This school’s so exclusive, you must be born into it!

As a young parent, I had heard of home schooling as an option in the past but in a very limited sense. My mind was full of misconceptions, as I thought home schooling was only something arranged for stage kids who rehearse all day and live out of a trailer, or maybe for children who were being raised by hippies. However, after my son had to change three schools in his first three years of pre-school, due to a number of disappointing reasons, I read a few articles and books by John Holt that made me sit up and take notice and seriously consider home schooling for us.

My whole family was going through many changes. My daughter was just born in March 2012, and my father had just been diagnosed with cancer, and my son’s new class 1 teacher was giving us a really hard time. Our stress levels were at a peak at that point and it was time to reconsider a lot of things. I didn’t know where to start, and one day, I just Googled ‘homeschooling in Goa’ and did a bit of snooping around and somehow managed to get in touch with some homeschoolers not far from our home who were more experienced than us. They were very helpful and positive. When we met their own homeschooled children, we were relieved to see that they were interesting, passionate and friendly teenagers who were involved in a lot of interesting and meaningful projects. It was very encouraging for us to meet their whole family as they gave us a glimpse into what our future could look like. The very next day, we went to meet our son’s principal and asked for his leaving certificate. My husband and I believe that the happiness and emotional well being of our children must be our top priority. We are always committed to cutting the stress out of our lives. He did have his worries and concerns at the start, but it took us all of two days to make this decision together, after asking our son, who was just six then, and he was thrilled when we told him that homeschool was an option.

We get very mixed reactions from people who discover that we homeschool. My son gets quite annoyed with the reactions, and in the beginning, I have often caught him lying to friends that he goes to school! He says that it’s too tiring to explain all the time. The reactions I get from people fail to surprise me anymore, as we have been homeschooling for almost 3 years now. Some people are shocked, some are interested in homeschooling too, and some are quick to argue and tell us we’re wrong for depriving our children of a ‘proper’ education.

The debate in my own mind is no different from the debates most parents have within themselves about whether they are parenting right. Doubts come and go, but we do the best we can. The important thing is to never limit yourself. If you keep pushing your own limits, then your child’s horizon is expanding too. That’s my responsibility. That is what I try to do all the time.

My daughter, being the younger child, is very baby-ish. My son was a much more mature three year old. When I look at my daughter, I feel so estatic that I can keep her with me at home, and let her take her time growing up. If I didn’t do this, I can imagine how quickly her innocence and freedom might have been snatched from her. She’s very free spirited, and I like that. She is bold, very active, loud and bossy and I know very few teachers that would have the patience to deal with loud, bold and bossy three year olds. She sees her nine year old brother read and do experiments and discover things, and she gets very inspired by watching him and mimicking him. Nobody is telling her what to do yet, but that’s the joy of learning at home. She is doing it on her own, very naturally, and is learning to be her own teacher.

My son didn’t take to school well at all, and I guess this was because of a mistake on my part. Being a new parent I was paranoid about getting him to join playschool at age 2, and now, to me that sounds so foolish. After we stopped sending him to school, I saw wonderful changes in him that are so beautiful. It’s hard to describe because you cannot measure how much a child thrives. It’s the only word I can use to tell you of the change in him. He began to thrive. It’s like I had a plant in a small pot and watered it once daily and sunned it once a day at a particular time, and it was very restricted. But when I took the plant out and put it in soil in a forest, it grew in leaps and bounds as nature fed and nurtured it. That’s my son in, and then out of school.

Soon after we began homeschooling, the first ever India Homeschoolers Conference was held in Khandala in February 2013. Over 100 homeschoolers from various parts of India all got together for 4 days and nights and had a lovely time in each others company, learning, playing, discovering… It was a huge help meeting all these people who soon became a sort of extended family. For me, apart from the vast numbers of websites and resources online, this was the biggest help. The conference is held every year, and this year it will be held in North India in April.

Rebecca will be back with her next article on myths and a day in her child’s life in her next post. If you have any questions then do leave it in the comments below.