As a Catholic revert, wanting to be serious about making faith a part of my life and my family's life, I envisioned homeschooling my kids. My husband also supported homeschooling. He had briefly been an Elementary Education major in college and said that convinced him traditional schooling was lacking. He also felt that homeschooling was what serious Catholics did. We did homschool really for only one year, and then I panicked and enrolled our oldest in first grade at a local Catholic school. How could we have both rejected an ideal we held together? That is a hard question for me to ask, because there is a sadness to it.
I guess we rejected the homeschooling ideal for many reasons:
- We live in a 3 bedroom apartment in Queens, New York. We have 4 children. It is not pleasant for all of us to be home together all day. I got really scared when I had some older cousins visit from the Midwest and I realized that kids do grow and having a big kid cooped up it a little apartment would only get more unhealthy and more difficult.
- My child was nocatching on quickly. It seemed like every homeschooled child I ever heard about, or read about was a prodigy. I was so afraid I was doing a terrible job.
- I have student loans to repay and really need to make some sort of living for my family. New York is also so expensive, nearly impossible to live on one income.
- It created conflict between me and my husband because I felt it was one more thing he could critique me about. Not only, since I was home most of the time, was I supposed to care for everyone, cook the meals, keep the place livable, but I was also supposed to create and administer, teach a ciriculim. I did purchase one from a Catholic company, but it was inadequate It was an additional responsibility I didn't think I could bear. This is something I want to know from the other homeschoolers. Are you able to meet expectations in all those areas? do you need to lower expectations in some? How do you bear that responsibility?
This list can go on, but I want to post this and come back to it. I was to know are you happy that you were homescholed, or not homeschooled? Do you think people choose homeschooling based on an ideal that it what a "good Catholic Family " should do?
I want to hear from moms:)
