School Already?

This is one of my favorite pictures from the trip. Sadie finally got to meet her Massachusetts cousins and she had a great time, although we have a lot to learn about sharing. Right now she wants any toy that anyone else has and Bailey (her cousin who has just turned two) did a great job sharing with Sadie.

I've been thinking a lot about how much Sadie is learning and that (along with various comments we've heard) has got me thinking more and more about homeschooling. We decided, long before Sadie was born, that we would homeschool our children.

Like breastfeeding and headcovering, homeschooling seems to be an issue that people are passionate about, even when it doesn't affect them. That's one thing I don't understand. I understand being passionate about these issues if they affect you, but if they don't, if you're not a mother making the choice to breastfeed or a woman deciding to cover her head during Mass or a family who's decided to homeschool, why care so passionately about it?

The socialization argument is the one we're already coming up against and it makes me want to scream. Socialization is the reason we've decided to take this path. I don't want my daughter socialized at an incredibly young age in our secular culture. When did protecting your child from very adult topics become a bad thing?

People automatically assume that we're homeschooling Sadie because I feel I can teach her more on my own. While I do feel that way (I had a 4.0 throughout school and it really wasn't challenging) that's not the reason we've chosen to homeschool. If it was only a matter of getting a good education I would send her to school and then supplement what she did at school at home.

We're still years away from deciding what kind of homeschooling, but I'm learning all I can right now. So far I'm leaning towards a mixture of different methods. I want to use a combination of one of the more traditional Catholic homeschooling programs and the Unschooling method. I'm sure we can come up with something that fosters Sadie's curiosity and love of learning and lets her truly be a child for far longer then she would be if we sent her to school, public or private.