Considering Homeschool? Top Worries Addressed

Have you ever wondered—even just a little—if you should start homeschooling? Is homeschooling better? Do you wonder if you really can?

You are not alone. You might be surprised to find out how many parents have these same questions. As parents ourselves, we realize the education our children receive largely shapes who they become in life, so these questions are important.

Many parents share similar worries when exploring the option to homeschool. In this post we offer encouragement and insights about these questions:

• Is homeschooling worth the effort? 
• Do you have the patience to homeschool?
• Will you be a good teacher?
• Will your children listen to you?
• Will your kids miss their friends?
• Will your children grow socially with homeschooling?

Is Homeschooling Better? 

We’re not going to pretend homeschooling is easy—it is a serious and life-changing commitment. However, with your efforts come these and many more precious blessings:

• You choose how and what your child is taught. 
• You have more time and opportunity to nurture your child’s strengths, interests, and weaknesses at his or her pace.
• You set your own schedule.
• Homeschooling allows time and opportunity to build stronger family relationships, faith, and high character.
• You choose the books your child reads.
• Homeschooling builds your child’s confidence, self-motivation, love of learning, time management, and more.
• You have more time and opportunity to explore the world and spend time in nature, which has huge benefits for children.

Like all worthwhile things, gaining these blessings does take work and time. Yet, as thousands of homeschool parents have found, completing the work and gaining these blessings are VERY possible!

Should I Homeschool My Child? 

Let’s go over a major worry you might have. Do you have the patience to homeschool, and will your children listen to you and learn from you? Here are some things to consider:

First, if you feel God is calling you to homeschool, He will make you enough—don’t worry too much about your abilities. Homeschool parents find that their patience increases over time, but their children’s behavior usually improves, too. 

You get to spend the best hours of the day with your children, not just the evenings when everyone is already tired and overwhelmed. They–and you–learn how to work together and communicate better.

Many families find that relationship problems resolve when they have more time together. Give it time, and God will help both you and your children develop increased patience.

Second, the same concept applies to having your children listen to you and learn from you when homeschooling. It might take some figuring out, but they CAN learn from you. In fact, a parent is the most influential teacher a child ever has.

And keep this in mind: there may be a period of time at the beginning of homeschooling where your child doesn’t listen to you as well as you’d like. This is normal and expected as you learn how to work together.

All good things take time and effort. With persistence, your teacher/student relationship with your child can grow into something beautiful and effective.

Finally, as far as academics go, studies show that regardless of the parent’s level of education, homeschool children thrive academically.

With our easy-to-teach resources that require no prep time or previous knowledge on the subject, you just open up the book and learn along with your child as you teach.

Homeschooling and Socialization 

Let’s address another worry you might have: socialization. A common concern about homeschooling is that your child will miss his or her friends. If your children don’t want to homeschool because they will miss their friends, consider three things:

1. Today’s society overemphasizes the importance of socialization and same-age friends and underemphasizes the importance of family, faith, and love of learning. Many children learn to center their lives and desires around friends and the social scene. They are less interested in family time.
   
   They feel intense pressure to focus on body image and popularity. They become less interested in learning and exploring the world, in reading good literature, or in developing strong relationships with their family 

2. You may need to give it time. If a child is used to large amounts of time with friends and has his or her heart centered around social life, adjusting to a better balance between FAMILY and friends can take time, but the shift is worth it.

3. We want our children to be strong and able to handle the world around them. It’s easy to wonder if taking them away from things in a school setting, like bullying, bad influences, social stress, and negative peer pressure, makes them weaker by not giving them a chance to work through problems. But the truth is that children so often are damaged by these things, not strengthened by them.

Often what a child needs most in order to gain strength is a place where safety, healthy relationships, and models of high character lead and teach them and give them confidence. 

Taking children out of unhealthy situations allows them to THRIVE spiritually, academically, emotionally, and socially. They are immersed in faith, family, uplifting friends, and literature and learning that promote high character. These are all things that strengthen children tremendously. 

To further lay your worries to rest on this topic, studies show homeschoolers tend to perform above average in the real world after high school. Our blog post about homeschool socialization has links to these studies.

How Can Homeschoolers Make Friends? 

Remember, homeschooling doesn’t mean your child has no challenges to work through or gets no social time at all. There are MANY opportunities for your child to have social experiences and growth through homeschool. 

In fact, many homeschoolers find they have to guard their family time because so many group classes and other options are available! Check out the blog post on social skills for ideas on how to teach social skills and more on this topic.

Lastly, some homeschoolers may be less skilled socially, but we all know there are socially unskilled children in other school settings as well. Getting an education in a brick-and-mortar school is by no means the only key to a child growing up to be socially healthy.

Homeschooling effectively is not about just academics; it is also about offering your children positive socialization. You can create fulfilling social experiences for your children. Homeschooled children report high levels of happiness, confidence, and positive self-image. They are free to be their authentic selves without worrying about peer pressure to act differently. 

Homeschooling creates a lot of opportunities to teach values that lead children to serve more in their communities as adults and have stronger family and friend relationships throughout their lives.

Free Homeschool Curriculum 

If you have felt a nudge to do something about your child’s education or relationships, start EXPLORING and praying about the possibility. Most of The Good and the Beautiful Language Arts and Math courses are completely free to download and use, and they can guide any parent to easily and joyfully give a child a solid academic, character-building education. 

Consider downloading these homeschool curriculum options today just to look through them. You can gain a better feel for what homeschooling is all about and the kind of joyful, high academic content you can teach to your child. It is easier and more rewarding than you might think!

You CAN Homeschool! 

With effort over time, you will see wonderful changes in yourself and your children from homeschooling. We see so many stories about how homeschooling strengthens the character, confidence, academic success, and—most importantly—the hearts of individual children and families.

Is homeschooling better? Here is something to consider. There are challenges if you homeschool, but there are also challenges that come from public, charter, and private schools. You ultimately get to “choose your challenge.”

If you are seeking to raise your child with a beautiful heart and mind, either route is going to require a lot of your effort and be hard, but very different kinds of hard. After homeschooling for a longer period of time, a lot of homeschool parents say that homeschooling is not really that hard anymore—it’s beautiful and fulfilling, and they wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Whatever the right educational path is for your child, we at The Good and the Beautiful invite you to enrich your child’s life through good books and connecting education to God and high character. That is our central mission, and we hope to be a continual support to you and your children as you strive to raise them in light and goodness.

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