Oh, those homeschoolers!

Today’s Friday Meme at Heart of the Matter (online homeschool magazine) has us answering the question:

“What are some of the crazy questions you’ve been asked about homeschooling?”

Since we’ve been homeschooling for 15 years, and my children have never been in a traditional school (except for a Spanish class here and there, and now, college), I’ve gotten a few questions over the years.  Here are some of my favorites:

1- The ever popular “socialization” question. This one is always fun to deal with, but it was most funny when that question came from my husband’s co-worker, who REGULARLY had to leave work to pick up his son from school because he’d been fighting.  Socialization

2 – Once, in a department store, a lady asked why my children were with me and not in school. I told her that we homeschooled and had  1/2 day of school on Fridays. She smiled and said, “Homeschooling has so many benefits, but do you ever regret it since it  means that  they’ll never be able to attend college?”  I never did convince her that homeschoolers go to college everyday.

3 – At my son’s baseball game one summer, a mother “heard” from another mom that I was a homeschooler. She asked a lot of academic questions, as her daughter was struggling terribly in school. After a while, she sighed and said, “I wish I could do it (homeschool) but I don’t think I could handle all those home visits and paperwork!”      Pardon?       She then told me that it was ‘common knowledge’ at her daughter’s school that homeschooling parents were buried in paperwork required by the school board, and that homeschoolers’ homes were required to be visited once a week by local school personnel and that curricula and children’s work must be approved by this personnel.   I’m happy to say that we cleared up the ‘common knowledge’  and she is a happy homeschooling Mom today.

Who’s makin’ up all this stuff?  Funny