“Homeschooling through high school? Really? What about socialization? Transcripts? Test prep for college? Ensuring academic rigor?” – Mina, homeschooling mom
All solvable… more easily than you would think.
Mina started homeschooling her two kids about three years ago. She did it primarily because she felt her older son was “disappearing.” He didn’t seem like himself. He was in his first year of middle school and falling in with a rough crowd. He was angry all the time. Her daughter, who is a couple of years younger, is gifted in math and was bored and frustrated at school.
Within a couple of months after starting to homeschool, she saw a change for the better and decided to keep on with it. A couple of years later her son was cheerful and well-adjusted. Her daughter was a couple of years ahead in math.
Things seemed great.
But as soon as her son turned fifteen, she worried she couldn’t homeschool her kids through high school.
Mina has a doctorate in chemistry. She is capable of teaching her kids.
Why is she worried?
She’s afraid she won’t be able to:
figure out their transcripts
help her kids with their coursework
help her kids get into a good college
find the ‘right’ socializing opportunities
have them take the ‘right’ courses that will look good for college
find the ‘right’ extracurriculars that will look good on a college application
However, she strongly wants to keep homeschooling because she sees so many benefits.
I had the same worries when my kids were high school age until I realized that the biggest benefit of homeschooling through high schoo was my kids becoming independent learners.
This one benefit outweighed every point on Mina’s (and my) list of worries.
It meant that my kids (and Mina’s… and yours) could develop self-direction and personal interests at an age when teens are generally desperate to gain independence, find their path, and take charge of their lives, but are boxed in by ‘in the box’ thinking.
Mina’s list of concerns about continuing to homeschool in high school makes sense. It feels daunting to school your teen, especially with college and adulting looming in the near future.
Your decisions are weighted with more responsibility as your kids get closer to adulthood and the stakes are higher. It can feel overwhelming.
But each common worry—socialization, academics, college—can be addressed easily.
Socialization? There are lots of homeschooling groups, in-person classes, and activities that more than make up for a lack of traditional high school socializing. Then there is the fact that homeschooled kids typically talk more with adults and people of all ages than traditionally schooled kids.
Homeschooled teens have many opportunities to socialize, it just may not look like the movie version of high school—kids in various social ‘groups’ forming an identity around fitting into the social pecking order. It may look far more open-ended and flexible.
Academics? Whether your kid is in a gifted program or needs more time to gain skills mastery, there are online and in-person programs as well as tutors to help your kid with everything from speech therapy to advanced placement classes—at the pace that works for them.
College? College admissions have experienced an awakening in recent years, recognizing that the unique educational and real-life experiences homeschoolers bring to the table are valuable and often highly desirable.
Admissions committees regularly find that homeschoolers (even if they don’t tick every traditional box), more than make up for any possible gaps with their unique vision and motivation.
Transcripts? It is relatively easy to create an official and detailed transcript for your kid, one that colleges will accept and take seriously.
For Mina, it is both avoiding the negative effects of socialization and the opportunity to provide a self-paced education for her kids.
For others, it is the chance to give their kids unique experiences. Or the chance to instill family values or focus on academics through their kids’ teen years.
The stakes are higher in high school because teens are closer to becoming adults. Constructive reasons to homeschool matter more.
Mina is motivated to keep her kids out of school to prevent what she views as negative effects from impacting her kids.
But she can do more than prevent negatives; she can help build a constructive roadmap for her kids through high school.
When my kids reached high school, any fears I may have had were far outweighed by the positive things my kids were experiencing.
My kids already had years of experience as active learners—they were engaged and problem-solving.
I didn’t want them to miss the chance for more independence and the ability to explore their passions, especially in their teen years.
By homeschooling through their teens, my kids had opportunities to explore their interests seriously.
(This doesn’t mean they could not have followed their passions while attending a traditional school. Many kids do so quite successfully. My kids, and homeschooled kids generally, have more freedom to do this.)
My oldest son was an avid builder in Minecraft through his teens. He used the platform to develop his interest in and understanding of architecture. He joined various servers and became a manager of one at fifteen. He started to see career possibilities.
He also studied physics, math and language arts, etc. But he had more freedom to pursue a passion and take it to an adult level of professionalism at a young age. His Minecraft interests led to his own Minecraft-based (successful) LLC at twenty-one.
My younger son built a forge as a young teen, taught himself blacksmithing, and graduated from homeschool early. He also decided he wanted to know what traditional high school was like. He did a second senior year at a charter school while concurrently enrolled in the community college associates program in welding technology.
He forged (pun intended) his own path and had the confidence to make adult decisions at a young age. He got both a welding degree and a bachelor’s in biology.
My daughter went full-time to community college at sixteen and pursued her interests in biology and writing fiction.
They each had the freedom to choose their path. They’ve been able to develop confidence as independent learners and chart their courses at young ages.
Things like transcripts, testing, and even college, are steppingstones along a much more significant path called life. They are not the goals in and of themselves.
When we give kids the chance to look beyond immediate high school milestones, they start thinking about life beyond school. They start thinking about their future, and their interests and taking on more agency in their learning.
The worries that Mina and many parents may have about socializing and academics may feel like significant, all-encompassing issues, but they are solvable steps.
And the reasons to homeschool?
Sure, there is a long list of ‘avoiding negative effects’ reasons to homeschool. But even these are not the real reasons.
The underlying reason that I homeschooled through high school was to give my kids a solid foundation as independent learners.
I wanted to give my kids the opportunity to take ownership of their path, express their voice, and have agency in making choices.
They didn’t make their choices in a vacuum or without support. They made them in discussion with us, their parents, and the many friends, adults, and people in their broader community who knew them and ‘had their backs’.
My kids gained practice making bigger life decisions while still teens and while the stakes were lower, and a fallback plan was more easily doable.
They gained practice at making better decisions because they had both the independence to explore their interests and the responsibility for the results of their choices—while they were still teens.
While my kids did miss out on parts of the traditional high school experience, they did not miss out on a fundamentally important part of growing up—finding their voice, confidence, and passion while learning how to balance it with grounded, practical, well-informed decision making. They also had plenty of regular teen experiences.
Homeschooling through high school means your kid will chart a unique path.
They can excel—socially, emotionally, and academically. They can get the support they need, to gain skills mastery and meet their individual needs.
The real motivation (at least for me) was and is not based on a fear of negative effects.
The real motivation to homeschool through high school is constructive.
Your kids will get a chance to take hold of their ideas and define the people they want to become.
High school is a time of higher stakes, but not adult-level stakes. It is the ideal time for your teen to find their footing and independence.
We are raising adults –ideally, adults who are independent learners, capable of making smart choices, and being kind human beings who treat others with respect and compassion.
This isn’t to say your kids can’t do all of this while attending a traditional high school. They can.
But if you already have reason to homeschool, continuing through high school can give your kids the opportunity to become firmly grounded independent learners.
Your kids—at a formative age when people crave self-expression and responsibility—will have the opportunity to make a difference, invest in themselves, develop confidence, and learn to make decisions.
Becoming independent learners in high school can give them a vision (beyond high school and college) of who they want to be. It can help them practice being the person they want to become—the best version of themselves, without the sometimes limiting constraints in traditional schooling.
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