The Absolute Worst Thing about Homeschooling

The absolute worst thing about homeschooling is something that no one ever warns you about. I have been forced to deal with the problem before, but Thanksgiving weekend I, once again, came face to face with this inescapable downside of homeschooling.

As a mother who homeschooled her ten children from the first grade through Master’s Degrees, I can attest that there is an awful lot of bonding that takes place in the home classroom. Bonding among siblings and bonding between parents and siblings occurs on a level that is nearly impossible to achieve under other circumstances.

Nevertheless, I expected the close ties that resulted from so many hours spent in such close proximity. I was prepared for the “my siblings are my best friends” attitude that is a natural result of spending all day every day interacting with one’s brothers and sisters. I took it for granted that we would always share wonderful holiday celebrations, and I looked forward to the day when the children would marry and the family gatherings would include grandchildren.

My husband and I worked hard and sacrificed a great deal so that the children would all have their master’s degrees before they reached the traditional age for high school graduation. We wanted to ensure that they would be able to have successful careers and provide well for their families. Somehow, I never understood that those careers would scatter them in many directions and that their families would not always be with us, but this is the way it has turned out:

• In 1994 Francesca married; she and her husband and three children now live in Phoenix. 
• In 1996 Victoria married; she and her husband and two children now live in Dallas.
• Dominic is a photographer for CNN and travels all over the world shooting news stories. He is based in Miami but has spent a total of only two weeks there this year. Even as I write this, Dominic is in Haiti covering their elections.
• Israel is in Colorado studying to be a veterinarian.

Two weeks ago Benjamin, who was the main news anchor for the NBC television affiliate here in El Paso, dropped by the house unexpectedly and told us that he had just signed a contract for the position of the main anchor for a television station in Cincinnati. It is a huge career move for him, and he and his wife are thrilled, but his six-year-old looked at my husband with big tears in his eyes and said, “Grandpa, I’ll never see you again.” I trust that’s not true, but even to me if feels as though we will never see them again. On Saturday we kissed our son and daughter-in-law and their five children good-by and tried to not let them see how sad we were to have them go.

Five of my children still live in the El Paso area, but there are rumblings that some of them may soon be leaving here to pursue better opportunities and better lives. If I could keep them here, I would not do it; if I could bring the others back, I would not do that either. I made it my life’s work to prepare them to do the things that they were created to do. Those amazing relationships that were forged in that homeschool classroom will last, but the physical circumstances must change. It’s just that no one ever tells you that when your children never go off to school, you never learn to lose them a little at a time. You have never experienced dropping them off for their first day of school; you have never experienced the emotional separation that comes from having your teen decide that his high school friends are so much cooler than his family; you have never waived good-by to an eighteen-year-old heading off to college in some distant city.

No one ever tells you that when you see all your years of work reaping the benefits that you dreamed they would, you smile, but you are smiling through tears.