I left a six figure income to homeschool our three children. I did this at 33 years old, in the prime of my career, one that I worked really hard to build and genuinely enjoyed. I was good at what I did, I started making six figures in my twenties, and I was being groomed for more senior roles within corporate America. So, why did I leave a lucrative career to homeschool my children? Well, to put it simply, motherhood changed my life.
I was
not one of those little girls that dreamed about weddings and babies. Not that there's anything wrong with dreaming about weddings and babies, it just wasn't me. I dreamed of going away to college and having
a career. Honestly, I didn’t even know
if I’d get married and have a family, and if I did, I was sure this would
happen much later in life for me. I did
go away to college, even studied abroad, but ended up meeting my husband at 22
in graduate school and we were married at 24.
Madly in love we started our lives together fresh out of graduate school
and we intentionally waited five years before starting a family. We focused on ourselves and our careers
during those first five years. And we
traveled a lot. In the eyes of our
parents’ we were living the American dream.
This is what they had worked so
hard for to put us through college. We
both came from blue-collar families, mine are European immigrants who came from poverty, we were
both the first in our families to earn a college degree, and the only ones with
master degrees. We were your typical
type-A personalities, ambitious and high-achievers.
Choosing an Alternative Path
So we surprised a lot of people when we decided that my husband would leave his job to be home with our first born. This was a radical decision, the first of many more to come which we would discover later. Almost three years later came our twin girls. My husband loved being the stay-at-home parent, but I was eager to have a turn at home, so we decided to switch places. He returned to corporate America and I stayed home. Now, we could have just hired a nanny or even had my mother care for them full time, which she was more than willing to do, but we didn’t want a nanny, and we didn’t even want the grandparents to be the primary caregivers, we wanted to be the ones to raise our children. So, even though I was the bread-winner, we agreed that I needed to be home to raise our twin baby girls and to homeschool our then preschooler. That was the second radical decision we made.
Initially, I was just going to stay home for a few years, homeschool all three girls through the preschool years and then send them off to our local public school. We wanted our children home with us through their early childhood years, not sending them to preschool was a decision many thought was radical. But our journey became even more radical when we passed up on public education in one of the best school districts in the country to homeschool our then kindergartner. Having our children at home with us through their early childhood years allowed us to observe how children naturally learn. And that was an amazing discovery, one that we want to continue with. It also forced us to slow down and live a more simple life where family is priority. We want to continue to give our children the time, space, and freedom to pursue their interests and to learn at their own pace. Homeschooling may not be an option for everyone, I understand that public education is very much needed in this country, and there are also a number of wonderful private schools across the country, but my hope is that homeschooling will become an option that more families consider. I'm also not advocating that all mothers quit their jobs to be at home. I support working mothers, I am still a working mother. I started my own part-time consulting practice when I left corporate America. But I do believe that many could live more simply and focus more on family. I never imagined homeschooling my children and now I can’t imagine doing anything else. It has truly enriched all of our lives and has given us the freedom to live according to our own agendas.
 |
| Our family |
I leave you with a quote from John Holt, an educator who coined the term “unschooling”. “Leaders are not, as we are often led to think, people who go along with huge crowds following them. Leaders are people who go their own way without caring, or even looking to see, whether anyone is following them. "Leadership qualities" are not the qualities that enable people to attract followers, but those that enable them to do without them. They include, at the very least, courage, endurance, patience, humor, flexibility, resourcefulness, stubbornness, a keen sense of reality, and the ability to keep a cool and clear head, even when things are going badly. True leaders, in short, do not make people into followers, but into other leaders.” John Holt, Teach Your Own: The John Holt Book Of Homeschooling.
