Homeschooling Siblings: Some Thoughts

I was going through my snapshots today and something really important occurred to me.

Even though I live in Texas, one of the most lenient and tolerant homeschooling state, I get questioned quite often by strangers asking why my boys are not in school.  I tell them I am homeschooling my sons and I usually feel that I have to follow it up with an excuse to justify my decision.  Sad, right?  It is still not politically correct to teach your own kids.

My most recent response is honestly one of the reasons that I decided to homeschool.  My husband works Saturday (his most busy day) and he takes off Sunday and Monday for his weekend.  If I sent the boys off to school then they would only have one day to spend with their father.  These boys of mine need as much time as possible with their dad.

Invariable I get questioned by these same strangers I meet when we are out and about during a school day about whether I think my boys are missing out getting "socialized".  Why is that the number one question by curious individuals?

If these well-intentioned strangers mean by "socialized" being trapped in a room all day long with 25-30 students their same age and one underpaid, overworked teacher spending most of his/her time trying to keep things under control while teaching subjects forced on them by mandatory standardized tests,  then I must respond "No".

When I was staring at those photos of my boys playing together, I suddenly realized that because we homeschool, my boys get to spend so much quality time with each other.  Time I did not have with my sisters because we went off to public school all day long at the young age of five.

I have never heard any one else mention that siblings getting to stay home together was a powerful reason to homeschool.  Funny that I never really thought about it myself.

My boys are around their parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents all of the time.  We also have wonderful family friends in our neighborhood with both homeschooled and private/public schooled children.  We meet up with other students during the day regularly for PE and chess.  And I can drop everything on a beautiful day and bring them to the park, zoo, museum, and festivals.  We can take our family vacations anytime we want and not have to mess with summer or holiday crowds.  Best of all, I know everyone who hangs out with my boys.

And my boys have each other.  They are best brother friends.

I look at those images I posted above and realize my boys are getting socialized just fine, but thanks for asking!

I wrote an action to automatically create and load the storyboard I posted today and will post it for download tomorrow.  :-)

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