Why aren't your kids in school?

Home*School*Home

This question was posed to me by an acquaintance, today in the grocery store. Now, normally, I don't take all 3 kids and go to the grocery in the middle of the day, but we were out of everything and it was a grocery emergency, so we went. The reason I don't usually go this early is that usually we are working and schooling in the mornings and don't go anywhere until the afternoon.

There's been some discussion about this topic on the About.com homeschooling site about what to say to this question, how to answer it, why people ask it, etc. I think probably if I was not a homeschooling parent and had run into an acquaintance in the grocery aisle and she had her kids with her, I'd probably ask. I guess I'm just naturally nosy. If there was some kind of illness that made all 3 of her kids sick, if the schools were unexpectedly closed for some important reason, I think I'd want to know. I don't think people mean any harm when they ask questions like this. I think it is just human nature to be curious and probably most of them are just being friendly. There probably are a few who think that we are crazy, wacko homeschoolers and should put our kids back in public school immediately, be we can pretty much ignore them, I think.

At the grocery store, we got one of those car carts, that is huge, plastic and shaped like a race car. My 12-year-old tried to drive it and was scaring people up and down the aisles. I told him he was turning people against homeschoolers with his driving and he should be more careful. After a couple more aisles and near misses, I told him he was turning me against homeschooling when I used to be quite fond of it. :-) After that, he let me drive. He doesn't want to miss out on being homeschooled for the rest of his school career. He has said that he wants to homeschool through college and he knows that depends on me not getting fed up with it. :-) Looks like mom has leverage now. ((grin))