Are You Considering Homeschooling? What You Need To Think About First!

There are many factors that might have you considering homeschooling your children.

Maybe you are tired of watching your child lose his or her joy in learning.

Maybe your child is not on the same level as his or her peers.

Maybe your 4 -year-old knows his letters and numbers and the teacher refuses to teach him because he will cause too much trouble in class. (True story)

Or maybe you realize that public school isn’t the only option and you like to be informed.

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Whatever your reason for considering homeschooling there are some things you should ask first.

I want to share 3 questions you might want to think about if you are considering homeschooling.

Considering Homeschooling?

Before I even start digging into the questions, there is something we need to look at first.

Do you think you know what homeschooling looks like?

If your answer is yes, then I ask you to stop and take a moment to think about it.

I have been homeschooling for a while now if 10 years count as “a while”. One thing I have learned about homeschooling is this: Homeschooling looks completely different for each family. It is also different for each person in that family.

Homeschooling continually changes.

Homeschooling today and next month, can be as different as right and left. Why? It is due to the fact that homeschooling is part of your life, not just something you “do”. So it is flexible enough to change with your family.

I shared my typical day with you but if you missed it, Kelly from Our Homeschooling Days will be featuring it next week on her blog. (Yay!) You might want to check out her blog for other examples of homeschooling days, as well as tips, tricks and how to.

So please keep that in mind as you think about homeschooling. Homeschooling something you live and impacts every part of your life. Let’s dig into the questions you may not have thought of when considering homeschooling.

Questions you should consider before you decide to homeschool:

There are side effects of homeschooling many do not consider before they begin. Aspects that may not even be on your personal radar, if you will. The following are questions I wish someone given me to consider before I started even thinking about homeschooling.

1. Do you like to learn?

Homeschooling takes research, like it or not. You need to be willing to learn new things, pretty often. Because no matter how knowledgeable you are, you do not know everything. If you think your 2-year-old asks a ton of questions, just you wait.

As children get older the questions get more complex and they are no longer satisfied with the bare essentials. Now they are asking for all the information.

However as long as you like to learn new things, it is okay not to have all the answers. In fact, it can be quite enjoyable to learn right alongside your child. Even if they do learn and remember material faster than me.

For me, I actually enjoy learning new things. The hard part now is remembering what I learn. I swear it is because I have so much going on. As we know multitasking really doesn’t help in the memory area.

Bonus: This is how you teach the things you don’t know.

2. Are you humble?

Hang on, I know what you are thinking? “Jen we aren’t talking about moral standards here…” Actually, we are.

Like above, you won’t always know everything, you also won’t always be able to do everything!

Are you humble enough to ask for help? You are not superwoman, so when you need help do you have someone, perhaps a family member? Or a support group? Or even a co-op group to fall back on?

Everyone has questions, so if you don’t have any of those, make sure you bookmark websites. (like mine!) Questions are the way to learn, I keep a list of questions I have answered for readers, feel free to bookmark it, or pin it for future reference.

This way if you have questions, you can easily reach out and ask. You want someone who will either answer you, share their personal experience or point you in the right direction of finding answers. Of course, you will need to see what is best for you, but having that “lifeline” really comes in handy!

If Facebook is your thing, Annie and Everything listed Facebook groups you might find very helpful.

Either way, have good communication with your family, husband/wife and children included. Let them know what you need from them, when you need encouragement, suggestions or even just a listening ear. (or coffee breaks!)

3. Can you stand up to criticism?

Homeschooling is more mainstream than when I started. More and more people are joining the dark side! (Sorry, couldn’t resist!! *wink!)

However, not all will be overjoyed to hear you are homeschooling.

People will question you and seemingly everything you do. They will doubt your ability, skills, knowledge and more. It can be hard to listen to, deal with, and put up with especially when you are just starting out.

This was more difficult for me than I anticipated, as I have never been one to cave under peer pressure. I didn’t want to run with the crowd not even as a child.

That said, hearing my own personal doubts being voiced out loud by others made me feel that all those doubts must be valid. If others are saying it, then it must be true, right?

Wrong thinking, but it worked. It took time for me to build confidence in myself and what I was doing.

Conclusion:

These are my top three questions I wish I had been prepared for when I started homeschooling. I would call this the short list of questions, to get you thinking. There are certainly more questions to consider.

If you could pick just three, what would they be? Leave them below!

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