Quitting Homeschooling
BevK April 3rd, 2006
I wanted to focus on how we deal with people who are forced to quit homeschooling because of circumstances beyond their control. That could be anywhere from the death of a spouse (Example: The death forced him to make an even more difficult decision: Stop home schooling his children and put them in a classroom.) to illness or divorce.
Most often in these circumstances, the family’s that have to stop homeschooling don’t do so because they believe homeschooling is no longer the best way to educate their children. No, usually they’re forced into the decision because homeschooling actually becomes a drawback to their children’s general well being. Let me give a for instance to set this in better context.
The father leaves his wife and children. Now, as a single mom, she’s working full time plus to keep them in food, clothing, and shelter. The children spend the day with grandma or whatever other arrangements she can make, and in the few hours she has off work before bedtime, she homeschools them. Sure if grandma is lively and spry, this could work. grandma could even do some of the homeschooling. But what if grandma is not well, and the children are taking care of her as much as she is taking care of them. The few hours available to relaxing with the children are now devoted to math, grammar, and history. This is not a recipe for happy children.
Another example: parents split up and one decides that homeschooling is wrong. That parent gets a court order that puts the children back in school.
Those who want to homeschool but can’t need our encouragement. They don’t need to hear that it’s really too bad that their children will now be subject to all the horrors that homeschoolers can dredge up about the public school system. They know all about that. Instead they need to have us come along side them, and tell them that we understand their decision and support them. Be gentle, loving, and kind, and remember that guilt makes people run away. They may run from your help just because you are a homeschooler. You can’t change that, but you can make sure that your words don’t add to the guilt.
Remind them that they can still read aloud to their kids. Remind them that they’ll still be helping them do their math and English homework. Remind them, that rather than bookwork, their spare time can be spent doing plenty of educational and fun things that they never had time for because they had to get their bookwork done. Remind them that through prayer and reliance on God, they can deal with anything that school throws at them. Remind them that the same love for their children that guided their decision to homeschool is guiding this decision, too.
