Homeschooling is not for everyone. We have chosen to homeschool one of our kids but with great certainty knew that we could not homeschool our older child who had needs that I could not meet but the public schools could. Everyone's decision is unique, yet, there are certain commonalities that echo through stories I have heard.

Our youngest child is adopted and multiracial, so he comes with a set of unique needs from the start. Being developmentally behind at preschool age was not a big deal since he is an intelligent kid, and with a summer birthday is was easy to send him to a private preschool to allow him time to mature. We chose public grade school thinking we would save money for private junior high and high school. Our grade school on Seattle's Eastside was highly regarded and well-funded. By second grade, I was looking for alternatives. His love of school and learning had diminished significantly with the "sit down, be quiet and listen" only version of teaching. he felt the teacher didn't like him as he was being reminded to pay attention, stop doing something or to be doing something else. The final straw was when he had one of his typical developmental "surges," literally going from not recognizing letters to reading a novel almost over night, his teacher chastised him for "pretending" to read a Harry Potter book during free reading time. When our son confided in us what had been said, my husband promptly had him get the book, randomly open to a page, read it and tell us what he read. He read fluently and displayed perfect comprehension of the page.

So third grade took us to a cooperative program within the public school that offered parent participation and a multimodal teaching method. This worked a bit better, but still wasn't a great fit. He still struggled with motivation, attention, and some specific skills in writing. The same old curriculum was still uninspiring and though his writing skills fell below age and grade level he did not qualify for help that was actually of any help. Then the same old curriculum was replaced by several months of "teaching for the WASL" test, followed by several weeks of the WASL test, and we would have a few more of those years to look forward to! And we still battled the presence of Gameboys and other handhelds, computer games that literally took him to another place neurologically, and exposure to conversational topics, pressure and aggression with peers that were just innappropriate and confusing. (The most common issue was conversation around violence, drugs and sex from primetime TV show content, R-rated movies, rap and heavy metal music lyrics, video games and kids' families. A close second was scantily clad little girls in make up talking about "going out").

We ended up pulling him out of school near the end of the year in an emergency situation. Another boy had brought nude pictures into school and showed the other boys in the class, including our son. In the process of talking about this, he disclosed that this boy had been bullying him, including making physical and sexual threats. Long story short, after 2 weeks of trying to work with the school to fix the problem, their only solution was a "safety plan" for our son that consisted of his telling an adult if this child harassed him again. I was proud when he wrote his reponse to the principal that said "This is not a saftey plan. This is a plan for me to get hurt again and then tell." We walked away from the school system pretty easily after that.

We use an ecclectic approach to homeschooling. His grade school curricula was mainly Waldorf-based, and now that he is in the middle grades we use an integrated, literature-based approach as much as possible. The road is not always smooth, by any means! Sometimes lack of motivation or out-right refusal has to be met with "school or full time job" reminder and he becomes a FT farm hand (and Jolynn gets yet another job!), and though he doesn't like it, he is still learning life and job skills at these times. My sister was visiting at one of these times that he chose to be a "farm hand" rather than a student; She called him an "indentured servent" but we actually call it "unschooling!" He usually gets back to school work quickly!

No, he doesn't watch TV except for an occasional DVD or outing to a theater with us (no TV in the bedroom!), he doesn't have his own computer, and has no video systems. He does build tree houses, make unusual medieval tools, plays, spends hours reading, sometimes writes poetry, journals, and writes short stories, and lately is insisting that he requires a cell phone. He goes to the local homeschool network center for a math class and meets with friends there. He is a music lover and plays guitar. And yes, he writes his own songs.
~Jolynn