Search Results for: blog why so many parents homeschool problem children

Whose Grade Level Is It Anyway?

Hang out with homeschoolers long enough and you’ll hear talk of grade levels. Your kid’s reading at a grade three level. Mine is doing things that are part of grade five science, and she’s only in kindergarten. As per usual with parents, we don’t tend to highlight when our kids are underachieving, so most of the conversation tends to focus on how divergent our kids are from the norm of the school system, how much farther ahead they are in certain areas. As a parent of a kid who is above average, below average, and distinctly average in different areas, … Continue reading →

Learning through Example

Parents are the biggest influence on a child’s life. A parent’s job is to mold and shape a child to function productively in society. While, family values vary from family to family, most want at the core the same things for their children. I have yet to meet a well intentioned parent who did not want a happy, compassionate, well-rounded, and wise child. We may want a doctor or a lawyer in the family but above all we want healthy and happy children. We also want children who show proper discernment and made good decisions in reference to time management. … Continue reading →

Should I homeschool without my husband’s consent?

Recently, the question was posed, “Should I homeschool without my husband’s consent?” Many times the wife is motivated to homeschool while her husband is against the idea. This issue can cause feelings of frustration and stress which can manifest into arguments. Like the mouse with the cookie, this leads to fighting and the fighting leads to insecure children and that leads to a long line of making independent decisions which continues to erode at a marriage. Due to this snowball effect, my answer is that homeschooling is not an option unless both parents are on board. Homeschooling is a massive … Continue reading →

Bullying may be a good reason to homeschool

If you have been following the news, you are aware that two 12 year old boys killed themselves in the past two weeks in separate incidents of bullying. According to an Oprah Winfrey show on the subject, the boys were hit, pushed, and called names, most specifically, they were called gay slurs. According to experts, harassment based on sexuality is the worst kind of torment for middle school students. I have my own personal history with bullying. It started in the third grade with girls who had previously been friendly becoming distant and cold. In the fourth grade it escalated … Continue reading →

Teachers Split on Effectiveness of Homeschooling

Having a diva child, I have a subscription to the Children in Film newsletter. While we don’t live in Hollywood, you never know when a local part might come up. Anyway, today’s newsletter is about the way Studio Teachers (teachers to tutor actors on set) feel about students, their education, and their parents. Here is what they have to say about homeschooling. “the studio teachers we surveyed agreed that most child actors are up to date with their school work and are on par with their grade level. While most of the child actors they work with attend regular or … Continue reading →

More and More Black Families Homeschooling

When I wrote On Being an African American Homeschooler some time back, I wrote about how being a black homeschooler could be a lonely endeavor. I also dicussed reasons why more blacks did not homeschool such as cultural pressure, economic reasons, and educational background and how those factors kept African Americans in school despite of a huge achievement gap between blacks and white. Just two years later and the tide is beginning to turn. For the same reasons that I mentioned in the previous article, more and more black families are making the sacrifice to teach their kids at home. … Continue reading →

Parents as Fashion Police

From the pool… back to school. Summer is rapidly coming to an end (sigh) and soon parents will be less worried about whether their daughter’s swimsuits are too tight and more concerned about whether their son’s pants are too baggy. Right now many of us are smack in the middle of that dreaded annual ritual—back to school shopping. Besides gathering the right shopping lists for each child and calculating how our household budgets will accommodate new pens, pencils, backpacks, socks, shoes, pants, tops and haircuts most parents are faced with the additional role of acting as fashion police. Who among … Continue reading →

Who is Inherently Responsible For a Child’s Education?

A very lively discussion on the homeschooling forum asking homeschoolers why they do it turned into the need for a discussion on who is inherently responsible for the education of a child. As one commenter pointed out, homeschooling set aside, most would agree that it is the parents responsibility to see that a child is educated. Still parents taking full responsibility through homeschooling are frowned upon. In my neighborhood where I grew up there were several large families with many kids. Mine were one of them. For the most part, if the first child in the family was well educated … Continue reading →

Perceptions of Homeschooling from the Media

I just read a 10 page article on homeschooling that showed up in my Google Alerts today. It actually turned out to be dated Oct 5, 1998, but it came to my email box as new news. Still, there were several statements in this article about homeschooling that caught my eye. I will address them below. “Americans are becoming fussy consumers rather than trusting captives of a state monopoly,” says Chester Finn, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “”They’ve declared their independence and are taking matters into their own hands.” I don’t think that … Continue reading →

Vocabulary Word of the Day: Accountability

The Washington D.C. Superintendent wants homeschoolers to be more accountable to school officials. Until now, homeschool parents were free from restrictions when it came to homeschooling their kids. Unfortunately, however, a tragic incident where a mother, Banita Jacks, claimed to be homeschooling her kids, and they ended up dying, put school administrators in the D.C. area up in arms. New regulations would require homeschoolers to let school representatives into the home and give them the authority to order kids back into the schools if they are unsatisfied with a child’s education. These laws would rival those of states that are … Continue reading →