When you tell people that you home school your children you will get varied responses, depending on who your audience is and whether they asked the question directly of you or your children. This can range from mild interest to a deep silence which may, or may not, indicate shock – that you would make such an unhinged decision – to have your children around you 24/7. It could also mean that the concept is so new to them that they simply have nothing to say, sort of like the time I was in conversation with a doctor who had been practicing pulmonary medicine in Nepal on hikers who were attempting to climb Mt. Everest. As he began to describe his life at a base camp with oxygen deprived mega-athletes and next to zero medical facilities, I had nothing to offer in response, other than “wow.” The picture that he painted was just not something that I had ever contemplated, and I couldn’t imagine making a choice to live at 15,000 feet, in a tent, monitoring people’s lungs as they dropped like flies in base camp. Isn’t this true of so many circumstances beyond our experience, though? We enter into an almost fugue-like state where our brain is just humming along doing…nothing. I eventually snapped out of my stupor and was able to form articulate questions and have a great conversation with him, but I will never forget that initial brain freeze. This was such new information to me that my brain just didn’t know what to do! I think this happens to a lot of people when they are presented with information that is new to them.
In the early 2000s when we began home schooling, perfect strangers felt completely at ease asking my children in the check-out line at the grocery store if there was no school that day and when they answered, “no, we home school” the answers were often a stunned silence, or a tight smile and furtive look meant to assess whether I was a dangerous person, and once a woman practically shrieked, “is that legal!?” while paying for her grapes and tonic water at Hannaford. I launched into an explanation about the legality of home education in New York state and tried very hard to be understanding and empathetic regarding her concerns about the “socialization” of my children. I’d like to think I was successful since Child Protective Services never darkened our door.
This kind of response has changed dramatically over the last 20 years, and for that we are eternally grateful. But I’m not gonna lie… It was a little rough back in the day. Most people these days, when they see a gaggle of school-aged children out in public in the middle of the day, are now familiar enough with the concept of home education that they make the assumption that what is going on is perfectly above board, and don’t grill the children while looking askance at mom.
It can be a little bit trickier with people, including family members, who wish to have a conversation about the choice that your family has made to keep your children out of the public school, and your answer will really depend on several factors. How comfortable are you with the person who is asking you about it and, most importantly, how deeply do you even understand the choice you are making? This was something that took me a long time to reconcile. Honestly; when pressed about home education, it took me awhile to formulate a coherent response that felt like it was actually what we thought about when making the choice. Why? Because, sometimes, the choice is coming from a gut instinct, a feeling that we’re having as a family that we can’t really put into words, or at least not yet. It’s coming from a place that we might have trouble defining or even understanding, but which is so strong and so undeniable that we find we must give it attention and eventually act on it. This is difficult, I know. You and your partner or you and your children come to the conclusion that school is just not working for you and changes must be made, but not how to explain that when you are not completely sure yourself?
I found, in the early years, that the simplest explanation is the absolute best. It satisfies the inquirer, eases your mind, and may help you to continue formulating a more succinct verbal representation of what your thoughts on the issue actually are. Still, it is such a personal issue and decision that it can often feel like an intrusion on your privacy. There were not just a few encounters that left me with a feeling of, “how dare they ask me such personal questions when they don’t even know who we are?!” Believe it or not, those encounters strengthened my resolve to determine what it was that I wanted to express about our choice to keep the children out of school, and I worked hard thinking about how to answer the inevitable questions. This kind of self-inquiry is critical not just for your own mental health as you take on this new role and begin formulating your daily plans for your family, but also for allowing you to move clearly and without any existential angst swirling around your decision to keep your children home. Or, at least, not too much angst…angst is probably inevitable in any situation in which you are charting your own path and bringing your children along for the ride. As you move through the process of getting comfortable with educating your children, you will also become more comfortable with the act of explaining yourself and your choices to both people who love and admire you and complete strangers in the grocery store. At some point you might even be perfectly confident in saying, “we thought it was the best option for our children”, and leave it at that.
Author: Heidi Liscomb
