This summer we’ve moved from a very poor performing school district into an excellent one, thank you Bill Gates.  All summer I’ve been struggling with the decision, will I send the kids to school?   or will I continue to teach them at home?  It’s a hard decision.   I think I’ve known my decision for a long time but for the most part, I’ve ignored it.  I’ve procrastinated.  But now that this is the last week to sign them up before they might miss the first day of school, I have to make a decision.  There have been many tears.  And over the last several days, I’ve prayed and waited for a sign, I even fasted in the hopes to hear The quiet voice, encouraging my decision.

I think everyone home schools for different reasons.  We home school to provide a better education.  We home school because we can’t imagine entrusting our children in someone else’s hands.  We home school so that we can entwine our faith into our curriculum.  We home school because we know our children better than any well-meaning relative, teacher, administrator,  counselor or curriculum publisher.  We home school in order to follow our own agenda, not a politically driven one.  We home school because the system is broken.  We home school because we’re a little bit anti establishment.  We home school because sometimes society’s norms are a little bit too stifling and constrictive or maybe because they are too liberal.  We home school because we were Called.  We home school because we love our kids.

When I think of why I began homeschooling, it was because I didn’t want my daughter defined by social peers.  I didn’t want her to feel she had to conform herself into the mold that the Lord of the Flies hierarchy of the playground dictates.  I didn’t want her to ever feel that she had to put herself into a box.  I loved her so much I couldn’t imagine allowing strangers to become her core sphere of influence.

This week I signed McKayla up for public school.  It’s been a long time coming and with the struggles of the last year, I’m not very sad about it.  I’m fairly confident that she will do well and I think that much of the tension in our home will subside as she is given the freedom she so greatly desires.  And, as she navigates her teen years among the public school system, I will have hopefully succeeded with my original goals for homeschooling.  Or maybe I will have failed miserably and she’ll come home in tears daily.  I don’t actually anticipate that happening, but I guess it’s a possibility.

But that still leaves the boys.

All of my friends’ kids have recently started school.  As I am inundated with Facebook posts about shopping for school supplies, new lunch boxes and back packs, I don’t find myself even the tiniest bit jealous or excited.  As I see posts about classroom assignments, and nervous anticipation, or even pictures with smiling happy kids all ready for the first day, I’m not the least bit enticed.  As I see the collective sigh of relief that summer is over, I feel a little bit of despair.  And I wonder why.

Do I think they will do well in  a traditional school setting?  Absolutely.  Do I think they are well prepared academically?  Absolutely.  Will they be okay socially?  Yes.

So maybe it’s me.  Maybe I’m not ready to let them go.  Maybe I enjoy them too much to let them spend so much of their day away from me.  Maybe it’s selfish to want to keep them all to myself.   I think about all of the things that I could do without them, while they are at school.  I could take a class.  I could become a master gardener.  I could make a quilt.  I might have more time to write.  I could watch a movie, uninterrupted.  I could join a ladies bible study.  I could shop at stores that don’t have a toy section.  All of those things are things I can do later.  Nothing is imperative that I do right now.  These things can all wait until the kids are gone or in bed for the night.  None of these things will make me any happier than my children make me.

Maybe it’s a little bit selfish to want all of the time for myself.  Maybe I don’t want to give up my time with them just to have my own time.   And just maybe, that’s okay.

“Many people are choosing to have children as few people before ever did.  They don’t have children just because that is what married people are supposed to do, or because they don’t know how not to have them.  On the contrary, knowing well what it may mean in time, energy, money, thought, and worry, they undertake the heavy responsibility of having and bringing up children because they deeply want to spend a part of their life living with them.  Having chosen to have children, they feel very strongly that it is their  responsibility to help these children grow into good, smart, capable, loving, trustworthy, and responsible human beings.  They do not think it right to turn that responsibility over to institutions, state or private, schools or otherwise, and would not do so even if they like and trusted these institutions, which on the whole they do not”  John Holt

I’m not convinced that public school is the best option, even in a well performing school.  I don’t want them gone for 7 hours to accomplish 4 hours of learning.  I am not willing to trust that they might luck out with a good teacher who will cultivate their talents and foster creativity.  I’m not willing to take the chance that we will get a teacher who won’t.  I’m not convinced that my kids have to be indoctrinated with 30 kids who happen to share the same birth year in order to function well as an adult.  Call me Nina Nonconformist, but I don’t want my kids to feel like they have to conform.

I want my kids to pursue the dreams that entice them, not the ones that are cool among the ten-year-old elite.  I don’t want them to lose themselves among a sea of bells and homework.  I want them to know that they have a say, that they matter, that they have power over their education, whether they choose to succeed or fail.

I don’t want them to feel like they have to open a text-book to learn.  I don’t want them to think that learning is formal or stuffy.   I don’t want them to find their self-worth in a grade or a test.  I don’t want them to think that they are confined to the standard curriculum.  I want them to question.  I want them to think. I want them to have the ability to pursue their desire to learn.

I want them to be different.  Markedly different.  Am I saying I want them to be freaks? No. I’m saying that when I want them to think  for themselves and not be hesitant to make changes in the world.  I want them to be innovators in their fields of choice.

I want them to choose to take the path which God leads them, even if it’s the road less traveled.  I want them to shine like a beacon in a very broken world.

Do I think that these things are possible within a traditional public school?  Probably.

In the not too distant future, every one of them will be grown up.  They will go off to college.  They will lead their own lives.  They will be marry and have families of their own.   I am blessed to be have this small sliver of their lives.

And I don’t want to share it.  I don’t want to give it up.

And that’s it.  They are mine.  I am blessed to have the ability and the opportunity to home school.  I get to choose, and I choose to keep them home.

I guess if I raise a pack of Charles Mansons then you may give me your opinions on homeschooling, but until then, I’d prefer that if you don’t have anything nice to say, please keep it to yourself.