Why Do People Home School Their Children

Why Do People Home School Their Children?

Of course in America there are many options to educating our children. There are public schools, private schools, charter schools, Montessori schools and, of course, the option of home schooling. There are advocates of both home schooling and public schooling. Those of us who don’t home school, which is still the majority of Americans, need to fully understand the reasons why people choose to home school their children.

Religious or Philosophical Convictions:

Religion is not permitted in the public schools. Many families feel that religion needs to be a larger part of their child’s education than that which the public schools allow.

People who have deep religious beliefs show great passion. These are the individuals who are passionate about their children’s education and feel that only they are able to teach them to the best of their ability and the content that they feel they should be learning. The home schooling parent is in charge, they call the shots and they like it that way.

Socialization:

Some people that don’t understand home schooling believe that it is confining rather than socializing. But those individuals that believe that are stuck in thinking about the stereotypical socialization of an age-based classroom. Children that are home schooled are exposed to social situations in a mixed age range. They have “age-mates” instead of “class-mates”.

Many home schoolers feel that their children need to be exposed to the appropriate ways to behave not inappropriate. They feel that their child should be exposed to the model behavior of people who have learned to make decisions and handle themselves in various social settings. By being exposed to appropriate modeling of social behavior, home-schooled children will learn how to act appropriately.

Parents of home schooled children can also see when their child “gets-it” when they model for a younger child appropriate behavior.

Home-schooled children get a reality based social lesson. On a daily basis they see adults they know, love and trust manage and balance life day to day. Modeled for them is academics balanced with real life chores; caring for a sick friend or neighbor, shoveling the driveway and walkway, doing the grocery shopping and dropping of the dry cleaning, cooking dinner while folding laundry, putting laundry away and talking on the phone with Aunt Sara. These are real life situations that home schoolers are exposed to and public school children are often sheltered from or are privy to a controlled school environment.

Academics:

Home schoolers have several advantages over publicly schooled children. The curriculum is designed specifically for them – not for children their age and what children at a particular age are expected to know and learn. Public schools differentiate instruction the best they can. However, a home-schooled child has a curriculum tailored to their needs. They may read at a 4 th grade level, spell at a 3 rd grade level and complete math at a 6 th grade level.

A home-schooled child is neither rushed nor not given enough time. There are no other children to “keep busy” so they are free to work at their pace and move as quickly or as slowly as need be.

Much research has been done on how children learn best. A home-schooled child is not only taught by the person who knows them best in the entire world but also since they are the only student, the learning style never has to be varied. If a student learns best through music, then the curriculum of a home-schooled child can be tailored to meet their needs so they will be more successful.

Home-schooled children get to spend more quality time as a family. They are not trapped in a traditional school setting for 6 hours a day but are free to spend quality time as a family every day.

It is said that parents are a child’s first teacher. Families that home school want to continue to be their child’s teacher because they feel that their children need the guidance of their family and God and not the guidance of someone hired to do a job that is naturally theirs from the day their child was born.

BONUS : You Can Have Love That Never Ends

If you were to ask someone if they wanted more love in their life, it is very unlikely that they would say they wouldn’t and that they don’t need any more. That would be like saying you don’t need to ever eat again because you are full. Even if our lives were full of love we would still want to experience more of it, because love is never ending and the more love we have the more we will have to give away. But how do we give love away? Before we can answer that question, we must attempt to define love or agree upon what love is. Because love is fathomless, we cannot completely understand its depth. And our attempts to define it often confine its meaning and eternal quality. However, we know when we experience love. And we can identify love in how it is expressed.

Love is communicated to us in many ways. Sometimes it is in words or someone’s thoughtfulness. We recognize it when we are treated with kindness and respect. We also communicate our love by our faithfulness, generosity, and selflessness. There are many different attributes that we associate with love. I believe there are ten key attributes that communicate true love most fully. I devote a chapter to each one of them in my ebook, Live to Love: 10 Powerful Ways to Communicate and Experience Love. In it you will discover how we communicate our love or lack of it every day. Love is more than words and it runs deeper than feelings. Love is what we live for. We love and we want to be loved.

We look for loving qualities in people and that is what often attracts us to them. Besides being drawn to their personality, appearance, common interests, and so forth, we look for qualities that communicate love, warmth, and acceptance. If we want to build a relationship with someone, we want a connection that is deeper and founded on the attributes of love.

Loving people draw others to them. We all like to be around someone who makes us feel valued and who treats us as important. We like being around someone who is thoughtful toward us; someone who cares about our feelings; someone who can be trusted and is honest with us. We like people who make us feel good about ourselves—people who listen and understand us; people who want to help us and will go of their way for us; people who are happy when we succeed; people who appreciate us. We all like to be around people who make us feel genuinely loved.

Earlier we said that the more love we give away, the more love it is that we will have to give. Love isn’t love until you give it away. We give love away when its attributes are evident and expressed in our life. We can all grow in the various attributes of love, and we can begin to express love more fully in our lives and relationships. Remember, we will never run out of love as long as we keep on

About Author:
Krystal Kuehn, MA, LPC, LLP, NCC is a psychotherapist, author, teacher, and cofounder of www.NewDayCounseling.org. She is featured in numerous newspapers and her many articles, pamphlets, and books are read worldwide. Krystal’s best-selling ebooks can be found at www.FavoriteEbooks.com.