Is Homeschooling For Your Child?

Homeschooling is a decision that is made by a family. Often the best interest of the child is the guiding factor. Parents also need to take into consideration their own feelings about the educational system and what they want for their family. Assessing the needs of the child and the parents is important when making a decision to homeschool. Typically, families decide to homeschool at certain pivotal points in a child’s education. Let’s take a look at a few of those key developmental periods.

Preschool and Early Elementary School

Often, parents want to homeschool their preschool children, offering activities that foster a love of learning and instill a good command of “the basics” of education. Many people feel that during the preschool and early elementary school years, it is important not to push children and put too much pressure on them.

Children, especially at a young age, develop at dramatically different rates. Some children begin to read at age three while others don’t learn to read until they’re seven or eight. Homeschooling, at this stage, offers children a change to develop at their own pace without being compared to other children. This can have a very positive effect on children, especially those children who are not typically the most advanced. Self-confidence can be nurtured in a homeschool setting in ways traditional classrooms can’t match. Many parents also feel comfortable homeschooling at this age because they feel they can master the curriculum and teach effectively.

Later Elementary School and Middle School

Children change during the later years of elementary school and into middle school. They begin to form a sense of identity about themselves in the larger world. A great many societal influences start to creep into the children’s lives through interactions with their friends, through the experiences on the Internet, and through television as well. Many children begin to falter at this stage of development. They may find themselves not fitting in socially. Parents and children often find at this age that the demands of homework and the need to keep pace with the others, pressurizes them. This is often a period of development where a child is diagnosed with a learning disability or meets with certain learning challenges. Many children and parents decide at this stage to homeschool because it is not meeting the specific needs of the child and perhaps not mirroring the values they hold as a family.

High School

It is unusual to find a student who attends traditional school and leaves to be homeschool for high school, but it does happen. Often students and families choose to homeschool through high school. Many students at this age have a passion or a talent for a particular subject or activity that is hard to mesh with traditional schooling.

Homeschooling students tend to be self-motivated and self-directed, with the ability to monitor themselves and to seek out guidance and help, if they need it. Homeschooling options for high school have opened up tremendously in the last decade with the development of accredited distance learning schools. Distance learning opportunities for homeschool students are easily accessible with a computer. More and more colleges are looking at homeschooled high school students as valid applicants. High school transcripts with a mixture of distance education and homeschool classes are viewed as just as credible as high school transcripts from a traditional school.