Homeschooling Your Children And The Problems Of DIY Education

A number of people describe homeschooling as 'do it yourself education' and the majority of parents immediately assume that they are the 'you' in 'yourself'. As a consequence, many parents who have busy lives making a living or undertaking other important activities, and especially single parents, dismiss any thoughts of teaching their children at home out of hand. But are they wise to do so?

Homeschooling has been with us for a very long time now and involves in excess of 1,000,000 children in the US alone and experience means that are many options available to parents nowadays. Indeed, it is not surprising to find that parents in just about any situation you can imagine have found a solution to homeschooling their children.

We are all of course familiar with the two parent family where dad goes out to work and mum stays home and this situation makes homeschooling a reasonably simple option. Since the 1960s however society has changed markedly and now there are a wide range of family situations including, extended families, single parents, same-sex couples, role reversal and much more.

Every situation carries with it both problems and advantages for homeschooling and it is a matter of studying both and then finding ways to overcome the difficulties and enhance the advantages.

As an example, a number of parents turn to their wider family or to friends for help and ask family or friends into their home to help. This is not new of course and, for many years, it was not uncommon for families to offer a friend or an older family member like an aunt a place to stay in exchange for helping with the care and education of the children.

Help can also frequently come from neighbors. A number of 'stay-at-home' moms are already providing day care facilities for children and, with the steady rise in homeschooling numbers, babysitting services are being extended more and more to encompass homeschooling.

In a lot of instances families are also combining their resources to provide homeschooling on a 'group' basis.

Yet another popular option is that of employing a tutor. Tutors nowadays come from a wide range of different backgrounds, in all age groups and include both specialists, such as those teaching languages or music, as well as of course general tutors. In fact, it is not unusual to find ex-public or private school teachers who have become dissatisfied with the 'system' becoming tutors because of their deep love of teaching.

Most parents believe that tutoring is quite simply out of their reach financially but, after some careful research, they are frequently surprised to find that the cost of hiring a tutor can indeed be within their reach.

Another very important consideration is the children themselves. It is often surprising how well motivated children are by the independence which homeschooling brings and many parents discover that teaching a child at home can be much less time consuming than you might think.

Should you find that you are tempted by the advantages of homeschooling over the poor quality of the public school system then do not fall into the common pitfall of dismissing the idea out-of-hand. Instead take time to explore the choices open to you and you could well be surprised to learn that it is not as difficult as you think.

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