Some Homeschooling Pitfalls

We know how rewarding, beneficial, and successful homeschooling can be. However, as with most things, there are some negatives to it. Being aware of and understanding these pitfalls can help homeschooling parents to try and minimize or alleviate these pitfalls.

One major pitfall that many homeschooling parents complain about it taking too many days off. Remember with traditional schools, there are substitue teachers, so if the teacher is sick or can’t teach for any other reason, there is someone to fill in. With homeschooling, this is often not the case, so days are taken off both when the child is sick and also when the parent is sick or has something else more important to attend to.

Along the same lines is struggling with the ability to focus in the home. At schools, the entire focus is on schooling, which helps to ensure an enviroment of learning. At home sometimes this can be difficult, especially if there are other kids or even pets at home. Often a barking dog, or a crying baby will get in the way of a successful day of homeschooling. So, it becomes extremely important for the parent to setup an environment for success at home and eliminate any potential distractions that will interuprt a day.

Another pitfall comes from memorization. Schools are setup to help students memorize critical imformation which comes in handy on many standardized tests. While a homeschooling program is often very interactivng, encouraging, and rewarding for the child; soemtimes it is difficult for the parent and child to get into a good memorization routine. Parents need to work hard to focus more effort on memorization and other tasks which may seem mundane, but which come in handy when there is mandatory testing or standardizes tests that the student must take.

One of the most commonly noted disadvantages comes from the challenges in the child faces in making friends. At schools, the child has countless opportunities to make friends as there are other children particpating in the same clases. Also, through being in a school, the child develops social skills that faciliates the child to make friends on their own. With homeschooling, less children are around, and even when events are set up for the child to meet other homeschooling children; the social skils aren’t there to allow the child to seek out and make friends on their own. Again, this is just a disadvantage, home school children certainly can make friends and be very popular as they get older – this is just one area parents should pay extra attention too.

Lastly, if your child is gifted, or has a special talent in one area; it may be difficult for the parent to know how to nurture and adequetely pay attention to this. Often schools will have “gifted programs” which the student can partipate in to help them grow further in the area which they already excel. As a homeschooling parent, this can be a challenge.

For many parents, the tremdous rewards and advantages of homeschooling outweight these and other pitfalls. And many of these pitfalls we mentioned can still be present in a traditional school. So our advice would be to learn about these and other pitfalls so that they can be addressed and improved – to make the homeschooling experience even that much better.

Homeschooling is a challenge, but it can have outstanding rewards for yourself. At the same time, it can be reat for your child. Just be sure to take it very seriously and try to make an effort to separate your roll as an everyday parent with your roll as a home school teacher.


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