Spin off of "What Made You HS": Do you HS all your children?

I noticed, while reading/responding to the "What are/were your reasons to homeschool thread" that there are a lot of you who homeschool only one or two of your children and the others go to PS. I am genuinely wondering what are your (general your) reasons for choosing to hs some, ps others. I am not judging at all so please don't take this as a slap in the face or mocking in any way. I really am curious. :?:

TIA for anyone who answers :wink:

 

We homeschool all of ours but I have several friends who have some in different schools usually due to special needs or because they only hs thru middle school and then send them out to high school. At this point, we plan to continue homeschooling all of them thru high school (or until they can dual-enroll at a comm. college).

Our children (the oldest two mostly) previously attended a Dept of Defense school prior to homeschooling. We have been hsing for 2.5 years.

 

We are fortunate to live close to an excellent public elementary school. We had children there for about 20 years, so we know all the teachers well. We interacted a lot so we knew if something was coming up with which we disagreed. For example, I remember an occasion when our daughter was given a different assignment because we didn't want her watching a scary movie on Hallowe'en.

Middle school years are tough for everyone, and in some areas the PS puts children in a holding pattern. These are the years when we homeschooled the older three. Our fourth went to the PS because he really really needed the social interaction. It worked out reasonably well, so we stuck with it for the others (the youngest starts in August). We may yet homeschool the youngest for one or two years; it depends on how it works out.

For high school, the oldest four attended a Christian school. One of the best things about it was the sensitivity of teachers. They'd give a child a second chance (and, for one son, even a third chance), whereas there are no second chances in PS. (In the public school system, if you don't hand a report in on time, you get zero - and it takes nine 100s to recover an A from a single zero.) The downside, of course, is the cost - and we simply can't afford it this year - especially with four at university.

Our fifth child attends public high school because he's an excellent tuba player. There's no real music program at the Christian school (even if we could still afford it), and there's no homeschool equivalent to the school performance and marching bands. Music is his love, and he plays the tuba every day. Yes, I get frustrated about some other aspects of the PS system, but it's a matter of coming to the best solution for each child.

As you can tell, we've adopted all three forms of education, and each worked and was appropriate to the child and the circumstances. The most important thing, no matter what the option, is that, as parents, we retain responsibility for each child's education. We may choose to delegate to a teacher, but we have no hesitation changing our minds when it doesn't work out.

Hope this helps.

 

When I started homeschooling, my oldest was already in public school as well as my 2nd. I was feeling very insecure so I gave them the choice to do what they wanted. The oldest wanted to stay and the youngest wanted to homeschool. The oldest did not have good reasons, they were downright bad. He wanted to do their field trips. I was completely in the wrong to allow it. The next 2 yrs of him being in that school were hell. And we really allowed ourselves to be torn in many negative ways over ds's decision and following it. I know...he is the child and we should have said no. But it was sooo bad. I never should have allowed myself to be manipulated and I should have been the adult and say no over it. I didn't. So I failed.

Others, I am sure, have better schools. But in our case, we had serious problems at the school with a psycho abuser principal. It was a very hostile environment. Our home as a whole was in constant turmoil over it. Every time something would happen, I would ask ds if he was ready to homeschool now and he would say no, he wanted to go on such-n-such field trip. I would let it go with a week or two later, deal with turmoil and abuse again.

 

I homeschool all of my kids, and will keep them all home unless something drastic happens to change that.

 

I have one somewhere between head start and pre-k level. She will be homeschool until we are no longer comfortable or feel we cannot provide adequate schooling for her.

 

Hi
Right now I'm just homeschooling my son and about to send my dd to public school kindergarten in the fall. My hubby and I decided that our daughter could try kindergarten at a different school and in a different district than my son attended (8 minutes away by car instead of 2 minutes away). If this particular school doesn't work out we might be able to homeschool our dd too. If we fall in love with this particular school, we are possibly thinking our son could go to the school in 2010/11. Another reason we signed dd up for school (and actually our ds too, but we withdrew him already) was because we thought hubby was going to lose his job this past April and that I would have to find work for financial reasons. The same day my kids were accepted to the school we found out dh wasn't going to lose his job (at least until the end of January now), so we decided to keep our son out and our dd in. There are a few other factors that we considered as well.
Anyway, I better go for now. My kids have friends over and I need to check on them.

 

homeschool my two all the way through. God Willing.

 

My oldest was blessed with good schools and experiences(Germany, and many states),plus I had never heard of homeschooling back then.

My middle daughter was the experiment child,when we began our journey in homeschooling. While I wanted to homeschool my younger daughters I didn't seek the Lord in this endevor(sp),so she was bounced from homeschooling to public school...it is amazing that she graduated high school with "honors", at sixteen.

Our youngest went to public and private school till we finally (well she decided) to homeschool. She starts high school (CLASS) this year on her way to b.e an adoption attorney

 

We have been homeschoolers for 15 years. I have homeschooled all of our children for all of their school years. We have one who is in college (little brag here : she has maintained an A average throughout her college courses) and we have two more who are still being homeschooled. We will continue hsing until they graduate.

LR

 

We homeschool both our kids. We can't afford private school, plus I wouldn't want my kids attending a religious school (all the private schools here are religous). The public schools in my area are horrible. The best high school has a graduation rate of maybe 80%. All the schools have bad test scores, and low percentages of students that test at or above grade level. The school that holds the gifted program, for grade school, may be the only exception. Even the high school that has the gifted program has horribly low scores on the ACT and the state required tests, and has a lower graduation rate than the other high school I mentioned.
I can't bring myself to send my kids to this district. It is not an environment that is conducive to learning. Since both my kids have special educational needs, I refuse to send them to a school that can't even properly educate the so-called 'Average' students. There's simply no way they could meet my kids' needs.

 

As I posted on the other thread, we are homeschooling our youngest only. Although my older two graduated from public school, they should have been homeschooled as well. I didn't know much about it at the time so it never was a consideration.

God willing, Ems will be homeschooled until she graduates.

 

I homeschooled all three kids up to 9th grade for my ds who just graduated, to 12 for dd whois going out to private church school next year, an ds younger one will be hsed until the other two are self sufficient then out to a school with sports hopefully. Otherwise we can hs him all the way through 11th grade cause i have most of the stuff for it already.


Why? Because we like it!
Ds 18 went out to school because he was my reluctant learner at home, he thrived on the friendships he made with both teachers and students at his private schools.
DD wanted to home school all the way through then changed her mind

 

We started out homeschooling both of our school age children,but this year only one will remain home. We were offered a full scholarship for our boys to attend the Christian School at our church, we decided to only send one because he wants to go and DH and I think he needs that interaction partly because all he does is fight with me about his school work, but will happily do it for someone else and partly because he really is a social child and needs to be surrounded with other children a lot and the new neighborhood doesn't have too many other children for him. The younger boy we are keeping home because he still has some separation issues we need to work on, and really hates groups of any size. He doesn't even interact with other children at sunday school and children's church unless his brother is there too. So we are going to keep him home to avoid stressing him and because he really only learns well when I teach him (he just learns differently from other children).

 

I homeschool both of my kids. DD started out as the only one, the last part of 5th grade, due to medical reasons, and we both loved it. DS started HSing following school year (4th grd) after much discussion and DH having the final say. He is going into 6th grade and she into 8th. I don't know yet if DD will be HSing for high school. DS does plan to school until high school and then we'll see what happens.

 

I enjoyed reading everyone's responses. I am mainly homeschooling because of my 10 yr old daughter. She was having so many problems in school. I at first thought it would just be her, because my other daughters 8 and 5 are doing Ok in PS. But as I thought about it more, my dd8 has developmental delays and there wouldn't have been as many teacher's assistants in her upcoming class as I believe she needs. She relays heavily on assistance. I also thought, " How could I send my others to school all day with one home" I work 30 hours a week at night, so being home learning with them during the day will be great. This will be our first year coming up and even though my dd5 was looking forward to going to Kindergarten on the school bus, I don't feel that reason is a good enough one to leave her in PS. I've been debating about it though for months. I've found a great homeschool group and the Mom's that i've spoken to have really made me see things the way I need to.

Not to mention the last week of PS this year, the school nurse came out of the building while we were picking up the kids and said something very loudly to me for so many others to hear. What it was embarassed me a little and I was so mad. Ever since i've decided to homeschool so many things I think about that go on at school irritate me. Who are they to think that we are just the people that drop these kids off at school. So many times I have felt that way and I am done!!

Ok, i'll stop now :lol:

 

I homeschool all of mine from Day One. And I don't plan on stopping.

My two dss were not homeschooled. They were a combination of public and Christian school. I was a new step-mom, and felt that they had to get use to me as "mom" and I didn't want to throw another variable into the mix by hs'ing. But looking back now, Carl and I realize we probably should have hs'ed them, too.

 

I'm hsing my two daughters because when they were in C.School, i worked there and if I was not there for some reason, my oldest would have problems b/c she could not talk to me during the day. My girls have always been with me and I like that fact that if they needed me they could find me. My hubby and I love hsing our girls, they learn and we can do special things during the day with them, (they love fishing, so we take them sometimes during the school yr when it is cooler outside)
Our main reason for hsing is it is what best fits us right now, if there was a CS somewhere that was good, and affordable we might have looked into it, but there is not, and now I don't think My girls would go if they had the option.

 

We started homeschooling our oldest when he was in 2nd grade (too long of a story to mention here). Our other two have always been homeschooled. We planned at first to go a year at a time and see how it went. After 2 years, we couldn't see ever sending them back to school, since we LOVED homeschooling them! When our oldest hit 10th grade he plateaued. He didn't want to work at things, and didn't finish everything without lots of pushing. We looked at all our options, and found only one school we would even consider sending him to. It's a Christian Boarding School that has a work-study program, works with people in the community, takes the month of March for mission trips and mission work, and upholds high (but not whacko if you kwim!) Christian standards, and is out in the country. We went and visited, and ds really liked it. We prayed a lot about it, and felt led to send him there. He did very well! His Junior year he ended up with an actual gpa of 4.19, though it's listed as 4.0. In his Senior year, this year, he had a hard time getting to an early morning work assignment on time, and was taking harder classes. The work attendance counts on the gpa, so that and the harder classes lowered his gpa to "only" 3.83. He barely missed out on being valedictorian, which would've given him more scholarship money, which is frustrating, because he could've done better, but really, I can't complain! Now he's heading to a Christian College next year.

We just recently had a change in plans for ds15 (soon to be 16). We live in a Navy town and people come and go. Lately people have been moving away. It's to the point that there is noone his age at church, which has always had many boys his age, so social things was never an issue with homeschooling. But now, there are none at church, and only 2 boys his age left in our neighborhood. One my son refuses to spend time with anymore because of the way he acts and things he talks about (don't want to get into details), and the other gets into trouble a lot. My ds was just "guilty by association" with something this boy did (the boy and his parents agree), and now neighbors are suspicious of my ds! They now know he was innocent of the problem, but we don't want him ending up in trouble, or problems because of this boy. With this boy being the only choice for a friend now, there is just NOTHING left here for ds besides us. He needs positive Christian people and goals, and he's struggling here. Soooo, he asked, and dh and I, after much prayer, have decided to send him to the same school our oldest just graduated from. Not what we had planned at all (I'd already bought and received his 10th grade curriculum), but it's something we feel is important for his well-being overall!!! I'll miss him terribly though!

So, dd is the only one that will be home and being homeschooled. I got offered an aide job at a local Christian School, and as much as I could use the money, dd does NOT want to go to school (I'd have to enroll her), and I WANT to be home with and homeschool her! I think this time with just her will be a very good thing!

 

You've highlighted something that I think is often overlooked: Parents often sacrifice an awful lot for the opportunity to homeschool their children. I wish you all the best this year with your daughter.