My now 5 year old son was about 2 1/2 and randomly one day my husband Brian said "you know you could homeschool Ahazaiah." I said, "yeah right! I don't think so." He responded with "well you already taught him so much already, why not?" So I decided to look into it.
The first thing I needed to know was what the laws in the State of Kansas were. I thought maybe I'd need to get a teaching degree, which wasn't out of the question, just a bit time consuming and expensive. I found that I did not need to do that! The law basically says that any competent person can teach their child in a registered "non accredited" private school. There are no actual laws for "homeschooling" in Kansas but there are laws for private schools, and that is what a homeschool in this state is considered. (I'm not an expert, this is just what I found out, so if you are considering homeschooling in Kansas or any other state, please make sure you check the laws for yourself. )
I found other homeschooling families that I knew and I started asking lots of questions! I found some homeschool parents that were very helpful and some that were not. I found some that were good at what they did and some that really shouldn't be homeschooling! (This thing doesn't work for everyone!) One family told me about a conference that is held in Kansas City each year through the Midwest Parent Educator's, here is their website http://midwesthomeschoolers.org/. We attended that for the first time in 2011. One of the speakers at the conference had a really big impact on our decision for choosing to homeschool. Her name was Carol Barnier, http://www.opengifts.org/. She shared a statistic about bullying in public schools that blew our minds. Something like 60,000 children in the United States are Bullied in one way or another every day! That's just the number of kids that were reported, not including how many were not (if i remember this statistic correctly, someone can correct me if I'm really far off!) Brian looked at me and said "our son is not going to a public school." The statistic actually was so overwhelming, I had chills and I had tears in my eyes. Not every school in the USA is horrible and public schools are not evil. I'm the product of a decent public school system and I am pretty fabulous, so I've been told! We prayed and researched and prayed and talked to others, discussed, prayed some more and more and more...... you get the picture!
As Christians we brought our son before the church and God at his baby dedication and promised God we would raise him in a Christian Home (which hasn't been easy and we have failed at this many times over), and that we would follow God's leading. Homeschooling was one of the things that we felt Him leading us toward. I won't get into all of the things that happened in our lives to show us that this was what we should do, but other than a few days of feeling discouraged and anxious, God has given us a peace about this.
I know that there are probably people in my family, some of my friends and several people in my society that think I'm crazy and not qualified to school my child. That's fine with me! I'm all about everyone having a right to voice their opinions. I'm doing what I feel is best for my child along with what my Husband feels is best for our child. Its not traditional in our current day society, however, over the course of time, most children were homeschooled, at least from various things that I've read.
So here we are starting our first year of Official Homeschooling! Kindergarten for the Little Guy! We are taking homeschooling semester by semester. In January if things seem as if they are not going well, we will look into alternative schooling like a private school in our area. I have faith that this is going to be one of the BEST times in our lives! Keep us in your prayers and thoughts as you follow us on our homeschooling journey!
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