April 92015

Well, it has happened at last. We are on the countdown to graduation! My oldest will be in cap and gown this Spring and I will be prepping school for only one child this fall. I pulled out his cap and gown and he put it on. He thinks he looks like a dork and I am not sure about the fit on the cap, but I feet excited for him and for his future. It makes me think about the reasons that I taught him at home.

One of my main reasons for homeschooling was to provide my boys with the time and space to find out what they loved and what they were good at. It is really hard to do when you are on the public school treadmill, A dear friend of mine and I were talking about her son who dropped out of high school and got his GED. Her son is bright and creative but like so many kids these days he just has not found his way. The reality is that there is no law that says a child must graduate at 18. It says that they must attend and that the schools are required to provide services until 18, or until 22 if they have special needs. So what happens if they are not ready at 18, if they need a little more time? Not all kids are ready for the world at 18. Yeah, sometimes it is the parents fault for failing to prepare them; I have met those parents. (If you are one, you are not helping your child; you are crippling them because you want them to love you.) But what if they are working toward their dreams and it just takes more time than what society says they should have? How do you know and what do you do?


I notice in the papers that all the school systems are planning their budgets for next year, so have you started planning next year? Do you set a budget, set aside money every month for buying materials?
What do you spend on average every year and how do you stretch that budget to cover everything?

Let me know.

Now back to those graduation announcements.

Terri