The Road Less Travelled.. why we chose to homeschool
There was a point in my life, where I thought the idea of home schooling our kids was beyond me. After all, I didn't graduate from high school (short 1 credit), didn't have a college/university degree, I did attend a trade school....but somehow I still didn't see that I could go down this road. I thought, seeing as I didn't get the education via University.. or a a teaching degree therefore I must not be equipped.. or so I thought.
Home Schooling my kids was definitely not in the cards for this mama.. that was until I saw my daughter struggling in school. The realities that school was not benefiting her well being was becoming more and more apparent.. and by Christmas I had this feeling, that maybe, just maybe I should talk to some of the mom's I knew that did home school and find out if this could be a possibility.
What I saw in our daughter.. to many times she would be isolated, taken away from social opportunities due to allergies and working with her class room ad for speech therapy. Her eczema would erupt more and more at school, to where some parents would pull their children aside.. stating "does she have chicken pox??" .. no, she has eczema. She'd then go on rounds of cortisol therapy (internal and external.. and sometimes she'd go for shots). We spent hours at the paediatrician's office, visits to see Allergists, Dermatologists, Nutritionist, visits to the speech therapist at the Public Health unit, up to the Medicine clinics at the University Hospital.. it was exhausting and taking a toll.
It wasn't hard to see that stress from school was a contributing factor. The chemicals they used in the school to clean, reacted with her, when school wasn't in.. her skin would have a reprieve. At home we could control her environment better.. and if chemicals were being sprayed by the city in the park behind us.. we would be notified and could leave the area for the day and shut down air vents to the house. But at school, so much was happening that was causing our daughter not to thrive.. and the school was blind to it. We were told, she would adjust, she would learn how to deal, they after all, had their supports set in place.
As a parent, it's hard to watch your kid.. it's even harder when you know that this isn't the ideal situation. That something has to change. I’d wake up knowing I’d have to give ourselves extra time because her skin may be oozing and I’d have to soak the bed sheets off of her before we could get moving. And that’s when I wanted it all to JUST STOP!
After much discussion and a whole lot of research.. finding what books I could at the library, and the limited resources of what was available on the net at the time.. I did my homework.. learned what I could, talked to people I knew that home schooled & then we made the decision that this was what we were going to do.We still had our doubts, but by spring break, it was imperative that this was the right thing to do for her. By April we registered with a school board for grade 1.. By May, Rod & I were called into the Principals office for a meeting. We talked about our issues with the school, the struggles we had witnessed, they thought we could work through it, they didn't think we were making the right decision, they said we'd be back....
We never did!