Everyone in the homeschooling blog world seems to have their “Why I Started Homeschooling” post and they are always an interesting glimpse into the myriad of ways that God calls on us to homeschool. So, in the hope that our story will be of interest here is our story.<\/p>\n

When my oldest son (Matey) was in grade five at our local school he developed severe headaches and missed basically a whole term of school (in Australia that’s about three months) while doctors totally failed to figure out what was wrong with him. At the time, having to justify his absences with medical certificates every week was getting to me and I started researching homeschooling in my state. The headaches went away and so did my interest in homeschooling, or so I thought. The next year, my youngest child (Mowgli) started at the same school and now I had a son in Prep, a daughter (Casper) in Grade Two and a son in Grade Six heading for the Select Entry Learning Programme at our local High School. The SELP course is offered to high achieving students via an entry exam. I thought that our path was set, the children would continue on through the school system and all would be “normal”.<\/p>\n

Of course, God had different plans for our lives. The next year Matey’s headaches returned and we spent months with him missing school and being sent from one specialist to another before finally finding out that he had a jaw problem. That same year Mowgli had a teacher who decided he was lazy and singled him out for special treatment and he was bullied. We spent a lot of time trying to get him transferred to a different teacher as the teacher he had had no interest in actually teaching him and even had him put into the autism programme although he was not autistic. He was also not sensitive to the bullying and even moved one of the bullies onto the same table as our son but justified it by saying that he thought that it would be alright because he’d put him opposite my son not next to him. At the same time, we had one of the senior staff tell my husband that Mowgli would be bullied in the workplace so he should get used to it. Excuse me, a Grade One child should get used to bullying because he will be bullied in the workplace. It’s illegal for a six year old to be in the workplace and workplace bullying is illegal. We eventually got him transferred to a wonderful teacher who gave us hope for the school system and he was diagnosed with an Auditory Processing Disorder. The APD gave us something other than laziness to focus on and a plan for the future although the school were still saying don’t expect too much from him, he’ll probably never be any good at school. The next year, his teacher was terrible. She put him into every special group she could, even ones he kept getting put out of, anything she could to get him out of her classroom so she didn’t have to deal with his APD. At the end of that year I was fed up with being the person who was actually teaching my son but only having after school when he was exhausted from trying to understand what was going on around him all day. We decided that if I was the one teaching him anyway it would be better to do it at the start of the day when he was fresh rather than wasting time with school.<\/p>\n

This was the start of our homeschool journey and there is no way I ever would have guess where it would lead. So, now I had one child at high school doing Year Nine, one child at primary school in Grade Six and one child at home finally learning. What I didn’t expect was for Casper to be jealous that Mowgli was getting to learn stuff. I didn’t realise that she was bored at school. She always got average grades and she wasn’t disruptive and the teachers didn’t realise that she was just coasting by and working out how to get away with not doing the work while still passing. That year, she got sick, constantly, and I was back providing medical certificates all the time and she was begging to be homeschooled. She even worked out how to answer every objection that she thought we could come up with. My husband didn’t agree that she should be homeschooled because he thought she would miss out on too many “normal” school experiences. Once again, God took a hand and Casper ended up in hospital with suspected appendicitis. Straight after her surgery, I got a phone call from the school threatening to report her as a truant to the Education Department. When I pointed out that they had had medical certificates for all of her absences and that she was at that time in hospital they told me that they knew that but that the Education Department wouldn’t care and since I was already homeschooling one child maybe I should just remove her from the school and homeschool her. And so Casper got the result she wanted and the ability to tell anyone that wants to know why she is homeschooled that the school kicked her out.<\/p>\n

From this really shaky, I just want my children to learn something, beginning God has lead us on an amazing journey of discovery about ourselves and our world. I still just want my children to learn but I’ve learnt that sometimes there are much more important things to learn than straight academics. I want my children to learn to live, and love, and make a difference in the world and academic studies help with all that but it’s only part of the whole picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone in the homeschooling blog world seems to have their “Why I Started Homeschooling” post and they are always an interesting glimpse into the myriad of ways that God calls on us to homeschool. So, in the hope that our…
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