The Journey of Parenthood…

10 Reasons to Homeschool Your Kids

10 Reasons to Homeschool Your Kids

Guest Post By: Christine Keys

I was homeschooled for a large chunk of my education and now I’m homeschooling my own children.

Honestly, the reasons to homeschool your kids are far more extensive than what is in this post, but these are a good starting point.

10 Reasons to Consider Homeschooling Your Kids

Homeschooling is becoming more and more popular around the globe and yet there are still a lot of crazy myths and misconceptions about it.

Related: 10 Common Homeschool Myths You Need to Know About

Instead of focusing on those, I’d like to share the positives that you can potentially gain from homeschooling your children.

#1 More Time

You won’t have more time for yourself…that’s kind of obvious. However, what homeschooling will give you is more time with your kids.

We’re forever being reminded about how the days drag but the years fly by. It’s true.

Babies don’t keep and neither do children. They grow up…quickly.

Homeschooling allows you as the parent to spend much more time with your children than if they were enrolled in school.

It’s not something that homeschoolers boast about. It’s just a fact.

#2 A Better Education

There’s a great big myth out there that homeschool parents need to be qualified to teach or else their children won’t be getting an ideal education.

That statement couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’ve personally seen many a homeschool mom that is also qualified as a teacher say that her degree was of little to no help.

In many school settings education is not at all specific to each child. It’s just the way that it has to be in order to teach so many children all at once.

Homeschooling allows parents to tailor everything to the needs of their child so that they can be getting the best education possible.

Sometimes that means hiring a tutor or enrolling their child in an extra class somewhere, but the thought that your child’s education will suffer is absolutely false.

Homeschooled children have the benefit of learning at their own pace and very often following their own interests.

This naturally leads to better quality learning overall.

reasons to homeschool your kids

#3 A Safe Environment

You can class “safe” as whatever you want. It could range from loss of innocence to school shootings.

The fact of the matter is that homeschooling provides a safer environment.

That doesn’t mean that homeschooled kids can’t get hurt. We all know that we can’t protect our children from every little thing.

However, it does lessen the risk of harm.

I’ve personally not chosen to homeschool out of fear, but I can certainly sympathize with that reason.

#4 Fewer Bugs

Hello, flu season! Here in New Zealand, the cold weather is on its way and I’m all for the natural isolation that homeschooling offers us.

Don’t get me wrong…we do leave the house.

The ridiculous myth that homeschoolers never get out and lack socialisation is laughable, but at least we can choose to stay home if we want to.

While my children get sick (and quite frankly they need to build up their immune systems that way), they also aren’t exposed to the endless colds and viruses that are inevitably passed around from child to child.

This was particularly helpful when we had a newborn at home.

Related: How to Get Your Toddler Washing Hands Without a Fight

#5 Strengthened Relationships

I’m not at all saying that you can’t have great family relationships if your children attend school. However, I do think that homeschooling lends itself to making it easier to work on those relationships.

Being together so much forces you to learn how to love even when it doesn’t feel good or is inconvenient.

Your children learn to work together and negotiate a lot more frequently than they would if they were apart for several hours per day.

If you decide that pursuing those relationships with your children is worth working on then homeschooling can work.

My own mother homeschooled myself and my three siblings and we’re all wonderful friends now as adults.

It’s not that attending school would have prevented that, but homeschooling gave us more opportunities to work on it.

#6 More Opportunities

One of the homeschool myths out there is that homeschoolers miss out on a lot of opportunities that children who attend regular school have.

While there will be a few things that they might miss out on, the truth is that homeschooled children probably have even more opportunities available to them.

Because of the flexibility of their school schedule and the fact that schoolwork is often finished quite quickly, it means that there is an opportunity to join in on things that other kids couldn’t.

#7 Better Socialisation

Yep, you read that right…homeschooling typically provides better socialisation opportunities.

Homeschoolers don’t live in a bubble and are usually very active members of their community.

Homeschooling allows your child to socialise not only with peers their own age but people of every age.

This, in turn, provides more real-life socialisation opportunities for them.

After all, how many scenarios in adulthood have you socialised with only people the same age as yourself?

reasons to homeschool your kids

#8 More Flexibility

One of the many appealing reasons to homeschool your kids is the flexibility. Don’t want to start school at 9 am? Then don’t.

Want to go on a vacation in the middle of the school term? Do it.

Homeschooling provides copious amounts of flexibility which results in a heck of a lot of freedom.

Schoolwork is often completed more quickly because there are fewer distractions and no need for classroom management.

This means that the majority of the day can be used for other purposes.

My family is originally from South Africa but we now live in New Zealand. Over the years we were able to travel back a few times and never had to take into consideration the school schedule.

We just worked to make up for it or did school during the typical school breaks.

We children were also able to get jobs that other kids couldn’t because we were available for daytime hours.

#9 More Control

Depending on where you live can have a big impact on the amount of control that you do (or don’t) have over your children when they attend public school.

There may be subjects that you’re not comfortable with them being taught.

You may want to take a vacation but aren’t able to due to school attendance rules.

There are a million and one things that you could come up with which is why homeschooling is a wonderful option.

Every location is different in regard to homeschool regulations, but in general, you will have a lot more control over your child and what they’re learning.

This is a big benefit in my books.

#10 A Better Pace

In a society where busy is supposedly better, homeschooling offers a different pace of life.

There’s nothing admirable about burnout and families so busy with different activities that they barely see one another.

If you’re looking to step off of the hamster wheel in order to just slow down then homeschooling really is worth looking into.

You can make it as slow-paced or as busy as you’d like, but the point is that the choice is yours.

Homeschooling is not going to work for every family, but I’ve seen the fruit that comes from it and I’m more than willing to sacrifice in order to reap those same benefits for my kids.

If you’re also considering homeschool, hopefully these reasons to homeschool your kids help you feel more confident as you’re making the decision!

Christine is a mother of three and blogs at: Christine Keys, This Home School House as well as Raising Kids Making Money. Be sure to subscribe to her YouTube Channel for more Motherhood Tips!

Emily Parker
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