After the discussion on my last post, I’ve been wondering just how involved the average homeschool father is in homeschooling. And it looks like the discussion has already begun a bit with Homeschool and Etc., Zimmszoo, and Only Sometimes Clever sharing their thoughts. So I thought I’d conduct a little poll. Wholly unscientific, and from which no meaningful conclusions can be drawn, but I’m curious anyway. For the homeschool fathers out there, how involved are you in the homeschooling of your children?
Around here, my husband is very supportive although not directly involved. Actually, that is part of why we homeschool in a round about way. As a railroader, he has a crazy schedule, and for those precious few hours when he is both home and awake, we find the family time to be more important than the school time.
Other than being a check on a budget that might otherwise spiral out of control, he has very little to do with any of the educational decisions made. Not counting the first big one which would be the decision to homeschool in the first place. I was totally against it, and only consented to teaching kindergarten because I think Playdo is as important as pencils at that age, and the local school district does not necessarily agree.
I began homeschooling knowing full well my daughter would be enrolled at the school in first grade.
From that point on, I’ve pretty much gone on about “my thing.” And, for the most part, it works. I’ve never particularly lamented the fact that he doesn’t do math lessons or listen to them read. I know he trusts me to do my best for the children and (almost as important) I know he won’t say too much about the last order I put in to Amazon.com.
I don’t expect him to take on the role of teacher, nor do I particularly want him to take on the role of principal in our little homeschool. I could not do this, however, if he weren’t on board. If I felt like I was continually being compared to the public school. If I had to keep my doubts and frustrations to myself to keep from adding fuel to the disagreement on how to educate the children.
There are enough people out there who question the decision to homeschool without it coming from my own home.
I answered the poll, but wanted to comment. I do all the teaching, but only because I’m a stay-at-home dad. When we first started homeschooling three years ago, my wife tried to step in on days off and teach a few lessons, but it was too confusing for both the kids and us. Now she’ll do a science experiment here and there, or take the kids on a field trip, but for the most part we do better with the consistency of me as teacher.
You know, it is kinda the same here. When my husband has tried to step in, it was too confusing for the kids and ended badly. We have totally different teaching styles. If he worked with them regularly, I’m sure it would be different, but on his every so often type of schedule, it just doesn’t work.
I’ve found that leaving a few math worksheets can work well, but only if my husband is not distracted and trying to do HIS work at the same time and watching the smaller children on top of that. It’s ok to have a half day every now and then if I have an appointment.
Thank you for the link. :]
Hubby does Math and Science and shares equally with field trips – though we do try to do those as a family it’s not always possible.
Our homeschooling is as much a joint effort as the rest of our parenting and housework…except I don’t mow the lawn.
It’s been working out really well so far. We do have our moments when we are at odds but we seem to have little trouble getting over those hurdles.
I hadn’t really thought about it until Dana asked the question, but I guess this is an advantage for those of us who have always unschooled — because there’s no “teaching” or worksheets or class schedule, etc, then there’s no sense on anyone’s part, that the children learn from only one parent.
I wouldn’t say the children learn from only one parent. It’s just different kinds of learning.
Interesting poll…
I voted “She homeschools and I support her 100%” eventhough I do help out from time to time – I don’t think it qualifies as enough to say that “I help out with the homeschooling”.
I mean, it’s not like I’m on their schedule or anything. I’ll give tests, read, or help them with their math from time to time. Probably no more or less than some public school parent might do helping their kids with their nightly homework or something.
I really do enjoy it when I get an oppotunity to help out though.
Robert at edifyathome.com
Still waiting for that one dad who both reads my blog and does not support the homeschool decision in his home.
Hmmm. Thinking maybe my poll may have been biased from the outset.
I put down, “I help,” because I do come up with field trips and take responsibility for teaching some things, but there’s a lot of “I support her 100%” in there, as well. Nicole & I are working hard to get better at talking through our home education/child-rearing practices, and encouraging each other to be engaged. We really want our family’s learning lifestyle to be, as Zanya says, “a joint effort.” But it’s not always easy.
Our kids sort of expect learning activities to be everywhere, so it doesn’t throw them off when either parent jumps in with some bit of instruction or calls attention to a cool thing to learn.
It’s an interesting question, though, which (as Robert points out) might apply to school parents as well as homeschool dads: how do you engage with your children’s education?
Robert & Circle Reader, you’ve raised another interesting question in my mind.
In order to be involved and engaged, do you have to be involved in the lessons themselves?
My husband isn’t likely to sit down with a spelling list unless I ask him to, but he’ll spend an hour surfing the web with the kids to answer a question or take them out for some one on one time at the hardware store.
To me, that is just as important as the messy gluing they’re involved in right now, though he’d never pull out anything involving mess if he were doing this!
Mulling and mulling, and I cannot quantify you an answer, Dana, other than to say we’re both involved 100%, but with really different time ratios due to his job.
Being unschoolers, I don’t know if we could define the split beyond time availability. We both just do stuff, and the kids follow whoever’s doing what they’re interested in.
We took our boat out on Monday, and the oldest two went with Dad sailing, while the youngest did practical experiments in density and displacement on the shore with sticks and rocks. (He was weighting down flat driftwood with rocks to see the effects, not just comparing the two independently. And weaving himself a story of how the rocks were catapult missiles landing on a boat.)
I guess the bias I would see in framing questions is not to assume that time spent = concepts absorbed. Dave can be home for half a day and get them into a really wild learning experience, whereas I’m home all the time and maybe not so intense due to constant exposure.
Maybe another way to frame the question of dads who are uncomfortable with their family’s homeschooling environment would be, “I don’t believe our homeschooling scenario is the most effective educational process we could have, and would like input for change.”
In my personal opinion, dads who support 100% without being involved in formal-learning decisions (some of which we also do, and it’s entirely my call in that area) are probably still teaching their kids more than they know. And that also goes for dads not happy with the status quo, but the parental discussions may be much more difficult.
~Cat
Hey, thanks for the link, Dana.
You asked: “In order to be involved and engaged, do you have to be involved in the lessons themselves?” And, as I said in my post, it works well in our family that my husband is NOT. It is extremely valuable to me that he trusts what I’m doing — because he’s pleased with the results — and is an encouragement, my defender, and the supplier of funds. I could probably count on one hand (maybe a hand with six or seven fingers) the number of times he’s been actively involved in any kind of “regular” schooling in the seven years we’ve done this. But, I’m not complaining!! I like our arrangement, and I’m not pining for his more-active involvement.
I don’t believe my DH would find an answer that matches his true feelings. If there were an option for “she homeschools and I am not thrilled about it but I don’t see that we have any better choice” that would be him. He’s skeptical about homeschooling but can do the math and knows that it’s not in our budget to pay for either private school tuition or moving to a neighborhood with (academically) decent government-run schools. So at least for now he’s grudgingly supportive.
I would love to have him embrace homeschooling, but I’ll take what I can get.
It might be interesting for the Dads to answer, and then their wives – to see if they both perceive his involvement the same way.
Tim’s Mom – that IS a great idea – at least it would be fascinating to know.
Anyway, Dana, my hubbs does not even read blogs much less ones about homeschooling if he did, but I’ll try to answer. I don’t see answer for my husband either. I guess I think “support her 100%” is pretty subjective. Does support mean I’m so glad she’s doing it, but she does it all. Or does it mean I’m really behind homeschooling and so I fill in as much as possible or teach the kids everything I can. OR something else?
So my answer for him is:
She does all the homeschooling and I’m mostly not involved in curriculum choosing, purchasing, or teaching. I’m not very interested in doing it, and she loves it, so I enjoy it this way. Occasionally I take the kids on a field trip without her (but she takes them on more often alone or we all go together). Sometimes I teach the kids life skills like raking the lawn, etc., or give them a worksheet to do while she’s out.
So as for me, the wife, I don’t really feel supported 100% per se, I feel somewhat supported in that he makes a comment once a year about being glad we homeschool, and he’s willing to teach the kids life skills or hand them a worksheet now and then, but it would NEVER be by his own idea or volunteering, only when I ask. My feeling of kind of being out there on my own comes from the fact that he doesn’t have that passion for learning I’m trying to instill, so it doesn’t come naturally to him to show the kids how he gets excited about something and then they go into learning it from the web or do an experiment or something like that. I wish. Not because I’m not doing those things, but because I know how important parental modeling is and I really want all my kids to catch that desire to learn. I try to lift him up to the kids as the principal, but no, he doesn’t check on my work. This may change as the kids get to high school and maybe he’ll want to make sure the ducks are in a row, but our oldest is only in 2nd grade-ish.
Tim’s mom–a little therapy right here on my blog? It would be interesting to see, because I’d venture to guess the involvement is seen differently. In fact, I’m suddenly sort of wondering how many dads would be more formally involved if they were simply asked.
And Crimson Wife, “best for us at the moment though not ideal”is a viable category. Not all bad.
Your situation sounds identical to ours with the exception that my husband comes on many of our bigger field trips and “teaches” our son in areas that are probably considered more “real life” and not schoolish in his mind at all–like operating the heavy equipment : backhoes and such, watching and talking about topics on the history or discovery channels, building things and fixing things around the house when my husband has the patience and doesn’t feel like David is in the way, having him help to tend the chickens and observe other bugs and reptiles in our yard, teaching him to shoot a pellet gun (just recently started that as David’s interest are there.) But these are things he would have taught him regardless of homeschooling or regular schooling, I suppose
Homeschooling just allows for a more natural progression and interaction for them.
Wade Hulcy, of KONOS, figured out why homeschool dads do so little. He says, “Most men are scared to death of looking stupid, especially in front of their wife and kids.” That was the conversation that triggered the “Pop Quiz” supplement to the Tapestry of Grace program. It’s a 32 CD set that tells dads what their family is learning each week and provides good “discussion starter” questions for him to ask at the dinner table.
Hah! Reading certain posts in this commentary reminds me of a marriage “survival” lesson that (by the Lord’s grace alone) I learned rather early on.
That is… “If you only do 5% of the work, you only get to VOLUNTEER 5% of your opinions.”
I don’t know about most dads in general, but the more engaged or “invested” I become in something, the more (crazy, green horn, rookie) opinions I start having about how that something should be done. Unfortunately, my opinions sometimes (well… let’s be honest, USUALLY) outpace my direct involvement.
It is at those times that I must often take a step back and recognize the fact that Diane is more often than not doing 95% of the homeschooling.
This is not to say that I do not support her 100% or otherwise provide my input when she asks for it, or that I do not volunteer it when I see a storm cloud approaching on the horizon – that is my duty, and hers as well when the roles are reversed.
That said, this flexible little rule of thumb applies rather well both ways to a number of scenarios – basement finishing, car repairs, yard work, decorating, room painting, preparing meals, etc. … oh… and definitely basement finishing… yes, I know I already said that one… believe me, it’s worth listing it twice!
;o)
Robert at edifyathome.com
Enjoyed the post, and all the comments too!
I was homeschooled growing up, and my wife now homeschools our oldest 3. It took me a while to learn to step away from the structured part of their homeschool day… The style of teaching I grew up with is much different than her approach. I had to realize that different doesn’t equal better or worse. Different people, different approaches. She does a GREAT job, and my suggestions and “help” seemed to muck things up.
Being an illustrator, I now try to focus on giving the kids lots of create experiences to learn from while wholeheartedly encouraging my wife to do her thing with math, science, history, spelling, etc, etc…
- AZ
Dh teaches all math in all grades, and is involved in science. He’s taught the younger set to read, because they Love love love to do reading lessons with dad after dinner. Once they are reading I take over all the LA and most of the rest of school as well, save math. Over the years dh and I have become a great team
Your DH is a railroader? Mine too. I totally understand.
I chose “supports me 100%” but really, it’s more of “She does all of the homeschooling, and I fill in around the edges when a new perspective is necessary.” LOL
Just this morning we were reviewing a new math course together.