He had been thinking about it for a while. It had never even entered my mind…
When my husband first brought up homeschooling, my internal response was something along the lines of: I have a master’s degree. I value education deeply. And you want me to do what, exactly?
I had a very specific picture of homeschooling in my head – and admittedly it wasn’t a flattering one. In my experience, homeschooled kids were sheltered in a particular way. No fairy tales allowed. No imagination allowed. No fantasy books. A kind of educational Puritanism where fun was suspicious and curiosity had to be contained within approved parameters. I didn’t want that for my kids. I’m not a helicopter-y parent. I didn’t want to be responsible for every second of their everyday continuously!
I also worried about friends. Would they have any? Would they be socially awkward and unable to relate to other people?
(A small voice in the back of my head noted that I hadn’t had a lot of friends in public school either. I ignored that voice for a while.)
And underneath all of it was the real fear – the one that kept me staring into space like Cupcake Dog (this was before Cupcake Dog, but the metaphor still stands..).
What if I shorted my kids out academically? What if my choice to do this unconventional thing robbed them of something they needed? What if they were wimps and couldn’t deal with life because they’d been too catered too their whole lives? I cared too much about education to be careless with it.
What Changed My Mind
Honestly? There wasn’t a mountain of internet research to consult back then. There weren’t the statistics, the studies, the communities, the curriculum options there are now. Or maybe they were there, but on the Baby Internet, I didn’t know where to find it.
What there was, was my husband making a case he believed in, and me deciding to give it one year and see.
That was it. One year.
What happened in that year was that my son – who would have spent his days with his bum molded into a plastic chair for eight hours, bored and restless and forced into a pace that wasn’t his – got to follow what he was actually interested in.
He got to enjoy learning instead of endure it. We got to build our own social life intentionally rather than hoping the right friendships happened to materialize in the right classroom because they magically had the same birthdate range that he did. We got to choose our curriculum, our rhythm, our approach.
We never looked back.
My daughter came along and was homeschooled from the start. My son graduated at 17 and is already a college sophomore at 18 – not because he’s some prodigy, but because he spent his entire education moving at his own pace instead of waiting for a group to catch up.
He is now attending college (with zero problems applying and lots of offers to lots of places based on my transcript – one I can help you make, too!), directs chess tournaments as a US Chess certified director, is the music intern at our church, and knows exactly who he wants to be.
My daughter is 15, already knows she wants to pursue interior design and the visual arts, and has an internship at a wedding venue under her belt, and is a graphic design whiz – not because anyone pushed her toward it, but because she had the space to discover what she actually loves.
Both of them have attended apologetics conferences, know what they believe and why, and walk into any room confident in who they are. They can talk to adults and other kids and aren’t scared to disagree with either. Neither of my kids turned out strange and friendless. They turned out to be themselves.
The Thing About the Reluctant Spouse
If you’re reading this because you’re on fire about homeschooling and your spouse is looking at you the way I looked at my husband – I want you to know something…
Their concerns are real. They’re not just being difficult. Well, maybe they *are* just being difficult, but for this purposes of this article, work with me here…
I’m sure they love their kids fiercely and are scared of getting this wrong, which is actually a very good sign.
Of all the parents I’ve coached over the years, many of the ones with zero doubts are the ones who got burned out fast. Doubts don’t mean No. They just mean Let’s Explore This First.
The fears are almost always some version of the same things:
Will my child be academically prepared?
Will they have friends?
Am I qualified to do this?
Am I going to ruin their lives?
Will they miss out on important experiences?
Are we going to become one of thoooose families?
These are reasonable questions from a person who cares.
What they need isn’t to be steamrolled. It’s to be heard, and then given real information.
The Free Toolkit: Everything in One Place
I wish something like this had existed when my husband was making his case to me. Statistics on academic outcomes, the real data on how much actual learning time happens in a public school day (it will surprise you), talking points for the socialization conversation, practical frameworks for getting started, and honest answers to the fears that actually keep people up at night.
I put it all together so you don’t have to go hunting across seventeen (or seventeen thousand!) different websites trying to build your own case.
It’s free. Just subscribe here and it’s yours.
If you’re the reluctant spouse reading this – welcome. I was you. Come on in! The fairy tales are no only allowed but encouraged, and nobody wears floor length jean skirts with denim vests and clunky sneakers around here. At least, not simultaneously…
If you’d love personalized help thinking through your homeschool approach – or figuring out how to have this conversation with your spouse – I do one-on-one coaching sessions. Thirty minutes, no pressure, just real talk. Book a chat with me!
