Amazing Mess

Amazing Mess


Why Do You Homeschool? Five of Our Original Reasons for Homeschooling – Podcast #5

July 01, 2019

I have had several questions about homeschooling through email and blog comments recently. I wasn’t really planning for my podcast to be all about that, but since those are the questions and comments that I’m getting, I have decided to do a few episodes on homeschooling! Today’s episode is based on a post I originally wrote many years ago about why we chose to homeschool. You can find that post here.
Please remember that I think each family should do what they feel called to do when it comes to schooling—I have no preconceived ideas or judgments about anyone’s choice in that area. So far, we’ve done homeschooling and private school…and I work in a public school system. I’m sharing these reasons not to convince anyone or make anyone feel badly about their own choices. Instead, I want to share them to encourage people considering homeschooling. It can be a difficult road, but it is definitely a road I’m glad we took…and are taking again!
Feel free to ask questions or leave comments below. I’d love to know what you’re thinking and if you have any other topics you’d like to see me cover! Have a wonderful week!
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Amazing Mess Podcast #5 Transcript
Why Do You Homeschool? Five Reasons We Homeschooled
Welcome back to episode number five. Today, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about homeschooling. So I’ve had some questions about why we homeschooled, why we quit homeschooling and why we are going back to homeschooling–at least for one, if not two or three, all three of the girls next fall–we’re still kind of working on that. I went back into my blog archives, and I found an article that I originally wrote about why we were homeschooling and I thought that I would just share a little bit of that with you. Some of it is changed. I mean, we’ve chosen different reasons to homeschool, but some of it is the same.
First of all, you have to know that if you had told me 15 years ago that I would teach my children at home, I would have laughed at you. I attended public school as a child, my college experience included earning a degree in elementary education, and I taught in several schools before the girls were born. So school was basically my life. But somewhere along the line, I started to feel uneasy and I started to reflect on my time in the school system. I didn’t really necessarily like all of the things that were happening there, but I didn’t really know any other options. I had met a few homeschool families, but at that point I thought they were quite weird. I also knew that we couldn’t afford private school at that point in time, but then God started bringing all kinds of amazing people and books and resources into my life. And that’s when we began to seriously ponder whether we could actually undertake that task of homeschooling our children. After studying and praying, I knew without a doubt that we had to do it. So, here are just a few of the reasons why we decided to homeschool at the beginning when the girls were small.
Life is Short
The very first one, number one is that life is short. I can’t remember if I’ve talked on the podcast about the loss of my dad before. I was pretty angry about it at the time,