For the past six months or so I’ve been serving in a communications role for our local homeschool support group and I started leading a “Homeschool 101” class within the same group.

Part of my job is to help those who are thinking about homeschooling or are new to homeschooling with all those first-timer questions.  Ones about which curriculum to use and where to get it, how to do all this legally, how you are supposed to actually get school work done without killing each other…and so forth and so on.

I’ve spoken to many moms and each situation, family and circumstance is so different.  Some families have always sent their kids to public school and some have always homeschooled. Some have children who aren’t even school age yet but they are planners and want to have it all figured out.

What I realized after almost an hour on the phone with one mom (who has very young kids) is that homeschooling families and public school families have more than one thing in common.  We actually have it all in common and that is, as parents, none of us know the “right” way to educate our children.

Oh, we think we do.

If we start them in the right pre-school by 18 months, fast track them to Kindergarten in a private school and start college dual enrollment by 9th grade then we are definitely doing it right.

If we never put them in daycare or pre-school and don’t start book work until they are 8 years old and feel like working on something…then we’re doing it right.

If we keep them home, teach Bible 3 times a day, eat organic and serve in our local soup kitchen once a week, then we’re doing it right.

If we send them to public school and in the afternoons sit beside them and do their homework for 2 hours each night before they are allowed to play a video game, then we’re doing it right.

We know we are.

We would never let our kids watch TV before the bus comes.

We would never send our kids to public school.

We would never homeschool.

We would never let them eat processed food.

Those people who do that are just wrong. THEY are definitely not doing it right.

Then again.

Maybe they are.

Maybe they love their kids as much as you love yours.  And maybe they do have their child’s best interest at heart.

Because I know I do, whether we spend $700 a year on curriculum or $5,000 on private school tuition, I love my children and I strive to do what’s “right” when it comes to their education and growing them into decent, God-fearing humans.

And knowing that we are all in the same boat…that none of us are actually doing it “right” takes a lot of pressure off, doesn’t it?