Reason #2

When people ask us why we chose to home educate our children, it's hard to pin it down to just one or two reasons. I think most of the really big choices in our lives are like that; there are so many reasons for the major decisions that it can be difficult to sum them up in just a sentence or two.

When I think back to the days when I was first thinking about school for our children, I know tha tI really wasn't thinking about the faith issues that are such a common reason for home educating even though our Christian faith is fundamental to every aspect of ourlives. I wasn't really looking at the intellectual reasons either, or the social issues of school. I was watching two small children learning together, and loving the sweetness of their interaction, and knowing that sending the older one to school would cut that short.

The primary reason then for keeping our chidlren home was to allow them to continue to be each other's closest friend, to watch big sister teach little brother and learn from him as well, and to enjoy the shared experience of taking them together on nature walks and museum trips and various other excursions, adding in the next lttle brother as he grew and caught up to them.

We hear so much about sibling rivalry and so little about brotherly love. We tried as parents to foster a sense that each child is a gift to the entire family, that siblings are the most constant people in our lives since we outlive our parents and move away from our classmates, but maintain that sibling connection for a lifetime. Our children now consider each other to be close friends, and watching that is such a blessing to us as their parents. One of the gifts of home education to be sure!