Does the Thought of Homeschooling Scare You?

Updated 9/29/2022

Will your child be enrolled in school next year, or will they be homeschooled? It’s a decision that many parents are making right now.

You may be an experienced homeschooler and not know it!

If you have a preschooler who has been home with you since birth, then you’ve been homeschooling for 5 years! It’s too late to worry about being a beginning homeschooler since you have loads of experience in teaching your child every day! Keep on doing what you’ve been doing!

If your child has been in school all along, does homeschooling for middle school or high school seem overwhelming?

Regardless of what your relatives say, it doesn’t matter if you weren’t good in school or if you never took calculus. You don’t have to know everything. You’ll find excellent learning materials for homeschoolers (with answers!), tutors, and don’t forget the often overlooked independent study – you may learn that your child is very good at figuring things out on their own!

Are you worried that your child will fall behind?

That just doesn’t happen. Schools have plenty of distractions that keep them from fully using the school day (taking attendance, collecting money, fundraisers, discipline, more discipline, studying for the time-consuming standardized testing, repeating things for the kid who wasn’t listening, etc.). Your homeschool year will not be worse than school, and chances are good that it will be much better! You really have nothing to lose by trying it this year.

Are you concerned that you won’t know what to teach?

That’s a legitimate worry that gets smaller when you realize that your child’s needs haven’t changed that much since yesterday. Schools take an unnatural giant leap from one grade level to another, while homeschoolers take it day by day. Don’t worry about a year from now or even 5 years from now. Worry about what your child wants to learn today. The rest will fall into place when the time is right.

Just remember, you don’t have to know everything, and you don’t have to have a 12-year plan before you begin! If there is a change of plans for next year, it’s easy to re-enroll your child in public school (although it’s a safe bet that neither of you will want to!).

Karen Taylor’s always homeschooled son attended a local community college after graduating from homeschooling. He transferred to UC Berkeley as a junior, and received a PhD in neuroscience from UCSF. She shares homeschooling comments and links on Facebook, Pinterest, and this blog.

Here are some other blog posts for new homeschoolers. Just remember, you can do it! I hope you have a great homeschooling year!

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