Making it work

 Sacrifices

The response I get from people when I tell them that we are home schooling our kids has been varied. 

Some parents find themselves feeling 'distant' from their kids.

Obviously the positive ones are awesome to get and are uplifting. When I told one of my teacher friends that we were home schooling the boys her first response was "I'm jealous!" She went onto say that she would love to be able to home school her kids. She works full time as a teacher and her kids go to school at a different school. She feels like she never sees them anymore. In fact she has mentioned on more than one occasion that she's 'lost connection' with them. She feels sad about that, and I feel sad for her and her kids too. I think, if that's how she feels, how many more parents feel the same? 




A big but easy decision for us.

This brings me to the question she asked me. "How do you make it work?" Quite simply we've made sacrifices. For us the biggest decision we made was moving to a cheaper area. We owned a house in the area where I grew up. It was close to my work, it was close to Simon's work, it was close to both our parents places. We weren't unhappy there, but the mortgage meant that Simon had to work full time and I'd need to go back to work once Nate started school in 2018. Obviously this wasn't going to work if we wanted to homeschool them. 

Moving house is how we 'make it work.'

So after we made our decision that we were going to home school the kids we put our house on the market, sold our house, bought another cheaper place. Now Simon and I both work three days each. Neither of us need to work full time because we are living within our means as well as saving for the future. Sure, I miss having mum and dad around the corner but this is the sacrifice we had to make. The house is larger, we live by the beach and we have a 250 hectare bush reserve out the of our house.  Certainly the move had a few rather large pluses as well.


My career has been sacrificed by becoming a mum. I'm fine with that.

The next largest thing I've had to sacrifice is my job. Yes, I'm still a teacher but before I had children I was on the leadership path. I worked as a learning coach at my school. I've been told that my chances of gaining a leadership role and working part time is unlikely. I don't know of a working mum out there who could say that taking 12 months off to have a baby enhanced their careers. Why would it? So remaining part time indefinitely will greatly minimize my chances of a promotion. And considering how much my views on teaching and schooling have changed since having kids, I'm not sure I even care anymore. 

Then there is the everyday sacrifices that we make in order to be able to afford to home school. For us this means living simply. We enjoy growing our own vegetables (and some fruits) and we enjoy making all our meals from scratch as much as possible. We try to link it into the boy's learning as much as possible. Growing our own food and cooking from scratch works well for us because it is also helping us to be as healthy as we can be. We also do all of our clothes shopping from Savers and other second hand shops. (Okay- I confess. I already did this before we started on our home schooling journey. I hate wearing clothes every one else is wearing- you go to a department store and buy something new and the next thing you know you are dressed the same as every second person. And there is already enough on the planet without making new ones for me. But op shopping helps save money and is fun.) We are frugal with our money but we are still living a life we love. 

Making it work

There are heaps of parents out there who are a 'making it work' within their different circumstances. Some mums who are studying and home schooling their kids at the same time, who do their own book work while their kids are working on independent learning tasks. There are parents that arrange their work so they work on weekends and home school during the week. Some parents home school four days a week so they can work one day a week. That's the beauty of home schooling! It's flexible!




If you are considering home schooling I would recommend you get onto the mountains of home schooling sites on Facebook and ask parents how they 'make it work.' Many parents are being very flexible with their lives in order to make home schooling work for their family.

I hope you've found this post informative. Please feel free to share and post a comment.

Love Alexis