When You’re the Only Homeschooler in Your Friend Circle

Choosing homeschooling when your friends are on a different path can mean part of the path is a little lonely — and that’s okay. Finding your community takes time.

A few months after Malcolm was born, I saw a flyer for a new moms group in our natural foods co-op. Malcolm and I attended the next session and every single session for the next five and a half years, with the exception of one session we missed because Malcolm had a cold and one session we missed because I was on a work trip.

These were our people: thoughtful, committed new moms who craved community as much as I did. We joined mommy and baby yoga classes together, signed up for the same preschool art classes, visited the same library story times, and watched our children grow up together. We shared parenting values: We cared about compassionate parenting and organic food, child-led activities and balancing parenting with our careers.

Preschool had meant different paths for some of us: Alex and Polly had gone to a Montessori preschool, Lane was part of a charter preschool, Laurel attended a preschool co-op her mother helped create. I was committed to homeschooling. Still, we continued to meet up once a week and to build intersecting lives outside our moms group. My best friend, Tomika, lived in New York City, and our phone calls were often interrupted or frazzled as I adjusted to motherhood and her work life got busier. I still thought of Tomika as my Best Friend, but the women in our group — Allison, the scientist; Lou, the engineer; Charice, the dancer; and all the rest — they were the people I could count on in a pinch, the people who helped me through potty training and late-night fevers. I believed that we would be friends forever, and I think they believed that I — Aminata, the business consultant — would be their friend forever, too.

Then came kindergarten.

I knew I wanted to homeschool Malcolm before he was even born. A few of the other mothers in our group toyed with the idea of homeschooling, but in the end, they all made the decision to enroll their children in the same Montessori school. It’s a wonderful, nurturing small school. If we weren’t homeschooling, I could imagine sending Malcolm there, too. And when I realized that everyone we knew was going to the same school, I have to admit that I was tempted to change my plans… but homeschooling was something I felt strongly about, and now, I can’t imagine that I ever hesitated since homeschooling is so clearly the right decision for our little family.

Everything changed immediately when school started. First our regular weekly meet-up was rescheduled to after-school hours, then postponed indefinitely as everyone adjusted to their new routines. When I checked in with Charice about scheduling something, she told me that they saw each other every day at school pick-up and had snacks and playtime together on the school’s playground.

“Maybe you could join us sometime,” she said, but when I followed up, she said, apologetically, that the playground was for students only.

Meanwhile, Malcolm and I were falling in love with homeschooling. Slowly, we were finding our routine and finding our rhythm of learning together. We took nature hikes and made art and read our way through the library’s picture book collection. Our lives were full of joy. But we missed our friends.

Slowly, we’re building our community back up. We joined a children’s nature group that meets twice a week and we're now regulars at the library’s kindergarten activities, and we're meeting other families who homeschool, too. There hasn’t been that magical connection I felt at the first meeting of our old moms group, but we have started to find our circle.

A few weeks ago, we ran into Lou and Alex at the food co-op. “It’s so good to see you,” Lou said, after we traded stories about our now-first-graders. “We should get together.”

“I’d love that,” I said. And I meant it. But I have no expectations. We’ve chosen our own path, and it’s a good path, even if we’re still finding the people we want to share it with.

This column was originally published in the winter 2019 issue of HSL. Aminata is the author of HSL’s It’s Elementary column, focused on homeschooling the early years.

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