10 Homeschooling Difficulties

Recently I posted an article on what my favourite things about homeschooling are. However, there are always two sides to a coin. In the interests of honesty and balance, I decided to post a second piece describing the 10 things I find most difficult about home education.

Now I don’t want to put anyone off the idea, but I do want to help you avoid unrealistic expectations, and hopefully prepare you a little for some of the challenges that might lie ahead. In my experience, homeschooling is definitely not all sunshine and butterflies! But given that we’ve chosen to pursue it, obviously the positives outweigh the negatives for us.

So, here are the 10 things I find most difficult or challenging at this point in my homeschooling journey:

1. Fitting in household chores around schooling

The homeschooling lifestyle is messy, because you are attempting to do lots of different things all at once. Eg:

• Manage a household – washing, cleaning, shopping (food + clothes + household items), arranging tradespeople, cooking dinner, paying bills etc. Even with some paid help, it is still a lot to manage. The bigger your family, the more work!
• Educate your school-aged kids – teaching, managing, disciplining, marking, taking them to activities, arranging social interaction
• Childcare – caring for, playing with, teaching and engaging with babies and toddlers
• Volunteer work for church and/or homeschooling activities
• In some cases also fitting in paid work

In reality, these things don’t get done anywhere near perfectly. Many of them can be combined and streamlined. Kids can be trained to contribute and lighten the load (highly recommended!) But it is still difficult trying to figure out how to fit it all in and prioritise and multi-task well.

2. Managing kids at different levels

I still haven’t mastered the ability to give each child the attention he/she needs in a typical school day. It really is like juggling, and is a struggle that is easy to feel guilty about. The reality is that teaching kids at different levels is hard – so do as many subjects as possible together! Younger children need more hands-on input than older ones, although the content is of course much more intensive and time-consuming the older they get. It is definitely tricky to focus on meeting an individual child’s needs.

3. Being mum and teacher

Trying to teach a child who is frustrated and in tears just doesn’t work very well. Unfortunately, this is prone to happening a lot with some kids, since they are at home in their comfort zone and it’s you, their mum having to deal with it, rather than a teacher with a class load of other children looking on. This means kids are sometimes difficult to teach – moaning and crying, bored and apathetic or angry and moody. It’s hard doing the job of teacher and mum all rolled into one!

4. Discipline and inspiration lacking

Homeschooling requires a certain level of discipline. At least, I find things go a whole lot more smoothly and everyone has more fun the more disciplined I am. But I find it’s not always easy to maintain this or feel inspired to put the energy into making it super interesting. Having some basic programs in place is helpful, so that even when life is messy I can feel like some work is being done! I find that planning some fun things to do at the beginning of each term is also a good idea.

5. Appointments and errands messing with the school day

It only takes one doctor’s appointment to throw the whole morning out! If only to give them something to do, I insist on the older kids bringing along a workbook or two, so the time is not completely wasted. I do my best to keep morning appointments and interuptions to a minimum, but home life is not as timetabled as school!

6. Siblings fighting

They love each other and form amazingly close bonds, but being at home all the time does unfortunately provide plenty of opportunities for siblings to fight. This gets very wearing, but is part and parcel of having children. Much of the time is actually spent playing nicely together, but it’s those ugly shouting matches (or punch ups) that mostly tend to intrude on your notice!

7. No (or very little) time out

By this I mean time totally without your kids – I find it difficult trying to fit in time to go clothes shopping for example. It can make you feel guilty trying to take some time out for yourself! But it is possible, it just requires some organisation and arrangement with other homeschoolers or family. There are also ways of getting some time out even if you have all the kids at home with you, e.g. send them all outside to play for an hour or get them reading on their beds for a while, or try rotation stations.

8. Limited appreciation

In a job (with a good boss) you might get praised for the things you do well and even some reward or recognition of jobs well done. No commendations or pay rises happen in homeschooling I’m sorry to say. Although hopefully you have a husband like mine who is supportive and encouraging, and children who occasionally thank you and show their appreciation by drawing you pictures or writing cards!

9. Other peoples’ reaction

People react in all sorts of ways when I inform them of my educational and vocational choice. I get the feeling that many automatically pigeon-hole me as being a certain type of person – which I suppose is natural, although it does annoy me a bit! I often feel the irresistible need to put their minds at ease over the more common objections such as socialisation and academic achievement. Some react positively, others with barely concealed incredulity. We often get curious looks at the shops during school hours. Funnily enough, 2020 has made homeschooling a bit less abnormal and a little more acceptable!

10. Being the odd ones out

Being the odd ones out can at times be frustrating and lonely. I don’t generally like to stand out from the crowd, but choosing a less ordinary lifestyle tends to produce that result. Sometimes I actually don’t mind this as it gives us a sense of “this is our family and what we do” – not just following everyone else like sheep! But in many ways it would be easier to just fit in. The antidote to this is to find other like-minded families and encourage one another to keep on.

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