School Daze

(I know, quite the original title to this post.)

As children in the Northeast begin a new school year, I find myself thinking about our homeschooling journey thus far. I haven’t blogged much about homeschooling because every time I start to write, I get off on several tangents and can’t seem to keep my thoughts focused. There are so many reasons why homeschooling is so right for our family.

When PHAT Daddy first suggested homeschooling (I think L was about a year old), I thought he had gone mad. I can’t teach him! Is that even legal? Only wacky religious people homeschool. He won’t have any friends. All of the ignorant thoughts that I hear expressed time and time again were once concerns of mine, too. Slowly, I began to realize that I can teach him (my, my how DID our younglings survive before the advent of the great and powerful public school system?), that it is completely legal (and guaranteed as a right by the Constitution of the United States), and that he will have many normal friends (I’ve been involved with three different homeschooling groups in our area and L has several close friends, who also happen to be wonderful kids with intelligent, non-wacky parents).

Over the past 6 years, I’ve been thrilled, awed, inspired, and impressed with the experience of homeschooling. My son can read and write and does math that makes Mommy the math-lover proud. And, honestly, all this has happened without too much effort on my part. Children are natural-born learners. They want to fit into the world they live in and to acquire the skills necessary to make a valuable contribution. (Here is where I might go off on a tangent and start bashing traditional schooling for squelching this natural desire.)

My goal is to expose him to as much as possible, to open up the world to him and allow him to dissect and digest it as he will. And I will love being beside him, watching his delights and disappointments, as he becomes the man he is destined to be.