When we made the decision to homeschool the kids, it wasnā€™t a light one. I was never the mom that had dreamt of homeschooling their children since I was a child. I was really hesitant to pull my kids out of school when we were preparing to move but after some issues with racism and a lack of challenge in her class, I decided it was what was best for us. Now a couple years later, Iā€™m discovering that I had quite a few misconceptions about homeschooling.

As my phone rings, questions are asked and assumptions made, I know that the misconceptions that I had about homeschooling werenā€™t just had by me. So letā€™s chat about seven of these.

7 Common Misconceptions About Homeschooling

Youā€™re home all the time.

Iā€™m sitting and writing this from my car as I sit and wait on Mini to be finished with chess. This year, Mini has done chess, robotics and dance. These have included chess tournaments, robotics competitions and dance performances. I feel like I am NEVER home.

Kids donā€™t socialize.

Again, I wrote this as Mini was inside a church socializing with other students while learning about chess. And there are various homeschool groups that are local where you meet up and do things together.

Everyone adapts immediately.

This was a misconception that I had. But we all had to go through a de-schooling process where we basically did nothing for a couple months as we figured out what our homeschool like was going to look like.

You have to follow a structured curriculum.

Some do. There are amazing programs like Classical Homeschool. There are also online school programs that still qualify as homeschool. And then there are many people that belive in unschooling. We do a hybrid of unschooling and eclectic–I make up our curriculum, lessons plans, etc with a combination of resources.

You have to buy textbooks or other materials.

Nope! If you choose to follow a curriculum that needs textbooks, you can get them from your local school.

You have to pay for all of the curriculums available.

There are a lot of really great curriculum options that have fees. But there are some really great free options. While we didnā€™t use them, they were really helpful in how we developed our own.

There is lots of free time.

Friends. Free time for me is non-existant. The kids get some but we have really active days as we try to balance social time with school time with my work. Itā€™s hard and it can be intense some days but free time? Ha!

Also to note: I thought that there would be waaaay more things to do for kids in abcā€™s age range but I was wrong. None of the groups that weā€™re part of have anything thatā€™s geared towards her age range or BCā€™s so most of our interations there are spent in the car while Mini goes and does her thing. I will also say that during Black Friday is a great time to buy memberships to museums and things. We got a family membership to both the Childrenā€™s Museum of Atlanta and the Fernbank for about $100–I regret not getting the High Museum too!

Your turn: What misconceptions do you have about homeschooling?