I
honestly never considered homeschooling my teenage son. He had always
been in the public school system, liked it there socially, and wanted
to stay there. When it came to learning though, he could have cared
less and showed no interest at all.

 

For me, the
very thought of trying to teach him with my limited education made me
feel deer-caught-in-the-headlights sick. It was something we didn’t
discuss and we both figured that if things weren’t broke, then no need
to try to “fix” them.

 

Then in
November of last year we moved to another state and he had to enroll in
a new school. We had to send him to a school considered one of the
worst in our area and trying to get him registered was a complete
nightmare! I often tell people that it would have been easier to have
him run for Senate than it was to get into that school. You could only
register on certain days and at certain times, they fought me over his
transcripts even though I had prepared ahead of time and brought a copy
from his previous school with me, and he wasn’t allowed to enroll until
he had two immunizations that we hadn’t previously needed. There were
several reasons why this last issue was such a big deal. The biggest
problem was that they wanted him to have both shots before he could
start school, and at three to six weeks apart. This meant he would miss
at least a month of school if we could get him in to someone
immediately. As it turned out, no one could see him any sooner than
four weeks. Meanwhile, my husband and I were trying to figure out when
he could take Bret to get the vaccinations, because morally and
religiously it was against my own personal beliefs. It was just not
something I could do anymore.

 

As I was
trying to figure out how to take care of everything, Bret came to me
and said he would like to try homeschooling. In his opinion, the school
wasn’t safe, he didn’t want to have to start all over again in another
place, and the fact that our state ranks near the bottom in education
bothered him quite a bit. He wanted to homeschool and give himself a
shot at going to a good college. Inside I was both jumping for joy and
having a nervous breakdown! How was I going to help him learn
everything he needed to? What did I need for a high schooler? How do I
do this without messing him up for life?

 

I
researched every homeschool method out there for many weeks, hoping to
find something that would be the perfect fit for Bret. Meanwhile, he
was spending his new free time reading every book he could get his
hands on. He has always loved reading, but he had never had as much
time as he wanted to spend just relaxing and going through his books.
The boy was reading a new book every two days and our library basket
constantly stayed full. That’s when I realized that he had already
found the perfect way for him to homeschool. Bret was finding his own
interests and learning everything he could about them. All he needed
from me was to provide him with the “tools” to continue learning. What
a relief!

 

So now I am
enjoying my new position as “teacher’s aide” and watching my son begin
to love learning all over again. The bright eyed little boy I once sent
off to Kindergarten is back. The only difference is I don’t think he
would let me hold his hand walking home nowadays.