While I think every homeschooler has these moments, wondering if it's time to send the kids back to the brick and mortar building, it seems to come up more in families that are not homeschooling against a system. We have friends that have always homeschooled and always will, up until the day that Junior moves out for college/trade school or marriage. Our other friends that fell into homeschooling due to medical reasons, academic reasons, military reasons or a host of other situations, wrestle with this every single year. Is this the year? What about next year?
We live in a district with a high proportion of charter schools that have lottery-based admissions. The most likely entry point is 6th grade. By default, most people who are looking to make a change- either from homeschooling to school or from school to school, have to make it in the winter of 5th grade. It's a huge decision because whatever you choose feels like it locks kids in for the rest of high school. It's painstakingly difficult to look at your 10 year old and try to determine what kind of person he will be in seven years and which high school is the best option.
After all the thinking, the pros and cons lists and the debates and discussions, we decided to forget about it for a year. My son is happy, sleeping well, as access to a huge amount of experiences, curriculum and life discoveries that he wouldn't have sitting in a classroom 8 hours a day with two more hours of homework. As I've said before, my irregular pentagon doesn't fit nicely in a square box anyway. I'm confident that the time will come when going to traditional school is a no-brainer and doesn't cause us to feel so tortured by the decision.
In the meantime, why would we want to give this up?
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