Ask HN: If you’ve considered homeschooling, what’s stopping you?

[actfrench]

Hi all, I’m a teacher and startup founder building a platform to support families homeschooling. I’m curious to know for those of you who have considered this approach, but not taken the leap yet, what’s stopping you and what kind of tools would make it a no-brainer/easier for you to adopt.

[ElijahLynn]

Social needs. Children need to learn how to be in relationship with others, it is the most fundamental need we have and is so important for the future of our planet.

If I were to homeschool, it isn't about the learning, that is easy, it is about providing an environment where children can learn to co-exist with others. That can still be done with homeschool, but it will need to be intentional with daily activities that involve being in relationship with others, in physical form.

[judah]

I was homeschooled and I credit much of my success in life to it. It taught me to think logically, taught me to honor my parents, taught me the value of tradition, morality, spirituality. It taught me the value of hard work, of loyalty, of kindness. It kept me out of vices that many of my public-schooled friends and peers got pulled into.

In my experience, homeschooling can create well-rounded, upright people at a ratio above traditional schooling. It insulates kids from many of the extreme elements and moores of society. Homeschooling is an excellent tool to pass on values from one generation to the next.

Lack of socialization is indeed a problem. Homeschooling parents need to make a big effort to get their kids in homeschooling groups and co-ops, youth sports, etc.

I have three kids myself now, but we send our them to private school rather than homeschool. What stops us from homeschooling is, my wife didn't feel like she had the skills to homeschool. She's not a teacher and feels she doesn't have the patience for it.

[kennywinker]

In my experience, both direct and indirect, homeschooling has the effect of concentrating a parent’s influence on their children’s lives / brain development / psychology, etc.

Take that, and think about it, before you start. If you have unexamined issues like anger problems, fixations, avoidances, fears - those will have an impact on your child, and a bigger impact if you homeschool your child - purely on the basis of much more time spent together.

If you’re going to do it, i would strongly encourage you to start therapy asap. Because the more of those things you crack open and deal with, the less your child will have to deal with the consequences of them.

The school system has a ton of problems. So does home schooling. There is no magic bullet. Just choices.

[rolfea]

I'd expand that even more broadly to say, if you are going to raise children at all, I would strongly encourage you to start therapy asap.

Some of the best parenting advice I ever got was, before you try to raise a kid, you need to get your own shit together.

[actfrench]

I think that in general parents concentrating brainpower on their kids would be a good thing ! And there are few things more enriching for your child (and their school or homeschool community) then getting involved in their education. A lot of research supports that parent involvement in education makes a bigger impact in a child’s education and the health of their school then any other factor.

https://www.modulo.app/learning/parent-engagement

With regards to therapy - wholeheartedly agree. We’ve got to put on those oxygen masks before we assist our kids! A parent who practices self-care, is grounded and calm will be a better parent for sure hands down

[_dain_]

Now do this for the influence of the state's pathologies on public schoolkids.

[acover]

How much can a parent even affect their children? I remember studies of adopted children showing it was little.

Edit: this[0] is not the study but shows something similar

> Adopted children resemble their adoptive parents slightly in early childhood but not at all in middle childhood or adolescence In contrast, during childhood and adolescence, adopted children become more like their biological parents, and to the same degree as children and parents in control families

[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.199...

[wyager]

I'd rather have the median homeschool parent influencing students than the median K-8 schoolteacher.

I also don't buy your notion that neuroses are directly transferable by contact. If anything, your kid will probably be so annoyed by them that they'll be exactly the opposite.

[concinds]

While more self-awareness and self-knowledge is always better, I think the main test for this should be "Ainsworth's Strange Situation". It's a test of your child's attachment style is; which is a good reflection of the child's (and your) emotional health.

For homeschoolers, it's probably a good idea to check if your child displays secure attachment first (since insecure attachment in the child is generally caused by the parents, and schooling your child at home might just make it worse).

And on a final note: why the hell don't we systematically test all children for attachment styles? They: a) can be detected very early, b) are much easier to correct when caught early, and c) have vast impacts for the child's whole life. You don't need any equipment except a trained psychologist!

[ShadowBear]

Homeschooling was detrimental to my own social development as a child, and that of my (many) siblings. Adjusting to college life made me nearly suicidal with hopelessness that I'd ever catch up either academically or socially, and none of my other siblings managed to successfully complete it. We're all doing much better now, but none of us would ever consider putting our own children through that kind of isolation long-term.

Now I'm part of an ex-homeschooler support group where most of us had a similar story. In my own case, the "homeschooling" was a political choice by parents who were deeply paranoid about the US government. They lacked the education to even understand what all we were missing and relied on a popular curriculum program to guide them without any supplemental counseling or outside tutoring.

Academically I'm sure some more educated parents could do better and understand they need to get information from a variety of sources, but socially it would be very difficult to replicate the opportunities that school provides most kids.

[ShadowBear]

One important thing about child development in isolated environments is that academically: you can catch up later. You might be older than the other students when you finally get there, but you can do it and end up doing just as well as the children who had a head start. But socially that's a very long, lonely road I wouldn't wish on anyone.

The only situation in which I'd consider homeschooling my child is if it was in the daily, sustained company of other families and involved parents. Skill-building aside: seeing other kids at the playground once a week doesn't even begin to take the edge off the loneliness.

[actfrench]

Thank you much for sharing this experience. I’m really sorry this was the case for you and your siblings. I myself was e trembly lonely as a child despite trying public and private schools. I ended up cooped up all the time doing homework and not much time to interact in school. It wasn’t really until I went to an acting school in Paris in my twenties that I made really close friends. It was it’s a different culture that felt more conducive to socializing and community - and in my experience more inclusive of a weirdo like myself :) since then I’ve found my friends working on collaborative projects (tech accelerators) or spiritual communities (zen center, yoga)

[whiskyagogo]

I too was homeschooled for most of my youth all the way through high school. At the time I welcomed it due to some pretty bad undiagnosed anxiety and ADD, but it in no way prepared me for life outside my nuclear family, nor did it provide me with much of an education that I didn’t explicitly give myself. My parents took me out of school for religious reasons primarily, with this vague notion they’d protect me and my sisters from secularism, while proving us a “better education.” As it turns out they were woefully under qualified to teach us anything past maybe grade 7, after which we were handed text books and encouraged to learn, instruction not included. Meanwhile I learned very little about social survival, or science, or life outside of the home. While I may have been protected from triggers to my anxiety, it actually got worse in ways because I was never challenged to grow, and it set me back in my social and emotional development many years. Subjects that the conservative Christian community considered risky (evolution anyone?) were either omitted or presented in such a corrupted way as to be worse than useless.

I love my parents, they tried their best, but there are very few scenarios in which I would encourage someone to homeschool their kids, if for no other reason than most parents aren’t trained teachers who actually know how to educate properly.

[mcone]

Our kids are 11 and 6 and we've always homeschooled them. As a secular homeschooling family, our headaches aren't related to curriculums or anything academic-related (there are lots of good options and resources out there) but rather the lack of socialization options outside of the home. If your experience is like ours, you'll quickly discover is that most homeschooling families are very religious or pulled their children out of school due to some kind of behavioral issue.

[actfrench]

That’s tough . Do you live in a rural area ? I find this is a lot easier in a place like San Francisco and NYC where there are more secular homeschoolers and more techies and teachers educating their kids at home for a better education /more mastery learning . Hopefully this will change for you as the population grows.

Have you considered reaching out to SEA homeschoolers for connecting w families near you ?

https://m.facebook.com/seahomeschoolers

I know a bunch of secular homeschoolers around the world and am happy to help you forge connections if you like :)

[dyingkneepad]

Socialization. Going to school is not only about absorbing academical knowledge. It's about interacting with a broader group of people, learning how to behave, how to avoid common problems, etc. I would not be able to provide this to my kids.

On top of that, the language we speak at home is not the language used by the school, or the rest of the country. There are a million problems that come with this: they would force us to use our language, which they're more comfortable with, they would be learning our broken accents, we're not super familiar with the local language so our ability to teach it would be worse, etc, etc.

[voisin]

Socialization is important, on that we agree. Socialization at school is not always positive or even effective. There are many ways to socialize and jamming people of the same age in a room for 6-7 hours at a time is far less effective, in my opinion, than being part of extracurricular programs, clubs, etc that often mingle kids of different ages, backgrounds, neighbourhoods, and cultures far better than any school.

I found that school is an effective way for people to be pigeonholed with labels and expectations that make it more difficult for people to explore and change. Once labelled the class clown, or the athlete, or the brainiac, or whatever, it is very hard to do or try other things so long as you are in a fixed environment. This is why, in my opinion, going to college or university is such a profound life event for people - suddenly new environments and opportunities to explore being something other than your fixed adolescent self.

[unity1001]

This. Not only what you said, but also even being the part of a certain generation as that generation grows up and creates a shared culture enables one to socialize much later. Having played similar games that a generation played, having listened to same songs, having played with the same toys etc.

[colinmhayes]

I would go further. Education is a secondary concern for grade school children. The main point of elementary school is 1. Figuring how to socialize/interact with peers 2. Starting to prepare children for responsibilities/solving problems without parental guidance. Education is important, but it’s mainly a way to give children these skills.

[Turing_Machine]

> It's about interacting with a broader group of people

A cohort within 12 months in age, typically from the same neighborhood, is not a "broader group of people".

[hprotagonist]

What stops me is that the socialization and peer-group relationship skills that are obtained rapidly in a public school context are not replicatable at home. Neither are the skills learned in dealing with non-family adults, independence of task skills away from home, and much else besides in that vein.

I would rather -- and do -- support the public school system in my (medium sized) city.

[jelled]

I was homeschooled in the late 80s / early 90s and I hated it. Though we were part of a homeschool group, we only got together with other families once or twice a week. It was really lonely and I never felt like a normal kid. Ultimately I convinced my parents to send me to public high school and had a great experience.

Watching my own kids thrive in school with lots of friends and social interaction has reaffirmed my thinking that building social skills is as much a part of schooling as the education itself.

[standardUser]

School is great. Not all of it obviously, and more for some people than others, but overall the pain and stresses of going to school were hugely outweighed by the fun and adventure of navigating through that system and interacting with all of those different peers and teachers. I wouldn't want to deny any kid those adventures and relationships and that exposure to our culture (for better and for worse). To be fair, I also grew up in a pretty great school system.

I feel the same way about college. I understand the arguments that college is not often worth the excessive cost if you look at it in terms of financial outcomes. But I didn't go to college for financial outcomes. I went because it was going to be (and was) a uniquely amazing adventure that I could never replicate at any other time in my life. I think going to grade school is the same thing.

Nothing can replace acting awkward around your crush in the hall, learning to navigate around the bully, bonding after class with a favorite teacher, enduring the horrors of PE or the excitement of a bomb threat, to name a few nostalgic examples.

[vitno]

As someone who was both home-schooled and went to public school, you are buying into the mythos around school too much. I had my own experiences when I was homeschooled that were far better than "enduring the horrors of PE".

[noufalibrahim]

I used to do it for my kids and wrote some articles on why and how on my blog here http://nibrahim.net.in/2011/09/06/homeschooling_in_india_par...

I moved towns and my main issues were 1. Lack of a like minded community who were willing to invest time and energy like I was. It's a demanding journey and not one that's easy (or even possible) to do alone. 2. Lack of insight into what the future holds esp. from the POV of higher studies. I can experiment with my own life but was scared of doing it with my kids'.

[importantbrian]

The main thing stopping us is that we both enjoy our careers and neither of us wants to teach. I think if there was strong evidence that homeschooling conferred significant benefits we would probably make the sacrifice to do it, but based on my research it seems like a wash.

The added factor is that my wife was home schooled, and my view of homeschooling is somewhat tainted by that. The homeschooling community she came from isn't exactly a strong advertisement for homeschooling, but I recognize there are also bad schools out there.

The strongest part of her education seems to have been the co-op classes, but those classes are really just like sending your kids to a private school. At that point I'm not sure why you wouldn't just send your kids to school outside of an ideological commitment to homeschooling.

[dotdi]

I get this is targeted at the US, still I'm throwing this out there:

my wife and I (with combined degrees in literature, molecular biology and computer science) would have seriously considered homeschooling. But we live in Germany, and it is absolutely illegal here.

[jpgvm]

Nothing.

If I have children and they are like me (i.e on the spectrum) then I will homeschool them.

School was by far the worst time of my life and also contributed the least to my success. I succeeded in spite of traditional schooling, mostly due to the great nature of my parents (who unfortunately just didn't have the capacity or economical means to homeschool me.) Enduring my schooling years didn't make me stronger it just left me with deep emotional scars that took years to come to terms with.

My partner has early age teaching experience and we are equipped to school our children if that is how things turn out.

Socialization is definitely a concern but I think it can be adequately addressed through sports, activity groups and extended family.

Of course if my children are normal then maybe none of this will be necessary and a normal school will be what is best for them.

[anon291]

Same. My parents both worked, but they were so shocked by how little we learned in schools that they'd spend the evenings tutoring my brother and I, such that, by the time we learned anything in school, we had already learned it. Ultimately, we were homeschooled, and school was daycare.

[f154hfds]

As someone who was homeschooled through 6th grade and then private schooled and considering homeschool for early elementary (I have a 4 year old) I would say my main concern is actually in my wife's ability to maintain a parent/teacher balance right now.

What I mean by this is simply wearing two hats in the household is a tricky business and can be overwhelming especially when our young students have younger siblings that must be cared for. I have enormous respect for my wife but handling these responsibilities is no easy feat!

Of course my kids are very young. I have other concerns beyond elementary, mostly around an increasing need for expertise in sciences/math and properly rigorous testing ensuring mastery over subjects without access to a realistic grade curve.

My personal experience was very good but a bit unrealistic - I was taught to read by my mom who has taught kindergarten for decades. Not everyone has a professional educator as their homeschool teacher!

[actfrench]

Thank you again for sharing these questions about me about wearing two hats in the family and the parent/teacher balance.

I thought about what you said quite a bit and wrote a blog about why I feel that parents are the best teachers for their child.

We are teaching our kids many "non-academic" skills all the time but don't see that as stepping into a specific role. I don't think that this needs to be the case either in homeschooling.

I've also included some resources which I think will address your concerns about expertise in certain speciality areas like math/science.

I didn't directly address assessment here, but there are some great ones you can use such as mobymax, cogat and others - as well as mastery-based digital learning apps that have built in assessment.

Here is the blog: https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/parentsarethebestteache...

[troupe]

There are a number of curriculums designed to help when you have multiple kids. It is challenging, but amazing to see how well it can work. Regarding expertise in particular areas, there are many options for that including taking a few online classes for particular subjects. If you think working through Algebra II might be a bit challenging, find an awesome teacher teaching an online class for it and sign them up. You can still help them study, bit it gives your child some interaction with another teacher (and in the better online classes) other students.

While I'm sure you mom had a lot of experience she brought to the table, it isn't uncommon to have kids reading at 3 or 4 taught by parents who didn't have a background in education and simply did some research to find the best way to do it. True it might be harder than it was for your mom, but it isn't like a parent has to just guess. There are plenty of people like your mom making information available about what seems to work and what doesn't so you can find the best thing for your kids.

[potatosalad1]

Does your wife have an education background too? If not, why not take on the teaching yourself if homeschooling is important to you?

[runjake]

The amount of effort it would take and the quality of that effort, when I already have a full-time job.

Edit: I have 3 kids, and they all learn in quite different ways. I can't really give one presentation to all 3 on something. The pandemic gave me a little glimpse into what home schooling would be like.

[actfrench]

I think one of the big challenges with pandemic homeschooling is that parents were trying to help kids with school work and keeping up with school , rather then necessarily directly helping them learn. One of the cool things about homeschooling is you can choose your child’s curriculum and support them learning at their own pace. I think you may even find you spend less or equal time as your child’s teacher than you do helping them with homework. And by the way , I have often found as a tutor/teacher that homework is where a lot of the only learning takes place because kids tune out in class lectures, miss vital info and fall behind. Many homeschool families I know have 4-5 kids with radically different learning styles and personalities and still only spend 1-2 hrs on direct instruction. These kids are going on to Harvard, Stanford, getting high scores on multiple AP exams because the learning goals are clear and they are able to learn at their own pace and master info before moving on to the next problem. Because kids learn so differently, I built a curriculum planner early on at Modulo to help families find the right tool for their individual child, that engages, inspires and challenges them. Also I don’t know about the dynamic of your family but older kids can help teach younger ones and “student as teacher” is one of the best ways for someone learning to really achieve mastery and a deep understanding of the subject.

[actfrench]

A lot of families thinks this would mean sitting at the kitchen table at their kids from 9-3 but actually homeschool does not need to look like school in order to be effective academically. with mastery learning and 1-1 instruction, kids learn way faster than in a classroom setting , so often parents spend max 1-2 hours guiding their kids through math and ELA with many of the great secular homeschool curriculums available and then cobble together a bunch of afterschool activities /skill shares , social activities and pareht swaps. Sometimes more affluent parents hire tutors but it’s not necessary. And there are some great digital tools kids csn use to largely teach themselves like khan academy - not to mention good old-fashioned books !

[actfrench]

So you’re looking for ways to reduce the effort …at not too high a cost I imagine ?

[muzani]

We did remote schooling during covid. Kids don't actually like it. I never thought I'd see the day when my child would wail about not being able to go to school, but that's it.

Also as bad as kids are with learning with teachers, it's usually a lot worse with parents. It's very stressful to, say, teach a child math. I think being in a group of others doing it gives them a little more grit.

[cowmix]

I'm 50, live in AZ (where home schooling is very popular) -- I didn't homeschool my kids but many of my friends did. Here's what I have seen:

1) If you are non-religious, the canned curriculum, trade shows, support groups are very few and far between. You will be much more lonely than your religious home-schooling counterparts.

2) As your kids get older, it is harder and harder to give them a proper education. By the time your kids are in middle-school, subjects get harder for a parent (or pairs of parents) to cover in a way that does each subject justice.

In the end, most of my friends who home-schooled eventually sent their kids to middle-school and or high-school... and that timing seemed about right.

[Mc91]

> As your kids get older, it is harder and harder to give them a proper education. By the time your kids are in middle-school, subjects get harder for a parent (or pairs of parents) to cover in a way that does each subject justice.

I agree. My cousin's daughter was not home-schooled, but she was having trouble with high school math so I tutored her. At the time I was going to college for computer science. We did algebra for a year and that went fine. I still remembered it from high school. Then we got to trigonometry. The year I was supposed to learn trigonometry in high school was disruptive so I never learned it properly. So I studied the lesson and learn it myself before I would go see her. I'm supposed to be the math/CS guy too. It worked out and she passed trigonometry too - I did have to spend much more time preparing to teach trigonometry than algebra as I had never learned trigonometry. I can imagine one parent having to teach trigonometry, biology, physics, chemistry, the themes of the Scarlet Letter, French, Medieval history etc.

[virissimo]

> As your kids get older, it is harder and harder to give them a proper education. By the time your kids are in middle-school, subjects get harder for a parent (or pairs of parents) to cover in a way that does each subject justice.

As a kid, I attended mostly private school, but when public school-educated parents express concern that they wouldn't be able to competently teach standard middle school subjects, that sounds much more like an indictment of public schooling than of the at-home variety.

[sbuttgereit]

Well, it's available resources about building and delivering an effective curricula across subjects and time. I have found a number of homeschooling resources, but the best organized efforts tend to be from religious perspectives (not surprising). We're not religious. My being an atheist and my wife being best described as irreligious (doesn't identify with a religion and puts approximately zero thought into the question) means much of that religious perspective is unwanted and is something I would consider detrimental. That I do seriously consider homeschooling should also make it evident that I reject public schooling as a good option; there are a number of reasons but your question implicitly assumes that to be true so I'll just restate it for others.

We do have relatives that have successfully homeschooled and I have seen groups that do their homeschooling together (homeschooling isn't necessarily about sitting at home by yourselves). So it's resources/support targeted to delivering a well-rounded homeschooled education, it's finding sufficiently like-minded others with whom to share the effort in a small group setting. With sufficient resources I could likely solve the time problem.

Absent that, we're looking at private schools for our kid. We'd probably just do this, but it's not a cheap alternative.

[actfrench]

I actually think I may have a potential solution for you on this one. It was clear to me when I started that sifting through religious curriculum to find secular stuff and making sure it was accurate and mastery-based was very hard and time-consuming for parehts.

Over the past three years, I’ve poured over thousands of resources in 50 different subjects to help families learn at home with kids. From these, I selected the best resources that were secular, accurate and mastery-based. I’ve also conducted dozens of intake interviews with parents helping them choose the best digital app, workbook, or nature-based curriculum for learning at home, that their child would love and fit their family’s needs. With our curriculum planner, you can answer a few questions about your child’s interests and your preferences around screen time, budget, etc and it will recommend core curriculum, math and literacy tools to support your child’s education

I’ve been iterating on it and find most people find it to be a helpful starting place

https://modulolearning.typeform.com/to/VBJmkLTu

[somethoughts]

I'd welcome more tools to enable home after-schooling and home summer schooling.

A lot of the after school/summer school in person offerings are pretty expensive and usually pretty sports centric.

Full home schooling I feel could easily burn out even the most hard working parent - as there's little time for getting groceries, etc. done. And lack of socialization in the childs cohort is an issue.

I think more online tools for prepping for science fairs and other academic competitions would be great.

More tools like Khan academy would be great - I'd love it if there were resources that were able to introduce real biology, chemistry, physics prior to high school.

[actfrench]

Thank you for these great thoughts and questions somethoughts. Awesome handle, btw

Actually I think about homeschooling more as a movement and ideology of greater involvement in education than a replacement to school. In fact, I call it “modular learning” where families can choose a variety of modules to compose their child’s education including school !

The burnout factor is real but I think that when you give yourself freedom to optimize on academics , social and childcare, you might find it’s lesss of a burnout than the grind of early morning wake-up’s, after school pickups , homework and pta meetings.

I’ve written a lot about curriculum tools to support learning at home.

With regards to physics and chemistry, it depends on your kid’s ages … some of my favorites off the top of my head are mystery science, blossom and roots science curriculum, quantum camp , mel science, Steve Spangler science

[cryptonector]

You are the tool. And there is sooo much content on the various video platforms. Teach them well.

[vyrotek]

Time.

I also think our 3 kids would struggle with the lack of separation between Teacher and Parent. Similar to how some adults struggle with working at home and separating work and home life appropriately. I know several folks who do it well and love the freedom and flexibility. But I feel it would take a lot of effort to really stay on top of it and not let things slide when it gets tough.

Not going to lie, the "babysitting" aspect of school is very nice too.

[actfrench]

Childcare is a really big deal. One of the nice things about homeschool though is you can customize childcare for when you need it, not just 9-3