Homeschooling Isn’t Just About Education

We aren’t sending our kids back to school in September.

I work full time, my husband is an entrepreneur and works for himself. This isn’t really something that falls seamlessly into our lives right now. 

But it’s something we’re willing to make sacrifices to make happen. 

For a long time, I’ve had this nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I’ve dropped my kids off.

I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t aligned. Like I was spending an enormous amount of energy convincing myself that something which felt wrong, was normal.

“Everyone does this”

“Kids are resilient, they’ll be fine”

“I went to school, and I turned out ok”

Maybe.

But eventually I had to ask myself whether something being normal automatically makes it right.

Maybe I wouldn’t be questioning any of this if I looked around and saw children thriving. Becoming happier, more resilient, more capable and more independent.

Maybe I wouldn’t be questioning it if rates of anxiety, depression and self-harm weren’t rising.

Maybe I wouldn’t be questioning it if teachers weren’t burned out, navigating increasingly complex classrooms while being asked to do more with less.

But that’s not the reality I see.

Let me put it another way.

If you walked up to a pool and saw swimmers struggling, with exhausted lifeguards running from one emergency to the next would your first instinct be to throw your own kids in?

I know my answer.

But if I’m being honest, that’s not even the biggest reason.

I’ve come to the realization that I don’t want to outsource the raising of my children. 

I like them. 

I enjoy spending time with them.

I don’t feel like they’re an obstacle standing between me and the life I want.

They are the life I want.

Somewhere along the way, I think we lost the point of all of this.

We’ve normalized parents spending less waking time with their children than almost anyone else.

We hand them over to a rotating cast of adults during the most formative years of their lives, and for some reason we’ve decided that questioning this arrangement is radical.

Don’t get me wrong, there are absolutely positive components to school. 

I think understanding social dynamics is a really big one. Learning how to solve conflict is crucial. Exposure to different people and perspectives matters.

But I don’t think that school has a monopoly on those things.

On the other hand, I also don’t want to teach my children that they are stuck with people that they don’t want to be around. 

I don’t want to teach my children that they have to go along to get along, or make themselves smaller to make other people comfortable.

I don’t want to teach my children to be compliant.

I want them to challenge authority, ask uncomfortable questions and think for themselves.

I want them to have the confidence to speak their minds, even when it’s unpopular.

I want them to pursue their passions, fail often enough that failure loses its power over them, and figure out who they are before the world starts telling them who they should be.

And yes, I want them to question everything—including me.

Most importantly, I want them to have the time to spend the majority of their day doing what is arguably the most crucial work of childhood:

Playing.

Building worlds. Making up games. Solving problems. Testing boundaries. Negotiating rules. Getting bored and figuring out what to do next.

Learning who they are.

We tend to treat play as the thing children do after the important work is finished. 

I suspect we’ve got that backwards.

Peaceful mornings and not having to rush out the door for drop offs and a flexible schedule for travelling and experiences may just be the cherry on top.

Who knows, I may be eating my words by the end of the year. 

I’m open to that possibility.

But all I know is that the second we handed in our withdrawal forms, I felt relieved.

And that’s got to mean something.

-HHH