From Normie to Weirdo: my indoctrination into Homeschoolism

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(I feel the need to preface this post by saying that in relaying my experiences, I do not mean to cast any judgment on people who do life differently to me).

Oz was keen to homeschool our kids before we even had them. I was not. Homeschoolers were hypo-socialized (religious) weirdos, and although we too were weird and arguably hypo-socialized , we were not like that.

And then we were ready to have kids, and as is often the way, my life (read: values) turned completely upside-down and I became hyper-fixated on the well-being of my baby. I quit my beloved dream job because I couldn’t handle the prospect of not being with her (and in fairness it involved a fair bit of travel), and we ultimately moved countries (from San Francisco to rural Australia) so that we could prioritize our kids’ early childhood (close to grandparents, more space and time to explore), and our time with them.

Thanks to the potent influence of maternal hormones, I chose¹ to raise the baby/toddler versions of our kids quite intensively, relative to cultural norms. I (my hormones and trapped priors) really vibe with the attachment-style theories of Gordon Neufeld, and a lot of modern parenting practices don’t make sense to me. That is, I don’t think our biology has caught up with the modern requests of post-industrial society. My babies also liked being held a lot, and I didn’t have it in me to not hold them when they wanted it. Maybe this set of circumstances was or wasn’t causative (in either direction!), but these choices made sending my kids to childcare at a young age seemingly impossible for both me and them.²³

And then they started growing up, and nothing really changed! I still believe that it’s better for my kids⁴ to be under the care of people who really really dig them, in the way that only parents/grandparents/maybe some others can really really dig a kid. And there are at least a couple of authors (Hold Onto Your Kids), who support my beliefs that kids do better under the dominant influence of adult leaders rather than their peers, as modern schooling systems would have.

And, as my brain has now re-connected with the outside world (bye hormones! I weaned by youngest a year ago), I am increasingly motivated by what has motivated Oz all along: a childhood grudge!

Only a little bit jk! Childhood grudge, plus the belief that it’s the best way to raise high-agency kids who will be prepared for Armageddon (see first paragraph). I mean, climate change/technological singularity/biological warfare/nothing being all that different but being a Normie (by unconscious choice) will always be way more boring than being able to create cool shit and live life on your own terms.

It took me about three years of living in the SF Bay Area to eventually undo my cultural conditioning and belief that “success” in life means being intellectually revered/earning a good income from a prestigious workplace.

Homeschooling gives our kids the best experience of my current formula for a good life: a deep understanding of self and your value in the world (and with that, self-confidence) + a stellar education (we’ll write more posts on this, but essentially you can be shockingly more efficient educating at home than at school). I am also not unhappy about the fact that by homeschooling, you automatically sit more at the margin of society, and therefore can critically evaluate it in a way that you can’t always when you’re embedded in the system. It is through this critical evaluation that deep internal fulfillment, as well as great solutions to the world’s problems, can be achieved. Of course conventional school is not prohibitive to this, but I think homeschooling will do a better job of it.

Re: being embedded in system and childhood grudges⁵, allow me to conclude with my final main motivator: I was also really good at being embedded in the system and it was really not good for me! And I would really hate for my kids to have the experience of doing well at that kind of cost to themselves. I was very good at following rules, so much so that I developed a decade-long eating disorder, suffered unacknowledged(?) anxiety, and got top marks all at the same time #goals. I am so very not alone in this. So much so that every time I see a dumb social science paper stating that X parenting technique does not cause negative outcomes later in life because some of the kids turned into doctors and lawyers, I yell in my head at the authors: “GAHH MY OPPOSITE POINT EXACTLY!”

By homeschooling, we remove our kids from these kinds of negative pressures by, for example: not being tied to an external clock (that’s actually a massive deal if you take the time to think about it); fostering a love of learning for learning’s sake rather than to achieve high marks (to compete with peers, to compensate for low self-esteem, blah); surrounding them with love until they have enough of it in themselves to block out negative external influences (that sounds whimsical but I think it’s highly underrated in a world that toughens kids up too quickly).

In later posts we’ll also address one obvious omission in this post: what to do as a parent if you homeschool and don’t want it to be your entire identity. (Most homeschooling families = working FT dad, FT homeschooling mum). Oz and I both work PT and parent FT (with the exception of a recent brief stint with an au pair - see footnote).

1. Oz keeps reminding me it’s a choice; I honestly feel I have very little control over my instinctual drive though!

2. I know most of you do not have this experience for many reasons. Values, finances, luck, different compromises, better cultural adaptation, hormonal influence, mental health, etc.

3. The irony of writing about this topic is that I’m attempting to do so while our au pair looks after the kids and it is not working. Ha! What ended up working was me taking over their care and filling up their love cup so that they could go play solo for a while and leave me to work.

4. Maybe you’re different to me! Probably! Cool if your kids like external childcare. Sorry if they don’t and you don’t have a choice! Again, just relaying my own experience.

5. For the record, Oz does not share this childhood grudge.