Homeschooled child concern

I completely understand that a college would not deny a homeschooler simply for being a homeschooler. I do think grades are viewed with a more critical eye. To be taken more seriously homeschoolers will often take SAT subject tests, AP tests, community college courses, or just go ahead and get an associate degree first (either after completing high school or completing the associate degree as their junior and senior year of high school). I understand that many "traditionally" schooled students will also do some of the above, but homeschoolers tend to see it as a necessity, even for schools that aren't very competitive. I graduated less than a decade ago, so it hasn't been that long.
That is an interesting thought.

The college that my son is currently attending actively pursues homeschooled students. And in fact, there are a number of colleges that do that.
 
That is an interesting thought.

The college that my son is currently attending actively pursues homeschooled students. And in fact, there are a number of colleges that do that.

I am familiar with some that do, the ones I know of are all Christian universities (but, I'm sure there are others). Actively pursuing someone to apply doesn't equal an acceptance letter, though. Many schools encourage applications to to make their acceptance numbers look better. Academia is becoming more accepting of homeschoolers, we've come a long way from back when it was illegal (in the US), but some are still suspicious (as can be seen on this thread). I'm not saying homeschoolers can't get full rides or gain entry into the most prestigious and competitive schools, but myself and my peers were taught to overcome common objections. I plan to homeschool my son, and I believe he will be very well prepared for college, but I also plan to show him how he can demonstrate his capabilities to an admissions office.

I know from my real world interactions that I am still an oddity to people when they find out I was homeschooled. Most are curious, generally asking the same questions (some of which are unintentionally offensive). There are some that have an initial negative reaction, acting shocked that "I'm normal," and want to think of me as the exception rather than the rule. Others think of it positively, some even saying they wish they had been homeschooled.
 
I'm so sorry about your DD. I've had social anxiety for as long as I can remember. I've learned to hide it, and most people are genuinely shocked to find out that I'm a very shy person. I was in the 3rd grade when this awful girl decided she wanted my best friend to be hers, and she just made my life miserable. I came home crying a lot of days. Even though, it's the other person's problem, it feels like there's something wrong with you. There's something about me that "puts off" alpha girls, and I've had to work around it, but it did cause me a lot of hurt feelings when I was a child and a teen. I hope and pray things go better at her school or she is able to find friends in another way.

I only have a one year old, so I can't relate to having an older daughter, but my heart is breaking over here thinking how much this must hurt you too. We can love them to the ends of the earth, but it's hard for them to not put their value in what temporary peers think.



.

Thank you so much, I appreciate your kindness, and I am so sorry that you suffered at the hands of bullies too. This has been a rough week for DD, who told me yesterday that she feels "empty inside". Just as you've said, she feels it's her fault. I'm still working on solutions, and just trying to reinforce at home how much she is loved, and matters.
 
But who is giving her A's? My guess is the parent is. She's 12 (7th grade) and reading at 9th grade level. That's not really a big deal. My 10 year old tested out of reading levels when she was in 5th grade. And yes, there are jobs that require night shifts. They are rough on your health - I wouldn't want one.

Also, when does he get out of the house and socialize with peers?

So what if her parents are giving her As, maybe she deserves them! My kids got As homeschooling and they get As now that they are in a brick and mortar school.

And you don't have to have a night shift job. My dad is 86 and healthy and often worked the night shift as a surgeon on call. Whatever. And she may change once she gets older. We used to stay up late several nights going out with others SOCIALIZING and then could sleep in the next day and get a little later start.

We adjusted just fine to getting up early when we had to. No big deal at all.
 


Well if you really must know, that "circle" is family. And the child is my only niece.
The sleep thing, no not really. Both my daughter and I are night owls. We like to sleep in and stay up late. As long as she is learning during the day and getting her education its fine. At 12 my daughter will probably have facebook, but I will be monitoring everything very closely. I do think kids should get socialization, so extra curricular activites would be a plus. Maybe you could talk to your niece and find out what shes interested in? My daughter is not a sports girl so we focus on the arts with activities. If you’re that concerned, maybe find out what she likes and offer to pay for it and take her.
 


That's cause I is just one of those ignant homeskooled childrun who sleep in & get As I doesn't deserve

School-Zone-No-Passing-Funny-Sign.jpg
 
If the child is reading at the ninth grade level, some content may be difficult. Pythagorean theorem, algebra, transformation and congruence, permutations, factorials - that's a bit of 7th grade math. Is the child going back to public school when she exceeds the parent's expertise? And a PP stated that online schooling isn't considered homeschooling. So now, I guess it is?

Homeschooled kids often find the answers themselves. There are all kinds of lessons, videos and classes that teach just about anything online. There are also groups, other homeschooling parents and children, tutors, etc.

My youngest son was homeschooled. He applied and was accepted to a few of the most prestigious film schools in the country. He did decide not to go college and work his way up instead. The colleges were very open to homeschooled children. Most of them accepted portfolios as a way to show ability.
 
That is an interesting thought.

The college that my son is currently attending actively pursues homeschooled students. And in fact, there are a number of colleges that do that.

My oldest was homeschooled all the way to 12th grade. He did some dual enrollment before graduating, and then did about 45 community college credits (including this semester), he has just been accepted into the school of his choice, along with a decent scholarship. They didn't even want to see his HS transcript and didn't ask where he went to high school. He has proven he is a good student.

But my homeschooling friends don't have trouble getting into college.
 
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My oldest was homeschooled all the way to 12th grade. He did some dual enrollment before graduating, and then did about 45 community college credits (including this semester), he has just been accepted into the school of his choice, along with a decent scholarship. They didn't even want to see his HS transcript and didn't ask where he went to high school. He has proven he is a good student.

But my homeschooling friend don't have trouble getting into college.
We taught our son through 12th as well. And I have to say that the chemistry experiments were pretty interesting. To say nothing of the dissections when he was in biology.

As I have said, he is in college now, and had no issue being admitted. They didn't care to see his transcript either. And he isn't attending a small/private/Christian college. He is attending a large nationally known school. In fact, their football team is ranked in the top 25.

Home educating your child has come out of the shadows. People have slowly come to realize that home educated students aren't the backward, lazy, or crazy students that they thought they were. And colleges have noticed.
 
This is the part that really confuses me- how do you make the assumption that she is missing meals and a large portion of family life if she’s sleeping an extra 3 hours to 11 am? My son misses all the “family life” that occurs in our house between 8:30 pm and midnight because he has to be in bed for an early school day. On weekends and in the summer he sleeps until 10:30/11 and then gets to stay up until midnight with us. He’s getting the same amount of social and family interaction under both scenarios.

It’s such a stretch to me to assume every family is up at the crack of dawn and in bed with the crickets.
It's unlikely that the whole family sleeps 'til noon everyday -- jobs and life interfere -- and my point is that the girl in question needs to spend time with family, not to sequester herself in her room. Especially since the girl has been bullied, I maintain this is a reason for concern.

I'd hazard a guess that the previous poster is referring to those homeschoolers who withdraw their kids from school in order to protect them from ideas that conflict with their own. Typically, they're fundamentally religious in one way or another, and see it as a matter of either protecting their children's innocence or else inoculating them against the belief systems of the broader, secular world.
Yes, while some parents are certainly serious about homeschooling and are doing a great job, it's also true to say that some parents are pulling their kids out to "protect them" from ideas that don't match those of the family -- an idea that's bound to backfire in the long run. And still others take their kids out because they want to protect their kids from any type of failure, yet they don't do much to build their abilities either.

I am quite sure wide diversity exists among the homeschooling community.

Me, I think public schools are incredibly valuable and important and a benefit to society.
Absolutely. The majority of parents would not homeschool well. As a public school teacher, I am frequently amazed at just how uninvolved the average parent is with his or her child's education.

Homeschooled kids often find the answers themselves. There are all kinds of lessons, videos and classes that teach just about anything online. There are also groups, other homeschooling parents and children, tutors, etc.
Well, they find the answers IF they (or their parents) are aware that the questions exist. As someone else said earlier, you don't know what you don't know. As a language teacher, I'm very aware of grammar and style in writing, and I frequently note that the pro-homeschooling contingent tends to be rather lax in this regard. If your only teacher doesn't understand how to use paragraphs or commas, you're not likely to become aware of their importance.

I taught 9th grade for years, and I taught perhaps 35-40 students who were entering public school for the first time -- some had been in private school for elementary /middle school, others had been homeschooled. I saw a number of generalities in terms of their English-Language Arts knowledge:

- The majority of the homeschoolers came to us having read novels (but not poetry or drama) and informational texts, and they were strong in terms of recalling plot; they enjoyed making charts and artwork based upon their novel reading, and they were good at writing summaries of their reading. However, they were weak in terms of analyzing and discussing anything below the surface.
- A few of the previous homeschoolers I taught were obsessive readers, but they tended not to be wide in their scope; that is, they didn't tend to have wide experiences with a variety of literature. Rather, these obsessive readers tended to have focused heavily on one writer or one genre -- I'm thinking of one boy who could almost quote the Redwall series -- but they were not particularly well versed in analysis either. They had the love of reading but not the instruction in literature.
- The majority were poor writers; teaching writing is not easy. (Sure, Christopher Paolinis are out there, but they are few in number.)
- The students from the large Christian school nearby were extremely well-versed in the Bible but had read essentially nothing else. They were also excellent at completing grammar worksheets.
- Most of the homeschoolers and private schoolers entered public school with the firm expectation that they would be head-and-shoulders ahead of the rest of the students. The reality was that their abilities varied widely (the public schoolers were more homogeneous in their knowledge, which I suppose was to be expected). I never encountered any who shot to the top of the class, but I saw many who were strong students in one or more subjects. I also saw a number who were moved to lower, remedial classes because their basics were weak. What these kids were not: average. That is, their abilities did not tend to group towards the center of a bell curve.

So what if her parents are giving her As, maybe she deserves them! My kids got As homeschooling and they get As now that they are in a brick and mortar school.
If she's completing work that is age-appropriate, is moving through a well-rounded curriculum, and is receiving straight As, good for her. On the other hand, we could just as easily be talking about Vanity Grading or the Magic Red Pen; that is, grades that're gifted to the student to enhance a kid's self-esteem or grades that're given because the parent just doesn't know what's age-appropriate for that subject. None of us here have any idea what type of work the student in question is actually doing.

My oldest was homeschooled all the way to 12th grade. He did some dual enrollment before graduating, and then did about 45 community college credits (including this semester), he has just been accepted into the school of his choice, along with a decent scholarship. They didn't even want to see his HS transcript and didn't ask where he went to high school. He has proven he is a good student.
Of course a university wouldn't want to see the high school transcript of a student who already has 45 community college credits. They wouldn't need an SAT /ACT score either.

My children both entered college with dual enrollment credits as well; most public school kids with upper-level academic abilities do these days. "Back in the day" country kids like me didn't have access to such things, but the internet has been a boon in terms of accessibility.
 
Thank you so much, I appreciate your kindness, and I am so sorry that you suffered at the hands of bullies too. This has been a rough week for DD, who told me yesterday that she feels "empty inside". Just as you've said, she feels it's her fault. I'm still working on solutions, and just trying to reinforce at home how much she is loved, and matters.

I hope she comes to understand it’s not her fault and she is so loved by her family. She’s not even going to know these awful kids in a few years, but it’s so hard to understand that when you’re young.

My oldest was homeschooled all the way to 12th grade. He did some dual enrollment before graduating, and then did about 45 community college credits (including this semester), he has just been accepted into the school of his choice, along with a decent scholarship. They didn't even want to see his HS transcript and didn't ask where he went to high school. He has proven he is a good student.

But my homeschooling friends don't have trouble getting into college.

I don’t know of anyone who wasn’t able to gain acceptance to a university, but the majority of the people I knew also did dual enrollment or community college classes after graduation.

I do know of one guy, many years before I graduated, who took the GED to prove to a college that he had satisfactorily completed high school. He graduated when homeschooling was probably still illegal in some states.

We taught our son through 12th as well. And I have to say that the chemistry experiments were pretty interesting. To say nothing of the dissections when he was in biology.

As I have said, he is in college now, and had no issue being admitted. They didn't care to see his transcript either. And he isn't attending a small/private/Christian college. He is attending a large nationally known school. In fact, their football team is ranked in the top 25.

Home educating your child has come out of the shadows. People have slowly come to realize that home educated students aren't the backward, lazy, or crazy students that they thought they were. And colleges have noticed.

I got curious about what my school currently recommends/requires of homeschooled applicants. They basically recommend the things I mentioned, SAT subject tests and community college coursework. They also recommend submitting course descriptions.

Some colleges have moved away from this type of admissions process, but my school hasn’t really changed since I was admitted.
 
My oldest granddaughter was homeschooled all the way, and has graduated from a large university; she's currently working on portfolios for grad school and studying for the GRE. When she was a junior, she took a creative writing class under a professor who struck terror in the hearts of her students; they had to write a paper on a novel named "The Wide Sargasso Sea". When my granddaughter got her paper back, there was a note from that terrifying (Phd of course) professor: "this is the best paper I have ever read on "The Wide Sargasso Sea". The lady professor wasn't young, so she had read a lot of papers on that subject. She got several papers back through the years with notations like that, and a few of her professors entered her papers into national competitions.

Homeschoolers do read a wide variety of subjects.
 
It's unlikely that the whole family sleeps 'til noon everyday -- jobs and life interfere -- and my point is that the girl in question needs to spend time with family, not to sequester herself in her room. Especially since the girl has been bullied, I maintain this is a reason for concern.


Yes, while some parents are certainly serious about homeschooling and are doing a great job, it's also true to say that some parents are pulling their kids out to "protect them" from ideas that don't match those of the family -- an idea that's bound to backfire in the long run. And still others take their kids out because they want to protect their kids from any type of failure, yet they don't do much to build their abilities either.

I am quite sure wide diversity exists among the homeschooling community.


Absolutely. The majority of parents would not homeschool well. As a public school teacher, I am frequently amazed at just how uninvolved the average parent is with his or her child's education.


Well, they find the answers IF they (or their parents) are aware that the questions exist. As someone else said earlier, you don't know what you don't know. As a language teacher, I'm very aware of grammar and style in writing, and I frequently note that the pro-homeschooling contingent tends to be rather lax in this regard. If your only teacher doesn't understand how to use paragraphs or commas, you're not likely to become aware of their importance.

I taught 9th grade for years, and I taught perhaps 35-40 students who were entering public school for the first time -- some had been in private school for elementary /middle school, others had been homeschooled. I saw a number of generalities in terms of their English-Language Arts knowledge:

- The majority of the homeschoolers came to us having read novels (but not poetry or drama) and informational texts, and they were strong in terms of recalling plot; they enjoyed making charts and artwork based upon their novel reading, and they were good at writing summaries of their reading. However, they were weak in terms of analyzing and discussing anything below the surface.
- A few of the previous homeschoolers I taught were obsessive readers, but they tended not to be wide in their scope; that is, they didn't tend to have wide experiences with a variety of literature. Rather, these obsessive readers tended to have focused heavily on one writer or one genre -- I'm thinking of one boy who could almost quote the Redwall series -- but they were not particularly well versed in analysis either. They had the love of reading but not the instruction in literature.
- The majority were poor writers; teaching writing is not easy. (Sure, Christopher Paolinis are out there, but they are few in number.)
- The students from the large Christian school nearby were extremely well-versed in the Bible but had read essentially nothing else. They were also excellent at completing grammar worksheets.
- Most of the homeschoolers and private schoolers entered public school with the firm expectation that they would be head-and-shoulders ahead of the rest of the students. The reality was that their abilities varied widely (the public schoolers were more homogeneous in their knowledge, which I suppose was to be expected). I never encountered any who shot to the top of the class, but I saw many who were strong students in one or more subjects. I also saw a number who were moved to lower, remedial classes because their basics were weak. What these kids were not: average. That is, their abilities did not tend to group towards the center of a bell curve.


If she's completing work that is age-appropriate, is moving through a well-rounded curriculum, and is receiving straight As, good for her. On the other hand, we could just as easily be talking about Vanity Grading or the Magic Red Pen; that is, grades that're gifted to the student to enhance a kid's self-esteem or grades that're given because the parent just doesn't know what's age-appropriate for that subject. None of us here have any idea what type of work the student in question is actually doing.


Of course a university wouldn't want to see the high school transcript of a student who already has 45 community college credits. They wouldn't need an SAT /ACT score either.

My children both entered college with dual enrollment credits as well; most public school kids with upper-level academic abilities do these days. "Back in the day" country kids like me didn't have access to such things, but the internet has been a boon in terms of accessibility.
So many generalisations made here...
 
But all of that is the business of the parents. Not the OP.
And you are correct.

But as parents, you also have to realize that you are not the only people who love your kids, are concerned about your kids and want the best for your kids.

I have many nieces and nephews and am now also gathering a few “grands”. I have agonized over difficult situations they have been in. No I’m
Not their mother. No I technically have no “say” in how they are raised. It doesn’t mean I can stop my concern for them.

I am grateful that my relatives have always generously shared their children with me. Kids can’t have too many people who love them.
 
So many generalisations made here...

I was cringing when I read that post as well. My DGD is an Ag student and the number of people who think all she want out of life is to "be a farmer" is astonishing. I am often amazed that people still have these outdated stereotypical images of students whose education steps outside of the "norm."

And you are correct.

But as parents, you also have to realize that you are not the only people who love your kids, are concerned about your kids and want the best for your kids.

I have many nieces and nephews and am now also gathering a few “grands”. I have agonized over difficult situations they have been in. No I’m
Not their mother. No I technically have no “say” in how they are raised. It doesn’t mean I can stop my concern for them.

I am grateful that my relatives have always generously shared their children with me. Kids can’t have too many people who love them.

I am a parent, an Aunt, and a grandparent. My husband and I have always taken an interest in our family and thier choices, and will sometimes share our opinions, both when we are impressed with decisions, etc, or whnen we have concerns. Ultimately, we know that there are often circumstances in play that we are not privy to, and that we need to trust that the parents are making choices and decisions that they feel are in the best interest of their children. We have an incredibly opinionated family, and therefore the concerns go both ways. We all have had the opportunity to have our decisions "discussed" but we also all know when it is time to back off gracefully.

I think one of the misconceptions in this thread that has irritated me the most is that respecting family boundaries means that it is impossible to have as a caring and involved extended family. Personally, I think the best way to close that doorway to involvement with the children is to overstep, and that is something I refuse to do.

The OP has focused on the sleeping and social habits of a child who was removed from the public school system for a very specific reason. I have no idea what is the best way to correct what has occurred in that child's life, but as a parent of a child who was bullied in school, I can assure you that there are no easy answers, and no one solution fits all. My son is now 42 and I can assure you that if tossing him into social situations would have made his life easier, we would have done so. His sleeping habits? Oh my gosh, what kid in that situation sleeps well? I also had a lot of feedback from my family in regards to decisions we made as my son navigated those horrible years in school. In the end, I was responsible for making those decisions, and I prayed they were the ones that were right for him. Some were. Some, not so much. My son and I have discussed those years, and we discuss his life now. He knows that his family, immediate and extended, always loved him, and that his aunts, uncles and his Grands all had opinions to help him. There were boundaries though, because no matter how close we all were, I woudl never have shared anything my son wanted kept private, and those concerns made differences in how we handled our choices.
 
So many generalisations made here...
Generalizations, you mean?

No, I'm reporting unemotional observations based upon homeschoolers I've seen come into public school for the first time. You could argue that the most successful homeschoolers never cross my threshold -- I'd have to agree with that; regardless, I know what I've seen.
 
I don’t know of anyone who wasn’t able to gain acceptance to a university, but the majority of the people I knew also did dual enrollment or community college classes after graduation.
Having taught high school for two decades, I've known MANY students who were not admitted to the school of their choice.
I've known a few students who were not admitted to ANY university; those students are few in number -- even our most lackluster students tend to be able to swing an admission to a non-competitive private school, and their problem then becomes the pricetag.

Yes, students who are involved in dual enrollment classes are almost always "cream of the crop", and I'd fully expect them to be admitted to universities.
Yes, community college admits essentially everyone, although some are admitted with "deficiencies", which means they're required to take remedial classes (at cost, no credit towards their future degrees) before they can launch into actual college classes. And I've known exactly two students who were not admitted to community college. Two in 25 years.
 

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