Homeschooling Cons and What To Do About Them
When thinking about homeschooling cons, several issues come to mind. Here are some of the main issues parents face when thinking about or attempting homeschooling.
Criticism from family members and other parents is probably the most irritating homeschooling con because it undermines our belief that homeschooling is what is best for our children. When others question your curriculum, teaching style, or even why your house isn't as clean as it should be, it's easy to get discouraged and to start questioning whether we are doing the right thing. As long as we continue to keep the best interest of our child in the forefront, we can often dismiss the criticism. If you have a few good friends either in person or online who are supportive of homeschooling or who homeschool themselves, you can also know that you are doing the right thing.
The expense of homeschooling can get discouraging too. You might see other people's children getting the benefit of your tax dollars in the public school and get discouraged that you have to spend your own money to educate your children. There are many ways to homeschool for free or almost free, so if money is tight, you might need to spend some time so you can save some money. Many times buying used books and curriculum and then reselling them when you are done can relieve a great deal of the financial burden of homeschooling. Oftentimes a homeschooling parent can operate a homeschool home business and earn some income during non-school hours that can help defray the cost of homeschooling.
Sometimes it's hard for homeschool parents to measure their child's progress. If you don't test and don't use a curriculum it can be hard to tell whether your child is learning the material they are reading. Many times oral testing can remedy this problem. Also, if you go back the the beginning of your child's notebooks or workbooks, you can see if they are making progress.
The fact that homeschoolers cannot participate in varsity sports can also be a homeschooling con. Families need to decide how important varsity sports are to their family and evaluate whether community sports or paid lessons would still be adequate for their child.
Sometimes homeschoolers can get burned out, stressed out by a messy house, or discouraged about not having a good schedule. Just like parents who work and have children in school, homeschoolers have a lot to juggle. If you work on combating burnout, getting your family to help keep the house cleaner, and get a good schedule that everyone can live with, your day can run much smoother.
What to do about the homeschooling cons . . .
Although there are homeschooling cons and negative aspects to homeschooling , there are also parenting cons and many other cons in our lives. In those cases, we have chosen to let the pros outweigh the cons. We knew parenting would be difficult, but we chose to become parents anyways and take the good with the bad. Hopefully the good times make the difficult times not so bad. Homeschooling has many good aspects and if you feel called to homeschool your children and know that is the best thing for them, then you can overcome any hurdle if you set your mind to it.
On a more positive note, here are some positive things about homeschooling: