The Beginning

Always having been an admirer of homeschooling, I was driven into the decision by the public school system. My youngest of 3 girls was in kindergarten and having a rough time. She had fallen off of the monkey bars at school the day before Thanksgiving vacation was starting and ended up in a children's hospital overnight. After another fall off of the dreadful play equipment I took her to an optometrist and found that she had a slight birth defect with her eyes. So slight that it had gone undetected. After many verbal and written requests for the adults at the school to keep her off of the equipment, she was still going on them and still falling off of them.

Now, add the fact that the teacher and I were in agreement that the same child showed all of the signs of having dyslexia, the school system refused to do further testing or offer any help until she repeated AND failed a second year of kindergarten. Through intensive work at home, the only thing milestone that she was struggling with to pass to first grade was the names of 6 letters. The names, not the sounds mind you. The teacher said she was sorry but the rules were clear... even though my daughter was much more advanced in other areas than the other kids (she could already do addition and subtraction in her head and on an abacus), since she couldn't keep from mixing up the names of those 6 letters, she was going to have to repeat kindergarten.

So, rather than let my daughter fall through the cracks like so many other kids did and do, I pulled her out that day and went down to enroll her in the homeschooling program. It was a big decision, one which I wonder about every day.