The gifts of Home-Schooling by Bonnie Baty

Home-schooling is not everyone’s flavour of choice, nor did I think it would ever be mine, but with this year marking our sixth year into the journey, I can honestly say I’m grateful for choosing to home-school my two younger sons who are now 9 and 10. For this article, I’d love to share the story of how we came to be a home-school family.

My two older children (ages 27 and 23) were educated through the mainstream education system and overall, the experience was something that worked well for them. In the greater scheme of things, mainstream education was all I knew, and I just naturally assumed that the boys would follow suit.

To be honest, I thought home-schooling was something religious families did to build their children’s education around the written word of God, but later came to realise how in the dark I was on that front.

Having made the choice to not vaccinate my younger children from the time the elder was in utero, by the time they were nearing readiness for school, there was a great emphasis in the news around children needing to be vaccinated to attend (I later came to realise this was not a legal requirement and still is not).

Admittingly, all that hype in the media put me into a fear mindset and as I was firmly of the decision to not vaccinate, it contributed to my overall decision to home-school.

What tipped it for me though, was one day in preparing to contact a local school to enrol my then four-year-old, he’d looked me dead-set in the eyes and quite confidently said, “I’m not going to school, this is my school (referring to our home) and you’re my teacher”. His demeanour and the way in which he made the statement gave me goosebumps and literally had my arm hairs standing on end.

Part of me wanted to laugh the possibility off, but the rest of me was left curious and in contemplation over the thought that I could actually home-school them. I worked in disability at the time, my hours were flexible, and with some great family supports in place I realised that this possibility was not a dead-end road.

In the days that followed, I found myself researching the topic and joining any and every Facebook group related to home-schooling that I could. I was so happy to discover groups that were local to us. As I researched more and more, I came to realise that the home-schooling community was actually quite large, and I felt a real sense of community in what I was reading.

Something was set alight in me and I decided to share with my husband, older children and other family members that I was now considering the prospect of home-schooling as an option.

Their response was more comical than anything else and I just put it to the side. I needed to do that because of the strong pull that I was experiencing and I knew that I had to follow my intuition on this one. It kept telling me that this was our path.

I’d love to share more on our home-school journey and the benefits we’ve found in my next article. Be sure to tune in then x.