Expert Guide to Gaps in The Child’s Home Education

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Let’s talk about gaps in our kids’ home education.

What about gaps in my child’s home education? If you’ve asked yourself that question — late at night, or the moment a relative raises an eyebrow at your homeschool — you’re in very good company. It’s one of the most common worries I hear from homeschool moms — whether they’re still asking “should I homeschool my child?” or they’re years into the journey.

We can homeschool beyond doubt, uncertainty, and that not-good-enough feeling. But first, we need to get clear on one question: What makes you question whether your kids’ education is good enough?

Let’s talk about it.

Feeling stuck? Start with the free Deschool Your Homeschool Checklist — a simple way to spot the school-shaped expectations you’ve been carrying home. (Here’s how to use the Deschool Your Homeschool Checklist once you have it.)

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What Are Gaps in a Child’s Home Education, Anyway?

These infamous things are called gaps: what Gaps. The word itself suggests something is missing.

It hints that something was forgotten along the way: a detail that slipped past the first time, the second time, the quadrillionth time, or a lesson nobody thought to share.

(And no, if you’re thinking of reasonably priced fashion from a store called The Gap, that’s not what we’re talking about today.)

When we worry about gaps in our child’s home education, we’re really worrying that we’ll be the one who forgot something important. That somewhere down the road, our child will be standing in a room, not knowing what everyone else knows — and it will be our fault.

That’s a heavy thing to carry. It’s close cousins with the other big worry: is my homeschooler behind? So let’s set it down for a minute and look at it honestly.

That’s a heavy thing to carry. So let’s set it down for a minute and look at it honestly.

Every Education Has Gaps — Not Just Homeschool

There is no gap-free school

Straight up: I don’t believe there is an education out there who doesn’t have gaps. It’s not a thing.

There are no children anywhere who make it through…

• Public school
• Private school
• Tutoring
• Sudbury school
• Waldorf school
• Montessori school
• Homeschool
• Law school or medical school

…or any school whatsoever without a gap.

We all have gaps. No one could write every article on Wikipedia, and no one gets consulted about everything. Only God knows it all. The rest of us? We consult the Google bar. (Or DuckDuckGo. Whichever you prefer.)

So when that anxious voice asks, “What about gaps in my child’s home education?” — remember that it’s asking a question no school on earth could answer with “there aren’t any.”

We ALL, and I mean ALL, have gaps.

What a Ghanaian Teenager Taught Me About Gaps in My Child’s Home Education

The question I couldn’t answer

If you travel to another country and have a conversation with someone, they might be surprised by what you don’t know — their country’s history, the politics of their region, their language, or you-fill-in-the-blank.

This happened to me.

Our homeschool family was staying in a hospital community compound in rural Ghana, where my husband was volunteering. Some of the neighbourhood kids were playing basketball with my five-year-old son. Some were showing off their scorpion-catching skills (yes, really). And some were hanging out with me and my girls while we waited for my husband to come back from the hospital for dinner.

An afternoon in rural Ghana

Simon, a sixteen-year-old, told me he hoped to come to Canada one day. I showed him pictures of snow. He thought it was cold enough where we were already sitting — it was winter in Ghana. (I thought it was the hottest, most humid weather I’d ever experienced.)

Somehow, we got onto the history of Ghana. And to Simon’s shock, I couldn’t remember what year Ghana gained independence from colonial rule.

He was dumbfounded. How was it even possible that I wouldn’t know?

Because I had never studied Ghanaian history at any school, ever.

The few things I did know came from our pre-trip unit study (naturally — we’re a homeschool family), from a trip to rural Kenya a couple of years earlier, and from a news story about the Obamas visiting Cape Coast Castle, a former slave-trade departure point. I’d hoped to visit it myself before flying home from Accra. I’d even been told it was the origin of the Amistad story — a movie I remember vividly because it was my very first date with my husband. Turns out the Amistad story began in Sierra Leone. Cape Coast Castle was a waystation for the transport of human beings.

How do I know? I googled it. (Which proves my point: I certainly didn’t learn it in school.)

I’ve thought about that conversation every time a mom asks me about gaps in her child’s home education.

What those Ghanaian kids didn’t know about Canada

Here’s the thing — the gaps went both ways. Those teenagers likely didn’t know…

• How many provinces Canada has, or that we still have territories.
• That most Canadians will never see an igloo — not even me, and I’ve lived in Canada for 48 years and touched the waters of the Arctic Ocean.
• That I lived in a semi-arid region of Canada with warmer summers than much of the American Midwest.
• That not every Canadian likes hockey (that’d be me) — though if I cheered for a team, it’d be the Edmonton Oilers, because I grew up in Alberta in the ’80s.
• That our national summer sport is lacrosse, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen played.
• That while I live in the mountain backcountry with bald eagles, black bears, cougars, Canada geese, and beavers nearly outside my door, most Canadians live in cities or suburbs with sidewalks, streetlights, and shopping malls (including the Gap).
• That not every Canadian loves Tim Hortons coffee (also me — and I don’t like Starbucks either, but I digress).
• That most Canadians live within a short drive of the U.S. border and will never see the Arctic, the endless trees of the Yukon, or the Dempster Highway, which looks like it’s paved with arrowheads.

And it’s not just those Ghanaian teenagers. You might not know these things either. And I likely don’t know the things that are common knowledge where you live.

What my homeschool family didn’t know about Ghana

Our family of six was introduced to all manner of things in northwestern Ghana that we’d never encountered before:

• Cerebral malaria, and how it’s treated.
• That a man with full-body burns from a spilled vat of boiling oil would be treated with Tylenol — because that was all that was available.
• How to barter in a market (not something the Safeway produce guy knows how to do either).
• How to communicate with people who didn’t share my language. I smiled a lot instead.
• How to balance a fifty-pound tray of mangos on my head. (I’d need a chiropractor if I tried.)
• How to walk alongside the road — pedestrians don’t have the right of way the world over.
• Anything about carpenter flies, scorpions, or palm-sized black beetles — or how to get rid of them when they crawl up your leg in the shower.

None of that was in any curriculum. And none of it made me less educated than Simon, or Simon less educated than me. We simply grew up in different places, taught by different people who valued different things.

Why Gaps in Your Child’s Home Education Aren’t a Failure

So why didn’t I know the history of Ghana?

Because I didn’t grow up there. And because the people educating me didn’t consider that information valuable.

This is the key to letting go of the idea that there can be no gaps in your child’s home education:

Every education is a series of choices about what matters. You get to decide what’s valuable for your child.

A school curriculum isn’t gap-free. It’s simply a list of someone else’s choices. When you homeschool, you’re not failing to cover “everything” — no one covers everything. You’re choosing, on purpose, what your child’s education will hold. You’re choosing, on purpose, what your child’s education will hold. (If you’ve never stopped to ask what an education is anyway, this is a good moment to start.)

What to Focus On Instead of Gaps in Your Child’s Home Education

I think we need to be less concerned about gaps in our child’s home education and more concerned about whether that education is personalized. Here’s what I mean.

Who is this child in front of me?

• How do they like to learn?
• What do they like to learn?
• What kind of learning is valuable for them right now — not ten years from now, when they’re supposed to be “finished,” but today?
• What will help them grow into the person they were meant to be?

These questions don’t expire as your kids get older. If you’re homeschooling a teen, here’s how to create a personalized homeschool high school that actually fits them.

You are the facilitator

• How can you help them?
• What skills do you have that you can share with them?
• What do you want to share with them, impart to them, or learn alongside them?
• And what could you learn, discover, or explore so you’re better equipped to be their facilitator?

You get to decide what fills the gaps in your child’s home education

And one very important third thing: you get to decide what you want your child to learn and how you shape their education. You! That’s why you homeschool. (It’s certainly a big part of why I homeschool.)

Every family fills the gaps in their child’s home education differently — and that’s not a flaw in homeschooling. That’s the whole point of it.

So what have you decided an education actually is? What are the important things you want to include in your child’s education? Once you know, you have plenty to do with your kids — and plenty to facilitate for them — so they can grow into the humans they were meant to be.

Want to release yourself from unrealistic expectations? Why you homeschool matters more than how you homeschool. And your why is shaped by what you believe an education is in the first place. The Deschool Your Homeschool Journaling Workbook walks you through redefining it with clarity and confidence. New to the idea? Start with How to Deschool 101.

The Three Ingredients for a Great Education

01 A specific child

Not a grade level or a standard. This child, right here.

02 An engaged adult

Listening to and observing that child’s interests, curiosities, and aptitudes.

03 Learning opportunities

Chosen for that specific child — not borrowed from someone else’s list.

No amount of worrying about gaps in your child’s home education can replace these three things. And if you have them, you already have what matters most. On the days you forget that, reach for a little self-compassion before you reach for another curriculum.

So, What About Gaps in My Child’s Home Education?

So, what about gaps in my child’s home education? Here’s my honest answer: they’re there. They’re in mine, they’re in yours, and they’re in every education Simon or anyone else has ever received.

The question was never whether your child will have gaps. It’s whether their education was built for them — by someone who knew them, watched them, and chose on purpose.

That’s something you’re uniquely positioned to give. And if you’re wondering, will I ever be confident homeschooling? — yes. It starts right here, with letting go of the need to cover everything.

“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

People also ask:

• What is an education anyway? You get to decide how to homeschool.
• How to Create a Personalized Homeschool High School (That Actually Fits Your Teen)
• How to Use the Practical Deschool Your Homeschool Checklist
• Useful Self-Compassion Strategies for the Homeschool Mama
• “Should I Homeschool My Child?” Here’s What You Need to Know
• How to deschool 101: 7 lessons I’ve learned that propelled my homeschool into freedom
• Do you offer one-on-one coaching? Why, Yes I do!
• Is My Homeschooler Behind? The Truth About Learning at Their Own Pace
• Why I Homeschool, Unexpected Challenges & My Transformation
• Will I ever be confident homeschooling?

Want to Talk It Through?

The Aligned Homeschool Reset Session is a free 30-minute coaching conversation. Together, we’ll identify what’s weighing you down, clarify what you really want, and map out what your aligned homeschool life could look like.

About Teresa

I’m Teresa Wiedrick, a Certified Life Coach for homeschool moms. I homeschooled my four kids for nearly two decades, and I know what it’s like to love your kids so much and still feel stretched thin, overwhelmed, and a little lost. Now, I help homeschool moms trust themselves, edit expectations, and make intentional choices for a more confident, connected, and present homeschool life.

Updated October 29, 2026 · Originally published June 2, 2022

Call to Adventure by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3470-call-to-adventure
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