I like the approach of school thru 5th grade...and then make the switch before junior high

I know when I look for advice on how to raise kids I go to the guy with no kids and a very limited moral compass.

coolerguy12 said:

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I know when I look for advice on how to raise kids I go to the guy with no kids and a very limited moral compass.

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And on record as saying " kids are trash"

I was homeschooled for a lot of my life and so were my siblings. There are a ton of very weird folks in the home school community. I dont think it is generally good for most kids, but we were all very sociable and werent really harmed socially, i would say. Once we actually went school we fit in well. i think that has more to do with the families though and we were in a lot of activities. the super weirdos / ultra religious / gothard types are going to be socially weird regardless, i assume.

I think pretty much all studies show that it doesnt really matter where you go to school but what the family life is like. I just would be hesitant to put your kids around the very isolated / odd folks that are home schooled.

I think it also hurts for preparedness for college. I dont know this for a fact but i get the sense that good colleges are not going to respect home school transcripts because they are meaningless so probably going off of test scores only?

I know a lot about the home school community and I just dont think its the best route for most kids.

We have no confidence in public schools, and homeschooling isn't practical for us. We've enrolled our children in a private faith-based school and are really enjoying the experience.

I have no advice. But I want to wish you the best of luck. Thanks for doing the best for your kiddo

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And reduce the risk of his exposure to social media, porn, child predators, gangs, drugs, shootings, prison-like atmosphere, bad teachers, unhinged psychopaths, rampant gender dysphoria, etc… none of these are development areas for a kid

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What the **** kind of school district are you living in?

coolerguy12 said:

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I know when I look for advice on how to raise kids I go to the guy with no kids and a very limited moral compass.

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I have two grade school age children. You have me confused with someone else.

McInnis 03 said:

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No better way to be prepared than to have a fantastic education that can put you in the competitive drivers seat. That's definitely available at home.

I think we get the point, you're adamantly against it. I don't think you'll steer this family away from this decision on your own. They can weigh the pros and cons with several opinions.

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But if your daughter is going to grow up and be a stay home mom teaching her own kids then what's the point of being in a "competitive drivers seat"?

Bless your heart.

Smart women with a wealth of knowledge will be able to both attract a top mate and just as importantly avoid bad potential mates. In addition that a stay at home mom / homeschool mom will likely be a key contributor in school and family matters it is absolutely critical she would be intelligent and have a great education foundation.

The ones that shouldn't be allowed to homeschool are the "unschooling" type. I had an acquaintance brag that her 12 year old didn't know how to read because he wasn't interested in it yet.

Now that she's through Elementary school, it's really going to depend on what she wants to do when she's an adult & what type of college she needs to get there. The biggest problem I see with homeschooling is that most parents can get them through 7-8th grade TEKS with their own basic knowledge, but they fail at setting the foundation needed for the critical thinking skills needed for high school AP & college. Then once the kid matriculates back, they flame out and flounder as an adult, especially if they were pulled because of undiagnosed learning difficulties.

So it's doable, but you need to be honest with yourself when it's not working anymore and you need to make sure it's in the best interest of your daughter, not because of gymnastics or your beliefs.

My kids attend a Classical, Christian, Collaborative School. We have found this to be the best of both worlds. Monday, Wednesday, Friday they are home where my wife teaches them. On Tuesday and Thursday they go to school like a public school. They have teachers, classrooms, and extra curricular activities.

The beauty of this model is you get the social interaction and the support of the teachers/administrators. They take care of certification for them to graduate and all the curriculum is scheduled for the year. One of the biggest changes is having a schedule and a plan. This took care of all of that for us but still allows us to be active during the formative years of their life.

The school continues to grow every year and most grades now have 2 or 3 classes each. It's cheaper than a private school but the kids still get just as good or in some instances a better education.

Teslag said:

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Quote:

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And reduce the risk of his exposure to social media, porn, child predators, gangs, drugs, shootings, prison-like atmosphere, bad teachers, unhinged psychopaths, rampant gender dysphoria, etc… none of these are development areas for a kid

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What the **** kind of school district are you living in?

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Are you one of those people who think your school district is pure as the driven snow?

jopatura said:

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The ones that shouldn't be allowed to homeschool are the "unschooling" type. I had an acquaintance brag that her 12 year old didn't know how to read because he wasn't interested in it yet.

Now that she's through Elementary school, it's really going to depend on what she wants to do when she's an adult & what type of college she needs to get there. The biggest problem I see with homeschooling is that most parents can get them through 7-8th grade TEKS with their own basic knowledge, but they fail at setting the foundation needed for the critical thinking skills needed for high school AP & college. Then once the kid matriculates back, they flame out and flounder as an adult, especially if they were pulled because of undiagnosed learning difficulties.

So it's doable, but you need to be honest with yourself when it's not working anymore and you need to make sure it's in the best interest of your daughter, not because of gymnastics or your beliefs.

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I have a friend who's son is autistic and they teach him nothing in "Homeschooling". Same thing of "He learns what he is interested in". He is only interested in watching brain rot on YT. I honestly think they are dooming their child.

fightingfarmer09 said:

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AggieKatie2 said:

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evestor1 said:

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I have heard of many folks that do school via gymnastics. is that a real thing?



School had been PERFECT for us until 5th grade. The school we are in split the GT program kids into equal parts of each class ... and there is almost no time during any day that my kid is learning.

We were unsure if it was the age level where puberty starts or if it was the classes being shuffled from previous years. Recently, we had the exact same conversations about homeschooling.

In my area, it is very common for mormons to take kids out of public school at 6th grade and return them to public school in 9th. Maybe we are finding out why.

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I think it's a good bit stressful right now for current setup with us.

Up at 630
School by 745
School til 4
Gymnastics 4-8/830 (MTTrF)
Eat/Relax for hour
Bed by 930

We don't get a ton of time with her during week and on weekends we are usually all exhausted and time isn't always quality (if no gym meets)

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Disclaimer: my wife teaches at a public high school and we are blessed to be in a great rural ISD.

Been around a lot of select and elite baseball and soccer kids and parents in my life. If you are concerned about your kids schooling and having no time with her there is one place I would start, but you probably won't like it.

And you think becoming your kids teacher in your "flexible" time will make things less stressful?

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Pretty much what I was going to say. We are not dealing with a normal situation here where the OP is trying to decide what is better academically/socially/morally for their child. Seems like we are trying to find an easier schooling option so daughter has more time to strive towards being an elite athlete with enough energy left over in everyone's tank to have some family time that is meaningful. It's only going to get harder as daughter gets older - schooling will be more rigorous and keeping up with the other elites will take more than 18 hours a week.

I am sure that it works great for a lot of people, but my somewhat educated guess is that on the aggregate home schooling is a negative for kids. Most parents are not qualified to teach high school level subjects and the lack of social skills can be a big problem.

There are a lot of home school kids coming back into our school system and the the vast majority of them are way behind academically. My wife complains about it constantly. And most, not all but most, that I have dealt with in socially activities are clearly behind.

That's not to say it doesn't work for some people. For some people it is probably the best thing that can happen. But usually the reasons I hear for people going homeschool are either parents being overprotective and wanting to shield their kids from some life lessons or some fantasy that public schools are all hell holes indoctrinating their little minds. Usually when those kids end up homeschool it just makes their problems worse.

I would never do it, at least not where I live. Oour schools are fine.

fixer said:

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Are you one of those people who think your school district is pure as the driven snow?

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You are engaging with a professional troll who has been allowed on texags for like two decades.

Just go ahead and stop responding or trying to win a texags argument for some magic internet points.

There are charter schools that provide a virtual option where it is more self-paced. They have one-on-one time with the teachers as needed. I have an acquaintance that teaches sped in one of the virtual programs.

schwabbin said:

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Home schooling sounds very isolating to me. I enjoyed public school as a kid and you meet people from all walks of life.

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That's a very antiquated idea of homeschooling (not your fault; I used to think the same).

Benefits I've seen from homeschooling:

-More control over who's raising your child. You can limit the world's influence on your child only so much, but at least in the early years you can control what and who is influencing them.
-Flexibility to study a wide array of topics and focus on the interests of your child.
-Efficiency. There is so much wasted time in traditional school. A few hours of work is stretched into 7 hour days.
-Adapting to your child's way of learning. Public school tends to be one size fits all. Students are trained to be quiet, listen, and fall in line. Remember, the western educational system was essentially established to produce worker drones.
-Socialization. Yes, depending on how you do it, what types of co-ops you get involved in, there can actually be more socializing in homeschooling. Again, in public school kids are told to sit down and be quiet.
-Extra curricular opportunities. Music lessons, sports, martial arts, regular field trips can all be scheduled into the homeschool day.

Challenges:

-It's not easy. The parent (usually the mom) is on 24/7. Mother, teacher, principal, disciplinarian, nurse, etc.
-There are nearly limitless curriculum options. Some choose to buy one "off the shelf" and keep it simple. I.e., here's everything to teach for 1st grade. Others choose to draw different subjects from various sources and piece it together. It's a lot of work.

I've know literally 100s of homeschoolers over the last 15 years. The "homeschoolers are weird/awkward" trope is just false. I've also know 100s of public schoolers (myself included). Percentage wise, there is no more social awkwardness among homeschoolers compared to those in traditional school.

Visit a Chick Fila in the suburbs. The 16-17 year old working a day shift is your typical homeschooler.

As someone who was actually homeschooled (k-12), I'll offer my perspective.

First, it has it's pros and cons, and it's not for everyone, but it's neither the perfect solution or the imperfect solution, just a solution. Not everyone is going to get the exact same result out of it, just like not all kids in public school get the same outcome.

Cons:

- Social aspect - in middle and high school, actually this really wasn't an issue. Played competitive sports (basketball), had a great friend group at church, etc. College transition was tough. This might have been unique to me, since I worked 20-30 hours a week freshman and Sophomore year along with carrying a class load (lived off campus too), but it seemed like everyone was already connected with people they went to high school with, and it was very difficult to "break in" to the already established groups. I sucked it up and focused on what I was there to do, probably ultimately a good thing to go through.

That's really the only con. You are somewhat limited in what you can do (for example football was not an option), but that's not a major deal.

Pros:

1. You learn early on how it is that you learn, i.e. how to teach yourself. Invaluable

2. You learn that sometimes it takes 10 minutes to do or learn something, and sometimes it takes half the day. That's one of the things I think has benefitted me tremendously in my professional career. There are a lot of people that subconsciously fill time and make tasks take longer than they should, and vice versa they stop when the clock hits a certain time, regardless if the job is done. That could just be a work ethic thing, or it could be a product of being taught that way for years and years.

To that end, if you overly structure the schedule, it defeats the purpose to an extent (like 9am - 3pm is school, period). Sometimes the learning day was from 9am to noon if you understood the topic and hustled, then you got to go do what you wanted to do. Sometimes you had to grind through something. Again, good lesson to learn early on in life.

3. The ability to take advantage of dual-credit programs was invaluable. Graduated high school with 39 hours. 24 of which transferred to A&M. Allowed me to graduate with a minor and a masters degree in 4 years.

In general, I think it was a really good thing for me. I have ADHD, I don't medicate for it, because I learned how to leverage my ability to hyperfocus and make it into a strength, I learned how to hold it together when I am having difficulty paying attention (a lot of **** is just boring as hell in my defense). I'm not sure if we will homeschool our son, but the second someone tells me a child needs to be on amphetamines, we will be starting the homeschool process. Acting like a child (especially a boy) is the issue because they can't sit still in a classroom for 8 hours is laughable to me.

Public school is really just daycare with extra steps. I would encourage people homeschooling, or considering homeschooling to embrace the idea that learning happens in bursts of progress, and that you can leverage the extra time to explore things that capture your child's interest, and teach them how to pursue knowledge for it's own sake. I know some people / kids will need structure, and that's great, but I think too many people start with that as the default, and the current classroom setting and structure is largely a product of working parents needing their kids to be taken care of for 8 hours.

Agree with the other comments that it's much more work on the parents than the kid. I did the co-op thing for physics, biology, and chemistry and that was a great approach.

This thread gives a pretty good flavor of the homeschool debate. Lots of people trying to justify their choice by criticizing the other side.

Be wary of the homeschool critics who don't have direct recent experience.


Be just as wary of public school critics who don't have direct recent experience.

And finally, keep in mind you can find good and bad examples from either route.

Like everything there are tradeoffs and you get out in proportion to what you put into it.

The homeschool community has evolved a ton to address the classic concerns. The public schools are evolving, too - you can decide if your local schools are evolving in good way or not.

The only real advantage I see with home schooling is the ability to effectively monitor cell phone use.

Cell phone use in schools is THE number one problem in high schools all over the State. Kids do not k is how to control themselves with them and even in schools where they are banned in class the distraction is constant. That is a much bigger issue than anything else.

pollo hermanos said:

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I think it also hurts for preparedness for college. I dont know this for a fact but i get the sense that good colleges are not going to respect home school transcripts because they are meaningless so probably going off of test scores only?

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Not really. In the end, whether traditional school or homeschool it's going to be up to the kid and the work they put in. Test scores do matter. But transcripts aren't pointless. Most (maybe all) homeschool graduates I've known in the last 5 years have some amount of dual credit (another benefit). Off the top of my head I know homeschoolers right now with full rides at UTD, Alabama, OU. Another that had offers from South Carolina and Arkansas. And a family friend who got a 1500 on the SAT last fall.

20+ years ago the transcript issue may have been a challenge, but I'm not seeing that now. Really, if the kid was on a college track, they would have been so whether in school or homeschooled.

fightingfarmer09 said:

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Tanya 93 said:

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aTmAg said:

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Tanya 93 said:

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aTmAg said:

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schwabbin said:

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Home schooling sounds very isolating to me. I enjoyed public school as a kid and you meet people from all walks of life.

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Sign them up for team sports. That's what several on my kids' soccer teams did. They seemed quite normal.

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I don't know about the age difference between our kids, but you weren't finding poor kids in weekend soccer or little league. These families, outside of possibly what is spoken at home, were extremely the same.

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I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying:

1) This is a problem because your kids won't interact with poor kids.
2) This is a problem because soccer is expensive
3) Something else

And BTW, mine are all graduated from college and one has kids. Also, the older two played on several teams at once. One was a Hispanic team where everybody other than my kids spoke Spanish as their primary language. They were poor AF (but damn good at soccer).

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That is why I asked


The only kids speaking Spanish on the teams had professional parents

I am not telling someone not to homeschool, but I found more variety in kids in TRYPS and programming than sports.

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Come to Texas Tanya! Only the poor kids play rec soccer and most teams are 80% Spanish speaking. Trust me they are good people but not in the "professional" class. Most are nurses and mechanics. All the rich kids play in select baseball.

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You just want me to move to your town because I am a fabulous baker

MasonB said:

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Be just as wary of public school critics who don't have direct recent experience.

And finally, keep in mind you can find good and bad examples from either route.

Like everything there are tradeoffs and you get out in proportion to what you put into it.

The homeschool community has evolved a ton to address the classic concerns. The public schools are evolving, too - you can decide if your local schools are evolving in good way or not.

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This is a fair point. I've toned it down in this thread but I can be very critical of the public school system. Not that kids aren't learning. More so because I think it's extremely inefficient, bloated with high-salaried bureaucrats, and wasteful of tax dollars.

I just left a meeting on homeschool transcripts at our coop. The directors daughter is about to enter med school. Her homeschool transcript didn't hold her back.

Sure there will be questions about how rigorously it was done. No more so than transcripts from high schools graduating over half their seniors with below proficiency standards for English and Math, though.

I will say as someone who quickly followed Mason on social media, he is the example of what I would want in homeschooling.


Ask him how many cookies he can eat in a day

Btw, my nephew still wears the hat you sent
He outgrew the shirt

Glad to hear!

And thanks for the kind words.

And anytime he wants a new shirt, just say the word.

Both of mine graduated from a very good public school system, but I wish we had homeschooled them. Unwinding some "cultural norms " has been a challenge. They both are very good people now.

fixer said:

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Teslag said:

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Quote:

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And reduce the risk of his exposure to social media, porn, child predators, gangs, drugs, shootings, prison-like atmosphere, bad teachers, unhinged psychopaths, rampant gender dysphoria, etc… none of these are development areas for a kid

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What the **** kind of school district are you living in?

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Are you one of those people who think your school district is pure as the driven snow?

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Pure? Lol no. But Brock ISD is fantastic for 99% of children, including yours.

I knew a homeschool family that only educated the boy in the family. All the girls were "educated" in how to wash clothes and cook. Very pretty girls but they could barely figure out 2*2=4

University Model is also an option. My middle school kids are at home 2 days and at school 3 days. Grammar school is at home 3 days and school 2 days.

Tanya 93 said:

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aTmAg said:

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Tanya 93 said:

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aTmAg said:

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schwabbin said:

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Home schooling sounds very isolating to me. I enjoyed public school as a kid and you meet people from all walks of life.

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Sign them up for team sports. That's what several on my kids' soccer teams did. They seemed quite normal.

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I don't know about the age difference between our kids, but you weren't finding poor kids in weekend soccer or little league. These families, outside of possibly what is spoken at home, were extremely the same.

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I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying:

1) This is a problem because your kids won't interact with poor kids.
2) This is a problem because soccer is expensive
3) Something else

And BTW, mine are all graduated from college and one has kids. Also, the older two played on several teams at once. One was a Hispanic team where everybody other than my kids spoke Spanish as their primary language. They were poor AF (but damn good at soccer).

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That is why I asked


The only kids speaking Spanish on the teams had professional parents

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I still don't understand what you mean. Professional parents? You mean like a nanny? If you are asking about my case, they were just normal parents raising their kids like everybody else. There was nothing special about them (except most of them being illegal, I'm sure).

Quote:

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I am not telling someone not to homeschool, but I found more variety in kids in TRYPS and programming than sports.

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In my experience, kids who play team sports are much more well rounded than theater kids.

Sports in general make kids more physically active and healthy, teaches them to try hard, to work towards a goal, to properly interact with adults, to accept criticism, to properly deal with winning and losing. Team sports adds the additional aspect of interacting and working together with others towards a common goal.

aTmAg said:

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Tanya 93 said:

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aTmAg said:

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Tanya 93 said:

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aTmAg said:

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schwabbin said:

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Home schooling sounds very isolating to me. I enjoyed public school as a kid and you meet people from all walks of life.

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Sign them up for team sports. That's what several on my kids' soccer teams did. They seemed quite normal.

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I don't know about the age difference between our kids, but you weren't finding poor kids in weekend soccer or little league. These families, outside of possibly what is spoken at home, were extremely the same.

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I am not sure what you mean. Are you saying:

1) This is a problem because your kids won't interact with poor kids.
2) This is a problem because soccer is expensive
3) Something else

And BTW, mine are all graduated from college and one has kids. Also, the older two played on several teams at once. One was a Hispanic team where everybody other than my kids spoke Spanish as their primary language. They were poor AF (but damn good at soccer).

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That is why I asked


The only kids speaking Spanish on the teams had professional parents

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I still don't understand what you mean. Professional parents? You mean like a nanny? If you are asking about my case, they were just normal parents raising their kids like everybody else. There was nothing special about them (except most of them being illegal, I'm sure).

Profs teaching at MU, programmers, and doctors.

Quote:

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I am not telling someone not to homeschool, but I found more variety in kids in TRYPS and programming than sports.

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In my experience, kids who play team sports are much more well rounded than theater kids.

Sports in general make kids more physically active and healthy, teaches them to try hard, to work towards a goal, to properly interact with adults, to accept criticism, to properly deal with winning and losing. Team sports adds the additional aspect of interacting and working together with others towards a common goal.

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I enrolled my son in sports for years.
I was just explaining my experience
And I don't need to be told again how your mom taught 50 kids of varying ages in a single classroom by herself.


I explained my experience of a mom in a college town with a precocious child.