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Hello! I am a homeschooling mom. I homeschool my 14 year old son. Joseph has dyslexia and add. We did the whole public school thing until it just didn't work any more. Now I am homeschooling him. He learns faster and easier and has a teacher who actually cares and isn't just trying to get through each month so she can pick up a pay check. Not that all teachers do that. But it seems that a good deal of once great teachers have lost their heart for the profession. I know I see a lot of it. I think a good deal of them would leave if they knew how to do something else. I think most people who become teachers actually have great hopes of making a great influence in the lives of young people. I really do beleive that is true. I used to want to be a teacher. If I had been I would have chosen literature.
Kids don't seem to like that I don't know who chooses the books. I do know that one of the books the 7th grade had to read last year was a book that I would never let my grandmother even see. I wonder if whoever choose it ever actually read the book because the stuff in that book was stuff that the kids aren't allowed to talk about in school. The language was stuff we try to teach our children not to say. And the violence in the book was off the charts. Its a very harsh book. I know this because I was reading it too. I wanted to see what he was reading and so I read it.

Anyway so we got off subject. As a homeschooling mom I can choose what he reads and I make good and sure he will like it. With one exception. We actually read War of The Worlds last year. If you have ever read this book and I do mean the original version you would know that the author HG Wells knows little about writing. It was written when writing was a hobby for rich people. People who generally knew big words but didn't know when not to use them. This book is a perfect example because the man wrote run on sentences like there was no tomorrow. For instance it became a game for us to count the lines in these wacko sentences of his and we thought we had a winner at 12 lines. But no! Alas, there was a grand prize winner of 15 lines. It was a harrowing experience to pick out what the man actually meant at times. I have lived in England and can usually pick through it quite easily and get the actual meaning but with this book you couldn't.
We make sure to mix it up on a regular basis. I let him pick one out and then I pick one out and back and forth and so on and so on. It works well and we have gone through some wonderful books that both of us have loved.

With homeschooling you would think he would get sick of me and me of him but that isn't the case. I don't get tired of him and he says he loves his teacher. I like to hear that. We have become closer and know more about each other then most parent/ child relationships. And this is especially true when it comes to teens.

I don't want my son to be a cookie cutter child. It seems a lot of schools want the children and teens to be graduating all looking the same and acting the same and all knowing the same things. They can't get out of the box and have a hard time thinking outside the box when it becomes important to do so. Elementry schools are horrible about this and when the kids get to highschool they are expected to be able to think for themselves and come up with things more individualized. Its hard for the kids to do this because they have been taught to do everything the same way all the other kids do it. Its really sad if you ask me. But still you see even in highschool where the kids are fighting to break out of a box they were put in early on and people keep telling them they can't do it. They still aren't allowed to be different because if they are they will get picked on. They are stuck in little groups and they don't know how to get out and learn about the rest of the people around them because of it. Its a different box then they had in elem. school but its still a box just the same. The kid that doesn't fit in any of those boxes is seen as wierd or strange and tends to be left out of most everything. They aren't in a box with others. They are locked in their own lonely box. While the others are fighting to break out of the boxes they are in these kids in the lonely boxes are striving to get out of their boxes and into one of the others. They don't realize that the kids in the group boxes want out of their boxes just as bad as the lonely box kids want in.

Joseph no longer has to worry about any of these boxes. He is free of all of them. Its something he doesn't even miss. He loves being homeschooled. He is the happiest he has been since starting preschool when he was three years old. He gets what he needs here. Someone to help him keep on track, a relaxed atmosphere and a teacher who loves teaching him and actually loves him. He laughs now. He doesn't think he is stupid because teachers forget he is dyslexic and constantly give him bad grades for something he can't help. He gets one on one attention he needs to help him out when he needs it but actually makes him do stuff himself so he will feel he has accomlished something and so he actually learns. He doesn't get detention for talking in class because discussing things is a way of learning.

I love homeschooling him. Its been the best thing for him. I am glad I made the right decision.