I Was Afraid I Was Failing at Homeschooling

I never thought I would feel like I was failing at homeschooling my children.

As a second generation homeschooler, I had no qualms about homeschooling my own children. I watched as my mom homeschooled me and my other siblings. I knew that it could be done and done well! Then I started homeschooling my oldest in Kindergarten.

This shouldn’t be this hard.

I remember sitting down with him all excited to watch him learn. He struggled more than I expected him to. Instead of understanding that there was a bigger issue at play, I started to question myself and my ability to homeschool my children at all. 

This questioning of myself made it easy to send them to a partial week Montessori school the next year, and then to public school the year after that. It wasn’t until I saw the relative ease with which my next two children were learning the material, that I realized my oldest child had some learning challenges that were going to affect how he learned for the rest of his life. 

You may think knowing this made everything better, but it was quite the opposite. We prayed a lot about sending the kids to public school, but there was still a lot of fear behind that prayer. I was afraid about sending my kids to a public school in general, but I was even more afraid of not being able to provide what they needed. I was afraid of failing at homeschooling and being judged for it if my kids “failed” in life at any point in time. 

Over the last 11 years of schooling my children have received, I’ve only homeschooled in any capacity for 6 of those years. The last 4 years being the most that I’ve consistently homeschooled at least some of my children. Even so, God has taught me so much through that fear and has helped me work through it so that it is no longer a fear. 

I’ve learned a lot about the realities of teaching children in the years that my children have been in school.

While I knew that children learned differently and in their own ways, I saw that play out even in the traditional school setting. I saw that putting my child in school wasn’t going to make his struggles magically disappear. On the other hand, I also saw the resources available to him that I was not always able to provide. 

This gave me a renewed sense of confidence once I started homeschooling again. While I have some children that don’t seem to struggle as much with learning, I have a couple of others that struggle in different ways than my oldest did. Yet, the fear I had about failing them was gone. 

I don’t homeschool one year at a time because I’m afraid of something.

We homeschool one year at a time because I know that I’m not always the best answer when it comes to my children’s needs. I can’t and don’t have to “do it all.” 

I firmly believe in the idealistic values behind homeschooling regarding family life and imparting religious values to our children. I also realize that sending our kids to school doesn’t mean we have to sweep those values to the side. It just means we have to work on them a little differently. 

We are a Catholic family seeking to do God’s will in our lives. So many times His will looks nothing like we imagined. I had to trust God in those years of fear. Fear of failing my children. Fear of not teaching them well enough. Fear of making the wrong decision in how we school them. Fear of how others view us when we choose to homeschool or even not to homeschool. Don’t let similar fears dictate your response like I did.

In the Bible, when Jairus came to Jesus to heal his dying daughter, Jesus responded with, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” (Mark 5:36) After we have prayerfully discerned God’s will for our families, let us hear His words and listen to them. Ask for some kind of consolation to know that the decision that was made was good. Then ask God to help you trust Him with the outcome. He truly does have it all under control.

If you’ve ever wrestled with fear, uncertainty, or difficult decisions in motherhood, you’re not alone. I share honest reflections on faith, family life, homeschooling, and pursuing peace in the midst of it all. I’d love to have you join me on Substack.