a day is like. Be very gentle with yourself and them. Read aloud, play outside, bake and build. Don’t worry too much about worksheets and math facts. Just start learning to be together, to enjoy each other’s company, and to learn rhythms of work and rest together. It’s not easy and it takes time and patience and lots of conversations about expectations - and probably a lot of apologies and forgiveness.
How many ‘facts’ from school do you remember? Probably not nearly as many as you were tested on. You likely have vivid memories, good and bad, of social situations, teachers, and certain projects / topics. Your child will be the same. There’s no way they will remember everything they supposedly need to learn. You get to decide what kind of family culture around learning and being together you want to set - you don’t really get to decide which facts they’ll remember when they’re 35. They will decide in their adult years if they want to learn more! If you raise a life-long learner, “gaps” in their education are just opportunities for the future.
There is no one-size-fits-all form of education for every child and family. Aside from faith and morals, there is no right and wrong to teaching. Their needs and yours will shift over time, and you will have great days and terrible days. Take the long view: your goal as a parent is to help this small irrational person become a virtuous adult, and that is the work of a lifetime. Some days you will burn the eggs and yell at them for not knowing how to multiply; other days you will marvel at God’s natural universe together as you recite poetry.
Adjustment for their changing needs (and yours) does not mean failure! It means good discernment. So free yourself from the pressure of once-and-for-all decisions. You may decide to home educate for many years, or few, for all subjects or some, for one child or several. As long as you are being faithful to what God is calling you to do for your family at this time, you’re on the right track. There is no such thing as perfect in this fallen world.
Know someone who would benefit from reading this? Share it!
Practical Help
No one likes to talk about how homemaking is a job, but it is. Just because it isn’t paid doesn’t mean it’s not work! Taking care of a home, meal planning, laundry, remembering to buy toilet paper and send birthday cards - these are all things that take work! Education takes work. Parenting takes work. Being emotionally present to your spouse and children takes work. These are all beautiful things, but thinking that you can do them all, all by yourself, is a recipe for madness.
As soon as your children are old enough to start helping (generally age 2 girls, age 3 boys), have them help in an age appropriate way. By the time they are 8 or 9 or 10 they can do most practical things an adult can do if they have been trained how and consider it ‘normal’ to help.
But sometimes, everyone is tired or there is a lot going on. Do not be afraid to get practical help! That can look like so many different things: help with housecleaning, pre-packaged meals, online tutoring, etc. etc.
Just be aware of the temptation to feel like a failure: reject it at all costs. We’re made to live in a village and have all kinds of help in life!
What if We Have a ‘Slow Learner’?
This is another fear that I see show up a lot in parents who are thinking about or actually are homeschooling. They worry that if their child is slow compared to the national average, it’s because of homeschooling, and not because that child just needs more time, or because the national average is meaningless.
All of us learn at different paces and in different ways. History is full of ‘slow learners’ who became famous as politicians, musicians, military leaders, and most importantly, saints! Some kids teach themselves to read at 3, and some kids need support until they are 8,9, 10. I think it’s less helpful to be concerned about mastery of skills and material and more helpful to be concerned about their wonder and joy in learning.
In other words: be more worried about crushing their love of reading/ math/ nature than about whether or not they can read or multiply or identify a leaf.
Usually it’s the adult’s anxiety that does more harm than the child’s own slow pace! The patience required on our end is really the difficult part.
Here’s a bit of wisdom on homeschooling from a veteran mom with successful and faithful adult children now, and how that woman's son was a slow early learner.
Sally Clarkson has also written a book with her now-adult son, about how he struggled with high energy, OCD, and anxiety. He’s now a successful filmmaker. The book is called Different: The Story of an Outside-the-Box Kid and the Mom Who Loved Him.
If your child needs practical help (speech therapy, for example), try to get that help in a way that’s encouraging and not discouraging for the child.
Resources*
For You as a Parent:
The book that comes up over and over again as a key recommendation is:
Teaching from Rest by (veteran homeschooling mom of 6) Sarah McKenzie.
Others that seem universally popular:
The Mission of Motherhood and Awakening Wonder by Sally Clarkson (another veteran homeschooling mother!)
Real Learning Revisited by Elizabeth Foss (now that many of her 9 homeschooled children are grown, she’s revisited a book she wrote when they were younger.)
This new Substack letter occasionally features “how we homeschool” essays from families around the world, and she also recently did a survey about reasons people homeschool. (Catherine is a non-religious new homeschooling mother of two, so offers a different perspective from the others.)
Regarding Learning:
The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer (and accompanying resources)
She’s also written (the hugely popular with kids) The Story of the World audio books. They are well-loved, but at a few points, fairly anti-Catholic... here is one Catholic mom's way of dealing with that. (see the other books in her list for good resources)
Sarah McKenzie’s podcast, Read Aloud Revival has LOADS of great episodes with genuinely helpful perspectives and resources, and she runs an online community to help families get more out of their reading lives: Read Aloud Revival Premium. The book lists on her website are super helpful.
Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum by Laura Berquist
There are many, many good curricula out there - the challenge is really not to get overwhelmed or paralyzed in the research and decision making. Remember that curricula are just tools to a greater goal.
Some advice from a Veteran (20 year) Homeschool Mom:
I asked my friend who has been doing this for two decades what her main piece of advice would be. Here’s what she said:
I’d encourage any homeschooling mom to write down her reasons for homeschooling as a reminder and inspiration for when the going gets tough. Also to have her kids (especially the boys) come up with rules for their homeschool together with her and their schedule to stick to. I did that with [the wild 8 year old boy] this year and it’s in the front of his binder and really helpful to refer to.
Practical Conclusions
Pray. Talk with your spouse. Together, decide what is most important for your family. Get clear priorities on what education is for and then make your decisions accordingly.
Gather information, but if you feel overwhelmed into decision paralysis, it’s time to stop. Make good (not “the best”!) decisions for a set amount of time, then pause to review in light of your main priorities.
Don’t quit on your worst day.
Trust that God loves your children even more than you do. You’re not alone in this parenting gig.
*I don’t make any money for suggesting resources [how I wish I did!] - I’ve just been paying attention to this area for a long time and seen the same things recommended over and over.
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