What is Your Why? How Homeschooling Advantages Can Help You Keep Going When It Gets Hard

Why did you choose to homeschool your kids? Was it to avoid something you didn’t like about public school? Or were there homeschooling advantages that you wanted to experience for your family? Homeschooling can be hard. It requires perseverance when the going gets tough. And it really helps on those hard days to know exactly why you are choosing this path for your family. In this post, I’ll share my reasons for choosing homeschooling for my family. We’ll also talk about how knowing your reasons can add fuel to your fire to keep you going when the going gets tough.

Avoiding the Disadvantages of Public Schools

I want to start by saying that I have a lot of respect for public school teachers. I was one for years before staying home with my kids. The job is hard, and most of them are doing the best that they can. But the reality is that the system has some major flaws that can be avoided by homeschooling.

Many families choose to get started with homeschooling because they are avoiding something about the public schools that they don’t like. Avoiding these things is definitely a huge benefit of homeschooling. These aren’t the only benefits of homeschooling, but they are a great start. Here’s a few of the homeschooling advantages that come from things we are avoiding:

Social Disadvantages of Public Schools:

Bullies

Schools can be a very negative social environment for kids. Many kids experience bullying from others, and some even learn to be bullies themselves. This is often a result of a large group of kids that are the same age and maturity level learning socialization from each other, without older kids or adults as role models. Teachers often have too much responsibility to be able to completely oversee every social interaction, and this means that kids are left up to their own devices. Bullying can leave long term emotional scars that harm kids for years in the future, and much of this unsupervised socialization can be avoided by homeschooling.

Peer Pressure

Kids in schools are often exposed to peer pressure as they seek to fit in to social groups and make friends. Some parents argue that kids won’t learn how to stand up to peer pressure unless they are in schools, but the reality is that most teachers are not teaching kids how to stand up to peer pressure. They have enough responsibility already teaching the curriculum and preparing kids for standardized tests! If the responsibility for teaching your child to stand up to peer pressure is going to fall to you anyways, wouldn’t it be better to at least be able to know that it is happening?

School Violence

With the increase in school shootings and school violence, the reality is that even kids in schools aren’t completely safe and free from risk. For some parents, this is reason enough to homeschool.

Educational Disadvantages of Public Schools:

Standardized Testing

Recent educational reforms including No Child Left Behind and Common Core have only increased the importance of standardized test scores for schools, teachers, and kids. As test scores have become more important, teachers have spent more and more time teaching specific skills that kids will need to know to do well on the tests, as well as teaching test taking skills. These might not be the most valuable skills that kids will need in real life. In fact, some of these things have no real life value at all and are a waste of time for kids. Time spent teaching to the test is time that isn’t spent really learning important new skills, and avoiding this is one of the biggest homeschooling advantages.

Low Standards

In most schools, the primary goal is to help every child achieve a minimum standard. For schools to receive funding under No Child Left Behind, they need to help every child meet the grade level standards. This is a great and admirable goal. But, what if your child is already past that level of understanding? They are suddenly not the priority as more and more resources go to helping those that are in danger of falling behind.

Impersonal Levels of Learning

Although teachers try to make sure that each child is receiving instruction on their level, this can be really hard to do when a whole classroom of kids are at all different levels. Chances are that everything that is taught will not be at the perfect level for your child. Sometimes a lesson might be too easy, and thus be boring and a waste of time. Other times it might be too difficult, and become frustrating- or worse, cause your child to give up even trying to figure it out. Both of these are impersonal at best, and at worst can really hurt a child long term.

Content of Curriculum

Many Christian parents in particular choose to homeschool, at least in part, because of the curriculum being taught in public schools. Curriculum often doesn’t line up with a Biblical worldview, or in some cases directly opposes it. Parents are often concerned with how much they will need to “un-teach” their kids that they learned in school.

COVID-19 Disadvantages of Public Schools:

Amount of Screen Time

My local public school’s current policy offers an option for kindergarteners to have 35 hours per week of online instruction. And the American Academy of Pediatrics’ current guidelines for screen time suggest that for 5 year olds, “Up to 1 hour per day (of screen time) is fine.” There is no way that 35 hours per week of screen time is healthy for anyone, much less a small child. And then there’s the issue of actually getting your child to sit and pay attention to those 35 hours of class each week.

Mask Wearing and Social Distancing

Many are concerned that these policies will harm our kids’ ability to learn. Others are concerned that these policies are not enough to prevent the risk of illness to our kids and families.

Battles Over Schoolwork

Hybrid school models can cause school battles in families. When we choose to send our kids to public school, even a virtual or hybrid one, we are implicitly giving authority over our child’s education to their teacher. Their teacher becomes the “expert” who knows best about the subject being taught and about what the child should do to learn that subject.

The problem is that in the hybrid model, parents are still trying to or expected to share some of the teaching responsibility. Even if it’s just making sure that their kids attend classes and get their assignments done, parents are trying to take back some of the authority that they have handed to the teachers when they sent their kids to school in the first place. This transfer of authority can create battles between kids and their parents as the kids struggle to see who is responsible for school and for their learning.

Avoiding all of these things are great reasons to homeschool. Honestly, they are probably reason enough for many people to get started with homeschooling. But, these aren’t the reasons that are going to keep you motivated when homeschooling gets hard. So, what else is there?

Homeschooling Advantages

Here’s the problem: Homeschooling is hard. There are days where it can be so frustrating that it’s easy to want to give up. But, if we want to make it through the first year homeschooling and be in this for the long haul, we need to remember what we are gaining by homeschooling. This is so much bigger than what it is we are avoiding- these are the actual, tangible benefits to our family and our kids. It’s important to focus on what the advantages of homeschooling are, and to remember these when times get tough.

Social Homeschooling Advantages:

Building Parent-Child Relationships

When you homeschool, you are choosing to prioritize the relationships in your family, and especially your relationship with your child. You are making sacrifices in your life to be able to commit the time to teach them yourself. Each day that you homeschool, you are pouring into your relationship with your child. This relationship currency that you are building when your child is young will likely transfer into a close relationship with that child now and as they get older.

Building Sibling Relationships

In homeschooling families, sibling relationships will replace some of the friend relationships that public school kids have. Homeschooled siblings will spend more time together because they will be together throughout the school day. This will give them more opportunities to practice conflict resolution with each other and to grow closer together. These sibling relationships are so important, because unlike most school aged friends, siblings will have a relationship for their entire lives. Homeschooling is a vehicle to allow siblings time to develop a close relationship that hopefully will benefit them for their entire lives.

Sharing More Family Quality Time

Because homeschool takes less time each day and can be done on a flexible timeline, this leaves more time for quality family relationship building. Families do not need to spend time together hurrying to get ready for the school bus, commuting to and from school and waiting in the drop off line, struggling through homework, or getting ready for bed early so they will be rested to get up early for the next day’s school routine. This gives families more time to spend on the things that really matter, and on building great relationships with each other.

Building Relationships Across Ages

This is a sneaky benefit of homeschooling that many families don’t realize until later in their homeschool journey. Homeschoolers will usually spend less time with kids their own age than public schoolers. Like in real life, homeschoolers will spend time with people of a variety of ages, not a classroom of kids grouped by age. This is one of the biggest homeschooling advantages because homeschoolers have more practice at a young age communicating with people who are not the same age as them.

Building Relationships in the Community

Homeschool is a great opportunity for kids to volunteer and learn to serve others in their community. Volunteer projects can be set up as a part of a child’s homeschool curriculum. Kids can volunteer in areas of interest to help them choose a future career. Kids can also learn to serve others in the community who are in need. Families can serve together and this is a great family bonding opportunity and a chance to share your values with your kids.

Avoiding Comparisons

Kids aren’t comparing themselves to others. Our kids aren’t getting frustrated or discouraged because they can’t do things that their friends are doing. And they aren’t getting boastful or conceited because they are so much better at school than their peers.

I wrote a blog post where I went into detail about how homeschoolers make friends. To read more about how to help your homeschoolers with socialization, you can check it out here!

Educational Homeschooling Advantages:

Learning at the Child’s Level

Homeschool families can choose curriculum that is exactly the right level for their child. This is a huge advantage because their kids won’t waste time sitting in class bored, waiting for the other kids to catch up. They also won’t get frustrated by curriculum that is just too hard for them, and then give up and stop trying.

Customizing Each Subject to the Right Grade Level

Homechoolers can choose their curriculum to be the right fit for their child, down to the subject. It’s ok for homeschooled kids to work a grade level or two ahead or behind in any subject, so that families can find the perfect fit for their child in each subject. This means that kids who excel in one subject can continue to be challenged in that area. Kids who are struggling in a subject can work at that subject at their own pace, while continuing to be challenged in other areas as well.

Moving at the Child’s Pace

Kids can move at their own pace through their learning. Families can speed through lessons that their kids understand quickly, and slow down when their kids need a little bit more time to understand a subject. This helps kids to really learn each topic without getting frustrated.

Supporting Kids with Learning Differences

Homeschooling is great for kids with special needs or learning challenges. It’s also really helpful for gifted kids. Anyone who is learning at a different level than kids their age will really benefit from the individualized curriculum that is possible in homeschooling.

Opportunities to Learn Life Skills

Kids who are homeschooling can learn life skills. Although public schools focus almost entirely on academic subjects, homeschoolers don’t have to do that. Homeschool families usually find that they can teach the academic subjects in a fraction of the time that it takes public schools to do the same thing. This means that homeschoolers will have some free time available that can be used to learn practical life skills. Homeschooled kids will also be around their families more which means more opportunities to learn things like laundry, grocery shopping, balancing the checkbook, cleaning the house, cooking, and other life skills.

Opportunities to Pursue Interests and Hobbies

Kids will also have time to pursue their interests and hobbies at a deeper level. Kids can use the time after their homeschool lessons are done to really immerse themselves in a hobby. In Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule, he says that a person needs 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a world class expert at anything. At 3 hours per day, it takes about 9 years to reach 10,000 hours of practice. What would it be like if your child could use their free time after their homeschool lessons were completed to become an expert in something they enjoy doing? What kind of advantage would they have entering college or the workforce with these kinds of skills? These homeschooling advantages can be so powerful for a child’s entire life!

Opportunities for Field Trips and Volunteering

Homeschooled kids have more opportunities for field trips and volunteer work. These kinds of experiences can be tailored to support your child’s interests and areas of study. Homeschool schedules are also much more flexible to give your child more opportunities to participate in activities outside of the classroom.

Opportunities to Spend Time Outside

Homeschooled kids will have more time to spend outside. There are tons of benefits to kids for spending time outside. Not only will homechooled kids have more free time to spend outside if they would like, homeschooled families have the option to do their lessons outside. Many homeschool families incorporate nature walks and nature studies into their homeschool. This is a great way to get more outdoor time for your kids!

Nurturing a Love of Learning

Kids will be learning for the love of learning, not learning so they can take a test or get a grade. We are teaching our kids how to learn new things for themselves, and how to take responsibility for their learning outside of the classroom. These are the skills that will keep them learning even after their years of schooling are completed. We are growing lifelong learners who know where to find information and how to keep learning, and who love learning enough to want to do so.

Passing Along Your Worldview

Homeschooled kids are learning their worldview from their parents, not from their schools. This is one of the biggest reasons why my family has chosen homeschooling for our kids. We want to pass along our Christian worldview to our children, and I love that homeschooling allows me to choose curriculum that will support this worldview. I’m not wondering what my kids are learning in school- because I am teaching them it myself!

These homeschooling advantages are powerful reminders of why we are choosing to do this important work.

What Does the Bible Say about Homeschooling?

Here are a few of my favorite verses that speak to why I have chosen homeschooling:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Deuteronomy 6:5-9

Homeschooling gives us so many opportunities to live out these verses with our families! We can be intentional to share truth with our kids throughout our day and throughout our homeschool time.

Everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.

Luke 6:40

I love that my children’s teacher is me. They are not learning socialization from the other kids in a classroom that are all the same age and maturity level as they are. And they are not learning their values and worldview from a teacher that I don’t know.

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.

Proverbs 22:6

Proverbs are principles, not promises. So this is not a guarantee that homeschooling a child with a Biblical worldview will create an adult believer. But, a recent survey by the NHERI showed that homeschooling had a positive influence on a person’s Christian beliefs and Christian behaviors as an adult (while public schools, private schools, and even Christian schools had a negative influence on kids becoming Christians as adults).

How Can These Homeschooling Advantages Help You?

So, what is YOUR why? It helps to get out a piece of paper and write down the benefits that you have chosen for your kids by choosing to homeschool them. Post this paper somewhere that you can see it often. On those days when you are feeling overwhelmed or discouraged, remember: you have made a choice to support your child. You have chosen something better for them. It’s not always easy. But, it’s always worth it!