How did you come to homeschool?

We talk a lot about the reasons why we homeschool here at Progressive Parenting, Conscious Caregiving. Make no mistake: all parents, homeschooling or not, are welcome here every day. The content is simply written with homeschoolers in mind, from a homeschooling (really an unshooling) perspective. I’ve never asked for you to share your stories, though.

Laura Grace Weldon shared a very brave and very scary story about how she came to homeschool her family. I really recommend reading it. I wish I could say that it’s an uncommon horror story, but when you begin to read about stories like hers you start to see them everywhere. It’s not a void; it’s the system. And whether it’s due to apathy or overwhelm or something in between, it’s nothing that parents want their children to be a part of.

My child was not physically harmed in the early childhood program, although she was punished with time-outs that I did not agree with. She had no choices like she does at home. The harm she received was psychological; we put her in the program because her occupational and physical therapists thought it best for her, but she actually regressed from school.

She became quiet. Her teacher told me she rarely talked and asked if she talked at home. I had to laugh; you’re kidding me, right? My inquisitive little scientist? But the more I paid attention, the quieter she became. She even started to point to things she wanted instead of asking for them, like she did when she was a baby.

I had planned on homeschooling her since I became a parent, and didn’t plan on enrolling her in the school system after she graduated from early childhood—but I think the moment that I decided to pull her out was when her teacher told me it was time to “cut the apron strings.”

My daughter was four.

Feel free to share your own homeschool stories in this thread. There will be no judgment here, as ever.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia