Once again a homeschool vs. public school debate raged on my Facebook feed. One comment said, “You do you. I’ll do me.” Yes! Yes, I completely agree. Then why is it so hard? Sigh.

The truth is a battle is raging on both sides and I fear it has little do with actual educational preferences. I’d guess it is more a reflection of the defensiveness we feel when our parenting choices are called into question.

It is easy to see our own struggles and discount the hardships of others. So I urge you to read on. Homeschooler or not, it is helpful to understand the experiences of people on both sides of the equation. I fully admit I have no personal experience (except my own childhood) as to a traditional schooling experience. Feel free to add your constructive comments below!

What I wish people knew about educating our kids:

1. Homeschooling is a full-time job. I cannot even recount all the times that I’ve been volunteered for a task based on the fact that I am home and “not doing anything all day.” In fact, this rotten belief so surrounded me that it unknowingly seeped into my own psyche. I still struggle daily to remember I am doing something valuable, and on long hard days, not to feel like a failure because surely homeschooling shouldn’t take that much of my time and energy. WRONG. Being both a teacher and a parent to the same individual is hard, emotion draining work. Work.  I don’t get paid, I don’t get days off. I don’t get benefits or vacation time. I don’t get acknowledgement from our current culture as accomplishing anything. BUT I am working as hard as other teachers… just with a smaller class size, more flexible schedule, and often a better view. See below. 🙂 
2. If you are doing it right, public schooling is a lot of work also. My public schooling friends carry a heavy, though different, weight. They have to manage schedules like a pro, often balancing school, work and social schedules that make my mind spin! I’d argue that while I (homeschoolers) face one kind of pressure, my public schooling friends face a different kind… the pressure to keep up with social demands of a much larger schooling community. Athletics. Parties. Teacher conferences. New friends. Ex-friends. Comparison. Testing standards. Mean kids. Sick days. Bullying. Attendance records. Homework. And to top it off, many struggle with guilt or doubt over whether these things are taking too much time away from their family time.
3. Homeschooling families receive what can only be called “persecution” for their schooling decisions on a weekly basis. This persecution comes from both the mouths of educational professionals and the ignorant, strangers and even their own families. My kids have been quizzed on a chairlift by “concerned strangers” who thought it was their place to make them rattle off memorized facts about math, history and science. They’ve been quizzed socially about how many friends they have and birthday parties they go to. As a parent, every wrong behavior, bad choice, or learning struggle my children battle is in turn blamed on my choice to homeschool. Example: As we battled through discovering my son has a wheat allergy, I even had someone suggest that his vomiting was due to homeschooling and anxiety over being around other people. You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding. Me. If you know my son, you know he is a deep lover of other people and thrives when surrounded by other adventurous boys and girls.
4. You can still be good friends with other families that don’t make the same schooling choices you do. Why the division? Why the need to seperate? We have been blessed by so many good friends, friends we’ve known since before having kids that have made different decisions. Some homeschool. Some stopped. Some public school. And some stopped. But we NEVER stopped being friends over it. We listen to each other’s struggles on the different battlegrounds of learning, then support and unite. Sure, schedules are often different and we have to be more purposeful in finding time to hang out, but there does not need to be a separation because you’ve chosen two separate paths. Mutual respect and willingness to listen to eachother’s struggles in a given path can keep your friendships strong.
5. Socialization isn’t a homeschool issue. It is a parenting issue. You are worried my homeschooled kids don’t know how to interact with kids their own age? Or handle large groups of people? Or work with others? Please come meet my youngest daughter. Her super hero power is making friends no matter where we go, no matter their skin color, gender or age. Can we also agree that social pressure to conform, daily bullying, and influence of kids who do not always have oversight is just as questionable in a traditional school setting? How to function in society is something ALL parents struggle to impart to their kids, no matter the schooling choice.
6. Let’s face it, as parents we carry the blame for all our kid’s issues (school preference aside), when really we should not. Sure, some of our decisions will negatively affect our kids. But our kids are human and living in a broken world. They will fail, fall and battle their own demons.  Our child having a fault to battle isn’t failure on our part. I’d argue that refusing to come alongside the child and engage with them would be the failure.
7. Let’s stop comparing our kids. Usually it isn’t really for their benefit that we do it anyways. I am just as guilty of this at times… we do it to validate ourselves and that is not healthy for our kids. As a homeschooler I have stories recited to me over and over about the “homeschool kid that was years behind when they went to public school.” Can we agree that part of the reason we left the traditional system behind is that we did not agree on the value of the system’s educational standards? We decided we didn’t want to play by those rules any more, so why on earth would our kids learn to perform according to them? Likewise, as homeschoolers, lets stop throwing social failures back in the face of public schoolers.

What did I miss? What has been your experience on both sides of the equation? For more on this topic visit my post: I homeschool my kids. I am not raising freaks.