First, I want to start out this blog post with a statement: While I do think that Homeschooling is a great choice, I am not against any other form of schooling. I attended public school, as did my husband, our siblings, our nieces and nephews. I have known people who attended private school. I even knew 1 homeschooler when I was in High School. Like I said in my previous post, what works for one family, might not work for another. Each family's needs are unique and individual.
Our consideration for homeschooling started prior to ever having children. I worked as a live-out Nanny for almost 5 years and worked for 2 families (overlapping each other at one point as a Nanny share) over that time period. My charges at the time that I started caring for them were 5, 3, 18 months and about 2 months old. I watched 3 out 4 of them, head off to school. I watched changes in my sweet little charges that I didn't like and concerned me. I prayed for them. I also noticed because I did help from time to time with classroom things, that school wasn't like it was when I went to school. Things were changing and it didn't feel like changes for the good. When we found out that were going to have child of our own, we started talking about what we were going to do when the time to educate came. We both prayed about it. We both felt that homeschooling was the best option for our family.
We wanted what God wanted for our family. We were willing to put it into His hands, go where He guided us and our family. We wanted our child(ren) to have a good solid Biblical Christian based education. God planted a deep conviction and passion in our hearts towards this choice of education for our child.
We feel Biblical Christian education begins in the home. We do not feel that it's entirely up to the church through Sunday School, VBS, and other youth/children programs to provide this education. God calls us as parents to be responsible for our children and how they are raised, to be parents to them. Therefore, that includes educating them. Yes, we do realize that there is a world going on outside our door, beyond our four walls, and that our child is going to have to go out into it one day. We are just choosing to be the ones to fully equip him for that day, not someone else. He knows not just what we believe but also what people that he might encounter in his lifetime might believe, which may vary greatly from what we believe.
Homeschooling has been a wonderful journey and experience for our family. Yes, we have met resistance from family members and misunderstanding. We've been told we are doing an injustice by our child. We have been asked out what his future will hold for him if he is homeschooled.
We feel that if we had ignored God's calling for us to homeschool our child, we would have been doing our son a greater injustice. We know that God's in control and that his future is already laid out for him if he's willing to follow where God leads him to go in his lifetime.
Yes, we plan to homeschool through High School as we feel God has called us to do. College is just as much a possibility for our son as it is for any other child.
Homeschooling isn't short changing a child, it's empowering them to be out of the box thinkers. We teach them to work with their strengths and not to see their weaknesses as stumbling blocks. We work at their level and together climb the mountains of learning. We share their smiles and their frustrations. We help them excel as they are, for who they are...not forcing them to fit into a "one-size" is suppose to fit all mold set up by someone that doesn't know our child as well as we do. Homeschooling has been and will continue to be a blessing for our family.
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