Are There Any Disadvantages of Homeschooling My Child?

To say there are no disadvantages of homeschooling would be a little bit of an untruth. It's very easy to get carried away with all of the wonderful benefits there are to homeschooling, so it's important to realize, that in a few circumstances, there can be reasons why homeschooling is bad.

Without wishing to dwell too much upon any negative aspects of homeschooling, I do feel that in order to provide you with an honest and balanced assessment it would be unfair of me not to draw you attention to some of the more commonly reported negative effects of homeschooling.

The personal sacrifice

• If you do go down the homeschooling route, then you have to understand that not only will you be responsible for the pastoral care of your child, but you will also be solely responsible for their education. If something does go wrong it will be down to you. After all, you have their academic life and future career prospects entirely in your hands, so you have to be the sort of person who is mentally strong enough to take on this challenge.


• Your time will no longer be your own. You'll be researching and preparing lessons, organizing field-trips and social outings, after that you'll be teaching, and assessing your child's work. Then the whole cycle will start over again. But have you noticed? There was no time set aside for the rest of the things you needed to get done around the home, like the laundry and the cleaning. And, more importantly, there was no time set aside for you. Without some really careful planning it can be all too easy to miss out on "me-time", you have to be super-efficient with your scheduling in order to homeschool. If you don't think you can handle being on call 24 seven, then homeschooling probably isn't for you.


• Your home will become a classroom, an art room, a music studio, a theater, a science lab. Your personal space, and perfect house may disappear for a while.


• And, your career will suffer. Do you really want to take such a long career break? Will your workplace skills still be useful when you head back to the job market in a few years time? Will you have to retrain or take something at a much more junior level? You need to assess how important your career is to your happiness and identity

The financial sacrifice

• The financial cost is one the major disadvantages of homeschooling. If you are used to being a two income household, you will need to work out if you can afford to lose one salary and still be able to pay the bills. If you are a couple, one of you will always have to be at home, even if it means you both working part-time hours so you can share the teaching. And what would you do if your circumstances were to change? Could you bear to lose face by admitting financial defeat and put your child back in to mainstream school?


• No matter how well you organize your home, you will never have the "free" facilities a public school can offer. You won't have a gym, a fully equipped music room, or a science laboratory. Some of these things can be gotten around by joining other homeschooling groups and clubs. But other extra-curricular pursuits and clubs will cost you extra.


• And the bug-bear of many homeschoolers? A lot of American states will still expect you to pay taxes for the public schools you are not actually using!

Social and emotional pressures

• You will feel pressurized by family and friends who don't understand what you are doing. They will pass judgment on your ability to provide a "proper" education for your child, so you need to be emotionally strong enough to be able to stand up to them and convince them of what you are doing.


• There will be areas of knowledge where you can not prepare lessons, areas where you have limited or no expertise. I mean, I can juggle with four plates while cooking a Thanksgiving meal for twenty people-- I have many talents, but I can't speak Japanese or throw a football forward over 50 yards, however if my child showed a particular talent for languages or football I'd want to give them the best possible chances. There will be times when you have to admit there is something you can't teach by yourself, and be man enough to hand that responsibility over to someone else—on the upside, it will be to someone you have researched and hand-picked.


• If you have a gifted child, or perhaps a child with disabilities, you have to honestly ask yourself whether you really are giving them the best opportunities for learning. Your heart may say yes, but your head has to say no.


• And then there are the tricky things that can befall a homeschooler. Your child may start to fret and worry that they are somehow missing out on something by not going to school like all the other kids, that they are different or weird in some way-- if the problem becomes too difficult to resolve, then you will have to consider letting your child return to the public school system. Despite all of your best efforts, if your child is unhappy their education will suffer, and they may end up rebelling against you. Some kids, and some parents, are just not suited to homeschooling.

Despite these disadvantages of homeschooling, I honestly believe that there is very little that can not be overcome. Its about having conviction in your beliefs, and having the courage to admit that when times get a bit tough you need to ask for help. I'd never tell a parent that its all easy, but I'd also never tell them it was impossible.