Homeschooling Your Children And The Problems Of DIY Education

A number of people describe homeschooling as 'do it yourself education' and the majority of parents assume that they are the 'you' in 'yourself'. As a consequence, many parents with busy lives earning a living or pursuing other important activities, and especially single parents, tend to dismiss any thoughts of homeschooling out of hand. But are they correct to take this course of action?

Homeschooling has been around for an extremely long time and involves more than one million children in the US alone and experience shows us that are a wide range of options available to parents today. Indeed, it is no surprise to find that parents in just about every situation that you can imagine have found a solution to homeschooling their children.

We are all of course familiar with the traditional two parent family where dad goes out to work and mum stays home and this model makes homeschooling a relatively simple option. Since the 1960s however our society has changed considerably and today there are a wide variety of family situations including, extended families, role reversal, same-sex couples, single parents and much more.

Each situation brings with it both advantages and problems for homeschooling and it is a matter of studying both and then finding ways to overcome the obstacles and enhance the advantages.

For example, a number of parents turn to their wider family or friends for help and invite family or friends into their home to help. This is nothing new of course and, for many years, it was common for families to offer a friend or an older family member such as an grandparent a place to stay in exchange for helping with the education and care of the children.

Neighbors can also often provide help. Many 'stay-at-home' moms already provide day care facilities for children and, with the steady rise in homeschooling numbers, babysitting services are being extended more and more to include homeschooling.

In more and more cases families are also getting together to provide homeschooling on a 'group' basis.

Yet another increasingly popular option is that of employing a tutor. Tutors today come from a variety of different backgrounds, in all age groups and include both specialists, like those teaching languages or music, as well as of course general tutors. Indeed, it is not unusual to find ex-private or public school teachers who have become dissatisfied with the 'system' becoming tutors because of their fundamental love of teaching.

Most parents think that tutoring is quite simply out of their reach financially but, having researched the subject carefully, they are normally surprised to find that the cost of engaging a tutor is not beyond their means.

Another important consideration is the children themselves. It is surprising how well motivated children are by the independent nature of homeschooling and a lot of parents discover that educating a child at home can be much less time consuming than you might imagine.

Should you find that you are tempted by the advantages of homeschooling over the poor quality of the public school system then do not fall into the common pitfall of dismissing the idea out-of-hand. Instead take the time to explore the options open to you and you might well be surprised to learn that it is not as difficult as you think.