Decision to Home School

The decision to home school our children was not an easy one to make. To be honest, by the time our children reached school age, I was anticipating having the days to myself to do whatever it was that I wanted to do. The kids would be in school and my husband would be at work, and life would be grand. I dreamed of going back to school myself, and then landing the perfect job. However, something in the back of my brain (which was the Lord speaking to me) kept nagging and saying, "I want you to do hard things, not easy things." My husband and I had never even given homeschooling a thought before. It never crossed our minds, in fact, until we spoke with a dear friend about her homeschooling her children.

Homeschooling our children scared us. What if we made a mistake and they ended up flipping hamburgers at the local McDonald's? What if they lagged behind all the other children we knew academically? What if they became loners and never made a friend? What if I couldn't teach my children the necessary things that they needed to know for college some day? All of these and so many other thoughts came into my brain, including the very loud-speaking fact that I don't have much patience.

Well, the first thing we did before even considering to home school was we prayed and prayed and prayed about it. We wanted to know that we were doing this for all the right reasons and not for prideful reasons. We wanted to make sure that this is what God really wanted for our children and our lives. We just put all our fears aside and gave them to the Lord. And the wonderful thing about that was He gave us a wonderful peace after we did this, and all our plans and decisions to home school from that point forward just fell into place.

With the peace that we felt, we did a lot of research into what materials we would use and how to use them by going online. We even went to a home school convention with tons of vendors and speakers at seminars and learned a tremendous amount about the values of homeschooling. We had a smorgasbord of ideas in front of us; and might I add, we could have easily been overwhelmed if we were not careful. So many books and props were thrown in our direction, so we had to be wise in picking and choosing what we really needed and not just wanted to take home and use. One other thing that helped us was we asked other parents what they used and would recommend, and thankfully, we found one curriculum that was really the right choice for our children. It spelled everything out for them to do day-by-day and was even teacher-friendly for me.

The best advice I can give you in regards to homeschooling your children is to just pray about it. Ask God who knows all what He thinks you should do. Don't home school your children because everyone else you know is doing it; make a wise prayerful decision that's best for your family. Furthermore, homeschooling has not only taught my children the necessary learning tools they need along with godly character-building, but it's also taught me life-building values like patience, love, gentleness, being slow to anger and quick to listen. Homeschooling may have been one of the toughest decisions in our lives that we ever made, but even after five years now, we're still learning that anything is possible with God.

Rachel G. LaChapelle is the website administrator for Baby Diaper Bags and also a stay-at-home mom for 14 years. Please visit her site for all sorts of discount baby items.