Today I am going to stray from the beaten path and talk about homeschooling, specifically why we dicided to homeschool .
My husband and I decided to homeschool in 2002. He was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in late 2001. He has Chondrosarcoma, which is essentially a cancer that is caused by tissues that make cartilage.
It was, as you can immagine a terrible year, followed by other terrible years....but in the midst of it we made some changes in our life.
Thant's what cancer (or any other serious situation) does to you. We saw some things more clearly and things which were once importat, instantly became less important.
I never thought I would homeschool my children, never. I was a busy woman with a career path in nursing. I loved my family no doubt, but never thought I would (or could) want to do such a thing. I had friends that homeschooled and I used to say, You are crazy" or "not me!"
I was very inpressed with their children though, there was something that stood out as different from other children....(including mine).
We never really had trouble with teachers or with the school system, we did try to get our kids in year round system here, but were turned down.
One issue we struggled with was that as our children became older, peers became so much more important.
Now, I am not so strange to think that peers are not important to the development of chikldren, but they statred thinking that what their friends said or did was more important than what their dad or I said or did...sound familiar? We struggled with this, even though we never had big problems with our kids, they were pleasant and obedient kids.
After the diagnosis, we had no idea what the future had in store for us ( do any of us really?), nor did the doctors.
We heard, "5 years" and " this will be treated like a chronic illness"....We are at 10 years and still going...
The truth is that no one knew what to tell us, this disease is so rare.
I started to think about time, how much time we had and what should I do with it?
I worried.
I wondered.
I started to think that I had missed out on oppurtunities to teach my kids certain things, things I wanted them to know.
Personally, I am not one that believes that public school and religion go together. We live in such a diverse country, a country where you are free to have whatever religion you desire, or not to have one at all. Teachers come from all differnt kinds of backgrounds and faiths as well. While my belief is that there is one true God and that salvation only comes through his son, Jesus, others do not feel this way. God does not force that on folks and neither do I. ( I do believe that kids should be allowed to express their faith)
I believe that is for the parents to teach and that WE ae primarily responsible to teach it to our kids, not even the church bears as much responsibility.
So I began to feel the nudge inside to homeschool my kids...I wanted them near me and their father. I wanted to hang on to our family unit and nourish it. It was a total transformation on my part.
I had a problem though and that was my JOB. I worked at that time, weekday nights, 3 twelve hour shifts per week.
That would not work with homescholing.
So I put in my request to go to weekend option ( working only weekends) and told God that if he got me the position, I would take all 4 of my kids out of public school and homeschool them. This was a daunting task because there was a waiting list, and my oldest was going into 9th grade, followed by 7th, 4th and 2nd grades....!
As you can imagine I was nervous. Before I knew it, I was offered the position! Just in time to register my kids with the state for the next year....
What had I gotten myself into???
But I knew he had answered that prayer and we dived into it headfirst!
Did we blunder and stumble? Oh yea!
But. it has been one of the best decisions we have
ever rmade.
Was it easy?
Yes and no.
God changed my heart, so I didn't miss the idea of a career in nursing. He is still moving me toward something different, this blog is a part of that.
All of the kids reacted differently to being taken out of school. My daughter, the social butterfly. had the worse time. We prayed together and cried together. I told her to pray about it, which she did. I told her I would pray and that if God told me to put her back then I would. By the end of the year she was a changed young lady, thrilled with the idea of being home and loving the choices we had made.
Josh, who was going to high school was fine with being home, as were the others...
I have been doing this for almost 10 years. Our next son will graduate this year, a fine young men, with a heart for service and for God... I know we made the right decision. We have a married daughter, ( who is a cosometologist ) and a son that works and serves in many areas. Our last child will graduate in 3 years!
My husband still has this cancer, but God has been faithful. He is still able to work, you would not know he is sick if you didn't ask. We have had to learn to trust God for EACH day and that is our story, so much gaind and nothing lost. Nothing.
I hope to talk more about homeschooling as we go along on this journey. We will talk issues, curricula and how to teach certain subjects. I am not any kind of expert, so I may ask others to join in on our conversation.
If you are considering homeschooling, I encourage you to do it.
Feel free to tell me your story! I would love to hear it!
Theresa
