Our family made the decision to homeschool our daughter before her 3rd grade year. School fostered incredible anxiety with her, and even landed her an official diagnosis of general anxiety. All before she was 10. When we brought her home it took us almost 2 years to undo the performance anxiety related to school. TWO years.
After her first year of homeschooling we also brought our boys home also. Both had IEPs and severe anxiety with school.
Have you ever heard a 1st grader call himself stupid because he wasn’t reading up to public school standards?
Standards that are not even developmentally appropriate… well, I have... and it is heartbreaking. Not only that, actually getting the services that they both needed was always a fight. Problems were addressed reactively rather than proactively. For example, it took an entire school year for them to address speech and occupational therapy for handwriting. An entire year- knowing there is a problem- and an entire year reinforcing bad habits. Unacceptable. One of my boys I am sure would have ended up medicated because of his very normal energy level.
Fast forward to today. We have been homeschooling for 3 years now and we are so happy that we had this choice.
OUR KIDS ARE HAPPIER,
have a better relationship with their peers (of mixed ages and genders), and a healthier relationship with school and performance. They spend more time doing what kids should be doing, playing, interacting with their community, and exploring topics they are passionate about. Instead of adults forcing education on them, they are learning to be the masters of their own education.
I am incredibly grateful that North Carolina supports homeschoolers and makes this decision easy for parents. Education cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach and every single parent should have the freedom to choose the mode of education that best suits their family’s needs.
I fear that if we fail to uphold this freedom our children will be the ones that suffer.