Getting There

The average homeschooling mom does an amazing job of educating children at home, but homeschooling can be hard and scary work—especially at the more advanced levels. Can fathers successfully steer their families through the high school years?

... IT HAS BEEN MY EXPERIENCE THAT THE HOMESCHOOLING FATHER IS USUALLY CRUCIAL TO SUCCESS IN THE HIGH SCHOOL YEARS ...

After 20 years of learning in our own home and 15 years of full-time service to the homeschooling community, I’m happy to report that fathers can do a lot to lead their family through these difficulties. In fact, it has been my experience that the homeschooling father is usually crucial to success in the high school years.

In this article, we’ll touch on a few ways a dad can help his wife finish the homeschool journey with joy. We’ll start by identifying why the high school years can seem so challenging, then discuss how strong and courageous dads can overcome those challenges by means of praise, prayer, planning, and provision.

What Makes High School so Scary?

Dads can’t help their wives over the hurdles of teaching high school unless they have some idea of why it can seem so hard. To understand that, you need to get inside the head and heart of the average homeschooling mom. From the first day she decided to homeschool, she has heard voices—real and imagined—that prophesy doom: “Your kids will never learn calculus. You’re overprotective! What about socialization?” Whether it is a well-meaning family member or the militant feminist next door, somebody has made it his or her business to tell the mom she is ruining her kids.

That’s bad, but it gets worse. The little children who were so eager to do arts and crafts with Mommy, get bigger, and they begin to question Mommy’s choices. “Why can’t I be with my friends? I want to play football. What about socialization?”

In some cases, husbands only make it worse. Even the best husbands have bad days, and angry words can pierce the heart of a hardworking wife. “What were you thinking? I can’t believe you were so stupid! No wonder our kids can’t spell!”

With all these voices warning her away, why would any sane woman keep homeschooling? The number one reason is spiritual. If your primary reason for homeschooling is to raise children who love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, then calculus and football just aren’t as important. And, while spelling is important, as a motivating factor to continue homeschooling it takes second place to sanctification. Home provides the best possible place for parents to disciple their own children.

Interestingly enough, the less formal education a homeschooling mom has, the more likely she is to keep homeschooling through high school. A report by the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education shows that more-educated women are more likely to quit homeschooling when their children reach the 9th grade.¹ That would have been true in my family’s case. I vividly remember the day my own wife met me at the door as I came home from my job as an attorney at Home School Legal Defense Association. Her unforgettable words were, “Here’s where we stop homeschooling!” Marcia was blessed with an excellent education herself (a prestigious prep school followed by a degree from Dartmouth College). Her problem with homeschooling our kids through high school was, “I know what a good education looks like—and this isn’t it!”

I can’t remember everything I said on that life-changing day, but I do remember one part. I said, “Honey, I don’t know how you can successfully teach all six kids at home, but here’s what I do know. Our kids love each other. They enjoy education. They worship God. They honor us. Whatever you have done so far has worked—and I don’t want to lose that unless we have to!”

How Dads Can Help

Praise. The biggest single thing a dad can do to help his wife succeed may be to simply notice what’s going right. Third John 4 says, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” Have you ever noticed the word “hear” in that verse? Our wives spend all day every day seeing our children—and so much of what they see needs so much work! We all tend to notice what is going wrong. It’s hard—but important!—to notice what is going right. A good husband not only notices what his children are doing right, but he also tells his wife about it.

If you want your wife to keep homeschooling, then help her see the evidences of grace around her. When your son gets all excited about some project he’s working on, thank your wife for helping him to love learning by making it interesting for him. When your daughter forgets to come to dinner because she’s so caught up in a story she’s reading, tell your wife it’s all her fault—she’s the one who made her love to read! Children who enjoy education today become lifelong learners—which is far more important, in the long run, than any high school class in calculus or chemistry.

Prayer. It sounds trite, but it’s still true—dads need to pray for their families. That’s especially true for homeschoolers. Homeschooling is always a little bit like walking on water. Although there isn’t technically any suspension of the laws of nature involved, it defies logic that an ordinary mom could do a better job of educating her kids at home than all the experts with all their millions of tax-funded dollars. If you’re a Christian dad who is reading this article and you don’t pray for your family, you’re ignoring your family’s best source of strength and wisdom. God is more eager to answer our prayers than we are to offer them—even the feeblest and most fitful prayers. Don’t believe me? Try it and see!

Planning. One reason teaching our children through high school was so hard for my wife was the fear of college. It’s one thing to do arts and crafts in kindergarten—it seemed very different to start writing high school credits onto our home-grown transcript. At HSLDA, I handled countless calls from parents who want to know what they need to do to get their children into college. Some of these calls came from families where the oldest child was 5 years old!

Dads can help their wives enormously by taking on the project of exploring colleges—the earlier the better. I would encourage fathers to start as early as 8th grade. It’s easier than you think: Pick some reasonably priced local college you could imagine your child attending some day, and call the admissions office. Say, “We’re homeschooling and like the looks of your college—do you have any special procedures for homeschoolers?” Most American colleges and universities now have some kind of process designed for the homeschool grad, and they aren’t intimidating. If you start the high school years with a concrete plan to get your child admitted into one actual college, you’ll find most other admissions offices just use variations on that theme.

Provision. What do you do, though, if the college of your choice wants two credits of lab science or a year of foreign language? Don’t panic—that doesn’t mean you have to quit homeschooling! You may just have to be willing to outsource a course or two.

Homeschoolers have created a market for individual high school credits. These can be earned through local co-op classes, online courses, or other avenues. Many private Christian schools have opened their doors to homeschoolers, and community colleges routinely accept homeschoolers over 16. (Students under the age of 16 are more likely to be turned away, mostly because the colleges are afraid of becoming baby-sitting services.)

All this costs money, of course, which brings up one more way dads can help their homeschool through the high school years: provision. It’s easy for homeschoolers to get sticker shock at the cost of these courses, but, as the bumper sticker says, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Dads who balk at paying $275 per credit hour for a distance learning course through Patrick Henry College should compare that to tuition at a private high school (over $6,000 per high school child per year in 2003²).

Conclusion

If your homeschool has borne spiritual fruit in the past, there’s every reason to believe God can make it even more fruitful in the future—especially in the high school years. It can be intimidating, but that’s why God commands us to be strong and courageous. With a reasonable amount of praise, prayer, planning, and provision, there’s every reason to keep on homeschooling, right through high school.

Endnotes

1 Eric Isenberg, Home Schooling: School Choice and Women’s Time Use, Dec. 2002, National Center for Privatization in Education.

2 David F. Salisbury, Cato Institute, What Does a Voucher Buy? A Closer Look at the Cost of Private Schools.