Guest Author - Meg Grooms

There are more than a million homeschooled children in the United States, which means there are more than a million reasons for homeschooling! While each family's interpretation of "better" and needs are unique, there are some reasons families across the nation agree on when it comes to why they homeschool.

1. Homeschooling provides a custom-tailored education for the individual child. Schools, even private schools, teach to the common denominator which doesn't necessary mean your child's particular denominator. Schools have a goal set for each grade level, a goal that was determined by folks who are far removed from your child's individual needs, knowledge and ability.

Schooling your child at home allows you to teach your child on their personal level and aim for improvement, you don't have to worry about how long it takes your child to catch onto a particular subject. In school your child will be held back if they learn "too slow" and told to slow down if they learn "too fast". Why bother with all of that when you can teach them on their individual level?

2. Your child's physical health can benefit from being at home. This is a particularly important issue to families who have children with health issues, food allergies and families who opt not to vaccinate their children. Regardless of where you live you will see news reports of infections being spread through school. Recently schools were cited as the exposure point of MRSA, meningitis and flu mini-epidemics.

3. Your child's emotional health can benefit from being at home. There is nothing magical about the age of five, nothing automatically clicks in the child's brain to signify that they are now ready to go to school. Your child may know their letters and numbers, but are they emotionally ready to step onto the bus and into the school? This is a hard issue for many parents to accept in this day of the earlier the better, but many kids who do not adjust well to school life were simply put into school too early.

4. Homeschooling provides your child and family time for outside interests. Maybe your family loves going to the beach, when you homeschool you aren't restricted to the same summer weeks as every other family as you are free to visit any time of year. Perhaps your child has a penchant for languages, your child can't reach their full potential when they spend eight hours a day in a school building. My oldest child is extremely interested in weather, definately not a topic covered in depth year after year in a government school!

5. Religious reasons to home educate stretch beyond the Christian faith most people associate with homeschooling. Public schooling is notorious for taking a negative light towards all religions, not just Christianity. Mention of world religions in public school texts is usually negative and fleeting, not providing a child with a true religious education or even a true meaning of what religion is and what each religion's belief set is.

New to Homeschooling?
Take a look at my ebook
Homeschooling With Confidence: A Plain English Guide to Homeschooling in the United States