5 Important Benefits of Homeschooling

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Thinking About Homeschooling?

If you’re reading this, then you’re probably already considering homeschooling. There are such diverse reasons people choose to educate their children at home. Whatever your motivation, there are many benefits to homeschooling your children. And I’d like you to know that it’s a good decision.  

Initially, I was motivated to homeschool because I felt my oldest daughter was too young to be away from me every day for preschool.  We planned to do it for a year or two and then enroll her in public school. However, she’s a senior in high school now and we’re still homeschooling.

The homeschooling movement is booming. There have never been more resources and support available for the homeschool parent than there are today.  According to the federal School Choice Report, homeschooling has nearly doubled in the last 20 years. You can read the findings of this report here.

There are endless curriculum options, homeschool co-ops available in most areas, homeschool support groups for moms, and many online school options, including free public school online. In fact, there are many options for free homeschool curriculum that you can find online. You can find out more about how to homeschool for free here.

5 Benefits of Homeschooling

1. Homeschooling fosters positive socialization.

The number one reason parents homeschool is due to concerns about the school environment, according to the School Choice Report done by the National Center for Education Statistics. Parents’ top 3 worries about the school environment include concerns about their child’s safety, drugs, and negative peer pressure.

A common argument you’ll hear against homeschooling is that children won’t get enough socialization if they’re homeschooled.  However, I would like to point out that socialization with peers in a public school environment isn’t always a positive thing.

Homeschooling gives parents the opportunity to provide their children with positive socialization. You have greater control over who your children spend time with.  Also, you can supervise their interaction with friends. 

Additionally, peer pressure for children and teens can actually be a positive thing if their friends are a good influence.  You can search out friends and environments that help support the character training they are getting at home from you.  Church groups have been a vital part of our children’s social life and character training. 

By the way, it’s actually very easy to find enough social opportunities for homeschoolers. Options for socialization include church activities, sports, play dates, homeschool groups, homeschool co-ops, and lessons. In fact, I often feel like there are too many opportunities and not enough time to take advantage of everything that’s available to homeschoolers.

2. Homeschooling provides more time for character training and discipleship. 

When children are in school all day, it’s hard to find enough time to read the Bible together, pray, memorize scripture and work on character issues.  When you’re with your child all day you have more opportunity to correct, speak words of encouragement and influence their decisions. 

If you have young children, homeschooling gives you more time for training and correcting.  If you have teens, there is more time for offering advice and counsel as they find their way and become young adults. 

3. Homeschooling can improve academic performance and foster a love of learning.

According to the School Choice Report, the second most common reason parents choose to homeschool is dissatisfaction with academic instruction in schools. Parents hope to improve the quality of their child’s education by homeschooling. Homeschoolers average 15 to 30 percentile points higher on standardized testing than public-schooled children, according to the National Home Education Research Institute.

With homeschooling, you are free to move at your child’s pace. You can move through the material quickly to keep your child from getting bored.  On the other hand, a child that struggles has a personal tutor (you!) to help them master the material with more repetition before moving on.  Homeschooling allows you to teach until there is mastery, not just teach for the test.

Additionally, many extremely bright children do not thrive in a traditional school environment. The classroom teacher can’t cater to each individual child’s unique learning style. As a homeschool teacher, you can identify the ways your child learns best and choose materials and methods that will be most effective.

By homeschooling, your child won’t develop an unhealthy self-image or feel like a failure. Unfortunately, this happens all too often in a classroom. When I taught elementary-aged children in a private remedial school, the new children we would get each school year from public schools would often laugh when someone answered incorrectly. It took time to retrain them to encourage each other and not ridicule their classmates for mistakes.

Also, I’ve found that homeschooling can foster a love of learning. You can allow your children to focus on things they’re interested in learning about, which makes them more likely to love learning. By the way, a library card is a homeschool mom’s best free resource.  Your child can choose the books they’d like to read. Children are more likely to want to read if it’s a topic that’s interesting to them.

4. Homeschoolers have more time for interests and passions. 

The homeschooled child can complete all their daily school work much faster than children in a classroom.  There just aren’t the same time constraints at home that there are in a school setting.  With homeschooling, there is no classroom management, class times to fill or switching classes.  They just simply move through their daily work as quickly as they’re able to complete it.

When they finish, they’re free to pursue other things.  In their free time, my children have pursued a variety of interests like writing, crafts, art, horseback riding, music, sports, working out, building things, jewelry making, etc. 

5. Homeschoolers can move more.

Lastly, homeschoolers can fit more movement into their day. Children at home aren’t confined to a desk.  They have the freedom to exercise their energetic bodies when they need to.

I wonder how many energetic boys are diagnosed with hyperactivity issues for the simple reason that they just need to move more. Boys are 2.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with hyperactivity disorders than girls in public schools. Boys have a physiological need to be active. This is hard for them in a classroom setting. Homeschoolers can take frequent exercise breaks.

I hope these 5 benefits to homeschooling have convinced you that you should go for it! If you’ve decided you’d like to homeschool, check out my post, “How to Start Homeschooling Now.”

What are your reasons for wanting to homeschool? Comment below to share.