All Parents Homeschool

Many people think their choices are to either send their kids to school or to homeschool them. More realistically, all parents teach their children. For some parents it is their hobbies or their trade, others integrate academics into their lives at home or with tutors. Even the attitude parents have toward education teaches their children what the parents think is important.

Those parents who read bedtime books every night are homeschooling their kids, they just don’t label it that. The parents who buy workbooks with math problems to keep their kids busy at the doctor’s office are homeschooling them. The parents who get so caught up in studying a subject that they use much of their free time learning it are teaching their children how to learn by example.

When I was officially homeschooling I would have parents who were already working with their kids and teaching them daily, tell me they could never homeschool. They did not realize they already were, just in a different format.

In many states parents have so many options including hybrid forms of schooling by enrolling their kids part time in public schools. This can be a wonderful way to outsource subjects the parents may not want to teach or remove children from a class which is not working for them while they stay in the others. In my case, I knew I would not teach music well and my kids took lessons, but also joined a school orchestra and community youth orchestras. Maybe the student loves team sports or wants to see friends. Perhaps the parents are not temperamentally suited to be home all day. We each find our own solutions and there is no one right way of the universe to teach kids. We can change and adapt to what works best for us.