As soon as our parenting journey begins, we want what is best for our children. We want them to have the best of everything! We want them to be happy. We love to watch them grow and learn. We know their hearts and share their milestones with them. Sometime around preschool age, many parents no longer feel capable of this. The pressure starts mounting to look into preschools.
When my daughter turned 3 and people around me started asking me where she’d be going to school, I started thinking long and hard about what it was I wanted for her. I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness the first time I toured a prestigious preschool. As I left the building, full of so many smiling children and every toy a person could imagine, I felt empty. Why, after these rough couple years, would I possibly send her somewhere else to learn, surrounded by people that would never know or love her the same way I did? I was so sad at the thought of not being the one to continue teaching her things. Of not sharing in the joys of discovery with her. No way, I thought! There has to be another way!
So, off to the library I went, to learn about other options. I knew sending her to preschool was not what I wanted to do. I found out that in my state (WI), school attendance wasn’t mandatory until she turned 6. Phew, I thought! I have a few more years to continue teaching and learning with her. Our life could continue as it was! I was ecstatic!!!
When she was about 5, we were at storytime at our local library, and someone else had a child there that was about the same age as my daughter. She asked me if I was homeschooling her. She proceeded to tell me about her excitement with starting to homeschool her son. I left there so confused. Homeschooling. What is that? I’d never even heard of it. The next day, I went back to the library and checked out and requested every book they had on homeschooling. I spent the next months pouring over all these books and learning all these new concepts. Some of these books made homeschooling seem so difficult. I didn’t find any that had the relaxed approach I guess I was looking for, but the seed had been planted in my heart. I would homeschool my children. I didn’t know how, or what it would entail, but I was completely committed to it!!! That was about 18 years ago……
