We will be starting in a couple of weeks. For you experienced h/s moms could someone reassure me that even though I am homeschooling and my dd will miss out on having a "first day of kindergarten" that I won't be scarring her for life.
I just remember loving school and I'm sad for her that she won't get to experience this!
I first got interested in homeschooling because I had such a LOUSY time in school. I hated the social interaction (went to school 11/12 years in the same area so knew most everyone from 1st on, and even in my Senior year I went home with big blotchy hives from the social interaction and nervousness EVERY DAY), the education was questionable with brief moments of "ooh that was brilliant", and my teachers, for the most part, were laughable and utterly burned out (5th grade teacher had a nervous breakdown in class towards the end of that year...then she was our class's teacher for 6th!). If I had a scanner I knew how to use, I would show you "Molly before school", happy joyous smiling girl, and then "Molly after she started Montessori" (did Montessori from 4 to 6 yo, then started 1st at public school) which shows a hunched shoulder, circles under eyes, scared sad shy girl.
So for me, I was worried (long before marrying and having DS) that I would scar a child for life BY sending him to school!
I'm a wee bit more militant than most, though.
I am 21 and I have my DS 3( I know I know young) We are currently living with my parents so that i can be full time care taker to my 90 year old grandfather and my sister 9 and brother 11, We will be moving out right after our September trip hopefully with my husbands new promotion and for our sanity.
My DS is currently 3 will be 4 in Nov. I have thought about homeschooling for awhile now. I had actually thought about doing it myself when I became pregnant with my son my junior year, but did not and finished school. My husband, my sons father and my mother who is a teacher, don't really agree with me wanting to do so. Its not so much that I love my son and don't want him to leave, but I look at it more of an adventure like being able to watch him grow and grow together. When I was put on bed rest the beginning of my senior year my math teacher came to my house and tutored me, i was doing amazing the best i had ever done. When i got back to school it was awful you couldn't focus everyone would constantly talk. My mother has been giving me a lot of stuff recently because I don't have him in day care well i cant afford (in our area)250 dollars a week for two days in daycare or preschool.She also keeps telling me that its going to be impossible for him to be in kindergarten. My fathers son thinks its just a big joke mind you he is 21, and is a "cool" kid. He thinks that my son will get no interaction or will become a social misfit. His father did homeschooling when he was in his junior year.Go figure. And my husband just worries about the social interaction and everything else. So I guess im just looking for some advice as to what all of you think, and where i should go from here. Sorry for writing a book but just thought I would ask. Thanks
It is very impressive that you're so young yet very determined. Especially when surrounded by naysayers!
My son is 6 and I've had people ask about his social skills, AFTER having a 20 minute long conversation WITH HIM. People are bananas, I tell you. Your whole family lives around him...how could he NOT develop social skills with all of those people?
I am a hermit (note the social interaction hives mention above) but DS is a social butterfly, and has forced me to get out and about. So he takes classes at the Y (swim, gymnastics, ballet, and aikido), and last year we did their Homeschool PE program so he got to learn all the little games kids "need" to learn, LOL. He made friends, interacted, worked things out...and that's without stuff like that until he was 5. DS LOVES people and after 5 minutes of being quiet to get used to things, and assuming the person doesn't totally creep him out (a reaction that I pay attention to), he'll pop into the conversation with his own thoughts and feelings.
Remembering that I'm a bit more militant than most...I find that most of the social interaction that kids get in school is "socializing". Meaning chatting about nothing, just hanging out. To me, school would have been so much better withOUT that. I had some pretty negative experiences with it! To me, kids with 39 other kids just becomes a sort of Lord of the Flies experience, and I don't feel that that helps much.
DS went to his second birthday party in June, and it was to a party where most of the kids invited were from one kindergarten class. There were 40 kids in their K class (and this is a private Catholic school), and while not everyone showed up (a virus swept the class just over a week before the party/end of school) it was a madhouse. A wonderful noisy madhouse b/c they had a HUGE backyard that the kids could just run and run in...DS knew exactly two kids there (the birthday twins, who were in his swim class), and he jumped right in, played his little legs off, had a grand time! And remember, I really only started taking him out to meet these other kids less than a year ago.
So I wouldn't worry about the social interaction stuff so much. Help him learn to communicate with all humans, and he'll work out communication with kids.
I am SO fortunate in where I live. I think I've posted about them before, but my neighbor is a nearly-100 year old man who teaches Western art classes at the local fairgrounds. His elderly son lives with him (and his daughter and son in law live in the same building with all of us)...we were at the condo's Social Hour last week, and the son said "you're homeschooling your son, right?" and when I said "yes", he said "GOOD. We get homeschooling groups there as well as school groups, and the homeschool kids are SO SMART." I could have kissed him for that!
I mean, not that schooled kids cannot be smart...I got B+s and As in school, and I was the lower-grade person of my group...but my friends were definitely not the norm for the schools we went to.
And of course the father-neighbor was very likely schooled mainly at home himself, and has made a lovely life for himself. If he wasn't schooled at home, his parents almost certainly were, and he has great respect for it.
And I love the social hours for DS's sake (left to my own devices I'd avoid them) because he gets to chat with 20 senior citizens and have a GREAT time, and we woulldn't get that if we lived somewhere else!
I still haven't been able to order Calvert, but we've been reading a bunch of the Sonlight books from 3/4, 4/5, and K this summer. And DS has me do little addition quizzes (which thoroughly impressed the person we were talking to at the time) on the fly LOL.