*Clara, a newly homeschooling mom last week:
“I just pulled my daughter out of fifth grade and started to homeschool her, but it’s the end of the school year and now I’m scared she won’t keep up with her class and I won’t find the right curriculum and she’ll fall behind!”
Clara’s stress radiates from every word.
She pulled her kid out of public school with about 6 weeks to go before summer break. Something must have been stressful to take her kid out of school abruptly.
Clara is scared her child will fall behind. She’s scared she won’t find the right curriculum. She’s scared she won’t measure up as a homeschool parent. And scared her daughter won’t do well academically.
That’s a lot of fear. Does the stress her child faced at school outweigh the fear? It must. If it hadn’t been as stressful, Clara might’ve figured they could wait it out, give themselves the summer to rethink, make a plan, and start fresh with homeschooling in the fall.
Lots of parents choose homeschooling based on stressful school situations their kids face. They want something better. But their decision is based on stress.
Parents might be reacting to any number of stress points within the traditional school system:
An authoritarian structure that doesn’t allow deviation
Demoralizing tests that focus more on judgment than on continual improvement
Rigid school timings that require even very young children to sit passively at a desk or table and chair for long hours, hours that would make lots of adults feel trapped. The inflexibility can limit kids’ ability to learn at their own pace.
One-size-fits-all curriculum: Traditional schools often use a standardized curriculum that assumes all kids learn the same way at the same pace.
Limited creative freedom and an emphasis on conformity and following strict guidelines, which can stifle creativity.
Focus on testing which can lead to teaching to the test rather than helping kids gain skills mastery
Limited voice and choice which means kids are more passive and less involved in their learning and have almost no say in what, how, when, and where they learn.
Disciplinary practices that prioritize compliance and/or punishment and can create a repressive and stressful environment for kids.
Overemphasis on compliance which can promote conformity at the expense of personal expression and independent learning.
That’s a lot of possible causes of stress, not to mention social issues (The above list is only about the mindset and structure of the school environment.).
Homeschooling parents like Clara want something different for their kids. But many of Clara’s main stress points are driven by external standards imposed on kids and parents, by the traditional school system.
Based on her statement, Clara still answers to her internalized version of those standards. They seem reasonable even: “I’m scared my daughter will ‘fall behind’ and not keep up.” By whose standard? The school system.
What does Clara want for her child? Does she want the freedom to teach her daughter differently? To let her learn at her own pace? To have more active engagement in learning rather than being a passive learner? To get a chance to explore her interests? To escape from learning to the test and focus on real learning?
If Clara answers yes to any of these reasons, she is looking for more freedom from an institutional educational environment. But she’s bringing that mindset with her in how she perceives homeschooling.
Sure, each state has requirements that homeschoolers need to meet, but they give homeschoolers what most of us want: freedom to educate our kids as we see fit.
The question is, how do we give ourselves license to educate our kids differently? How do we let go of the mindset that we were likely indoctrinated with from our education? And do we even know what that list of things we’ve internalized is?
Effective homeschooling requires a fundamental shift in mindset from traditional schooling practices to a more personalized, flexible educational approach.
To effectively transition from traditional schooling methods to homeschooling, parents need to shift their mindset and rethink their homeschooling vision. This is called, ‘deschooling.’
Deschooling is a process that helps us—those of us who want to teach our kids in a permissionless environment—let go of the points of stress that may be our original motivation to homeschool. By consciously shifting our mindset, we are effectively acknowledging—and giving ourselves permission—to not comply with the list of ‘shoulds.’
Does Clara really need to worry so much that her daughter will ‘fall behind?’ Or can she change her mindset from fear based on external pressures to one of empowerment?
The shift would mean trusting that she can help her daughter learn at her own pace and gain skills mastery instead of just moving through assignments to check them off a list on a calendar.
Each is about rethinking your concept of the norm from a standardized norm to a personalized approach:
1. Standardization to Personalization: Let go of the belief that education must follow a standardized curriculum for all. Embrace the idea that learning should be tailored to fit the individual needs, interests, and pace of your kid.
2. Compliance to Empowerment: Shift from valuing obedience and compliance to wanting your kid to become an independent learner.
3. Teacher-Led to Child-Centered: Move away from the idea that the teacher or institution (or parent, in the case of homeschooling) must direct all learning. Instead, adopt the role of a guide to mentor your kid in their learning process.
4. Rigid Structures to Flexibility: Let go of the need for rigid schedules and structures. Embrace a flexible approach that allows your kid to explore subjects more deeply, and learn in a way that works for them and at a pace that allows them to gain mastery.
5. Testing to Learning: Shift from a focus on grades and test scores as measures of success to a focus on the actual process of learning and understanding. Help your kid see learning as a process of continual improvement rather than a series of tests and fixed scores.
6. One-size-fits-all to Understanding: Free yourself and your kid from having to meet artificially contrived standards to mentoring them so that they engage in learning and gain mastery.
7. Formality to Authenticity: Let go of the formal aspects of traditional schooling, such as formal classrooms, fixed timings, and fixed answers. Embrace learning in more casual, comfortable environments that make kids feel safe and valued for who they are and helps them engage in learning life skills and learning how to apply what they learn.
8. Fear of Failure to Embracing Mistakes: Change the perception that making mistakes is a negative. Shift your mindset to recognize mistakes are natural, valuable parts of your kid’s learning process. Help your kid to know this too so they can become confident, independent learners.
9. Curriculum-Centric to Life Skills-Centric: Broaden your focus from purely academic subjects to include life skills and practical education. Think about including skills like financial literacy, communication, critical thinking, creative thinking and problem-solving, and emotional intelligence as an integral part of your kid’s learning.
Chances are that if Clara continues feeling stressed about her daughter keeping up, her kid is going to feel this too. And homeschooling isn’t going to give her the freedom and positive experience she wants for her kid.
It’s easy to say, ‘stop worrying’, but hard to do.
When I started homeschooling, I felt confident, almost strident about leaving traditional school behind and charting our course. I stood up to friends and relatives who were disapproving. I knew I wanted to create a child-centered learning environment for my kids. But along the way I hit a lot of mental roadblocks—internalized ‘shoulds’ I didn’t realize I had.
I had to rethink my perception of things like:
The purpose of testing
How kids learn
Life learning versus school learning
The purpose of education
The kind of lived learning experience I wanted my kids to have daily
The idea that kids don’t like learning and we have to coax them to learn or pressure them
The idea that kids should sit and study for X hours per day
The idea that we have to prioritize a set agenda for learning
I spent a lot of time rethinking the shoulds in my head.
I realized that I could embrace--like truly deeply at a core level--embrace the fact that homeschooling and child-centered learning is not only permissionless, it is empowering for both our kids and us as parents.
Here is how I shifted each of my stress points, which sometimes looked like Clara’s and so many other parents.
Create space in your homeschool schedule to explore your kids’ interests and find ways to incorporate them into your plans.
Instead of trying to keep pace with the academic school calendar, keep pace with your child. They might learn math quickly and need more time to develop reading skills. Take the time they need to gain skills mastery. The biggest thing about kids is that they learn at their own pace. One of my kids was a late reader and didn’t relate to it for some time, but that changed suddenly when they discovered Diary of a Wimpy Kid and read the book obsessively.
Don’t feel pressured to compare your kid to external ‘norms’ or other people’s kids. It’s not worth it and it will cause you unnecessary stress. Most importantly it will not help your kid. Your kid is more likely to pick up on even unspoken judgments if you’re secretly comparing them to others instead of focusing on supporting them where they are at in their learning process. Skip it. It’s not helpful.
Practice supporting your kid’s curiosity, their endless questions, and their discussions. I am not suggesting that boundaries aren’t important. What I mean is that when your kid asks a zillion questions and raises discussion points, they are teaching themselves how to think independently. They are being active learners. Encourage this. You might think it’s a win if your kid sits quietly and does exactly what they are told. But if they don’t engage and actively ask questions, this form of compliance doesn’t encourage kids to take charge of their learning.
Support multiple learning environments. No one does well sitting trapped in a chair all day. Kids learn by doing, running around, playing—actively engaging. Give them space to do this. It’s okay if learning is a bit messy. You do not need to replicate school at home.
Think seriously about the tests you give them and the real purpose of testing. Sure, the occasional test can be helpful. To meet state homeschool requirements, our kids had to take an annual nationally standardized test. I used it to a) help them learn how the system worked so they had a grasp of that mindset, and b) to see areas for improvement. What I did NOT do, because homeschooling is permissionless and empowering, is use tests to assign grades. My goal shifted from labeling my kids as getting A, B, or C grades to helping them learn and improve.
Learn from your kids. I observed how my kids thought, and how they related to the material.
If I had continued to worry about fitting the school system norm when homeschooling, I would’ve found myself like Clara, scared about measuring up against someone else’s standard.
Homeschooling gives you the freedom to focus on your kids’ learning.
You don’t need to replicate the standard, the mindset, the comparisons, the fear, the rigid structure at home. You are free to redesign a learning environment that serves the needs of your child so that your child learns how to learn and becomes an independent learner.
You don’t need to prove anything to an external institution, you can focus on doing right by your kids.
I read reports regularly about how the system is failing to educate our kids effectively: only a third of kids do math at grade level, absenteeism is climbing, and reading skills are dropping. It’s a long list. The stresses and reasons to strike out on your own are long and valid.
I am not here to say that homeschooling is the right choice for everyone. Each parent needs to make that decision and decide what is best for their kid. But if you choose homeschooling, it is an opportunity to meet your kids’ needs and create a positive learning environment for them.
Deschooling is leaving a mindset of institutionalized learning behind and rethinking how YOU want to educate your kid. Whether or not you homeschool, you can do this by shifting your mindset and supporting your kid’s unique learning process.
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