Can I ask one more question? Why do you homeschool? What is the financial, hashkafic, halachic reasoning behind such an unorthodox choice for a family that seems (from your bio) to be pretty normal? I am dying to know.

This isn’t a short answer, but I’ll try to be as succinct as I can without leaving out the major factors.

I didn’t set out to homeschool – Hashem kind of led me to it and I feel unbelievably blessed that He did.  When I moved from Israel in August 2000 (my husband had been offered a position as a shul rabbi so we moved to Seattle for that), my oldest was in second grade and struggled because the secular subjects required reading and writing skills that he didn’t yet have, and his Judaic skills were much more advanced than his classmates.

We brought him home for half a day with the intent to bring him up to par in secular subjects – I did it out of desperation, because he was so stressed out that it was affecting the entire family, and nothing else I was doing was helping.  (This was one of the worst periods of my life, which has shown me how often the best things come from the most difficult situations.)  I didn’t know anything about homeschooling, and didn’t consider myself to be homeschooling him.  I was just tutoring him at home.  The principals and teachers were very supportive of me doing this, because they knew they didn’t have the ability to help him catch up.

Despite the many obstacles (like not knowing what I was doing and constantly doubting and second guessing myself), he thrived and we achieved our goals for him. Along the way he became much happier and more relaxed, which positively affected everyone.

We put him back into school for the full day about three or four months later with no intent to bring him back home.  But then we started to see behaviors we hadn’t seen for a long time that were attributable to nothing but being in school, behaviors that were subtle and everyone would say were normal.  In the past we thought it was because he didn’t yet have friends after moving there, was pressured academically, felt the strain of a major move, etc.  But now he was doing great academically in all his classes, socially fine, the family had settled down, and life was all around positive and relaxed – there was absolutely nothing wrong.  And I saw that school actually created a kind of tension in children, even a child who was succeeding, something I never would have recognized if it hadn’t been totally absent from him for so long.

For the next few months, I thought about the significance of this.  I thought about what it would be like to have all the kids at home (if it was such a big improvement with one child home just half a day, imagine if everyone were home all day!), without the school induced pressures of carpool, tuition, mandatory parent service hours, and constantly worrying about keeping up with exactly what the school was up to, all issues I had to deal with when he was home for half a day.

What if we didn’t have to rush everyone to bed so that they could get up on time the next day, what if I could relax through our morning routine instead of rushing to get them to school on time; what if my primary goal wasn’t school centered but values centered?

I had by now started reading a lot about homeschooling philosophies, educational models, and thinking very seriously about what it all meant to me and where I stood.  I was working through some very major ideas about where parenting and education met, and my role in that.  I thought a lot about the kind of children I wanted to raise, the qualities I wanted to help them develop, and in what environment those would best be nurtured.  I strongly felt homeschooling would help us best meet those goals, though I had no idea how right I was.

But I was scared.  I was a conservative kind of person, someone who was very much part of the mainstream, who was comfortable being part of the mainstream and in fact found security in being clearly identifiable as being mainstream.  I didn’t want to be different from everyone else.  I didn’t want to listen to my conscience.

Not only that, my kids were all doing great in school – there were no behavior issues, academic issues, social issues – nothing.  And the following year all three of them were going to have the most experienced teachers in the school, teachers who were so good that people would actually switch their kids for the year to this school to have these teachers.  Who in their right mind would take out their kids at a time like this?

But the problem was, I was trying to live my life with integrity and I couldn’t silence the voice inside me that kept telling me that this was a change I should make, that even as seemingly successful as the kids were, that there was more they could be than model students.  I couldn’t ignore what I really believed was best.

I had two discussions at this time about this that gave me the support I needed to make the leap to homeschooling, one with my husband, and one with the wife of the rosh kollel of that area, and with both I expressed my fears and feelings of inadequacy.  My husband told me that no matter how wonderful the teachers were, he was confident that I could do just as well.  The rosh kollel’s wife, when I told her my fears of appearing non mainstream and not being like everyone else, said, “Who cares what people think?”  These two conversations gave me the final boost I needed to do to begin to live out my vision.

It was making the decision to homeschool that was the hardest thing. But since then, I’ve never looked back.  It was clear from the very beginning that it was the right thing for our family – there were so many advantages that I can’t begin to express them here.  I had the advantage of knowing what life with kids in school was like, and it was very easy to compare and contrast that to homeschooling.

Life with kids in school is a pale (and stressful!) comparison to a homeschooled life.   Though people have told us that because we’re such good parents our kids would have been great anyway, I know it’s not true and they’re making false assumptions.  I’m not an amazing or unusually good parent.  But homeschooling my kids and the time it’s given us together has been the factor that has made all of the difference.

To go back to the original question, there were no negative factors – tuition was affordable for us (I’ve never felt that finances alone were a reason to homeschool), the kids were successful in school (and I was happy with the school), and I had a great rapport with the administration.  I don’t have a bone to pick with schools, not then and not now.  Choosing to homeschool wasn’t coming from negative motivations, but rather from a strong philosophical belief that it was the best thing for my children, to educate each of them according to their individual needs and personalities (‘chanoch l’naar al pi darko’).

I didn’t and don’t believe that a one size fits all institution with hired workers can know and understand a child and their needs (crucial to effectively educating them) as well as a loving and motivated parent.  I felt that building a strong family would happen most effectively when the family had ample time to spend together in a relaxed way, not pulled in lots of directions all day long, every day, with everyone coming together at the end when they were tired and uptight.  And there were lots of other more specific concerns about education and child raising that I had.

As the years have gone by, my belief about all of these things has only gotten stronger. I’m at the beautiful place in life where I don’t have to wonder if this homeschooling business was all a major mistake on my part and what will all come out from it in the end. I’ve been so fortunate to have seen the things I trusted to happen, happen, beyond what I ever hoped for.  Is life perfect?  No.  Are my kids perfect?  Obviously not.  And me?  You all know I’m not perfect by now!  🙂

But I can’t tell you how incredibly grateful I feel every single day for the life I’m privileged to have with my family.  I don’t take it for granted because I hear and see from all that goes on around me how special what we have is.

Avivah