How to Know if Homeschooling is Right for You

I always say that I am an accidental homeschooler. I never intended to homeschool, and I used to scoff at homeschoolers (I’ve repented. I was wrong, for a lot of reasons).

My oldest child was getting ready to enter school. In Florida, where we were living at the time, school starts at age 4 with Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten (VPK). It’s called “voluntary” because it’s … well… not mandatory. But the vast majority of kids — 71% overall, with participation rates higher in cities — enroll in VPK.

We signed him up, toured schools, chose one that we thought would meet his needs, did Meet the Teacher Night, bought him his adorable little backpack, and sent him off with a kiss and a hug.

Then he came home with his shirt soaked around the collar from anxiously chewing on it, a dark look in his eyes, and he stopped talking.

He’s on the autism spectrum, but this still came as a shock to us. He had VPK on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and for weeks, he would come home Tuesday afternoon and not recover his ability to speak until sometime late Saturday night or Sunday, just to start the whole cycle over again Tuesday morning.

We were heartbroken. Clearly this wasn’t working for him. He was only four years old and he had a major developmental disability. Perhaps we should redshirt him; after all, up to 20% of kids delay their kindergarten start.

So we kept him home that year. The following fall, he was 5 and still eligible for VPK or he could choose kindergarten. I had two other small children, so enrolling him in school was enticing in some ways. But he was so happy at home! Things were going so well! He had already learned to read, he had a big circle of friends, we had robust educational opportunities because we lived in a city: museums, a science center, a strong library system, a zoo, aquarium, etc.

We kept him home that year, too. The next fall, when he was 6 and my next child was gearing up for preschool, we were in a precarious place. My husband had graduated law school and was awaiting his bar results. His job placement would have us relocating to … somewhere. Would we uproot our newly-enrolled and anxious child in the middle of a school year? Would we do that to him when he was clearly learning and thriving at home?

No.

We decided not to enroll him in school. We were back home in Arizona, so we filed the necessary paperwork to declare our son as a homeschooler.

That was over a decade ago. That kid is now an 11th grader, enrolled at a small charter school that knows him and loves him and surrounds him with people who “get” him. He’s been there since 7th grade.

My next two children homeschooled (with a 1-year break while I was working full-time during a personal financial crisis) all the way up until this school year, when they will be entering that same charter school. My youngest is entering first grade in our homeschool.

Prior to the pandemic, around 8% of American school-aged children were homeschooled. There are unvalidated reports that this number will be much higher now, now that every family in America has had a taste of the homeschool life.

How do you decide if homeschooling is right for you? At the start of the pandemic, I wrote about how homeschooling is different than school-at-home (spoiler: homeschooling is a lot easier than school-at-home, even when there isn’t a global pandemic and financial crisis raging), but beyond that comparison, here are some things you need to check before you decide to homeschool.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

1. Check your state laws. Every state is different. Here in Arizona, it’s the wild west when it comes to homeschooling. I filed a form at the beginning of the first school year, signed an affidavit promising to teach English, history, science, and math, and… that’s it. Other states have more (better) requirements, such as annual reviews by certified teachers. Still others have even more (worse) requirements, like mandatory standardized testing in which your child might need to outperform the local public school in order to keep homeschooling. If these laws sound like something you can reasonably adhere to, great! Move on to step two!
2. Check your family’s schedule, flexibility, and routines. Homeschool takes time, there’s no way around it. Preschool through approximately second grade isn’t so bad, a lot of a child’s education at this age should be play-based and experiential anyway, so this often feels very natural for parents to homeschool at these ages. High school takes a ton of time for the student, but the parent/teacher can be busy with other tasks while the student is reading, writing reports, doing research, or working on algebra assignments. They can be dropped off at (or drive themselves to!) extracurricular activities. But those middle grade years? 3rd through 8th? Whew. Those take a lot of time. They need more robust instruction, but they aren’t usually mature enough to self-regulate or manage their time, so parents need to constantly be in the room. If you’re working part-time or full-time, or your spouse/partner is constantly gone, or any number of things will prevent you from being around enough? Maybe now is not the time for you to homeschool.
3. Check your expectations. Public school days are around 7 hours long. Many new homeschoolers think they need to spend 7 hours a day homeschooling, but thankfully this isn’t true. But in that 7 hours, students have a lunch break, recess, specials (music, PE, computers, stuff that homeschoolers naturally incorporate into a day without needed to change locations), and transition time. I once read a blog post from a 2nd grade teacher who claimed that her students spent a little over an hour per day lining up for things or being in lines. Add in the fact that every subject can only move as fast as the slowest learner, and you have an awful lot of down time for these kiddos. I spent five years as a classroom teacher and I can tell you that for my junior high students, I easily spent about 30% of my time disciplining, redirecting, or re-explaining things because they weren’t listening the first eleven times I said it. Basically all of that disappears when you’re homeschooling. This past year, my 5th and 6th graders each spent about 3–4 hours per day on academic work. The rest of the day would be spent reading for fun, practicing musical instruments, playing sports, cooking, making art, playing with siblings and other homeschoolers, or helping take care of our home and family.
4. Check your community’s support system. I’ve never homeschooled in a small town or a rural area, but I imagine the support systems would be pretty sparse. Here in Phoenix, we have an awful lot of support systems. Homeschool playgroups, homeschool co-ops, homeschool enrichment programs through the public schools, programming at libraries and zoos and aquariums and science centers and museums for homeschoolers, plus cultural opportunities like live theater, symphonies, and even an opera house. Maybe you really want to lone-wolf it, but maybe not. Make sure the support system available to you meets your needs.
5. Check your state’s standards against your own abilities. If you’re considering homeschooling high school, and your state requires homeschoolers get through calculus, and you can’t remember past your times tables, you are going to struggle. If you have severe dyslexia and dysgraphia, but your child hasn’t yet learned how to read or write for themselves, you’re going to struggle. Take a hard look at what is required of you (not what the social expectations are, but the real requirements) and evaluate yourself on your ability to teach to those standards. Can you access curriculum to fill in your gaps? Can you confidently say that you can learn the material and stay at least a few weeks ahead of your kids?
6. Check your reasons for homeschooling. Homeschooling should be done because it is what is best for your child without causing harm to the rest of the family and household. It shouldn’t be done to prove a point or to own the libs or because everyone else is doing it or as an easy way out (it’s not that easy, after all). Good reasons I’ve heard for why people homeschool:

• their child has special needs that can be better met at home
• parents want more control and influence over the curriculum (this pops up on every point of the political spectrum, btw; this isn’t exclusive to either liberals or conservatives or anyone in between)
• the child had disparate academic abilities that a standard classroom wasn’t equipped for (a 10yo who reads and writes at grade level but can do trigonometry)
• there is a medical need to reduce excessive interactions outside the household
• “I want to and I can” (a parent with a strong education themselves feels confident in their ability to instruct and loves having their kids home all the time)
• the family moves a lot and homeschool is actually the best way to provide stability and consistency in the children’s education
• the public schools are a bad fit (bullying, violence, lack of resources, etc) and private school is outside the budget
• the family wants to travel or have an otherwise flexible schedule that public schools won’t allow
• the child isn’t ready for public school yet
• the child has outgrown public school but doesn’t want to officially “drop out” and can’t legally graduate yet
• the child is pursuing a time-consuming skillset that requires more flexibility (elite athletics, performing arts careers, etc)

If you’re thinking of homeschooling, these checkpoints can help you decide if it’s actually going to be a good fit. I recommend finding homeschooling groups in your area (they’re usually on facebook… le sigh) and asking questions. One of the best things about homeschoolers is that they love to share their experiences and want to help newcomers have an easy transition if possible.