How to Tell if Homeschooling is Not Working
Last year I got a great question from Leslie on my curriculum post. She asked,
Would you consider writing a post on how to evaluate the difference between “Homeschooling is not always fun and easy, and that’s okay!” and “Homeschooling is not working”? It’s hard for me to let go of wondering on the tough days if they’d be happier in school…
I always meant to write a response, but better late than never. As someone who has moved kids between public school and homeschooling, and also relied on community college and online classes, I though I could share some of my thoughts on when homeschooling is definitely not working, in the hopes it may help another mom decide between, “This is just a bad day, homeschooling is still the best option for my child.” and “This is more than a bad day; homeschooling is no longer working for my child.”
Should I quit homeschooling?
I don’t think the decision is black or white. For one thing, it might just be one aspect of homeschooling that isn’t working. You may not need to throw in the towel entirely. Its very often not all or nothing. Your situation may be improved by changing things for just one child, dropping one activity from your familiy’s calendar, or simply clarifying your mission. I never recommend quitting on a Friday and enrolling all the kids on Monday without a lot of thought and experimentation. And while I have switched up curriculum choices mid-year (or sooner) I never switched mid-year between public and homeschooling. There are probably cases where that is the prudent choice, however, I am very much a year by year type person and I finish out the current year, before enrolling a child in public school, or withdrawing them. That being said, here are a few signs that homeschooling is not working.
You hate it.
And not just for a day, or even a season. It’s beyond the normal February blahs or burnout. If you actually don’t want to be a homeschooler anymore, but you keep doing it for some other reason; you don’t want to let your husband down, or no one around you is supportive of you stopping. You might feel trapped. If you actually hate homeschooling and already know you want to quit but for whatever reason you haven’t, then homeschooling is not working for your family. Your hatred of it is going to sour everything no matter how much you think you’re hiding it.
Some reflection is required; do you just hate grading, or the planning, the demands of co-op, or teaching one subject in particular? If it’s just one aspect you hate, you can try to improve that area first, or if your difficulties are primarily with one child, outsource more of that child’s education. However, in some homes, homeschooling was never a “call” it was an ideal imposed or undertaken begrudgingly that has persisted for too long. You should not be miserable and dread each new year. If you are, it’s time to quit. I give you permission. (You’d be amazed how many moms just need to hear support from one other person to do what they’ve wanted to do for years.)
Your kids hate it.
Kids rarely like school in any form, however when your child tells you that he hates homeschooling, you should listen. Again, work with them to get to the root of what specifically he dislikes so much. Very often its something he will dislike in any other school environment and that you can actually make more tolerable at home. And you should! Work with your kids to make difficult subjects easier for them to manage. Don’t make them muscle through whatever’s easiest for you. But if he’s asking to go to school, making reasonable arguments to give public/ private school a try, and nothing you do at home is working, let him go. He will either decide he doesn’t like it any better and ask to be homeschooled again, or he will thrive – and that is a good thing. The older the child, the more say he should have in his education.
It’s hurting your relationship with your kids.
It’s hard to be a teacher one minute and mom the next. I still often struggle to flip the switch. If you hate homeschooling or one or more of your kids hate homeschooling, chances are your relationship with each other is struggling. When the animosity of the school day bleeds into home life, it can be an ongoing battle that seeps into dinner time, the evening and weekends; no time is free from school struggles because you can’t leave school at school. Prioritize a happy family life and a loving relationship with your kids over homeschooling. If you homeschool your kids K – 12, but they move out and you never hear from them again, I wouldn’t consider that a win. Your relationship with your kids is lifelong, not from 0 to 18; you should plan with the big picture in mind.
Some parents use homeschooling to shelter their kids to an extreme, and that will backfire. Chances are you will fight more as they get older and want more freedom. If you obstinately keep them cut off from activities, people, and work outside your highly monitored homeschool circles, they will resent you and eventually break free and probably reject your worldview. If homeschooling is driving a wedge between you and your children, it’s not working for your family.
It’s causing problems in your marriage.
You and your spouse need to be on the same page regarding homeschooling. Each needs to have realistic expectations for the others role in homeschooling. Dad who are at work all day, need to understand the difficulty of managing a household while teaching a gaggle of little kids anything, say nothing of Latin. And moms who homeschool need to understand they can’t push off all disciplinary actions until the end of the day when dad walks in and bombard him with the task of doling out a days worth of punishments on kids who won’t listen. Being a homeschooling family is more than “just” educating your kids at home, it impacts everything in your life. It’s not a separate sphere that can be managed perfectly on its own. Its also a demanding job that takes away time from other tasks, and it only gets more demanding the more kids you have and the older they get. If you and your husband regularly argue over homeschooling, or if one or the other is constantly trying to sabotage the other’s efforts in regards to homeschooling, its not working for your family. If you can’t say to your spouse, “I don’t want to homeschool anymore”, and after a calm discussion, reach a solution you’re both in support of, homeschooling is not working for your family.
It’s a financial burden.
Many families, even after careful budgeting and cutting back struggle to live on one income. I live in New Jersey; I see it first hand, and our family lived it for many years. Trying to work, even part time, and homeschool a large family is draining. Yes, moms do it, but it may not work for your family. If a second income is necessary, you can try to work and homeschool (and maybe ask your husband to help more with homeschooling) but it may be a sign that homeschooling is not working for your family. I understand it can be hard to give up homeschooling in this situation, especially if you and your children enjoy homeschooling, however you can still be actively involved in your children’s education even if they’re in school and you need to work. Homeschooling can be a goal to work towards, not something you need to give up forever.
You cannot meet your child’s special education needs.
If one child’s needs are taking up all your time and making it nearly impossible to educate your other children, homeschooling may not be working for your family. Schools provide specialized education, support, and therapies. To provide all the extra support yourself, and drive to private therapies can easily eat up most of your time. School provides it all free, along with transportation. I know first hand the problems public schools can have meeting the unique needs of your child (say nothing of the fact that private schools rarely accept students with disabilities) however homeschooling must meet the needs of all your kids not just the neediest. And depending on your child’s diagnosis, you may not have any idea how to educate her; do you have time to learn?
I have had parents come to me and ask my opinion about pulling their disabled children out of school, usually because the school was not providing the child with enough support. I always advise the parents to fight for what their child is entitled to first, and consider homeschooling second. Once the parent thinks about all the things they will need to do to provide a similar education at home (that will require a parent to quit working and stay home full time) they are motivated to fight harder to make the schools do what they are required to do. I don’t want anyone to homeschool because they felt they were forced into it-that’s a terrible start! You should choose to do it because you believe in it and are excited. I love teaching Fulton and Teddy at home now, but long time readers know it’s been a struggle and I needed the help of the public school district for many years to make homeschooling an overall success for our family.
Your kids refuse to do their schoolwork and/ or you’re having behavioral issues.
You absolutely must have order and discipline in your home to homeschool. Even if you’re a gentle parent, if you tell your child to do his work, he must complete it or there are consistent consequences. And those consequences have to come immediately from you, not be some distant threat of “wait until your father gets home”. Little children who do not listen, turn into tweens and teens who do not listen. And one disobedient child can ruin the school day for everyone. If a child in school does not complete work, they will fail, or worse case, repeat a grade. If your child does not do his work and you keep pushing him forward, he will be ill prepared for high school, college and life. Sending your child to school should not be a threat you throw around all willy nilly, but your child needs to understand, homeschooling is not guaranteed without cooperation. And sometimes, kids do better when they’re answering to someone else, especially as they get older. If a child’s defiance is preventing their education or that of their siblings, homeschooling is not working for your family.
It’s not happening-period, due to an ongoing crisis situation.
I have homeschooled through bedrest, new babies, moving, hospitalizations, surgery and recovery, unemployment and lots of smaller emergencies. I knew each was a temporary rough patch that we could work our schooling around, and no one’s overall education suffered. In fact, homeschooling made many of those situations easier to manage because of the flexibility. But sometimes, schooling stops, and as much as we try, it never picks back up again. We keep thinking the next day, or week, or month will be easier and we’ll catch up, but the uncertainty never goes away. I can’t tell you what an ongoing crisis situation will be for your family, but some examples might be depression, homelessness, taking care of sick relative, or welcoming lots of babies into your home over several years with no local support system in place. You might be able to claim “unschooling” for a bit, but, especially depending on what state you live in and the goals of your older children, homeschooling may not be working for your family.
It’s okay to quit homeschooling.
Maybe you’ll come back to it with one, some, or all of your children, but if you don’t, it’s okay. Maybe homeschooling worked for a bit and now it doesn’t, and that’s okay. Life changes and sometimes we can adapt homeschooling to suit our new situation, and sometimes we can’t. If you want to homeschool, I want to help you make that happen, but I will not hesitate to tell you if I think it’s a bad idea. Homeschooling does not make you a better Catholic or more virtuous person, and it doesn’t make your family more holy. Enrolling your child in school is not sinful and it doesn’t make you a failure. Hold your head high and don’t allow the comments of others to make you question your judgement. If you’ve gone through this list and none of these things are true for your homeschool, then realize you’re probably just in a rough patch, and with some minor adjustments you’ll be able to get your groove back. But if one or many of these statements ring true, then seriously consider if homeschool is truly working for your family. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. I’m very curious to hear other thoughts on the subject.
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Well, I’m a reluctant homeschooler for my one son ( “when to quit public school” is a topic for another day.). My husband isn’t fond of it, so there’s always some tension about if he’s doing enough work or if I’m being too easy/hard/teaching the right things. The current compromise is some HS classes, a virtual community college class, and me for 2 subjects. He’s mostly good about doing the work, but flags around holidays and transitions. Sometimes I do want to throw in the towel. It’s lonely and hard and I always doubt whether it’s the right choice. But I need to complete this semester. We’ll see if he passes his school classes. If not, I have to figure out something else. I can’t take another school year of constant messages from the teachers. I wish he could do better at school; maybe jr. college classes will work better. Frankly, a GED looks pretty tempting.
I get it. (And I did think about writing another post about how to tell when public school isn’t working, but I feel much less qualified there!) Sometimes I think homeschooling is “the lesser of two evils” and you’ve just got to make it work because public school is even worse for your child. It’s a tough position to be in, but unfortunately, some times there isn’t a perfect option, we just need to do the best we can.
This is a great post. We homeschooled our 4 children for 10 years. We discerned that the oldest should enter high school in 2023. We had recently moved, and she struggled to make friends in the homeschooling circles of our new area. Homeschooling had become too isolating for her given our circumstances. Then in 2024 all the rest went to school. I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and the treatment protocol was going to make it nearly impossible for me to continue homeschooling for at least 9 months. The known side effects would render me so debilitated for so long that my children would have just languished at home. Even though all of them were elementary school aged and older, they deserved more than I could give. Continuing to homeschool under these circumstances would have been detrimental to our kids. They needed engagement, routine, and stability at school to weather the instability and uncertainty of mom in cancer treatment at home. School and the community they found there saved them from greater trauma.
Homeschooling should not be an identity. It is something we do for a time for particular reasons, but it should not become who we are.
Prayers for your continued recovery JKA. And “homeschooling should not be an identity” – exactly; though his can be very hard to accept at times. I often wonder how I will feel when my youngest graduates and I can no longer identify as a homeschooler. I hope you received support when you transitioned all your kids from homeschooling to public school.
Thank you for this post. My daughter is part of a hybrid school for the first time this year, to see if it helps, and to be honest it is something that I have grieved and felt failure over. I love homeschooling, and this is my only daughter (still homeschooling all my boys). But we made the choice because of multiple reasons on this list. And I have gradually been able to transition into being hopeful that this will be wonderful for her, although still anxious.
One year at a time! The feelings of failure and grief are real. Prayers for a successful year for you all.
In my opinion, a child refusing to do school work won’t improve being switched to public/private school unless you’re being very intentional with getting homework done during the time they are home. So basically you still should figure out a way to solve the same problem, just instead of having you all day, they get a break. Throwing up your hands and saying “I guess they’ll repeat a grade” is not how any parent should approach their child’s education, whether it’s homeschool or private/public school. By the way, I’ve heard stories online of how some children are being passed up through the grades (in public school) even though they cannot read or write, so being held back a grade might not even happen even though it should.
Also, while obviously you cannot make your child do something, I believe that there should be a way to negotiate getting them to do the work. Finding what motivates/inspires them will be key. You could also start with something less school related like chores around the house.
Good points Catherine. In my limited experience with my kids and other families I know, some kids (usually older) will happily complete work in a timely manner for another teacher (be it online or in person), but not their mom. So sometimes, you can outsource the homeschooling to an online school, but sometimes those kids ultimately thrive in a public/ private school setting. But yes, for kids who continue to not complete work at school, there needs to be a strategy in place, though now you have the help of the district who can potentially diagnose a learning disability or lend more encouragement and incentives to help with learning. Certainly public school has its problems (pushing through kids who don’t know the material being one of them), but so does homeschooling, so sometimes you just have to choose which problems you want to deal with that year. Some years its public school problems, other years, its homeschool problems.
Getting kids to do what they’re told is another whole post! 🙂 I have written before about the topic, and stressed that if you have kids who don’t listen, it is helpful to focus on the virtue of obedience for a bit, unrelated to school.
My older 2 went to public school in 2023, my younger 2 joined last year. It was time! Multiple medical needs in the family, my own capacity, lots and lots of fighting . . . And also realizing I wasn’t really great at it (or maybe my style wasnt a good fit for my kids). I appreciate reading this post and feeling validated in hindsight!
Thanks Emily! I’m glad you figured out what works best for your family!
I cried reading this. Thank you for such honesty. I was homeschooled k-12 myself so when the when the opportunity arose to homeschool this year I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was walking into. But this journey has been TOUGH. It’s not working for our family and straining both our marriage and my relationships with my kids. I feel like a failure, but have been encouraged to read that sometimes it just doesn’t work. Thank you!