How we entered the world of Homeschooling

So as I said before, I was going to share how we got into the world of homeschooling.  Once again, God has a sense of humor.  You see my husband, prior to us beginning homeschooling, was totally against the idea.  He felt like children needed to be in classrooms in public schools.  I often hear people express that same opinion.  Moreover, I hear people say that children can become socialized while being homeschooled.  But I beg to differ.  I caution people to never say, "I could/would not ever do something/"  Because immediately that sets someone up to have to have their words thrown back in their face.  

Our son went to two different public schools for grades kindergarten thru 5th.  The first one he attended kindergarten through 2nd.  Then we moved from one home to a home on a military installation.  So he did 3rd and 4th there and began 5th.  However, he was placed in a classroom with a teacher that was completely the wrong person to be teaching him.  Because it was a small school on an air station., we did not have a lot of options.  This teacher made it impossible for us to leave him in the school.  The school had a full-time nurse who was at the school full-time.  On the morning in question, she was there.  My son had health issues that it would take us until 2013 to get diagnosed  (took that long for symptoms to get bad enough for us to want to put our son through endoscopies).  We knew he had heath concerns and this particular day, I knew he did not feel good.  But I asked him to try to hold out until lunch.  However, the teacher took it upon herself to determine that my son was faking as a result of forgetting to bring the spelling words he was forced to select on the second week of school instead of the teacher providing the list of words to the students.  She ended up yelling at me, not a good start for a conversation about my son.  She told me I could do what I wanted to with my son - so I took him home.  I knew my son was sick so what other choice would I make.  

Based on the conversation with the teacher, I went home with my son and called my husband.  I said something needed to change.  Our other 3 children all attended this school and had wonderful teachers, wonderful classrooms and had all their needs being met.  We had three choices - change all the children to a different school, change just Jacob to a different school (which didn't work because we would have to provide transportation and I could not be two places at one time).  Or we could just homeschool our oldest.  Mentally I had gone through all the possible decisions and  investigated homeschooling before I talked to my husband.  I knew I was up for the challenge - after all I had been a teacher in a classroom and taken the teacher certification courses.  So that part didn't scare me.  So I went into the conversation knowing what my decision was going to be.  Surprisingly enough he agreed with my choice.  Of course we had family members who were skeptical.  But in the long run, the majority came around.  Less than a month after bringing our son home we saw tremendous changes for the good in him.  He started to enjoy being around his family.  He started to do better with his schoolwork.  Within that first year, my husband became a really staunch advocate of homeschooling.  

We became part of a homeschool group, so that plus scouts gave him opportunities to be with others his own age.  The next year we brought all the children home and I have to say it has been a tremendous blessing for our family.