The Answer To Every Problem Can't Be To “Just Homeschool”

It doesn’t matter if your area has been in school for a month or just over a week, all of the local mom groups and text threads and after-school chats are the same: the parents are going through it. From difficulties with a child’s teacher to bullying to kids having a lot of emotions about back-to-school, this season can really throw everything up in the air. Back-to-school time is always overwhelming and takes some adjusting, but lately, I’ve found that there’s one piece of advice other moms love to share — and it’s a piece of advice that truly isn’t sustainable.

Because “just homeschool, mama” is not exactly a viable solution.

In a recent Facebook group for my own local moms, someone shared that her 6th grader was struggling every day with going to school. Instead of suggesting she talk to him one-on-one about what’s going on or try and figure out if there’s some bigger issue than play other than “sometimes life and school just suck when you’re in 6th grade,” a majority of the comments told her to homeschool him. No worries about if she had a job, no context on whether or not that was the right solution for her or her kid, just a band-aid slapped over the problem. Homeschool will fix everything.

It’s a terrible precedent to set. Homeschooling is right for some families — and it’s become a much more popular form of education since I was little — and wrong for others, and if you feel a deep intuition in your gut that tells you it would be best for your kids to homeschool them, then by all means, that’s the way to go. But to think this is some kind of solution for every single person who has an issue with their kid’s school or who is experiencing a moment of struggle with their current education plan is misguided.

Sure, it’s pretty standard now to know people who homeschool, and those people don’t always fit the stereotypes you might have about homeschooling families. But that doesn’t mean “just homeschool” is the perfect answer for everybody’s back-to-school problems.

For one thing, the word “just” implies that homeschooling is as easy as pie. And while different states have different regulations for this form of education, that doesn’t mean homeschooling your children is super simple or easy. I have never homeschooled my children, but I did try to keep them on task during the pandemic year of kindergarten and let me tell you it sucked. Imagining a whole curriculum, keeping up with a schedule, making sure I hit all of my kids’ educational and social needs, along with the “normal” everyday grind of parenting and being a working mom? Oh, hell no.

But even if homeschooling was just as easy as deciding to do it and it being successful, the truth is not every back-to-school problem needs to be solved this way. “Just homeschool” seems to be the crutch for parents to use instead of other strategies like asking your child’s teacher for a quick meeting, reaching out to the school counselor, or having open communication with your child to figure out what’s stopping them from enjoying school.

It feels like more often than not, we think the only solution to an issue is to just rid ourselves of the environment entirely. But we seem to have forgotten how to fix things — or at least attempt to fix them — and the rallying cry of “just homeschool” reminds me of the less problematic — but similar — solution to “move school districts” or “look into permissive transfer.”

Look, sometimes there’s a learning curve for everybody when school starts back. Sometimes kids need a second to adjust and get back in the groove of things. Sometimes there are a lot of big feelings happening that have zero to do with school or academics or their peers and everything to do with hormones and family life and their age. Sometimes there are bullies and issues that need to be fixed immediately, and sometimes that means you’re going to have to reach out to the school and give them a chance to fix something.

Communication, engaged teachers, parents who care — these are tools and resources most of us have. It’s easy to get caught up in the fear of public education or the worry that your kid is being left behind in some capacity by your local schools, but overall, you can find something to help your kid. You can’t parent your kids with an all or nothing mentality.

And the answer to every problem can’t be to “just homeschool.”