My thoughts on our homeschooling journey

Tomorrow we will officially be homeschooling.  This decision has been an up and down emotional roller coaster for me.  I have been excited and scared but for the most part have had incredible feelings of insecurity and self doubt.  About a month ago I attended a get together of like minded people (not home school related) and the topic was on being positive.  Since that day I have told myself that no matter what my feelings are, I would be positive about homeschooling, about my capabilities and my overall vision of how things would go. I wrote down a list of positive affirmations, many of them I didn't necessary believe to be true and committed to believe them or become them.

Our decision to home school as I have previously shared did not come because of discontent for public schools, or because of an overwhelming fear of what unleashing my child to the outside world might do, or any lack of doubt in some teachers ability to teach or the many other things a person might choose to home school.  My choice to home school is not to undermine the many amazing teachers out there.  I know that if you are a teacher you were trained to teach a classroom full of children and in a lot of situations the teachers love and work tirelessly to teach children. Teachers amaze me with their capabilities.   I know that if given the opportunity to sit with my child one on one, most teachers could do a far better job than I could.  Our personal decision to home school in no way makes me feel that every family should be homeschooling.  It has been a personal decision for us and what is right for my family will not be right for every family.  With that being said, our choice to home school came as a prompting from the Lord.  It wasn't something I just knew we would always do. It was just something I decided to pray about and the answer came very obviously to me.

The last week as the official day has approached, I have felt a peace come over me.  I've have spent time stressing about how this or that might play into our homeschooling life and all of a sudden it has hit me that everything that we experience is real life.  One thing I absolutely want to teach my children is how to manage and work around real life.  If mom is sick or we need to potty train, it can all be worked around those things  If we need to play with math manipulative while following little sister around the house to make sure she doesn't pee her pants then we will.  If another baby comes a long and we spend a month (or more) engrossing ourselves in classical books in moms bed then that is just as beneficial to learning reader as anything else.

I don't know what the future holds for us.  I can't say whether or not I will be homeschooling high schoolers or if I will be homeschooling all my children.  I will say that I sure hope I am!  I believe wholeheartedly that the benefits of homeschooling will be even more far reaching the longer I do it.  I know that statistics show that the opportunities for home schoolers can be just as great, in many cases greater for home schoolers.  I am not perfect, I am impatient, I yell more than I should, I am not the most creative person and so I know without a doubt this will stretch me.  From the very moment I received inspiration that we should home school I cried and even asked Heavenly Father, "Why?" but shortly after that I received a quiet reassurance that this was just as me for as it was for my children.  I know there will be moments when I need to be reminded of this but I know that I am not alone in this at all.  I know that Heavenly Father will us in this endeavor.

So I am excited for tomorrow.  Lizzy is more than ecstatic and that makes me even more excited. She has complete trust in me and that means the world to me.