Nurturing His Potential: Embracing Homeschool for Our Son’s Growth

My son had a great 3rd-grade year. His teacher was amazing, he was making friends in a new town, and everything seemed to be going well.

Once a week, I would volunteer in his classroom, I wanted to be involved in his learning, and help out his teacher a little bit. I was involved in the programs, and I knew what his schedule and programs were.

Because I was so heavily involved, I knew what my son’s potential was. He is a bright kid that has always received decent grades.

Halfway through 3rd grade I began to get reports about him that didn’t make any sense.

He was beginning to fall behind in multiple areas in class. I was informed that “he was a very smart kid, but he had difficulty completing tasks on time”. This was leading him to miss out on instruction and fall behind.

When I addressed this to my son, he explained that the “lessons are so boring, that he was just waiting for recess and lunch to start”.

Typical boy response, right?

Well, as the months went by, I paid closer and closer attention to my son’s habits and behaviors to the lessons he said were “boring”. I watched my son’s eyes glaze over as his teacher gave a math lesson at the front of the class. As she finished her instructions she said “Ok! We will spend fifteen minutes working on our assignment before we go to lunch!”

Rather than jumping into this assignment, my kid looked at the clock, quickly calculated when lunch would be, and began to doodle on his paper.

BINGO. He had learned how to run out the clock.

He knew in fifteen minutes, he would get to put away his work and go to lunch. There were no repercussions for not finishing his assignment on time. He was in 3rd grade!

Worst case scenario, he would scramble to finish at a later time, but at this moment, he didn’t care.

The lunch bell rang, he shoved his lunch in his bag and he took off.

He never finished that assignment. It was lost in his desk until it was thrown out later.

As the year came to a close, he was completing less and less of his work. Anytime I asked about an assignment (that I knew he didn’t work on) he would quickly explain the concept to me. He knew what was being said, he was just bored sitting in the classroom.

This was the moment that I decided to do better for him.

I wouldn’t want to sit bored in a class for 7 hours a day. Of course, a hyperactive little boy wasn’t succeeding doing that either.

My son had a phenomenal teacher. She explained things so well, made each day so fun, and taught the kids so many valuable skills. BUT he was not thriving in the school environment. He was not reaching his potential.

I have learned to teach him in a way that is task-based, rather than time-based. He can spend as much time as he wants to work on one assignment, whether it is twenty minutes or two hours. It is his job to take responsibility to complete it.

The majority of the time, he will knock it out quickly so he can go play.

Making the decision to homeschool doesn’t have to come with a drastic story of how the system has failed, or how awful the kids were.

It doesn’t need to have a long explanation behind it, that shows why this decision was made. Choosing to homeschool can be as simple as wanting to have those 180 days per year with your child.

It could be that you want to travel with him more, to show him a life that you didn’t have. Or it could be that you want to know what is going into your child’s mind and heart each day.

Whatever the reason, whatever your story is, we are glad that you are here.