Whether your child attends a traditional school or you are considering homeschooling, this article is for you. Many of the questions we should ask about education apply to every family: What does my child need? What is influencing them? Are they learning well? Do they feel safe and supported? And does their educational environment reflect what our family believes is important? Even if you ultimately remain in your current school, thoughtfully examining that choice is valuable.
In my neck of the woods, school starts at the beginning of September.
It is only mid-July, which means there is still time to decide what school will look like for your family this fall. Some parents already know exactly what they are doing. Others are still weighing their options, and that is okay.
But this is the time to begin dialing in those choices.
As you look more closely, you may discover that some of the options you once considered valid choices are not choices you actually want to entertain at all.
You may decide that your child’s current school remains the right fit. You may explore a different public school, a private school, a charter school, a hybrid program, or homeschooling.
The purpose of examining your options is not to convince yourself that every educational setting is wrong. It is to make sure that the choice you make is intentional.
And if homeschooling has crossed your mind—even briefly—I want to encourage you not to dismiss it simply because it feels unfamiliar or intimidating.
Maybe you believe your schedule could accommodate homeschooling, but you do not feel equipped to teach your children.
Maybe you worry that spending so much time together would irritate you or somehow make you enjoy your children less.
Maybe you are afraid you will not be patient enough, knowledgeable enough, organized enough, or disciplined enough.
As a teacher who left the traditional school system to homeschool my own children, I can tell you that I carried many of those same fears.
I considered all the choices. I questioned whether I could really do it. But deep down, I knew I wanted to homeschool long before I actually began.
Eventually, the desire to homeschool was so heavily impressed upon my heart that I could no longer ignore it. I was still scared, but through many conversations with my husband, observations within the school, books about homeschooling, and stories from other mothers, I slowly accepted that homeschooling was likely in my future.
When the final straw came, the decision had already been forming for a long time.
I pulled my child from school in the middle of the year.
I started simply.
And I just started.
Listen to Your Children
One of the most important things parents can do when making educational decisions is listen to their children.
Really listen.
If your child attends a public school, private school, charter school, or another traditional school setting, pay attention to what they are telling you.
If you do not like the way your child comes home speaking to you, listen to that.
If your child brings home math homework but cannot complete it because the lesson was explained in several confusing ways, listen to that.
If your child tells you about a troubling situation at school, says a teacher became involved, and nothing meaningful happened, listen to that.
If your child is being bullied and you have repeatedly met with teachers or administrators without seeing change, listen to that.
If your child’s teacher seems far more concerned about benchmarks and test scores than you are, listen to that.
Not every difficult day means you need to remove your child from school. Children will experience challenges wherever they are, including at home.
But patterns matter.
Your child’s behavior matters. Their worries matter. Their words matter. The way they change throughout the school year matters.
Listen carefully to what they may be trying to tell you.
This also applies to homeschool families. If you already homeschool and your child is consistently frustrated, discouraged, or overwhelmed, listen to that too. The answer may not be abandoning homeschooling. It may be changing the curriculum, reducing the workload, altering the schedule, or approaching a subject differently.
Listening does not mean allowing children to make every educational decision for themselves.
It means recognizing that their experiences provide important information.
Identify Why Something Does Not Feel Right
Once you begin to recognize that the current situation may not be working, ask yourself why.
Pinpoint the specific reason you do not want your child to remain in the same situation.
- Maybe you feel your child is being exposed to ideological ideas that conflict with your family’s beliefs, and you want to explore a faith-based private school or homeschooling.
- Maybe you believe your child is learning more from the other students than from the teacher, and a smaller class would be beneficial.
- Maybe your child is struggling academically and needs more individual attention.
- Maybe your child is overwhelmed, anxious, distracted, or discouraged.
- Maybe your child needs more challenge than the current environment provides.
- Maybe you believe your child would benefit immensely from spending more time with you and with a carefully selected community of people.
There are countless reasons a family may begin exploring different educational choices.
Before you begin comparing schools, programs, or curricula, identify your why.
- What exactly are you hoping to change?
- What does your child need more of?
- What does your child need less of?
- What are you trying to protect?
- What are you trying to build?
When you understand your why, you can evaluate your options much more clearly.
Ask Direct Questions About Every Educational Option
Once you know why you are exploring alternatives, look at your options intentionally.
Do not rely on rumors, advertisements, social media posts, or vague promises.
Ask direct questions.
Suppose your child’s current class feels too large and another school advertises smaller class sizes. Ask the school exactly what “small” means.
One school may consider 20 students a small class because 30 is common elsewhere. Your idea of a small class may be 10 to 15 students.
That difference matters.
If you are concerned about ideology in the classroom, do not simply ask whether the school is “political,” “neutral,” “traditional,” or “family-friendly.” Those words can mean very different things to different people.
Ask about actual policies and classroom practices.
You might ask what flags or symbols are permitted in classrooms, how much of a teacher’s personal life is shared with students, or how teachers are expected to respond when children ask controversial or deeply personal questions.
If bullying is one of your concerns, ask exactly how the school handles it.
- What happens first?
- What happens if the behavior continues?
- When are parents contacted?
- Who follows up?
- How is the child who was harmed protected while the situation is being addressed?
If academics are your concern, ask how struggling students receive support and how advanced students are challenged. Ask what curriculum the school uses. Ask whether parents may review it. Ask how much homework is ordinarily assigned. Ask how the school measures progress and what happens when a child does not meet a benchmark.
Your questions are not dumb, unreasonable, or unimportant.
They matter because your child matters.
You are not required to accept vague answers simply because someone else is an education professional. You are the parent, and you are allowed to ask direct questions about the environment in which your child will spend a large portion of each day.
Homeschool parents should ask direct questions too.
- What will this curriculum require from me?
- Does its philosophy align with our family’s beliefs?
- Is it appropriate for the way my child learns?
- Can we realistically complete it within our schedule?
- Am I choosing it because it fits my child, or because another family made it look beautiful online?
Every educational choice deserves honest examination.
Homeschooling Removes Many of Those Concerns
As a homeschool mother, I no longer have to worry about many of the questions I once had about traditional schooling.
I know what my children are being taught.
I know what ideas are being presented to them.
I know who they are spending their days with.
I know how conflict is handled.
I know whether they understand a lesson because I am there to see it.
The children I homeschool are surrounded by what I believe to be good, true, and beautiful, grounded in faith, history, and truth.
That is my why.
That is why I homeschool.
Your why may sound different from mine, but if there is something in you that keeps saying, “I want to homeschool,” I believe you should take that seriously.
Do not automatically assume that desire is unrealistic.
You are your child’s parent, teacher, protector, and advocate. It is your responsibility to pay attention when something continues to weigh heavily on your heart.
Read Before You Decide
Talking with experienced homeschool mothers helped me, but books also played an important role in changing how I understood education, motherhood, and learning at home.
My top recommendations for a parent considering homeschooling are Mere Motherhood by Cindy Rollins and The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer.
These are two very different books, which is one reason I recommend reading both.
Mere Motherhood offers the perspective and reflections of an experienced homeschool mother. It speaks to the life of the home, the formation of a family, the value of good books, and the reality that homeschooling is about much more than completing assignments.
The Well-Trained Mind provides a far more detailed and practical look at classical education at home. It can help you understand how subjects may be taught across different ages and stages while giving you a clearer picture of what an academically rich homeschool education can look like.
You do not have to follow either book perfectly.
You do not have to adopt every recommendation or recreate another family’s homeschool.
Read to expand your understanding of what is possible.
Read to learn from mothers who have already walked this road.
Read so your decision is informed by more than fear, assumptions, or a picture of homeschooling based entirely on traditional school.
“I Don’t Have Time to Homeschool”
One of the biggest concerns I hear from parents is that they do not have time to homeschool.
They have jobs. Commitments. Appointments. Younger children. Older children. Household responsibilities. Real lives.
Before deciding that homeschooling is impossible, sit down with a weekly calendar and honestly write out your schedule.
Look at what your week actually contains.
You may discover that you have more flexibility than you thought.
Perhaps you work part time and want to keep your job. That is understandable.
Could Grandma spend one day a week with the children?
You may think, “But Grandma cannot teach them.”
She may not have to.
Time spent with a loving grandparent is valuable. Children can learn through conversations, cooking, errands, stories, family history, gardening, practical tasks, and simply sharing daily life.
They may learn more about family, responsibility, service, patience, and practical living during a day with Grandma than they would during seven hours spent in a classroom.
Not every hour of a child’s day needs to look like formal instruction.
Maybe you work more than part time. That does not necessarily mean homeschooling is impossible either.
Some families use homeschool co-ops, tutors, hybrid programs, learning centers, or virtual school programs. Depending on where you live and how a program is structured, some virtual charter programs may offer curriculum, classes, educational funding, or additional support.
Your children may attend a co-op or learning program for several hours a day, a few days each week, while still completing the education you have intentionally chosen for them.
You may still need help with transportation or childcare, but many families already rely on others to make a traditional school schedule work.
Homeschooling sometimes requires us to think outside the box.
It does not have to mean one mother sitting alone at a kitchen table with her children from 8:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon.
There are many ways to build a homeschool life.
“I’m Afraid I Won’t Teach Them Well Enough”
The second concern I often hear is that parents are afraid they will not teach their children well enough.
People who have never taught before sometimes imagine that teachers stand in front of a room and create every lesson from their own knowledge.
That is not how most teaching works.
A well-designed curriculum tells you what to do.
It gives you the lesson, examples, questions, explanations, practice, and often the answers.
You open the book and follow the next step.
You may read something aloud, ask a few questions, guide your child through an activity, or assign a small project. Many curricula provide project ideas, book suggestions, discussion questions, and teaching notes.
Math curriculum works much the same way. It walks you through the concept and gives your child opportunities to practice.
You are also allowed to learn alongside your child.
Sometimes you will relearn something you forgot.
Sometimes you will look at a lesson and say, “Oh, I remember this.”
Sometimes you will need to look something up.
That is not failure. That is learning.
Your children do not need a parent who knows everything.
They need a parent who is willing to guide them, learn with them, and help them find answers.
“I’m Afraid We’ll Get Tired of Each Other”
Some parents worry that spending more time with their children will make them irritated with one another or cause them to enjoy their children less.
Homeschooling does not create a perfect family.
You will still have frustrating days. Your children will still complain sometimes. You will occasionally need quiet, space, or a change of scenery.
But spending more time together also allows you to know your children more deeply.
You learn how they think.
You notice what sparks their curiosity.
You recognize frustration before it becomes defeat.
You have time to work through conflict instead of constantly rushing everyone out the door.
You begin to see your children as whole people rather than as family members moving between school, homework, dinner, activities, and bedtime.
More time together does not automatically make relationships easier. But it gives you more opportunities to build those relationships intentionally.
In my experience, homeschooling did not make me like my children less.
It allowed me to know them better.
Start Slowly
If you decide to homeschool, begin simply.
You probably have wonderful ideas about what your homeschool days will look like. You may picture beautiful read-alouds, nature journals, art lessons, Bible study, history projects, science experiments, music practice, foreign languages, and peaceful family meals.
Some of those things may eventually become part of your homeschool.
But your days probably will not look exactly the way you imagine them at first.
That is okay.
Choose a language arts curriculum and a math curriculum.
Start there.
Each day, complete language arts and math, and include free reading.
Make your children read.
Make your children read.
I will say it again: make your children read.
If children can read well, they can learn anything.
They can read the instructions in their math book. They can explore history, science, geography, faith, literature, and any subject that captures their attention.
You do not need to purchase a house full of books. Use your public library.
There are also free and inexpensive curriculum options available online if you are not ready to make major purchases.
For the beginning, focus on three things:
Language arts.
Math.
Reading.
If you are worried that your children will miss another subject while you are starting slowly, use reading to fill the gap by taking your child to the library. Have them to choose a book from the history section, science section, or another subject you want to introduce.
Even young children can explore children’s nonfiction books. These books are filled with photographs, illustrations, maps, diagrams, and fascinating facts.
They spark questions.
Questions spark curiosity.
Curiosity leads to learning.
Every Parent Has Doubts
I want mothers who are considering homeschooling to understand that nearly every homeschool mother has experienced uncertainty.
Even mothers who knew before having children that they wanted to homeschool still have days when they wonder:
- Are they understanding this?
- Am I doing a good job?
- Are they learning enough?
- Is this the right curriculum?
- Should I change something?
- Would they be better off somewhere else?
- How do I fix what is not working?
Those questions do not mean you are failing.
They mean you care.
Parents with children in traditional schools often ask similar questions:
- Is this teacher a good fit?
- Is my child receiving enough help?
- Are they being challenged?
- Should we stay another year?
- Would a different school be better?
- Should I become more involved?
- Should I bring this concern to the teacher or administration?
There is no educational choice that permanently removes every doubt.
The goal is not to become so confident that you never evaluate your decision again. The goal is to remain attentive, willing to ask questions, and prepared to make changes when your child needs them.
Talk to Parents Who Are Actually Living It
Talk with a homeschool mother you trust.
Ask what her days really look like, not only what appears in photographs.
Ask what she did during her first year.
Ask what she purchased but never used.
Ask what she wishes she had known.
If you are considering a particular school, talk to families whose children currently attend.
Ask what they love.
Ask what has been difficult.
Ask how the school communicates with parents.
Ask whether the promises made during enrollment match the daily reality.
Listen carefully, but remember that another family’s experience should inform your decision, not make it for you.
Your child is not their child.
Your family is not their family.
Your priorities may not be their priorities.
Gather information, return to your why, and make the choice that best serves the child in front of you.
Homeschool Does Not Have to Look Like School
One of the most freeing things you can understand is that homeschooling does not have to look like traditional school.
It can look the way your family needs it to look.
My homeschool is quiet and relatively short. We are often finished by 11:00 or noon.
The rest of the day can include extracurricular activities, nature walks, field trips, projects, rest, prayer, household responsibilities, or simply time together.
When our school day lasts longer, it is not usually because everything has gone terribly wrong.
Often, it is because curiosity has taken over.
One question leads to another. We pull out another book. We look something up. We continue talking because the children are interested and no one is ready to stop.
That is one of the great beauties of homeschooling.
You are not always rushing away from curiosity because the bell has rung.
You have time to follow it.
Make an Intentional Choice This Fall
You may work through these questions and decide to keep your child exactly where they are.
That is still an intentional and thoughtful choice.
You may decide that your child needs a different school, a smaller classroom, a faith-based environment, additional support, or a different academic approach.
Or you may acknowledge that the quiet desire to homeschool has not gone away.
Do not continue putting homeschooling on the back burner simply because you are afraid.
Explore it.
Write down your concerns.
Look honestly at your schedule.
Talk with your spouse.
Speak with experienced homeschool parents.
Read thoughtful books.
Visit the library.
Research a few simple curriculum options.
Identify your why.
Then begin.
Do not recreate a school building inside your home.
Do not purchase every curriculum at once.
You do not need to know what the next twelve years will look like.
You only need to take the first faithful step.
Start slowly.
Start simply.
But start.
If you are weighing your options and would like an honest, thoughtful perspective grounded in faith, find me on Instagram @pillar.and.pace.homeschool. I have walked through many of these decisions myself and have supported others as they worked through them too. I am always happy to talk through your concerns, questions, and hopes for your child’s education.