Since we moved here, my daughter is trying the school (we hated the schools where we used to live), my son decided to stay home still. It's weird now. One kid in public school and one home schooled.
It's strange seeing her get on the bus while my son is here. He's so cute over there squatting on a stool, not sitting, wearing a pair of blue camo thermals working on his second bowl of cheerios. Yeah, I should be giving him some oatmeal or something, but he found my husband's secret box of cereal.
He knows I like to hang out at the Sift a bit while he has his morning feed 
We sometimes play a book on cd during this time.
Anyway... once the extended family heard my daughter was going "back to school" they were thrilled and secretly wonder why I'm not making my son go too.
There is more to choosing homeschooling as a way of life other than 'crappy local school' or religious reasons. It really burns me up when folks assume I'm homeschooling for religious reasons.
Summing up: We've LOVED homeschooling since moving to the Indy area. There's been SO MUCH to do! Anyway, I think once the novelty of going to public school wears off, my daughter will want to come home again, but if it doesn't and she's doing well then fine... My hat's off to her for independance.. My son will never want to go back though.
I've ran across this article a few times and it makes me smile. I share some of her sentiments on the topic and I'm feeling especially ornery this morning so:
The Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List
1. Please stop asking us if it’s legal. If it is — and it is — it’s insulting to imply that we’re criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?
2. Learn what the words "socialize" and "socialization" mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you’re talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we’ve got a decent grasp of both concepts.
3. Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.
4. Don’t assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.
5. If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a "reality" show, the above goes double.
6. Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You’re probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you’ve ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.
7. We don’t look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they’re in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we’re doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.
8. Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.
9. Stop assuming that if we’re religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.
10. We didn’t go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.
11. Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn’t have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don’t need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years in the kind of chew-it-up-and-spit-it-out educational facility we call public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can’t teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there’s a reason I’m so reluctant to send my child to school.
12. If my kid’s only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he’d learn in school, please understand that you’re calling me an idiot. Don’t act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.
13. Stop assuming that because the word "home" is right there in "homeschool," we never leave the house. We’re the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it’s crowded and icky.
14. Stop assuming that because the word "school" is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we’re into the "school" side of education — and many of us prefer a more organic approach — we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don’t have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.
15. Stop asking, "But what about the Prom?" Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don’t get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I’m one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.
16. Don’t ask my kid if she wouldn’t rather go to school unless you don’t mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn’t rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.
17. Stop saying, "Oh, I could never homeschool!" Even if you think it’s some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you’re horrified. One of these days, I won’t bother disagreeing with you any more.
18. If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you’re allowed to ask how we’ll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can’t, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn’t possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.
19. Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child’s teacher as well as her parent. I don’t see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.
20. Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he’s homeschooled. It’s not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.
21. Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she’s homeschooled.
22. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.
23. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.
24. Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won’t get because they don’t go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.
25. Here’s a thought: If you can’t say something nice about homeschooling, shut up!
Bitter Homeschooler's Wish List was written by:
Deborah MarkusEditor, Secular Homeschooling Magazine
http://www.secular-homeschooling.com
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I was pretty shocked at how many of the kids in my class greeted me and were pretty nice about it too. It turned out to be good for me an my social development. (Though dealing with lots of adults while being homeschooled helped me mature most.)
The thing is Public Education in the U.S. is terrible. The teachers are underpaid, the federal requirements hold back the potential of most kids, and there is no way to provide kids with the versatility of the learning experence they desperately need.
Homeschooling, excels where Public Schooling fails. Besides the social aspect, which I feel can be compensated by parents who actively enroll their kids in public services and community events, Public School really doesn't have much to offer as an advantage. (Besides the fact that my taxes are paying for it.)
Swampgirl, Good for you! There are too many stereotypes about homeschooling. In fact I think it takes more effort on the part of the child and the parent to homeschool, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
My kid is very, very bright, and doing terribly in school. It's heartbreaking.
So a network of parents all have their group of kids taught in one parent's home one day at a time. This way each kid gets to mingle with other kids and a different adult each day.
complete waste of my, and 99% of my teachers', time.
i dropped out in the 9th grade, so i could get a job as a busboy, at Denny's. no shit.
because even that was more value to my education, than grades 10-12 would've been.
outstanding post, swampgirl.
You know what would be a great thing is something like networked home schooling.
So a network of parents all have their group of kids taught in one parent's home one day at a time. This way each kid gets to mingle with other kids and a different adult each day.
You know Lucky, you're not far off from describing a "Co-Op". We've joined one recently where once a week families meet and hold classes on subjects we've all decided to teach.
Dags right, sometimes it's very hard. I don't see how a parent of 5 or 6 do this on a daily basis. Seriously I think it's easier to teach a class of 20 than your own kids.
I'm hoping my daughter will thrive in the new school because she's a personality that's difficult to homeschool. She dominates her brother so much and distracts a major part of the day competing for attention. In a group setting though, she actually more focused I think which is weird. She is happy around groups of people. Being home drove her nuts...and us too!
My son on the other hand loves to be able to separate work from play. At home he can work in a quiet place, in his pajamas, with mom near by to chat about the subjects. He loves the quiet, building his sets, going to homeschool groups to find one boy to play with, and waiting on his bike for the school bus to get back to play w/ the local boys.
Different personalities!
***Don't feel guilty if you're not homeschooling. Every family has their own needs. It truly is a lifestyle change. No matter what school your kid goes to, he/she can get a good education if you keep up w/ them. Personally I hate homework, but it's a necessary evil if your kid goes to school.
Their are books out there that has lists like "What your 3rd Grader Should Know" or whatever grade.... You can use materials like that to find out where your child needs help, and when summer break rolls around...
They're doing nothing during the summer anyhow. There's a decent workbook series for kids on summer break called "Summer Bridge to ____ Grade" I think.
Summing up, homeschooling can be hard...but I love it. You don't have to be anal retentive organized to make it work either (it helps tho
Let me add one thing, though; I know quite a few homeschooling parents and I have noticed that often times, the entire subject of homeschooling comes about because the HS parents has to point out that THEY are not sending their precious to that icky public school THEY are HOMESCHOOLING *sniff* I hd to tell at least one friend of mine "look, that doesn't necessarily make you superior so come off your high horse please"
I think so long as you say it in a pleasant conversational way, most parents will be cool. But its hard not to take offense or be suspicious about motives when the HS parents acts as if they are somehow better than you just because they are homeschooling. I've met HS success-stories and HS failures - I think there's more successes than failures but failure can happen too, no one is immune.
Grats to you tho! I know it ain't easy!
Most kids are kids are home-schooled, for the quality of education, and their freedom from exposure to the casualties of society, called MOST of their peers.....If you brought a group of elementary teachers back from 1922, and placed them in today's classroom setting, you'd have the 1st 4 hrs of class in a conga line for an ass-whipping.....
Just wanted to let you know that I wrote this list, and it's an article from a magazine I recently started -- Secular Homeschooling Magazine. Could you please put my name, the name of the magazine, and a link to the magazine's site at the top, please?
Here's a link to the mag's site:
http://www.secular-homeschooling.com
And here's a link directly to the list on the mag's site:
http://www.secular-homeschooling.com/001/bitter_homeschooler.html
Thank you,
Deborah Markus
Editor, Secular Homeschooling Magazine