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Our days used to begin with chaos, with me yelling to my three kids: "Hurry up and eat your breakfast! You're going to miss the bus!" There was a lot of panic, caused by the harried schedule of our lives.
And then on March 13, 2020, everything shut down due to the pandemic. My son was six, my daughter was eight, and my eldest daughter was 12. They all got handed a Chromebook for class, and that was the beginning of what I call "Zoom school."
My husband, John, and I had already been thinking that we didn't want our kids to be so plugged in, and now they literally had to be in front of a screen for hours every day. My son and youngest daughter were so little that sitting in front of a screen that wasn't a movie or a cartoon was frustrating for them. Five minutes into class, in our home in Potomac Falls, Virginia, my son would take a dive away from the screen and be like, "I don't want to do this."
The kids weren't really progressing. We were able to see what the kids were learning—or, not learning—during that March through June period, and it seemed like they were doing a lot of busy work.
So, at the end of the school year, in June 2020, my husband suggested we try homeschooling.
John had initially been against homeschooling, whereas I was always interested in it. I had looked into it in 2018 when some friends had started homeschooling their kids. I loved the idea of having my children near me, and not gone, for seven or eight hours a day. So I asked my husband if we could try it, but he said, "No, absolutely not." He wanted our kids to do what other kids did.
How our homeschooling works
I was excited when John agreed we should give it a go, but I was also scared. We felt wholly unprepared; we're not teachers and we were in full-time demanding jobs—I'm a public relations director, and John is a consultant. But I read every blog, Facebook page, book, and talked to countless homeschool moms. Everyone uses a different curriculum but, through trial and error, I found a routine that suited my family.
Every day, we drill down into the basics: reading, writing and arithmetic. So they practice math, write in their journal, and read. Those are the non-negotiables. And then on Mondays, for instance, we do Science, and on Thursdays we read History.
The kids get up on their own—there is no set alarm. The mornings are quiet now. Often, my 11-year-old will come downstairs and want to start math at 6 a.m. She's on her own schedule and wants the bulk of her day to be spent doing what she'd like to do: gymnastics on the trampoline, working on her short story, reading a book of her choice or snuggling with the dogs.
There are downsides to homeschooling. It's more work for me and my husband. We have to research, plan and work more. And cook more. Plus, our house is messier. It's a balancing act and it's not without its challenges. But we find the benefits far outweigh the downsides.
One thing that people don't realize is that homeschooling is much more efficient in terms of time. In a classroom, there's a lot of time wasted, whereas homeschooling is like private tutoring—their pace is much faster. My children probably spend three or four hours a day at "school," which means they get more time back.
The flexibility of their schedule is a major perk. If we wake up and it's the most beautiful day ever, we might go on a walk or a long hike, or they might play tennis on the courts down the street. They have a lot more outdoor time, and a lot more time together as siblings. Plus, as a family, we can travel off-season—as we recently did on a two-week trip to Europe.
How the kids adjusted to homeschooling
Everyone was home and still doing "Zoom School" when we started homeschooling, so our kids felt like they were doing what everyone else was doing. Until everybody went back to school in early 2021.
We decided not to send our kids back to school, even when it reopened, because we loved homeschooling and the kids were doing so well. I have some friends who did the same: they started homeschooling in the pandemic, and then decided, "We kind of like the pace of this life," so they just kept going.
My son is very bright because he has two older sisters, so he already knew a lot before he went to kindergarten—he was almost reading. So school was not a happy place for him because he had to just sit in his chair and listen to things he already knew. When it comes to homeschooling, he is the most enthusiastic of my kids.
My middle child, Emily, was less enthusiastic because we live in a neighborhood where most of the children go to public school down the street, so she wanted to do what her friends were doing. When we started out, we were less connected with other homeschooling families because we didn't move in those circles. Now, however, we are plugged into different groups.
Common misconceptions about homeschooling being "weird"
People often say, "If my kids are homeschooled, they're going to be weird." But this isn't true: our kids interact with people of all different ages. Once a week, we have "homeschool recess," where the kids get together for two hours in a field or a playground and play outside.
The kids at recess are aged 5 to 15. At public school, kids tend to stick with their own age group, but at homeschool recess they're able to interact with people of all ages. There are 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds and 9-year-olds playing flag football together, and it's not weird.
We have a field trip group, too, with family friends who also started homeschooling during the pandemic. So once or twice a month, we'll do different educational activities. They recently went backstage at a theater, for example. Depending on the field trip, we can have as many as 15 kids, or as few as four or five—it's interest-based.
I don't believe my kids are missing out on anything. They go to a big co-op for writing classes on Tuesdays, where they see a few kids in their grade. My kids also do sports in our neighborhood and my son is on a basketball team. He's the only homeschooler but it's all his old school buddies from kindergarten. We live in a neighborhood where our kids are able to have play dates, too, and they are all in Scouts. There's no lack of socialization, in my eyes.
Impact on the kids' wellbeing
I've observed that the kids are very content. You see a lot of articles about mental health and anxiety, and different issues that kids are going through. But my kids are thriving at home. They sleep well and they're not anxious. We have other issues—my son and daughter are 23 months apart so they fight a lot, but other times you'll find them bonding.
My son would tell you he loves homeschooling. But Emily would probably say, "I want to go back to school." She liked the rigidity of the schedule, whereas homeschooling tends to be somewhat less rigid and not as lecture-based.
But, from my observation of her, she's pretty happy. She's skipping around, doing her own thing. Somewhere in the middle of the day, she'll be like, "I found this glue, can I make some slime?"
My husband and I have talked about sending her back to school. I think at this point it would be difficult to put her back into her grade because, math-wise, she's already surpassed her grade level. And it would be really hard, knowing what we're able to give them through homeschooling, to put them back into traditional school.
However, we made the decision to put our 14-year-old back in school. That was a very specific decision for that child because she was way too comfortable being at home with us—so we wanted her to have more of those relationships, interactions and to get involved in high school sports. She's now in a small private school but says she would prefer to homeschool. But that was the reason we put her in the school—because she can't just live at home with us in this bubble.
We're making decisions as parents, looking at our children. My eldest is doing this year in school, and we'll see how that goes. She may come back home. It's a year-to-year thing. But, right now, this is working for us.
Sandra Kim is the director of media relations at the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). She is on Instagram at @thereluctanthomeschoolmama.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
As told to Newsweek's My Turn deputy editor, Katie Russell.
