Real Life Secular Homeschool Stories: What It’s Really Like . . .
Ready to be inspired? Real homeschool families answer the question we all want to ask: “How do you do it?” From managing the education of a big family to dealing with depression to traveling around the country in a 150-square-foot RV, these families make homeschool life work on their own terms.
What it’s really like to go away to college after homeschooling
I guess I always kind of thought I would go to college. My mom and dad both went, and they had lots of friends from college and told lots of stories about their college days. And as I got older, I knew that I wanted to study veterinary medicine, which is something you kind of have to go to college to do.
When people find out I was homeschooled, they often ask me if it’s weird to go from being home all day with my mom to living on a college campus. And I guess that would be pretty weird! But that’s not what it was like for me. I was homeschooled all the way through, from kindergarten through 12th grade, but it’s not like I spent every day at home. We always had park days and activities, and I usually took a few outside classes — I took history at our homeschool co-op and karate at a dojo and other stuff here and there. In high school, I started taking dual enrollment classes at a nearby college. By the time I was a senior, I was spending half of my week on a college campus. I’m not sure how much better prepared for college I could have been!
I actually think I was more prepared than a lot of students who went to school. One of the girls on my hall had no idea how to use a washing machine. I had to show her how to sort her clothes and get the machine started. She’d never washed her own clothes. I’ve been doing laundry since 6th grade — and cooking my own meals and cleaning up my own messes. I think all those dual enrollment classes served me well, too. Not because I learned so much but because I learned how to do things like talk to professors and navigate the campus. I notice that a lot of students are kind of shy or hesitant about approaching professors, but I’m totally comfortable taking advantage of office hours. One of my professors offered me a lab internship next year that I didn’t even apply for — I’d just been talking to her about internship opportunities over the course of the year, so she thought of me when one came up.
I know how to manage my time and my workload, too, because my parents gave me a lot of responsibility for that in high school. I think it helped a lot that my parents gave me a lot of freedom to mess up. One time, back in 5th or 6th grade, I signed up to do a history fair project at our co-op. I was really excited about it, but I flaked on doing the work and ended up throwing the project together the night before. I was so embarrassed seeing my slapped-up posterboards surrounded by everybody else’s cool projects. I learned that I have to care about my work more than anybody else does — and that’s something that has served me really well in college.
—Ginny*, sophomore in college and former homeschooler
What it’s really like to homeschool a big family
When people find out I homeschool five kids ages 2 to 15, they always ask me how we do it. The honest answer is that I don’t know — and that sometimes we don’t do it very well! It’s much easier now that most of the kids are older — they can work independently, get their own snacks, help each other out. In fact, at this point, it’s probably easier to homeschool them than it would be to get everybody up and dressed and ready to catch a bus in the morning. (I don’t know how people do that!)
In my life before kids, I would never have called myself an organized person, but homeschooling has forced me to become one. Without structure, our life would be impossible. I don’t know how I’d make sure we covered the academic bases with each kid if we didn’t stick to a pretty detailed schedule. At the same time, I have to be really flexible — if Sasha gets chosen for a ballet performance, we have to make time for getting to and from rehearsals, or if one of the kids comes down with a cold or the toddler refuses to take her nap, I have to improvise. On the other hand, sometimes there are days where we have a little extra time — the toddler naps longer or our math lesson clicks right away — and I try to make the most of that time. I actually keep a to-do list just for unexpected extra time so that I’m not just standing there with my mouth open in surprise until it ends.
I’ve learned over the years that the moments when we’re really connecting as a family, all working together, are some of my favorite parts of homeschooling. When I give those up, I feel more frustrated, less patient, less sure I’m doing a good job as a homeschooling mom. So I make sure we always have one subject we do all of us together — it’s nature study now, but we’ve done art and history together in the past. I think it’s good for the kids, too, but it’s something that I do for me.
As the kids get older, I’ve found that they can be a great help. Right now, my 10-year-old is teaching my 5-year-old math. Not only is Daniel loving learning from his big brother, it’s also reinforcing Ryan’s math skills and improving his math confidence. That’s what I call a win-win.
I also rely on the kids to help around the house. The way I see it, homeschooling them is my full-time job, and keeping up with the house is everybody-who-lives-here’s job. Even the littlest kids get chores. I make a monthly meal plan, which sometimes makes me feel a little blah about cooking, but ultimately, three meals and umpteen snacks a day is just too much for me to cope with on the fly.
We do have to sacrifice some things. We can’t really handle more than one outside class/activity per kid — I’d basically be running a taxi service if we tried to do more than that. And the younger kids sometimes have to wait a year on something they want to do because of the older kids’ commitments. That might get easier when Sasha starts driving next year.
Because we’re so scheduled, I try to shake up the routine every once in a while — take a day to play outside just because it finally feels like spring, rent a bunch of movies and make popcorn for a movie marathon, bake cookies after breakfast. I have to be so organized to make it all work that sometimes I start to feel like a draconian taskmaster rather than the fun mom I want to be. Fun days remind all of us, especially me, that we homeschool because it’s smart and good and right for us — but also because it’s fun.
—Kathryn*, homeschool mom to Sasha (15), Eric(13), Ryan (10), Daniel (5), and Ellie (2)
What it’s really like to work full-time when you’re homeschooling
Going back to work wasn’t the plan. When I quit my nursing job after Erin was born, I thought I was done with the working world for good. And for 22 years, I was. Then, my marriage fell apart, and I had to go back to work. Erin was already in college and Josh was about to graduate, but Stephen was just finishing 8th grade. We talked a lot about what to do: The schools near us aren’t bad, and Stephen is a good student. I thought he’d be OK there. But he was adamant that he wanted to keep homeschooling, so we’ve been figuring it out together. I do 12-hour shifts, three days on, two days off, so he does a lot of independent work. We plan out his assignments a month at a time — he doesn’t love that, but it’s the only way I have the space to plan things. He works on his own on my work days, and on my off-days, we check over his work together and talk about what’s interesting or what’s confusing. I also have to run errands, do housework, and manage everything else on those days, so it’s hard. It’s exhausting. But I see how hard he’s working, and it inspires me to keep at it.
—Lora*, mom to two homeschool grads and one homeschooled high-schooler
What it’s really like to live without a TV
Honestly, I don’t think it’s that different from living with a television. We got rid of our television set three years ago, and we really haven’t missed it. We read a lot and play a lot of games and work on a lot of big puzzles — we almost always have a big jigsaw puzzle going on the table in the dining room. We go to movies now and then, and the kids play Minecraft, and sometimes we’ll watch a documentary on the computer, so I wouldn’t call us screen-free. But I do feel like I am more intentional about my downtime, and I like that a lot.
—Emily*, homeschool mom to 10-year-old and 8-year-old boys
What it’s really like to homeschool a gifted child
People always said “Oh, she’s so smart,” and I noticed that she did a lot of things earlier than other kids — I remember her putting together puzzles all by herself before she was 3 — but I was still surprised when she scored 180 on a MENSA I.Q. test when she was just 10. We were already homeschooling Maggie when we found out she was gifted. I think we would have made the same decision if we had known. Homeschooling gives us a lot of flexibility. We can move at Maggie’s pace, which is often a lot faster than schools can move, but we can also slow down when we need to. There’s no busy work! And no waiting on anyone else to get it. It’s hard sometimes, though, because your kid is your kid, but sometimes it feels like whatever you say comes across as bragging. Or worse, you’ll seem like one of those Tiger Moms, pushing your kid too hard too fast. (Which you worry about all the time anyway. Am I pushing hard enough? Am I pushing too hard? It never ends.) Other parents at the playground don’t have to weigh their words to talk about things like reading lists and math scores, but I always do.
—Kim*, homeschool mom to 12-year-old Maggie
What it’s really like to homeschool when you’re depressed
At first, I didn’t know I had a problem. It just felt like a bad day, but the bad day kept coming. Just getting out of bed in the morning felt like it used up every scrap of energy I had. The prospect of making breakfast was more than I could handle — I felt so annoyed when the kids didn't want something easy, like cereal or toast, that they could get for themselves. They were younger then — my oldest was just in 2nd grade when my symptoms started — so they really did depend on me for a lot. And I was always letting them down. They’d want to take a class at our co-op, but I was too overwhelmed by having to call to sign up, so we’d miss the deadline. They’d want to go to a museum exhibit, but I’d keep putting it off until the exhibit was gone. They’d want to play at the park with friends, but I couldn’t make myself call the other moms to set something up. Every night, I’d lie awake thinking “Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow we’ll go to the nature center and read books and have fun. Tomorrow I’ll make it up to them.” I felt guilty pretty much all the time.
I slept so much, but I was tired all the time. My phone’s voice mail filled up with messages I couldn't make myself listen to. Laundry piled up. The kids were spending their time playing video games and watching television instead of doing school work. And I was just moving in this haze, constantly telling myself that tomorrow would be different, tomorrow would be better.
Finally, my husband said, look, I think you should talk to someone, I think you might be depressed. I was honestly horrified. Mothers aren’t supposed to be depressed, especially stay-at-home mothers, especially stay-at-home homeschooling mothers. Wasn’t I supposed to get all the happiness I needed from taking care of my family and spending time with my kids? Wasn’t that what I had wanted? Wasn’t that why I had quit my job to stay home with the kids? What was wrong with me? Thank goodness he pushed, and I finally went to see a doctor. She prescribed me some medication, which I was really resistant to taking, and scheduled me for therapy.
I couldn’t believe what a difference the medication made. Suddenly, I felt awake again. A week after I started seeing my doctor, I woke up early and made scrambled eggs with bacon and hash browns for breakfast. The kids came into the kitchen and watched, like they were seeing a unicorn or something rare and amazing. We fell back into a routine of school work and park days.
Medication and therapy made a big difference, but depression isn’t something that magically goes away. I still have days where I don’t want to get out of bed, where all I want to do is sit on the couch. But I’ve learned to accept those days because they’re the exception rather than the rule now. A bad day is just a bad day (or a bad week sometimes), not a sign that I am a bad mother. Feeling guilty just makes me feel more depressed.
—Jennifer*, homeschooling mom to a 9th grader and a 6th grader
What it’s really like to homeschool for $0
My kids are young, so it’s probably easier, but I don’t spend any money on homeschooling. That was the deal we made — I could quit work and homeschool as long as our expenses stayed the same. I don’t even look at other people’s curriculum stuff because there’s no way I’m going to spend money on it, but there is a lot of good free stuff. I think there’s free stuff that’s better than curriculum you can pay for. What it costs is time because I have to spend a lot of time on the library website and searching online for materials. but they’re there. I just have to keep hunting until I find the right one and know that it sometimes takes longer than I want it to.
—Rachel*, homeschool mom to three kids
What it’s really like to homeschool on the road
We’ve been homeschooling since Amelia was in first grade, and Henry has never been to a traditional school. The idea of roadschooling just kind of happened. My partner and I have always loved traveling, and we spent a big chunk of our pre-kid days in planes, trains, and automobiles. Money and mobility slowed us down after Amelia was born, but one of us was always saying ‘Oooh, it would be so cool to take the kids here’ or ‘We’ve gotta plan a trip there.’ We wondered what we were waiting for, so we started planning a cross-country road trip with the kids. That morphed into buying an RV — after all, we’d be saving lots of money on hotel rooms, right? And once we had the RV and had done a couple of long weekends in it, we thought ‘Why don’t we just live this way?’ It felt right, way more right than living in the suburbs had ever felt to either of us. So we sold our house in Tennessee and most of our stuff (we still have some stuff in a storage space in Texas, where my mom lives) and headed out to explore North America.
I know we’re lucky to be able to make it work. Not everyone could. My partner does medical transcription work, which she can do from anywhere, but we do sometimes hit panic mode when WiFi is spotty for miles on end. We’ve checked into a hotel a couple of times so she can get her work done. I do freelance writing, so as long as I make my deadlines, I can work anywhere. We don’t make a ton of money, but we make enough to live a simple life and travel when we want to, which is all we need. Our permanent address is my mom’s place in Texas, which means we don’t have to worry about school paperwork for the kids — Texas is totally relaxed when it comes to requirements for homeschooling.
We’ve been on the road for almost a year now, and every week is different. Originally, I thought we would do all this research before visiting different sites, but it’s turned out to be the reverse — seeing sites, visiting museums, and experiencing different places is what makes us want to learn more about them. Another idea I had was for the kids to keep travel journals — to write down their experiences on the road — but they weren’t really interested in that. So I thought I’d keep a family travel journal instead. Of course, seeing me journaling made them want to participate, so now we all take turns writing in the journal. I love flipping back through the pages and remembering how many things we’ve done together. We have also become huge fans of the Junior Ranger program at the National Parks — the kids love completing the activities to earn badges.
The hardest thing is probably having such limited space. We have to be really selective about what we keep with us, and I’m always wishing I’d brought different books. There’s always something I want that’s in our storage locker! But thank goodness for laptops and e-readers, which have saved the day more than once.
—Carole*, homeschool mom to two roadscholars
*last names removed for online publication
