A reader writes to say that his five year old came home from public school kindergarten with a flyer alerting parents that the kids are about to have a whole week of "Just Say No to Drugs" education. It shocked him that kids as young as this are being subjected to this sort of thing, and made the reader and his wife consider whether they would be better off getting their kids out of the public school environment, and homeschooling them.
He wrote me asking for homeschooling advice. I told him a couple of things from our experience. First, be realistic. Homeschooling is not for everybody, and it's no panacea. You have to have a certain amount of idealism to get through the tough parts, but understand that there probably will be tough parts. Not everybody is ideally suited to be a teacher, nor are all kids suited to home learning. If you can go into it without illusions, you'll do better.
Second, I said, by far the greater burden of homeschooling will fall on your wife, if you're like most families. As a husband, that means you have to play a crucial support role. If your wife is busy homeschooling, she's not going to be able to cook and clean like she otherwise would. You can step in there by doing this work yourself, hiring a housekeeper to come in once or twice a week, and so forth. Also, you can pick up some of the homeschooling tasks if you can. Furthermore, you'll need to be there to support your wife emotionally when she has a bad day with the kids (and she will). If you think of homeschooling as something your wife does with the kids, it won't succeed.
Those were two things off the top of my head. For you who are now homeschooling, or who once homeschooled but no longer do, what would you advise this reader? Don't chastise or be argumentative here; I mean for this to be a helpful post to him and to all readers who are considering homeschooling, or who might be struggling with it and need some tips.

Add to Newsvine
Add to StumbleUpon