Home Schooling, Good Idea or Not?

I have mixed feelings about home schooling. On one hand there are the things you mentioned such as the safety issue. On the other hand I would worry as your husband does about the child's socialization. I know we all want to protect our child from beig emotionally tortured at school, but it is something we all went through. Life is tough though and when he becomes an adult and has to go out in the real world and deal with life's problems, and dealing with difficult people they need to be ready for it. I know as parents we want to protect our children as much as we can, but that also means we must help them to learn to prepare themselves. On the other hand if you feel the schools in your area are not doing a good job in educating children then perhaps he will be better off at home. It is kind of a hard call. Personally I would send them to school and then if I felt he wasn't learning well enough or if something just doesn't seem right then I would pull him out and homeschool him. That is only my opinion though, and you need to go with your heart, and also respect his father's opinion as well.

While I have no children, I'll give my opinion nonetheless. You can also search mylot as there have been several discussions on homeschooling I'll start with your concerns Rachel. "1)Safety. You never truly know the people who are watching over and educating your child." That is very true. I just posted a discussion on a student abuse case. Its not just bullies, fools and idiots at school, some teachers also have problems. Even when you discount the crime factors some teachers are not competant: teaching either very ridgedly; using videos, distractions, "easy" mode; or just blasting their opinions as fact and "education". "2.)I live in Oklahoma. On a list of ratings for state schools, we are ranked 46th. 46TH!! There are only 50 states! That is horrible!! I know I could fix this problem by supplementing is education at home. Teaching whatever they are leaving out, but what child wants to go to school all day, come home, do there homework and them study some more. For sure not mine." I can easily make this better. In my opinion and experience not even the highest states in terms of education are great. I definitely recommend teaching what is left out or things the teacher refuses to reiterate. Its also good to get ahead of the curve and teach/learn what interests your child, but there is a chance of boredom back in class. Homeschooling will negate that factor though as there is no limit to what you can teach your child. "3.)I worry about his emotional well being. Grade school was a horrible experience for me. My family was poor and I was bullied endlessly. While are family is very well off, children can always find a reason to bully someone. For instance. My son will be the youngest one in his class, turning 5 only weeks before starting school. So, he will be smaller than the other children." Ah yes, forgot about something. More attention and "care" is given to the outliers, the hooligans and so forth. You are also correct that he maybe bullied for being the youngest. Its possible that it can be countered with proper authority intervention, but its never a guarantee. One other thing to bring up is a lack of importance on education when it comes to public school. This can be seen everywhere though people really don't pay attention. The children don't want to learn and aspire for the very unrealistic. The teachers can be apathetic to the students. The school and community focus on the school is almost always on the sports and not the academics. Though a student could carve out their own niche in this situation, it can also backfire (i.e. bullying again, withdrawl, scorn/ridicule from students) You also want to research the homeschooling laws as they've come into question in California (and possibly other smaller communities and pockets).

I homeschool for many of the same reasons you are concerned with, but my main reason being that our schools teach to the average student, and if your child is not average they are not getting the best education they could. In our case, my girls are higher than average and I feel putting them in school would hold them back from reaching their highest potential. I have a friend whose boys are not quite at the average level and if they were to be put in school, they would fall behind and/or be labeled special ed (the school actually did tell her one of them would be put in special ed and that he would need to be medicated). As for the socialization issue, that is all what you make of it. In my experience, homeschooled children are actually more sociable and more accepting of others, than children who attend tradtional schools. Of course there are exceptions to both cases, but generally speaking this has been the case. The best example I have is my daughter's experience in Girl Scouts. Her first year, she was in a troop with all girls who attended traditional schools. The girls in the troop stuck to the girls who were in their classes at school and did not try to include those who were not in their class, resulting in mini-cliches within the troop. My daughter was willing to play/work with ANY of the girls there, including those from an older troop who were there helping out. The following year, we found a troop made up of all homeschoolers. The girls in the this troop ALL get along with each other and any of them can be paired up and will work fine together. Of course there are times when two of them will have their differences, but they have always worked it out. There are tons of opportunities for socialization for homeschoolers. Aside from scouts, there are neighborhood kids, church groups/activities, sports, homeschool organizations and activities, etc. There is probably a homeschool organization in your area that arranges "field trips" and other activities on a regular basis. Check Yahoo! groups or something similar and see what you find. Here in Western NY, we have participated in a homeschool bowling league, the homeschool Scout troop, and several wonderful field trips with area homeschoolers, all through the homeschool group I found through Yahoo!. I have also found that homeschoolers are exposed to a wider "variety" of people than traditional schoolkids. Schools are divided by where you live, meaning most of the people in the school you attend are going to be of the same race and socio-economic background and of course, the kids are divided by age as well. When attending homeschool activities, the kids tend to meet other kids from all walks of life and all ages, from all over the area we live. As you said also, you can always send him to school and see how it works for the two of you. I do want to let you know though that it does not even need to be for a full year. If a few weeks or months into the year, you realize it is not working for you, you can pull him out then, and vice versa. If you decide to start out homeschooling and then realize that it is not working for you, you can always enroll him then, at any point in the school year. I wish you the best of luck and if you have any questions feel free to ask.