Back-to-school season reminds me why I love homeschooling my kids

Every year, as my friends complain about registration errors or the amount of paperwork they have to fill out before their kids’ first day of school, I’m reminded of the many reasons homeschooling was the best choice for my family.

I don’t feel the pressure to keep up with the Pinterest moms

My children started their school career at the age of 2 private kindergarten. From there, they attended public school until my son finished sixth grade and my daughter finished fourth. Between the two of them, we went through 18 hyper-organized years of school, which included things like planning the perfect outfit for the first day of school and printing out the cutest signs to hold up for back-to-school photos.

It was exhausting, and while the overachieving part of me still tried to commemorate the start of each new school year when I homeschooling began in 2020, I quickly let go of the mindset that everything had to be documented for social media. These days, the first day of school is uneventful, usually with homework done in pajamas and always without fanfare and photo shoots.

We can learn on our own schedule

Since starting homeschooling, I’ve found a curriculum that works best for my kids and let go of the need to accomplish every single thing on a daily basis. My kids are now 14 and 16 and entering their freshman and junior high school years, and it’s liberating to let them each learn in their own way.

Untethered from state-mandated class loads and tons of homework, we check the boxes necessary for them to graduate, but we don’t sweat the small stuff either. With a set of goals to accomplish each year before we meet our home school evaluator – a credentialed teacher who reports to our county board of education that we have done everything required of us – we go at a more leisurely pace through the school year.

I really don’t miss all the permits and documents

When I think back to before I started homeschooling, I am filled with anxiety as I remember the stacks of paperwork and long lists of rules to learn from schoolevery teacher and every extracurricular activity. I could barely keep up each year and the responsibilities only increased as my children grew.

Now, I’m just reporting to myself (and, once a year, to the state of Florida) and I’m loving how the back-to-school season approaches without teacher emails, administration forms, and long lists of supplies to buy. Homeschooling allows me to be my own boss and I never feel overwhelmed by all the items on my back-to-school to-do list.

My kids have friends all year round without all the social pressure

As this year’s back-to-school season approaches, I’ve heard mom friends complain that their kids aren’t walking into classes with their favorite social circle. My kids’ friends post things on social media about how they dread the school year because they didn’t get the electives they were hoping for or have a lunch period where they won’t know anyone. There is a lot of pressure on children and parents to design a school year to give them the best chance to have a perfect social position in school hierarchy.

Since starting homeschool five years ago, my kids have found great groups of friends who are also homeschooled through community groups and drama programs. There isn’t the same pressure among homeschoolers to establish a group of “cool kids” friends. I’m thankful that my kids have a year-round group of friends who are also homeschooled and that they don’t change based on their class schedule or extracurricular task looks like.

However, I am still grateful for my children’s public school days

Because of my introverted personality type and anxiety diagnosis, the public school movement took a lot out of me as a parent. My children have inherited some of these traits and I see them thriving in the relaxed environment that homeschooling provides.

However, I often talk to the younger children’s friends considering homeschooling and tell them I don’t think I could have been a homeschool mom when my kids were younger. Preschoolers are exhausted, and early elementary-aged children need structure. I doubt we would have had as much success with homeschooling if my kids hadn’t been 10 and 12 when I started.

Although I found the process of going back to school stressful as a young mother, I also relied on public school to teach my children to become independent in their early years. I’m grateful that I did some years of organized school and I wouldn’t change it, even though things like shopping for supplies and filling out endless paperwork filled me with dread every year.

Homeschooling has given my family so much

Every year, as I plan home school curriculumI’m asking both of my kids if they want to continue homeschooling or go back to public school. What we do works great for me, but it would be selfish to keep them from an experience they wanted to have just to keep my anxiety level down. So far, my kids have said they love homeschooling and the opportunities it provides, so we’re continuing with homeschooling.

There’s a misconception that homeschooled kids miss out on things like after-school activities and rites of passage like prom. It is simply not true. In our homeschool community, my children participated in special dances, performed in musicals, took art classes, and tried out for sports. Aside from the paperwork and stress, I don’t think I lost much by homeschooling.

However, what I gained from homeschooling was invaluable to my family. Because we homeschool, we have more time to travel together as a family, and my kids have the unique opportunity to focus on the things they’re passionate about while leaving non-required school subjects that don’t interest them. Our lives are more stress-free as a homeschool family and I feel closer to my kids after spending so much time with them these past few years.