When do we jump from a sinking ship and when do we bail frantically to save our lives?

When do we decide that the public school system is broken enough that it can’t be fixed and jump ship to homeschooling? When do we stay in the school system, attend PTA meetings and volunteer as a playground supervisor? When do we put our kids in the public school system and do our best to bail out the ship?

How am I supposed to know?

But who wants to screw up their kids?

When my soul welled up with reasons to seriously consider homeschooling, flooding cultural expectations for my life, this is some of what it said:

1. Before we had kids, I would hear something about homeschooling and a random tear would erupt, sliding slowly down my cheek. What was going on? (If you have a lump in your throat right now, you’re done for. Just sayin’. Stay in your pyjamas today to get used to it because you should be homeschooling soon.)

2. A kid tried to beat me up on my way home from school in Grade 3. What was that about? I was “the kindest, most empathetic person” a teacher had “encountered in a long time” (verbatim wording from my report card). Is there any way to spare our kids from UNNECESSARY pain?

Sure, they WILL experience pain, but if we know they will get beat up with a baseball bat emotionally, spiritually or (even) physically day after day, can we at not, at least, flip a coin to see if there are other ways to learn the alphabet?

3. And there were those times when I would walk home from grocery shopping with my mom, hand in hand. We would sing songs. This was most cherished memory of my childhood.

It wasn’t expensive. It wasn’t complicated. How could we live to have a few more of those kinds of moments?

4. Then I read the parenting classic Hold Onto Your Kids by Neufeld and Mate. Their words were a confirmation, like check marks on my intuition. Maybe we AREN’T supposed to structure society so that kids and teens spend most of their time with people exactly the same age as them.

5. And what if some of the ideas we hold dear as a culture, the general beliefs, are wrong? If another culture’s beliefs are (obviously to us) wrong, some of our culture’s commonly held beliefs WILL BE wrong too. Which ones?

Maybe the way we currently do school?

6. Maybe kids DON’T need the latest cultural clothing styles as defined by other kids their same age. Maybe a second-hand sweater will do.

7. Maybe kids don’t need their own menus of sugar and hyper-processed foods. Healthy food habits WILL get pulled down to an outlandish level in a culture of extreme bizarreness, of kids eating two-thirds of their diet as highly processed foods. As much as we wax on about eating healthily, stepping into another culture, home, where everyone eats a bowl of soup at lunch is a realistic way to instil normal food habits.

Oh, and this may even help heal various diagnoses, as it did in our home, and as science is increasingly suggesting.

8. It’s COMMON but perhaps not NORMAL for pre-pubescents to ideate about sex. If you are ready to be challenged about this, check out The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman, which was written 40 YEARS ago. Ouch.

Schools are increasingly mimicking the culture of Brave New World (so my middle school substitute teacher friend asserts), but it’s our kids who suffer there.

9. The cons of both homeschooling and public schooling swam around my thoughts.

It was time for us to jump ship, to swerve onto a narrower road. How about you? Is it time for your family to jump ship? Do you sense the pull of your heart towards giving homeschooling a try?

We have to wean ourselves off the cultural drugs that addict us to the wrong desires first.

Our status in society may drop precipitously. We will have to pick up a new identity, one others may gawk at. The old identity, defined by perhaps lots of stuff, expensive vacations, and value in corporate America (i.e. a job in exchange for money!) may no longer stick with us.

Welcome to the wild ride!

Prepare to be scared, and to laugh, and to cry. But God will cheer you on from the sidelines, give you food to strengthen, and usher in your transformation.

Because this spiritual journey isn’t just for our kids.

Cmon! Let’s go!

Here’s some food to strengthen you for the journey.

Blogpost Footnotes

Since this post was written, a teen in our community died from a drug overdose. Also, I received a text from a local nurse that youth age 12 – 14 using meth is the new normal. Sheltering kids for a few more years, using whatever resources are available to us, is becoming increasingly important.

Oh, and homeschooling is the cool, new thing, and we should always try to fit in, right?