Just wondering… do you ever feel like you don’t fit in with other homeschooling families? Why?

For years I felt like I had to put my girls in long skirts to be accepted at our homeschool food co-op. I felt bad that we were just faking the Amish look, but I wanted to show respect to the other families… turns out a bunch of them were dressing their kids in long dresses cause I was…

No more! Let’s just be who were are. It took a while to embrace the idea that Homeschooling doesn’t have a dress code… unless PJs count.

I also thought that to be in the Homeschool cool-club I had to grind my own grain, milk my own goat, grow my own watermelon and sew my kids clothing. I also noticed that most of my homeschooling friends had four kids… I only had three… then I had seven, now ten! It doesn’t matter what your family size is! It’s all good!

As a family we did some of these things just for the joy of it, and for health reasons, but we don’t all have to grind wheat to be friends. Here is the truth… a lot of homeschoolers eat Lucky Charms and go to Wendy’s.

I thought that “good homeschool moms” teach their kids to read at age 4. That worked with Isaac. But most of my kids are reading around age 9. Isaac never learned multiplication facts! Here is the truth, a lot of homeschoolers have kids that struggle with math or reading.

It was a hard lesson to learn that we don’t have to dress, eat, sew, skin rabbits, and have a zoo pass to be good homeschooling moms. Here’s the truth, a lot of homeschoolers shop at Walmart, and don’t always eat organic. Some do. Cool.

Oh, and here’s another confession… my kids play with Pokemon Cards and watch Disney movies. That’s how they learn math and music. I felt like I could lose friends over this at one point.

Here’s another one: Good homeschool moms have clean houses and wake up before the sun. I make my appearance at 9:30am on most days, and my house looks like a work in progress.

Another tough one to swallow was the idea that unschoolers can’t be Christians. What the heck? I was a closet unschooler!

Do you need to “hang up” any of your hang ups? Hang-um in the comments, and support each other!
You can read more of my journey to joy and freedom in my book – Windows to Our World… 

Check out my son’s Homeschooling Vlog here. Click the image below, to watch “All a 7-Year-Old Needs to Homeschool”: