Your Average Middle Class Homeschooler

In a post recognizing the efforts of homeschoolers that came before us, I saw the phrase "average middle class" homeschooler and said... FINALLY!  A description that fits our family.

My kids are not isolated.  They are not disabled in any discernible way.  We are not uber religious.  They are not particularly brainy.  They are average... or for our area, amongst their peers, and even
among their cousins with a public school upbringing.  We have not created super-human exceptionally gifted children by homeschooling.  Instead, we allowed them to be the average middle class kids they are.

But it could have been so much worse.  Both kids were struggling in school for different reasons, and it was very clear, with kids in 1st and 3rd grades,  that my kids were going to be below average achievers.  My son was shutting down, and my daughter was acting up.  They weren't happy.  We weren't happy.  The school wasn't happy.

Enter homeschooling.

Ten years later, my son is in college doing well, and my daughter is about to enter in the fall.  I really, really, really could not foresee any of this back when schools were giving us disapproving looks and lectures about our kids who were failing to thrive in school.  So here we are, your average middle class homeschoolers, with kids that didn't rock homeschool statistic charts, or make their public school cousins look like underachievers.  In fact, they look like their cousins, they act like their cousins, and they are academically on the same level as their cousins.   But perhaps I am not giving a fair comparison.  The cousins I am comparing them to are well above average academically.

With that said, I am very happy to have average middle class homeschooled kids.



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1 comment:

Julie said...

Thanks for helping to pave the way for us newbies.

12 grade year of homeschooling, Finishing Strong

We are almost done with my college prep series. There will still be a video on completing the transcript.    Stay tuned... meanwhile, ...