Telling Parents and Friends About Your Homeschooling Decision
Telling Parents and Friends, While your decision to homeschool is uniquely your own, it is excellent if you have the support of your family and friends too. Unfortunately, getting your friends and family on board can sometimes be challenging. For the uninitiated, homeschooling can be a new and strange concept, even though we, as a society, have been homeschooling for centuries. And, despite the current growing popularity of homeschooling due to failing schools, limited educational choices, and schoolyard bullying, home education still has a lot of stigmas attached.
Telling Parents and Family The Benefits
If your family and friends are not familiar with the many benefits of an education at home, they may bring up every argument and stereotype they've heard to convince you that you should send your child to school. It is important to remember that most of these concerned people will be those who care about you and have no exposure to the many positives of homeschooling.
Telling Parents and Family About Socialization
You need to determine why it is that you want to homeschool your family, and to consider (and answer) the following questions:
"How will your child know how to interact with their peers?" "Why are you afraid of the school system?" "What about socialization?" "What about the overall school experiences that help children develop into adults?" "What about sports and other activities?" "Are you sure you can teach your child all that they need to learn?" "Teaching is a highly professional skill, can you do it?" "Sounds expensive, how can you manage the books and the cost?" "You're going to quit work? What about your career?"
Telling Parents and Friends Your Concerns
In many cases, unless your friends and family homeschooled themselves, they are going to assume that the "normal" way to educate children, the idea that they understand and are familiar with, will be superior. If that is the problem, you may experience quite significant pressure to conform to a standard public or private education. By doing your research first, using resources such as the internet, you can put their concerns to rest and help yourself to stand firm. Rebuttals are simple. Firstly, you can talk about taking control of your child's education. You can also talk about how you want to have the most time you can with your child. As for activities and socialization, you can address that by showing them the community-based activities that your kids can join in during the year.
Curriculum and other teaching materials at hand is a great way to show that not only are you ready, but you are serious about teaching your child. You can also show them the various options for homeschooling and demonstrate the flexibility and the customization of education for your child over the "one-size-fits-all" solution at the local public school.
Telling Parents and Friends Include Them
To encourage your family and friends to support your position adequately, you may consider including them in the education process. For instance, if they speak a language, or have a specific skill your child might be interested in, ask them if they would consider teaching your child about that topic. Involvement can be a useful tool to get family on board. If they still are not interested in homeschool, be prepared to move forward without them. The most important thing to remember is that the choice is about you and your children, not your extended family.
Telling Parents and Friends Summary
Homeschooling is not always easy. Like the rest of life, it has its hard days too. Fortunately, there is plenty of support available, whether it comes from your family, or whether it's from one of the online or offline homeschooling support groups. Since the internet became readily available to everyone, homeschooling families have been able to reach out and encourage other similarly inclined families the world over.
