Homeschooling: Sheltering my kids

Rachael Barlow

I was accused of this before I even started homeschooling. It's odd because one would think that sheltering your children is what every parent is supposed to do. After all the definition is:
1. To constitute or provide a shelter for: Protect.

2. To place under shelter or protection.

Neither of these says “to cloister without friends,” or “to lock in a closet.” Yet on last month's episode of “Nanny 911,” the homeschooling mom was talked about as “sheltering her kids so much, she home schools them.” -- like sheltering is a bad thing!

And some of the more directly honest people I have met will ask me things like, “do you let your kids hang out with regular kids?” (Which is a really funny question -- my kids are very regular!)

In some ways, I do protect my children, as my parents did for me. I offer them only good food most of the day; the television is only available a couple times a week on channels like HGTV or the Food Network; and most videos are library non-fiction videos.


Katherine decides when she will do different subjects. She learned really quickly not to “save” all the tough stuff for the afternoons. She decided what style of cursive to learn and when she wanted to learn it. She helped decide which math approach to use. In spite of reminders, she did not focus while doing her math workbook for several weeks. Then she had to figure out how many pages a day she needed to complete in order to finish the workbook in time. I try not to shelter her from the ramifications of her own decisions, if that can be safely done.