A little assumption to think about...

Today, I got my hair trimmed. While I did, Mal stayed in the foyer area playing with their Lego Duplos and chatted up the two people who were waiting their turns in the barber's seat, specifically a very young adult.

While the lady cut my hair, she made small talk and remarked on Mal's imagination and cleverness. And, of course, his hair. She did call him a girl. A lot. Despite the fact that I said "he/him" and called him "buddy" numerous times. She just didn't pick up on it.

At one point, she asked if he was in school. I said, "Well, his birthday is in late September, so he wouldn't be starting kindergarten until next year, anyway, but we homeschool."

Without any further information, she said, "Oh, I know we like to protect our kids, but they need to get out there and be social with each other."

Um.

Many things to unpack here.

The very first is the assumption that we homeschool for protection. That's nowhere on the list. But I'll get back to that.

The other thing was that she was observing in literally the sentence before this that he was so fun and interactive with everyone. And he's never been to school. So wouldn't it make sense that we'd provide alternate opportunities for him to socialize, not only with children his own age, but with a wide variety of human beings and maybe even animals?

Back to why we homeschool.

The reasons are many, but the top two "not on the list" reasons are: protection from the ideas/influence of peers, and the very absolutely NOTHING TO DO WITH why we homeschool is that we perceive it to be "better" or to give a leg up academically, or help our kids be "more advanced" than other kids their age, etc.

Today, I got this ad in a break for a game and I thought, "They have no idea with whom they're dealing."

We don't need our kids to have higher test scores than anyone else. They're not in competition with anyone else: not their siblings, not other homeschooled kids, not private or public schooled kids. It's not a race, where whoever reads best at the age of 5 wins.

Also, specifically, regarding the above ad: Show me that what you're doing makes kids LOVE reading, and maybe I'd be interested. I got high test scores in most things when I was in school. I hated math and history. Test scores were not an arbiter of mastery over time or of interest. So mehh to your advertisement. My kid might be the gray rocket, struggling to achieve escape velocity. That's okay. Most people get there eventually.

It has always bothered me when people tout homeschooling as a "superior" choice to traditional schooling because of how freaking awesome the homeschooled kids turn out. Honestly, most kids turn out pretty cool, and unless you're one of those people for whom a particular schooling method just messes you up, most kids find a way to be excited about and still learn what they truly want to learn, anyway.

So why *do* we homeschool?

I just realized that I can't speak for James. But I don't think he's super vicariously competitive with our kids, either. Anyway, one big reason I started homeschooling D, after considering it for a couple of years, was that D had already mastered everything taught in kindergarten when the time finally came. D's birthday is in November, and at almost six, had already been reading for a good year and a half (we won't be able to say that about Mal, and that's just fine; he can do some math that D could not at this age... again, it's not a competition). It seemed like a waste of D's time, and probably a pain in the teacher's butt, honestly.

Then the more I thought about the time: organizing kids, disciplining a group, getting from point A to point B... just ask a teacher how much actual forward momentum their class has per day, and I'm going to guess they'd say a couple of hours. So it made sense to let D work a couple of hours per day, and then be free to pursue whatever.

The same holds true for Mal.

Maybe most people won't say that time management is the main reason they homeschool, but that's really the number one factor for me. I don't have to drive to/from a school. I don't have to wake up and herd kids at the crack of dawn. My kids don't have to wait for other kids to calm down if they're raring to do something. My kids don't hold anyone else back if they're feeling restless or don't understand something. It's just more efficient. We go on vacation when everyone else is in school, so we don't deal with crowds and lines and headaches like that. I get as much time with my kids as they or I can handle (we all needs breaks, variously). We can move through zoos, aquariums, and museums as slowly or quickly as we want. We can go see a movie when no one else is available. We can stay out late because we don't have to get up at a certain time most mornings. It's all about time.

There are other reasons homeschooling works for our family, but sheltering my kids from outside ideas or people or dangers isn't one of them. Neither is giving them "every advantage." Really, I want them to be happy, peaceful, and fulfilled, as I'm sure most parents want for their kids. That's it.