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Homeschooling Your Children And The Ins And Outs Of Do It Yourself Education
By Donald Saunders
Many people see homeschooling very much as 'do it yourself education' and most parents immediately see themselves as the 'you' in 'yourself'. As a consequence, many parents who have busy lives earning a living or undertaking other important activities, and especially single parents, tend to dismiss any ideas of homeschooling out of hand. But are they wise to take this course of action?
Homeschooling has been with us for an extremely long time now and involves in excess of 1,000,000 children in the US alone and experience demonstrates that are a wide range of options available to parents nowadays. Indeed, it is no surprise to find that parents in just about any situation which you can think of have found a solution to homeschooling their children.
Of course we are all familiar with the traditional two parent family where dad goes out to work and mum stays home and this situation makes homeschooling a reasonably simple option. Since the 1960s however our society has changed a great deal and today there are a wide range of family situations including, extended families, role reversal, single parents, same-sex couples and much more.
Every situation carries with it both problems and advantages for homeschooling and it is a question of examining both and then looking for ways to overcome the difficulties and enhance the advantages.
As an example, a number of parents turn to their wider family or friends for assistance and invite friends or family into their home to help. This is not new of course and, for a very long time, it was not uncommon for families to offer a friend or an older family member such as an uncle accommodation in exchange for helping with the care and education of a child.
Neighbors can also frequently provide assistance. Many 'stay-at-home' moms are already providing day care facilities for children and, with the continued rise in homeschooling numbers, babysitting services are being extended more and more to encompass homeschooling.
In more and more cases families are also getting together to provide homeschooling on a 'group' basis.
Another increasingly popular option is to employ a tutor. Tutors nowadays come from a variety of different backgrounds, at all ages and include both specialists, like those teaching music or languages, as well as general tutors. In fact, it is not unusual to find ex-private or public school teachers who are unhappy with the 'system' becoming tutors because of their basic love of teaching.
The majority of parents think that private tutoring is simply beyond their financial reach but, after some careful research, they are normally surprised to learn that the cost of tutoring is not beyond their means.
Another important consideration is the children themselves. It is surprising just how well motivated children are by the independence which homeschooling brings and many parents find that educating a child at home can be a lot less time consuming than you might imagine.
Should you find yourself tempted by the advantages of homeschooling over the present poor public school system then do not fall into the common pitfall of simply dismissing the idea out-of-hand. Take time to examine the options open to you and you could well be surprised to discover that it is easier than you think.
Parenting4Dummies.com provides a comprehensive and growing resource of information, advice and articles on many aspects of parenting including a range of parenting tips and also provides comprehensive advice for homeschooling online.
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