My almost 6 year old son H had his first serious desire to go "to regular school". We are a homeschooling family. He knows that while he stays home with us, other kids load up on the school bus and go to a place called school. Before he's asked to ride the bus but he was only curious about it. We are going to have the opportunity this fall to go see a factory where school buses are made and ride in one. The perks of having a Grandma who builds buses.
Last week we traveled to California to see family and every day he watched his cousin get up and ready for school. Something clicked. "I want to do that too!" He started talking about going, doing homework "just like T." He was dead set on it even after my mom and I explained what school was like. No playing when you want to, sitting at a desk a lot, lots of homework, being away from Mama and brothers. He would not be deterred.
So I made a deal with him. We would start having school at home, 8am to 2pm. Complete with bathroom passes, lunches in a lunch box, the whole bit. If by summer vacation he still wanted to go to school, I would enroll him the next year. He agreed. I started a mental checklist of what I needed to do to super structurize our current routine.
Then on the drive back to Texas something clicked and I had to tell him. "Hey H ya know that you will not be able to wear your hat when you are at school." There was a pause from the back seat. "... No hat?"
"Yup buddy, no hats at school."
H loves wearing hats. He puts it on a peg by his bed before climbing in at night and puts it right back on after climbing out in the morning. It's his trademark. Because of the constant wear we just bought his 3rd hat in 2 years, long overdue as it was. I knew that it would upset him but wasn't sure what he would say to it.
After another pause, "Okay I want to be homeschooled."
And that was that. He loves his hat more than he wanted to go to school, for right now at least. As much as I want to homeschool my boys I know we will have other "I want to go to regular school" conversations in the future. The best I can do is give them all the facts and let them decide on their own which they would rather do. And I can hope they will choose the best for them.
If you are a homeschooling family, do you have a funny story about one of your kids wanting to go to "real school"? If your child(ren) is in public/private school have they ever wanted to be homeschooled for whatever reason?
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Comments (18)
Haha!
When my kids are old enough I'm booting 'em out the door to school, but doing a year of "school at home" actually sounds like a great approach to that issue from a homeschooling perspective.
As a kid myself I wanted to be homeschooled...but only so I could stay home and read all day (that's school, right?). I was that kid in class that would get in trouble for hiding books under my desk, oops! and my dad had to hide all the flashlights in the house so I would stop staying up all night nerding out under my blanket. :P
@milfncookies@xanga - I was that kid too.
I'm thrilled my boys love reading just as much.
@TornadoChaser - @milfncookies@xanga - I was that kid too! Only I WAS homeschooled, and I DID read all day (and night) long. Ooooh I got into SO much trouble growing up.
But hey, I turned out all right and graduated from college cum laude. 
I had one out of six who wanted to go to a classroom setting. I enrolled her in 7th grade along with her older sis who was then starting high school. I still wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had stuck to my homeschooling with her instead of enrolling the two of them. My last two I have homeschooled all the way through and I would encourage anybody to stick it out all the way through. It's worth it. You never get that time back. My relationship with my kids and with their Dad is very good but it has been more of a struggle with the older kids in some ways because we gave up so much time together once we enrolled them in school away from home.
We just started homeschooling this year with Pre-K and right now there haven't been any arguments.
I am really surprised you would make school sound so terrible, doesn't seem like a fair approach...You should have been a little bit more honest with your son. Maybe just set up a day to visit a school. I'm glad you at least thought about setting up "school" in your home.
Kids need a balance of structure and free time and school (at least the ones I went to) were pretty good about doing that.
@michcoy@xanga - I think H has been a bit disillusioned with the idea of school so he mostly needed to know more of the bad than the good, that it isn't like Sid the Science Kid or Magic Schoolbus. I was honest but I didn't sugar coat it. We also had my nephew tell him about what he does all day and what he likes about school.
I homeschool my 8 yr old and I think he learns more with my homeschool and enrichment classes at the church than he would in regular school.
I was homeschooled but my mom took a more "un-schooling" approach to it. I think briefly in seventh or eighth grade I wanted to go to public school but it was because of a boy. :P
Other than that..I had no desire to go to public school and my biggest reason was what time I'd have to get up. My best friend had zero hour at 7am, she had to get up around 5:45 and be at school by 6:45. Um...no thank you. I appreciated sleeping in till eight, not starting any school work till ten and being done by one or two at the latest. No assigned class time, I did school in my pajamas.
And everyone was like, "Yeah...that's great, what about friends?" I had plenty, being social wasn't an issue at all.
I just started homeschooling my son this year (2nd grade) He has been talking it up at church and has another child convinced that she should be homeschooled too. Then one day he said when I can have a locker I want to go to regular school. I asked him why and he said so he can take his DS to school and play it during "free time" and put it in his locker when he was finished. I had to explain to him that you don't have "free time" in school and video games were not allowed in school. I don't think he believed me!
I decided I wanted to try and actually went back to "regular school" for my freshman year of highschool. It lasted about 3 months. I was painfully bored...they didn't test me, they just put me in with the other kids my age. Paaaaaain! They were behind where I was, so I sat through class after class of things I already knew. I deemed the other kids "officially stupid" after one put a paperclip in an electrical outlet during algebra. And I hated [hate - present tense!] getting up before the sun. (It's not natural, I tell ya!) It was anything like they showed in movies or on TV. The first week was great since I was accepted by the "cool" girls...then I realized how completely shallow and caty they were and ran away.
I think you did the right thing by being honest with him about what it all involved! Better to find out the deal breaker now than on the first day of school, when he's already been enrolled!!
hahaha, great story
@milfncookies@xanga - I was that kid too! :) I don't think my behaviour has changed much, over the years!
I know there are pros to homeschooling, but my experiences with it have not been good ones. I'm glad I went to a public school, I feel a learned a lot more there--academically and socially--than I could have in a home setting. But, that is just my opinion, based on nothing but negative experiences with homeschool.
My son does NOT want to be homeschooled at all.
He's a smart boy, and I know he needs the social interaction with other kids his age... but I think if we can manage it, I'd like to send him to private school instead of public, and if not, well... I went through it, and so has my husband, and nothing too horrible happened to us.
Lol, that's so cute!!
I don't see any problem with allowing a kid who's curious about public school go to public school. You can take a child out of school at any time in the year, as far as I know. You can also enroll tem at any point in the year. :p Although, for enrolling its usually best at the beginning so they can be sure not to get left behind.
I don't have children, though. But, when I was a kid I went to public school and I hated it. I always wanted to be home schooled. There were two reasons. One was that I was and am not and have never been and likely will never be a morning person. :p The other was that I was bullied a lot in school, and I used to cry and wish I could stay home and be home schooled.
In the middle of 8th grade, my mother finally took me out to home school me, but she really wasn't all that good at it, plus she had to work. But, I was still very grateful that I didn't have to go to public school, anymore.
I went through home school, private school and public school.
My home schooling lacked in the education part. I was being taught along with a co-op course, so it was somewhat structured. But it wasn't a complete education i.e. lacking any art, music, physical education, extended math, many sciences, debate, etc. Not waking up early made me lazy, and it doesn't do anything to prepare a child for the real world. No college prep either Socially, I had friends (not a lot) but I spent a physiologically unhealthy amount of time in the house or my room.
Private school provided a complete and structured education, but gave me no preparation for furthering my education. No college/career counselor and many classes I took were not recognized by many universities. I also lacked any state history and all history classes were bias to religious events and views. As a social environment, it was much like a small town. Everyone knew my business. But it kept me out of trouble.
Public school was a hassel with my credits. Many of my homeschooling and private school credits were counted as English while they may have been philoshpy or history. This being, I had 4 more English credits than I needed to graduate. Nonetheless I was, by law, required to be enrolled in a English class every semester. Because of this, I ended up doing night classes and summer school to catch up on required credits. The education was complete and well structured as a k1-12 scheme. I was in all advanced placement classes, so the difficulty of the work was around that of private school, granted much, much less homework and assignments. In public school I was well prepared for college and had a lot of resources to help. Socially I met so many people, but also was provided more opportunity for trouble. It is truly a ground to test character. But everyone's character is tested at some point, so to avoid public school because of this is just delaying it until the kid graduates.
Overall, private school wins.
BUT pick one before junior high. Switching around after that just makes a mess of credits.
My sister (we were homeschooled) wanted to go to school so she could "ride her bike to school." My mom told her she could ride it from the garage to the school room upstairs.
Homeschooling wins, hands down, provided the parent/teacher wants to and is good at it (duh).
It really defined me my first year in college, especially since I was studying eduction, but it's becoming increasingly less of a big deal as I get older. I had a much smoother time growing up and did a lot of things before most people my age, but I figure at this point (24 years old) there's not much of a difference between me and a "public schooler" -- we can all hold down jobs and do enough math to make it through. I think I may have an advantage again when I have my own kids, though. We'll see.