The Glasses We Wear: Understanding the Responses You Get About Your Decision to Homeschool

“Ooo, here is an article about homeschooling!” Sandra reaches for her glasses. They are a lovely floral vintage pair. She puts them on the end of her nose. She reads the first few lines of the article. Her face lights up, and she smiles and exclaims, “That’s exactly what I was thinking!”

You see, what we often forget is that everyone looks at life through her own glasses. Some wear sunglasses in order to dim the brightness of others’ enthusiasm. Everything they say is negative and dark. They are often fearful of something and warn others of the dangers of too much exposure or too much of a good thing. I heard such a lady the other day cautioning a mom: “Think long and hard before you homeschool. There are many hard days.” We need these sundowners in our lives to bring us down to earth and help us to be realistic about things.

Others’ glasses have been cracked by hardships and rough handling. They can’t see very clearly, yet what they see is truth to them. “You are doing your child a big disservice by homeschooling him! Look how bent that other child is!” These people do not understand that their views are skewed. Perhaps all the children they have looked at have looked weird and abnormal to them. Does that mean YOU shouldn’t homeschool your child?

Everyone has a set of circumstances and knowledge when it comes to any subject. Whenever something controversial gets placed on the examination table, they put their glasses on and look at it. A common response is, “ I could never do that!” Immediately, the person evaluates homeschooling through her own aptitude and interests. Her insecurities and belief that only teachers are qualified to teach are all built into the glasses she wears and in turn, the opinion she shares.

It’s not only homeschooling that illicits such person-centered responses. Think of the last time you saw a person’s new haircut. Immediately you form an opinion based on your feelings surrounding that haircut. Even your favourite flower is your favourite as a result of some pleasant experience related to it. Therefore, I have a lot of patience for people voicing their opinions, good or bad, about homeschooling. They may have been held up in a bank by a delinquent who was kept at home throughout his childhood, and now they are convinced children from homeschooled families become criminals.

Some grandparents wear ancient horn-rimmed glasses. They are anti-homeschooling because when they were children, going to school was an enormous priviledge. Their parents had scrimped and saved to send them to school, working multiple jobs and working themselves to the bone. Perhaps it was dangerous to go to school, like it was for my grandparents in England during the war. Perhaps, like my grandmother, girls were only sent to school until they were 12 even if they longed for more education. Can you then blame these elderly people for valuing traditonal schooling so much?

But then there may be someone who had a horrible experience during his school career and who may jump with excitement at the thought of your child escaping that. His reading glasses were jumped on, kicked, and broken. Bullying and evil teachers still haunt him, and he feels a measure of relief, and a little jealousy, at the thought of homeschooling. Perhaps he has found meaning in his suffering, -he has taped his glasses back together- and has become a successful businessman as a result of learning to stand up to the bullies. Now he believes that public schools are there to toughen kids up, to prepare them for the real world. He is simply unaware that homeschoolers also live in the real world and often come into contact with bullies and hard-to-please people.

Moms who feel guilty that they are not spending enough time with their children might attack you. Strangers who have never heard of homeschooling quickly calculate that your kids probably don’t have any friends and pounce on that. Well-meaning friends wonder if you’ll still have time to visit with them. Even in your heart, you hope you’ll still have a little me-time somewhere. And that’s all okay. It’s all understandable. It’s just your glasses.

The moral of my story is, when you share with someone that you are homsechooling or planning to homeschool, remember that she will be looking at homeschooling through her glasses. It has little or nothing to do with you and your decision. It has everything to do with her and the glasses she is wearing.

Janet Kieswetter has become passionate about homeschooling simce she started learning together with her three beautiful daughters in January 2014. Since then, so many friends and strangers have been asking her about homeschooling–which has fueled her desire to help more families take the leap. Her husband Timothy is a marriage counselor, and they have a Facebook ministry called Gesonde Seks which helps Afrikaans-speaking South Africans enjoy healthier marriages as a result of enjoying healthy sex. Their daughters are 7, 5, and 2 years old. You can read more from Janet at Kieswetter Klaskamer