I have a horrible story to share. One that might make your blood boil. You might hate me for a second, but I hope you’ll forgive me. Before I started homeschooling my girls, I had all the same misconceptions that everyone else seems to have.
I won’t list them here, but it added up to this: Homeschoolers are freaks. Different. Downright weird.
So, the story: A friend of mine had a daughter that just started college and my friend told me that her daughter had a discovered a special kind of freak-radar when she went away to college. Can you guess what is coming?
Her daughter said she could tell within one minute of meeting someone on campus whether they were homeschooled or not. Not in a good way, but in a this person is so weird they must have been homeschooled way. We had a good giggle over it and forgot about it. (And.. . Oh. The shame. My face is so red telling you this now. Is your blood boiling?)
A few months later, God would call me to homeschool my girls. We started homeschooling and after our first convention, we were sold on it.
Homeschool rocks!
We’re doing this forever!
However.
In the back of my mind, my friend’s freak-radar joke lingered. And it bothered me. Yes, God was calling us to do this. Yes, we had met several perfectly wonderful, not at all freaky homeschooled kids. But, still.
Would my kids be judged for the rest of their life because of this?
Would they be labeled freaks forever? The good Christian in me knew it didn’t matter. But the worried mom in me, well…. she worried.
And you know what else she did?
She signed her kids up for every single activity possible. That’s right. No cocky college kid was going to find my girl on her freak-radar! My girls would be socialized beyond belief!
And they were. Beyond belief. Beyond my own ability to keep up with it, in fact. Before long, we were frazzled, tired, and hardly ever home. It wasn’t working.
Thankfully, I didn’t keep at this pace for long before I realized I wasn’t doing my girls any favors. I also learned that socialization has nothing to do with dance lessons. But most importantly, I stopped worrying about my kids being freaks and started embracing it.
I mean, who was I kidding? After all…
My kids have called me Tooty Booty ever since an unfortunate incident that shall never be spoken of again.
We regularly have fashion shows featuring our noble dachshund, Frankie, dressed in doll clothes. I can’t actually say the word dachshund, by the way.
Both of my daughters have a photo in their room of my husband and me sticking our tongues out and picking our noses. And nope, it’s not the same picture. We’ve done it more than once.
I sometimes talk in an accent all day for no reason at all, other than to drive my kids crazy.
We pray before our meals, wherever we are.
We sport tee shirts advertising our faith in Jesus.
And here’s the topper: We love to talk about what God is doing in our lives.
We’d been weirdos all along.
We’re not Homeschool freaks, we’re just freaks who happen to homeschool.
Guess what? You’re probably a freak, too. Embrace it.
How would your family register on the freak radar? Pretty normal? Kinda weird? All-out freak?
