Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Thinking of homeschooling but husband has concerns

My son was often butting heads with everyone when he was attending school too. The biggest behavioral problems he's had in his life were on the play ground after school.

We have a pretty laid back approach to homeschooling. As long as we're reading, writing, doing some math daily and then getting regular exposure to history and science I'm fine. Especially after we had achievement testing that really did show we really are that far ahead. That did help clinch for my DH a bit. I consider my son and I a team and if something isn't working we sit down and work out a solution. My DS also takes piano, which is an area is regularly challenged and pushed in. But in general, I require very little "output" and no more acadmics than a normal kid his age gets. That just gives him that much more time to dive into his own interests, where some of his best learning takes place. He is also a kid that reads for an hour or 2 a day without prodding, which makes life simpler too.

O)ooh, good advice everyone, and worth me remembering!

I, too, generally find it easier to work with DS8 now than I did when he was doing homework assigned by the school. The contract we have REALLY helps. He accepts that the state requires a certain amount of work, and that I have promised that I would provide that. We treat is as a nonnegotiable duty.

Of course, he's human, and he has bad days sometimes, but they're generally rare if he's onboard with the schedule. We had 2 good years, and then at the start of this year, he wasn't really cooperating because of some minor schedule changes I'd made. It was a rough period. But we worked through it and things are good again. I adjusted the work to make it more challenging for him, and we talked more extensively about the reasons for the minor changes. Once he saw why things were different (and I gave him some other options, all of which he rejected as less desirable than what we were doing), he was back on the team.

I also try to make sure there are natural consequences: if he doesn't finish his work, his brother goes out to play while he stays in to work.

I do worry about how things would go with DS5 if we decide to homeschool him next year because he is more emotional and generally less cooperative with me than DS8 is. I think we'll work it out if homeschooling seems like the thing to do for him. But I'm certainly less confident about our choosing that for him than I was when we made it for DS8, who was VERY unhappy at school. For DS5, it's more iffy.

I'd recommend approaching your daughter as a partner. Top-down dictation of what she will do is generally going to be less effective than teamwork from the very planning of things. I'd say something like, "Here's the deal. You have to do some writing and grammar. That's not open for debate. But how we approach it--what you write about and how you learn it--is open for discussion. What would you like to do? What do you not want to do?" Research as needed and talk to her some more. Make a plan together and hold her to it.

I recommend if you find down the line that it's not working, be willing to adjust. We review what we're doing every semester at least, and more often if necessary. As long as you adjust because you're still learning what works and because it's the right thing to do, not to give in to her, it's a good adjustment. About the only thing you can do really wrong with homeschooling is to keep plugging away at something that just isn't working. The first year is all about learning--for the parent!

I haven't a whole lot to add beyond some of the preceding great posts. But I will say that there's socialization, and there's socialization.

My kids definitely saw more children when they were in public school. And yeah, they learned a lot of things from the experience, at least superficially (and admittedly there are some instances in which I'm glad the exposure was only superficial). OTOH, we've honestly run into far more cultural and socioeconomic diversity homeschooling than we would in Suburban Heights Middle School. They've had far more opportunity to interact with people who are not age-mates. And they've been able to make real-world connections to real-world people who use the things they're studying on a regular basis: learning not just about art or math, but also about artists and accountants.

In the interest of fairness, I'll say that this is how it's worked out for us. Homeschooling in a different part of the country, where there are far better schools and more obstacles to homeschooling, might be a whole 'nother ball of wax. We're in a very homeschool-friendly part of the country, and there are a lot of us here. So our options are different than they might be in, say, rural North Dakota.