When we first began to research homeschooling, prevailing wisdom told us not to place too much pressure on ourselves and not to look at the decision as a life sentence. Take it one year at a time, one day at a time, whatever – but don’t think of it as something we were deciding once and for all.

This idea makes a lot of sense; but not for me. I pondered and prayed and fought the idea for MONTHS before we finally decided to pursue homeschooling, making our final decision and notifying our school district just a handful of days before school was set to begin. It was such an exhausting, emotional decision for me that I am not interested in revisiting it each year. Of course, if something were to arise that made me think our family needed a schooling change, I would not refuse to consider that. But, I’m not going to reevaluate homeschooling each year, just for the sake of reevaluation. That’s our story (and our choice) and we’re sticking to it. Weird? Maybe.

Now, on the flip side, I have a friend who just made the decision to begin homeschooling her two boys. Neither of the boys are thrilled, but my friend is feeling very led to spend the year serving, traveling and learning outside the classroom. It’s a beautiful and inspiring plan, and one she prefers to contain within the next nine months. She is open to the idea of homeschooling for subsequent years, but it is planning to on-ramp her kids back to public school next year. Weird? Maybe.

At the root of homeschooling is the idea of PERSONAL CHOICE and it’s one of the things I love most about it. My school doesn’t look like your school, and yours doesn’t look like your neighbor’s, but we’re all learning and growing and doing our best to do right by our children. We don’t have to cover the same subjects, spend the same number of hours on school each day, or even gather our children the same days of the week as each other – and it’s all fine. It’s weird and wonderful and perfectly fine.

So, how do you approach your homeschooling choice, as a lifetime or annual membership? Lets talk about it.