Homeschooling has its many obvious upsides: customized curriculum, flexibility of schedule, ability for students to advance at their own pace. I have also discovered many benefits I hadn’t expected, however. These are some of the benefits that have revealed themselves over time.
1. Fewer lice scares. What public/private school student hasn’t brought home at least one “We have lice going around! Oh no!” note at least once during their school years? This isn’t much of an issue w/ the homeschooled student. Sure, they could pick something up at co-op, but where are those kids going to get it? With smaller groups (and, admittedly, the hippie homeschool tendency to wash hair a little less frequency) in a carefully controlled setting, lice isn’t going to be spreading through the homeschool community like wildfire.
2. No (social pressure-laden) fundraisers. I know that some co-ops or homeschool groups do fundraisers, but not like public/private schools do fundraisers. Fundraisers are serious business in public and private schools. Wrapping paper, candy, cookie dough, frozen pizzas, flower bulbs: the list goes on and on. Note after guilt-inducing note letting you know all the prizes your child will be missing by your failure to adequately pressure your friends, neighbors, and relatives into buying multiple items from your little darling. You don’t want your baby to be the only one who didn’t get the key chain and teddy bear, right?
3. Ever-ready errand boy/girl. There’s something to be said for having a child in the house who is big enough to respond to, “Go grab the whatever-it-is-I-need from the car.” Sure, this isn’t something you, as a homeschool parent, should abuse, but it’s nice to not constantly be running up and down the stairs all the time. Besides, it’s lots of extra physical activity for your child. Mark it down as P.E. and you don’t even have to feel guilty.
4. Also, ever-ready manual labor. The kids are home during the time of day that I’m doing chores or running errands, which means I’ve got extra sets of hands when it’s necessary. Sure, doing the grocery shopping may have been easier with just the baby, but that meant balancing both baby and bags of groceries to get into the house. Homeschooled kids are there to help you carry in those bags! If you haven’t figured it out yet, household chores are also a great way to break up the monotony of the school day and to drive home the valuable lesson of the careers to which one may aspire without finishing a decent education. In other words, kids who pitch a fit over doing math or writing can scrub a bathroom or rake a yard to get the full experience of why we pushy parents think learning is so important.
5. Fewer birthday party invitations. If you don’t realize what a blessing this is, you have never had a child in public school. The obligatory birthday invitations mean hundreds of dollars spent on impersonal gifts for children your child doesn’t even play with outside of school or risking the possible social ostracism that comes from failing to appear at all the right parties. The other upside of this is that you are equally freed from the obligation of inviting 19 near-strangers into your home or rented bounce house facility once a year. The controlled social sphere of homeschooling means smaller, more intimate parties. Be happy about that.
6. You do not, in fact, gotta catch ‘em all. A controlled social sphere also means your child’s exposure to the “kid crack” phenomena of Pokemon, Bakugan, Yu-gi-oh, and all other collectible card games is significantly more limited. Few parents really want to get their kids started on these games (Which the kids don’t even know how to play. It’s just about the having), but they’re aware that knowledge of games like these (and ownership of the cards/toys) is like currency in a public school, and they don’t want their kids to be the socially impoverished ones, begging for little Pikachu scraps off the elementary lunch table. As long as you keep them off of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, homeschooled children don’t have the same exposure to these games, and aren’t as likely to get caught up on the frenzied need to have them. Homeschooling, I choose you!
7. Minivan Expectations. No one will make “oh, you poor, unhip thing” faces over your choice to drive a minivan. Everyone knows that homeschoolers drive minivans, even if they only have one or two kids. Homeschoolers are not expected to drive SUVs, Camrys, or muscle cars. If anything, there might be some confusion as to why your van is a mini and not a conversion.
8. Floods. Not the natural disaster, but the pants length. By the end of the season, pants are hanging a few inches above the shoes and shirts are cutting off a few inches above the wrist. In a public or private school setting, this means either replacing the garments for the few remaining weeks of cold weather or dealing with the disapproving looks and comments directed at your slightly bedraggled-looking offspring. When you’re homeschooling, no one cares if your kid is wearing floods. Being slightly ill-dressed is part of the social expectations for homeschoolers, so you’re disappointed nobody by meeting those expectations and rising above expectations if your kid is wearing pants that fit come March. It’s win-win.
9. Never again be perceived as idle. While a stay-at-home-mom may be perceived (incorrectly and unjustly) as “not working” or “doing nothing all day” or “getting to stay home and play with the kids all day,” a homeschooling stay-at-home-mom is perceived as undertaking a momentous and time-intensive task, one that most parents of public/private schooled children believe they could never, themselves, manage. Fewer people will make assumptions about your availability (“Well, you don’t do anything all day, so you can do this favor for me!”). Lackadaisical housekeeping will be viewed, not as a sign of laziness, but as a natural byproduct of the tremendous effort expended planning lessons, directing learning, and grading and filing papers. Don’t disavow anyone of that belief; You’ll ruin it for the rest of us.
10. An excuse for weirdness. When your child does something unusual, socially awkward, or just plain bizarre in public, you can easily soothe observers’ distressed looks with a slightly dismissive hand wave and an, “Oh, don’t worry. They’re homeschooled.” This also works pretty well to explain weirdness in homeschooling parents. A woman muttering to herself in the aisles of Borders book store is creepy. A homeschooler muttering to herself in the aisles of Borders book store is just planning for next semester.
