While making a call to a company about a mistake on a credit given to me on a return I did on an online order (at a giant name company) I was asked homeschool advice. There is a first time for everything.
Here is a bit more fleshed out reply than I gave over the phone.
The question was:
My child has always been in school. We are making a big move next month (October) and my wife and I are thinking of homeschooling her. What do you think? Is homeschooling a good idea?
I responded that I am very pro-homeschooling but that in this case it may not be a great idea. I said that any transition from school to home has its challenges as the family gets used to the switch. Kids often have an adjustment from mom as mom to mom as teacher. It is a big change for both mom and child.
However the bigger issue is the risk of isolation. Moving to a new place and not knowing anyone will require work to make a new social network. The child will not have school to provide the usual social outlet that the child is used to. If homeschooled the child will have to make friends via Scouts or sports or other extra-curriculars.
I mentioned that last year we moved 2000 miles, after homeschooling my kids from birth and having years to develop a place in the local homeschool network, we left it behind. I said being in a new place was challenging and it was hard to make inroads and friends having arrived here knowing no one. Not going to school made it harder for my kids to make friends, and Boy Scouts and sports was the way they found friends, but it still was not easy.
I said if the schools were thought to be really bad then consider it, but it would be a big change that takes hard work.
The response was that the schools they think might not be as great but they are not really bad. He said I gave him some things to think about.
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I hate to sound negative but that was a truthful answer from a person who just went through a major move. Moving is about leaving friends and sometimes relatives behind. It is kind of a death, you mourn the loss of your friends. Even if you still technically are friends it is not the same to have phone calls or emails as seeing them in real life and sharing experiences together. Depending on the age of the child, maintaining long distance relationships may simply not happen.
Putting a child through the emotional experience of moving is a lot, and to add in a change of schooling method to something as drastic as stopping school and keep the child home to homeschool is probably not a good idea. The child will miss her old way of life and will miss her old friends and now she will be "stuck" at home with mom.
Mom will be implementing a whole new struture to life: schooling at home and the relationship dynamic will change. There is a certain intensity to the homeschool parent-child relationship that does not exist between mom and schooled child. The last thing you want for your child in the moving process is to feel trapped and isolated in their new home.
The first year homeschooling is a challenge for any family but to do it in October (after fall experiences have already begun and it is too late to enroll your child) is not a good thing. This means the child will have less options to do things away from home to meet new friends and have a change of atmosphere.
To combine the first year of homeschooling with a big move and all the changes that come with unpacking and finding one's way in a new place is putting a lot on Mom's plate.
Speaking for our family as I have discussed here previously since my younger son was not in a fall or winter sport he found no friends through a sport after the August move. The spring sport was only 3 hours a week for about 8 weeks and they were so busy and spread across the field that no one was making friends, they were all about doing the sport they were there to do.
My older son immediately enrolled in a four season sport upon arriving in Texas and his first circle of real friends has been through the sport team.
In the first year here we have failed to make connections in the local homeschooling community, so we have no friends in this first year here among homeschoolers. That is so different from what I was used to in Connecticut.