The Worst Reasons to Homeschool
If you homeschool for these reasons, you're setting yourself up for faiure.
Homeschooling is a great choice for many families—more than you might think—because there are many misconceptions. But like anything worth doing, motive matters. If you start for the wrong reasons, you’ll handicap yourself with false expectations or leave yourself wide open to one of the pitfalls.
What are some of the worst reasons to start homeschooling?
You Want to Solve All of Your Education Problems
Homeschooling trades one set of problems for a different set of problems. Except now, you have no scapegoats and no excuses. It all falls on you.
Like any human endeavor, humans are involved, and so you will experience problems. Your kids might struggle with math or reading. They will fail to memorize something important. You will find gaps you wish you had covered years ago.
Don’t be naive. Go in with both eyes open.
You Want No Help From Anyone
While homeschooling is accepting more responsibility for the education of your child, it's foolish to go alone. Like-minded families make the journey more enjoyable and increase the likelihood of success.
Refusing help and advice is a form of pride. It’s also a great way to burn out and start to resent your own children. Worse, your children might start resenting the idea of education because it is never joyful.
You Want Zero Accountability
You want to do it your own way, and who cares what anybody thinks. This is bad in any endeavor. Surround yourself with people wiser than you. Listen to feedback, especially from those who helped forge the path ahead. Don't pretend to be autonomous.
Be open to critique from other parents, especially those more experienced. Co-ops with periodic assessments can provide much-needed sanity checks and accountability. Invite honest feedback from church elders. For some, state standards can provide a baseline to follow. You aren’t the last word on education, and if you act like it, your children will suffer.
You Think Your Kids Are Super Special and Unique
No one else could possibly educate them except you.
I’m sure your kids are great. But they're probably not that special. You certainly aren’t special in thinking they are super special. Many parents think their little Suzie is the smartest, prettiest thing in this room and in all the rooms next door.
While your children are especially unique to you and have a special place in your family, you cannot extrapolate that to the wider world. In fact, they are probably normal. Mundanely so.
Thinking they are special will only pressure them to live up to unrealistic expectations, and when they finally fail at something, they will crumble.
You Want to Sleep In
You can set your own schedule, and you don't have to get up at dawn, but you don't want to be lazy either. The sloth turns back and forth on his bed like the hinge of a door.
And your children are watching.
You Want Your Kids to Remain Unsullied From the Outside World
Sin resides in the human heart. No matter where you go or what you do, your children will struggle with their desires, their passions, their pride, and more. Homeschooling isn't a cure for evil. In some cases, it can exacerbate it. What might have withered can be given roots and grow to maturity.
You’ll still need to deal with plenty of sin in your home, and now the stakes are even higher. Homeschooling, done well, requires faith and prayer. A parent does not have the power to save their children from their sins. Be realistic.
What Are the Right Reasons to Homeschool?
You want to do your best to raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
You want more flexibility and opportunities to explore curiosities.
Your child really does have special needs.
You want to give your household a mission beyond rest and entertainment.
You want to provide a better education than what they would receive in public school.
You want to offer your children more training before you have them face down wolves
I’m bullish on homeschooling. It offers a lot of freedom and potential. But it is not a universal solution to all of life’s problems, and those engaging in it can make a lot of mistakes, as humans tend to do.