Why I Homeschool, Unexpected Challenges & My Transformation

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Why I Homeschool

Why I homeschool? Because wandering around this wide world, and discovering all it has to offer, is an interesting, engaging, intriguing way to live a family life. And I loved doing it with my kids.

Also, I love having the public library as our second home. Thumbing my fingers across the children’s storybooks and shoulder bags full of interesting reads were part of our routine too.

(Though the late fees were enormous!)

Oh, and wandering bookstores and libraries during school days: this is an amazing life!

Or bringing those books to the local cafe to “CafeSchool” and enjoying special drinks while listening to adult conversations while the kids play games or finish their books.

Driving around the neighbourhood or driving to a new town to discover museums and botanical gardens or nature centers with my kids, listening to audiobooks in the minivan, or completing a math workbook while we drove there was fun! Mini-van schooling is underrated.

Reliving childhood memories alongside my kids, like learning to swing on a swing, understanding World War history for the first time, or even relearning basic arithmetic and algebra was an accomplishment.

And building a social circle around the values that mattered most to our family? That was a cool way to live, too.

What Led Me to Homeschooling?

It was a book I casually picked up from a bookstore on a vacation. I intended to find the arguments against it because I didn’t want my kids to be weird and I didn’t wear jean jumpers, yet it seemed like everyone around me was homeschooling. So I needed my arguments against it.

So I knew I could engage the academic elements of an education, despite only surviving high school. I was crazy motivated so I knew I could do it. This would be a fun adventure in learning all the things I didn’t learn in school! (Did I have gaps? Oh yes! Didn’t you?)

Since my husband planned to work part-time and we would travel part-time, I knew we’d give our kids loads of interesting experiences as we traveled. And we did, you can read about them here.

We’re highly engaged people doing interesting things so the kids wouldn’t lack variety.

I knew we’d find social opportunities because we were already doing that.

However, what we had pre-homeschooling was a life that didn’t fit.

If you’re standing where I stood, holding a book about homeschooling and wondering whether this life could fit yours, I put together some encouragement for exactly that season.

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Unexpected Challenges: What I Didn’t Know Before I Homeschooled

The life we were living was fine, average, expected, but it wasn’t this…

Our life didn’t feel authentic. There wasn’t a lot of us in it. We were doing what everyone else was doing. Signing up for the same life everyone else was living: letters after our names, numbers in the bank account, not enough time together, but nice house, two-car garage, annual vacations, investments, soon-to-be membership in a local church, birthing babies born with a full Baby Gap closet, and when they got old enough, signing them up for the local private Christian school.

Our life didn’t feel purposeful. As much as I adored my two daughters’ kindergarten teacher, and still do, knowing that my kids were in a classroom not being challenged, beyond memorizing ASL hand signs for the alphabet in their first official school year, yet coming home to prepare dinner so we could turn around to return to the school to participate in a communal soup and cracker night felt time-consuming and not-so-meaningful when we could all join together in the kitchen on Saturday to make soup and crackers, minus the fanfare.

What I Subconsciously Chose as I Began This Homeschool Life

When I first grabbed that Homeschool Option book off the shelf, I wasn’t expecting my life was about to change.

Our intent to homeschool wasn’t just about choosing an individualized education for our kids or giving them an education that felt more robust with the values we approved.

It wasn’t just determining which curriculum we liked, or what social network we would encourage for our family. Though it was all those things.

Homeschooling was about us, grown-up adults choosing to live our lives on purpose. On our terms.

And though we didn’t have life figured, and still don’t, we categorically knew we were choosing an intentional life.  

Unexpected challenges: what I didn’t know before I homeschooled.

This homeschool thing wasn’t hard because I didn’t know how to ‘teach’ someone (in fact, I did, I didn’t recognize at the time that mothering IS teaching.)

This homeschool thing wasn’t hard because I didn’t choose the right curriculum (curriculum choice has little impact on a life well-lived).

And this homeschool thing wasn’t even hard because family and friends weren’t supporting it.

Homeschooling, at times, was hard because I needed to grow myself up in more ways than I had counted on.

Of course, I had high hopes for a charmed homeschool life (that’s why I titled my blog, Capturing the Charmed Life).

What I subconsciously chose as I began this homeschool life?

I was looking to replace a hard childhood — a tumultuous, always on-the-edge of my seat, emotionally dysregulated, nervous system overstimulated, confusing, insecure childhood—I was determined to replace it with an idyllic 1980s sitcom, circa Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains childhood. If the Huxtables can figure out family conflict in 22 minutes and then live happily ever after, I could too.

Turns out, homeschooling is no panacea for the broken-hearted. 

And it’s also not a panacea for those who had a predictable, occasionally annoying, disappointing, frustrating childhood.

It would take three or four homeschool years to hit my proverbial wall.

(Where I wanted to send the kids on whatever yellow school bus passed by).

But when I did, I had a life-changing homeschool day.

• Was it kids fighting with each other?
• A kiddo fighting with me as she refused to do her math workbook?
• Was there complaining, whining, or boredom?
• Was I premenstrual?
• Or was I in an argument with my husband?

I don’t recall. I’m not sure it’s relevant. Because it could have been any or all of those things. All these things were part of a typical frustrating homeschool day at that time.

I’ll tell you what I discovered that day, but first, if any of this already sounds familiar, know that you don’t have to figure it out alone.

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It wasn’t just those things that impacted that fateful day when everything changed for me.

I didn’t understand how to assert my needs, so I was spent. I didn’t know how to be vulnerable to share those needs anyway.

Underneath that spent-ness was a younger Teresa who had never gotten what she needed: acknowledgment, consistency, safety, and security. She’d never had the chance to grow up.

And I didn’t know myself, nor did I invest time in becoming more me.

I was trying to do a whole lotta things for my kids and my husband, the things that I would have needed when I was younger.

I was doing a lot of the things for my kids that I needed for me, but I didn’t consciously know that’s why I was doing them.

At the time, I didn’t understand that a home education didn’t need to resemble a prestigious private school. Though I was trying to make one.

However, what I was doing I tried to do perfectly.

Perfection was the only option: perfection meant I did enough-–and if what I did was one smidge less than perfection, what I was doing was not enough.  

If I let myself do less than perfect, I acknowledged what I had already been told as a child (in no minced or hyperbolic words): you are nothing, you are worthless.

Now I couldn’t be reminding myself that this was true. So I didn’t. Perfection was the only option and must be maintained or else that imperfection would reveal that I was indeed nothing and worthless.

I remember that “hitting the wall” day, feeling exasperated before 9 am. Certainly, I remember yelling at the kids. I don’t remember the specifics. But I do remember I left the kids in the family room with our morning basket, and I excused myself angrily to my bedroom.

I texted my husband for help. He was too busy in emerg (a physician) to message me back.

So I texted my friend. She was a more seasoned mom and could listen to my real mom freak-out moments. Since she just finished watching a Ted Talk by a lady named Brene Brown and she found it impactful, she told me, “You should watch it right now.”

And I did and everything changed. (Well it was the beginning of changing everything).

What My Transformation Looked Like

My awakened transformation involved these things:

• Learning to become more me.
• Understanding that I wasn’t showing up as my authentic self.
• Realizing I wasn’t building healthy, authentic relationships because I hadn’t allowed the real me to be present with others.
• Learning to address my needs. I also needed to sign up for personal growth and creative exploration.
• Knowing what mattered most to me, which shaped the activities I chose for myself and my homeschool kids.
• Understanding that it wasn’t just me growing up; my kids were doing that alongside me, and I needed to allow them to do it.
• Clarifying what I believed an education to be anyway, and how my beliefs and values shaped our homeschool routine.

I had a whole lotta things to learn.

You’re Not Alone in This

These lessons didn’t happen overnight, but over the last decade and a half, I realized I’m not alone in these unexpected challenges.

I repeatedly have conversations with other homeschool moms with these challenges too; especially in the last five years, as I walk alongside them to support them to become the real them.

I support homeschool moms to shed what’s not working, so they can show up authentically, confidently, and purposefully in their homeschools & lives.

(And it’s an absolute pleasure to do it!)

Ready to Become More You?

Maybe you’re not at your wall yet. Maybe you hit it this morning. Either way, you don’t need a perfect homeschool. You need one that has room for the real you in it. That’s the work I love doing with homeschool moms, and if you’d like to start, let’s talk. Book a no-obligation conversation, and we’ll create your ACTION Plan together.

And if you’re just starting out, I wrote down the mistakes I wish someone had warned me about in my first year, so your first year can feel a little lighter than mine did.

I’d love to hear your story too. Why did you begin homeschooling? Tell me in the comments.

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Originally published August 3, 2024 · Updated September 24, 2026