I’m not sure that there are any more accurate homeschooling stereotypes. The truth is that now homeschooling comes in all shapes and sizes. All kinds of families and all kinds of ideas about education. However most of the time it’s just us homeschoolers that know this and the stereotypes in the mainstream abound.
Here are some well known stereotypes that our family shatters!
Homeschool Stereotypes
1. My Kids are Loud & Boisterous -Â Often the stereotype of homeschooling families is that the children are all well-behaved, quiet kids. Oh, how I wish it were true, but not in my house! While we work hard on the behavior part, my kids are loud. I blame their Dad 😉
Get all the kids in the swimming pool and it sounds like we have the entire neighborhood in there and that’s from the front yard! I’m sure our neighbors love us.
2. My Kids Don’t Like to Read -Â While a couple of kids do struggle with reading, the ones who don’t just simply aren’t that interested in reading. There is always someone to play with or to talk to or walls to stare at, I guess.
I love to read so I’m still hopeful that this will change as they continue to get older.
3. We Watch TV and We Have Cable -Â I know, the horror. We didn’t always have cable, in fact we went many years without. Now we have it and while my husband and I don’t watch tv much at all, the kids do. Obviously we limit what they watch and how much they watch, but we are a homeschooling family of tv watchers!
4. We Don’t Have any Budding Einsteins – Sadly, none of our kids will be heading off to Harvard at 15. The truth is our kids are working at grade level and some are working below grade level. Homeschooling isn’t just for the brilliant kids, it is just as effective for the average kids too.Â
5. My Kids Drive me Crazy! – I know it seems like all homeschooling moms have a ton of patience but that’s not entirely true. I love to be around my kids. I really do. It’s a privilege to homeschool my children. However, I would be lying if I didn’t admit to looking forward to bedtime and for cherishing those times I can get a date night with my husband or a mom’s night out. While I never want my kids to think I don’t want them around (the back to school commercials with the giddy parents make me sad), Â I also treasure those quiet times to recharge and regroup.
Are there any homeschool stereotypes that your family ruin?
If you liked this post you might like 9 Things I will NEVER do as a Homeschooling Mom and I Can’t Homeschool I Have Too Many Kids!
Homeschooling in a Large Family - Pinterest board
love this post! I would have to say my biggest one is: we only have 2 boys. You wouldn’t believe the crazy stares and comments I get at homeschool conventions, “you only have 2?” Then I would add we don’t make our own bread or soap. 😉
Thanks Stef! The family size thing is always a kicker. Either too small, too big or in our case we don’t “match”!
I love each of these.
Now, you would really disappoint me if you let them read Diary of a Wimpy Kid. 😉
You have an awesome family!
Mary recently posted…Homeschooling When Dad is Away
Just between you and me – they have read it! 😉
Love this – I can say my family, too! Although we don’t have cable, you can watch anything these days on the computer! I would add – my kids don’t play musical instruments and my boys love video games!
Oh the musical instruments – that’s a good one! We tried, but it was a no go here 😉
We don’t hate public school! Lots of the PSers think we are antiPS, but we really aren’t! That’s my myth busted!
Us too! I am the director of a mentoring program between our church and the local public school! We love supporting the local schools 🙂 Just because we homeschool doesn’t mean that we don’t want the best for our local schools!
Thank you for posting this! It’s so true. We are huge supporters of our local PSs. My husband is a former public school teacher AND is thinking about going back to teaching some day when our finances are in better shape.
LOVE this post 🙂
Why, I only have ONE kid! And she also went to public school, which actually worked quite fine for the first two years she came to our family, at age 13 and a half. She’s an ESL student. I never dreamed of homeschooling, until my daughter begged me to, in highschool. I work part-time, in addition to homeschooling ONE child! We don’t drive a minivan!
Chandra Regan recently posted…Fun Mother/Daughter Field Trip
This is my first year of homeschooling. I have two girls, 16 and 12. My 16 year old is an honors student this year after being a below average student the last two years and my youngest is Learning the horrors of doing her own work. (She is special needs and has always been able to scrape thru with teachers focusing on the answer rather than the problems.) We are making progress, slowly but surely. When we decided to homeschool a lot of friends and family assumed that I was enrolling my children into a cult or iding them away in a closet refusing to let them enjoy life. Myth Busted: Home schooling is NOT, I repeat, NOT a cult. No one is forcing them to memorize their final speech and I refuse to serve KoolAid. My children are in more groups and extra curricular now then when they went to a brick n mortar. I can’t say it is all roses and carnations, some days…. I PRAY FOR BEDTIME. Other days… I Pray for a friend to call just so I can talk to another human being over 16. But I do admit that being able to spend time with them has been amazing and I feel blessed to have the opportunity to do this.
So glad to see someone post and be Transparent!!!!! Out side of the 31 days of homeschooling the ADHD child, this month this has been the best post I have read and encourages me to keep doing what I am doing!
Oh yes we do! I have a bipolar teen who is super creative but is not overly studious. I have a 7 yr old who is super sensitive. We “break the rules” all the time and just have days off to do art work. We sleep in. We laugh. We live. We don’t SCHOOL, we live and learn.
Mary Herrington recently posted…No Strings Attached
For us, we don’t have musicians…ie. violinists, cello, pianists. I can’t imagine our house ever being that quiet for someone to hear as they practice an instrument!
Patty recently posted…A Quiet Week – Daybook Post
Aww now I want to write on the same topic! LOL! Great post, Jen.
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Thank you!!!!
We don’t drive around singing hymns and the Sound of Music soundtracks together.
My husband is in a rock band, while we know hymns and I sometimes break out in a random show-tune (successful in initiating the kids eye roll every time) we are just as versed in rock-and-roll, maybe with a little are guitar as well.
We don’t do co-ops or home school group outings.
Great post… We are a homeschool family of one 9 yr old girl. We love Netflix (not all educational), wish we had cable. We dont start school at 8am sharp (more like 10:30ish) We dont do instruments, but we love anything crafty. Don’t do co-ops, but have tons of cousins. And if we are in a funk, we just take the day off. Perks of homeschooling!
Well…. 19 years in, and while we do propagate some stereotypes (large evangelical Christian family, recently downgraded from 12-passenger to a minivan, homesteading, bread-making, girls have long hair 😉 ) in other ways, we don’t: we never colour-coordinate, don’t do co-ops or the local hs support group, we sleep in (even with farm animals), kids are average academically, we watch tv and listen to secular music (although we are picky about content of both), play video games, and eat more junk food than we should. And– horror of horrors– we receive social assistance (don’t get me started on that whole “free ride and everyone should have drug tests” thing…)