Making the decision to educate your child at home, is not a decision you made lightly! It was probably one of the most important decisions you ever made, or will make. In my humble opinion, it is the best and wisest decision you can make However, once you’ve made the decision, don’t be surprised if you find yourself feeling panicky, thinking thoughts like, “Oh my gosh! What have I done? What if I don’t do it right? What if I forget something? My child’s life will be ruined! Ruined! What have I done?!?”

Or if you are taking you’re child out of public or private school to educate them at home, you’ll likely struggle with, “I have to start ‘school’ immediately or else my child will fall behind and never catch up and their life will be ruined and it’s all my fault!”

And if your child is high school age you may be plagued with these thoughts : “What was I thinking? I can’t teach Algebra, or Calculus, or Chemistry or Ancient History or ….I must have been nuts! Now they’ll never get into college! What am I going to do?!?!” “I’ve ruined their life!!!”

OK, perhaps that’s a bit of exaggeration, but the panicky feelings & thoughts I just described sneak up on many of us who home school and often intensify the closer our child gets to highschool. Can you identify? My tip….

Relax & enjoy. Seriously!

The reality is you have plenty of time to accomplish what needs to be accomplished, even if you are starting homeschool in highschool. Let’s look at it this way….

If your child was in a public or private school:
1. How many hours a day, including travel time, would they be away from home? For us, it was 8 ½ hours! 8 ½ hours!

2. How much of this time away were they actually learning? Allow for switching classes, the time it takes for the class to settle down and actually begin, then subtract time for the inevitable questions and distractions and the 5 minutes that are lost at the end of the class because the kids are mentally disengaged, getting ready to make the transition to their next class…… You get the picture.

Many sources agree that actual learning takes place for only about 30 minutes per 45 minute class. Our public school district has seven class periods per day. Doing the math, that equals 3 ½ hours of actual learning out of 8 ½ hours. With home education, you will accomplish far more in far less time simply because of the improved “teacher”/ “student” ratio.

As far as the question of “What if I forget something?”, let me encourage you by saying, you can not cover everything. Neither can a public or private school. It’s impossible, there will be gaps. But…choosing to educate at home allows you, who knows your child best, to choose what they learn. You have the opportunity to educate them for life. Learning is a life-long process, so don’t sweat the “gaps”!

3. The frantic pace of institutionalized schooling, from the long school day itself, to hours of homework to extracurricular activities, & don’t forget the meetings – gotta love those meetings – takes its toll on family life and relationships. And of course, we still need to eat, sleep, maintain the house and so on.

Each one of us has 24 hours per day. No more, no less. Once the time is spent, it’s gone. The very nature of the institutionalized schooling beast dictates how most of those 24 hours are spent and it eats most of them.

Relax. You have plenty of time.

Home schooling gives back to you, control of how you spend that precious and irreplaceable commodity of time. You decide what to do & when to do it. While not always easy (an understatement), you have redeemed the all-to-short time you have to be with your kids. And, as I said before…you will accomplish far more in far less time – you don’t need 8 1/2 hours to accomplish 3 1/2 of work!

May I encourage you to relax and think of this time at home as a gift and blessing – it is. If you are transitioning from private or public school, use this time to rebuild and strengthen your relationship with your child. Once grown & graduated, it will seem like “just yesterday” when you started your home education adventure. Relax and take full advantage of it, spend time with and love your precious child(ren) – you have plenty of time to do what needs to be done!

Next time: Tip #2 – Decompression Time

Sue

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 8:18 am and is filed under Home Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.