Congrats on making the leap to homeschooling. My son disliked it from the start also, and it took me until six weeks into first grade to find the confidence to pull him out– so you were faster than I was to get there! It’s tough– just feels like such a big decision.

My son had a similar experience with reading– he was an early reader and always loved books, but the combination of boring levelled readers, being required to read particular things at a set time, a snail’s-pace emphasis on phonics, and pressure to read out loud was a pretty deadly combination. He said once that “The way schools teach reading make kids think that reading isn’t fun.”

Which sucks. I hope your son rediscovers his love for books soon… I bet he will. Reading is pretty awesome, after all…

I appreciate what you have written about school killing kids interest in learning. In the 8 months my son was there he lost interest in most of the things he loved to do before he went. The one that makes me the most sad is his current lack of interest in reading. I am stunned that in 8 months he has lost his desire to read – and he loved to read before he started. I really believe that something happened at school that brought it on. Suddenly there were sticker rewards and incentives for reading when he had always done it on his own because he loved it. I knew something was going terribly wrong when he told me that it wasn’t good to know the answers to questions at school.

I am very interested to read what you have to say about socializing because my son is also quite introverted and it took him months to make any friends at school. I am hopeful we will find our homelearning “tribe” in the next few months so he can start making some new friends with common interests.

Thank you so much for the detailed response. I really appreciate it. Thanks for opening my eyes up to new educational ventures. Really. I love learning about different things, and it is so interesting to read about homeschooling, unschooling, regular schooling, etc. While I may have thrived in “normal” (? regular?) schooling, I can so see how much FUN unschooling would be. (Personally my mom would throw me to the wolves – we can’t be together for sooooo long or else we get snippy! )

Also- so glad to hear you are not like the Duggars!

Best-
Rachel

I read my son your comment and got a snort in response. An amused snort, not a mean one, of course. He says unschoolers get more time to play with other kids because they’re not always being told not to talk to each other like kids are in the classroom! Guess that must be one of his memories from his year of kindergarten. He also says that unschoolers get together based on interests rather than age, and he prefers that. Me too.

Where we live there are lots of homeschoolers and unschoolers, and all kinds of opportunities to get together. If you have a kid who really likes to be with other kids a lot, you could go from one homeschool activity to the next all week– drama, gymnastics, swimming, choir, band, science club, art, pottery etc etc. This afternoon there’s a homeschooling get-together where all the kids are bringing their science projects, collections, art work etc to share, and I think some are doing music and dance performances too. We don’t sign up for a ton of stuff, because we like our unstructured time, but my son has friends over whenever he wants to. We’re lucky to have quite a few homeschoolers within walking distance of our house, and of course they are generally available during the day so it is easy to get together without all the planning and scheduling that goes with working around school hours.

Having said all that, I don’t think kids necessarily need to be around other kids their own age all the time. Peer socialization is, imo, over-rated.
I will definitely write a post on the homeschooling and socialization in the next couple of weeks.

Best wishes- Robin

ps. Laughing, because a friend of my son’s just showed up at the door as I typed this…