We’re walking into this path ourselves at the CHEER household, those tween years when our children are not quite little kids and not quite teens.   I feel blessed that homeschooling has allowed my tween to continue to be little.  As she branches out to find her own music taste, she leans toward Taylor Swift and has yet to figure out who Britney Spears is and, thank goodness, she hasn’t asked “what did she do again?’

I see our community filled with growing children, seeking their own interests and friends.  They are becoming their own people rather than just somebody’s child.

In our community, there aren’t many requests to go to public school. These kids have it good and they know it!  They’ve got friends, community, classes activities and a darn good life.  But in places where community is not so well established, the request to go to school can often be heard in these middle years.

Often after a miserable attempt, kids want to return home, but not always.  These middle years are a traditionally under-served period.  It’s a ‘chicken or egg’ type situation.  Do the kids go to school because they have no support or is there no support because they all go to school.  I’m betting on the former.  If we can create community and support for these kids during their most impressionable and vulnerable years, more and more of them will choose to stay home.  I’m hoping so.  I’ve got a prom to plan in a few years!

Homeschooling a Middle Schooler - Homeschooling your young adolescent carries with it some of the challenges of puberty but it also is a time period where some fruits of earlier work can be harvested.

Starting Homeschooling in the Middle Grades – “Not every parent who thinks about homeschooling has the confidence or the vision to start homeschooling when their child becomes old enough to start school.  Some of us, like me, despite thinking about it for years, only actually come to do it later in our child’s education when we’ve lost faith in a particular school system being able to deliver what our child needs.”

Homeschool Programs and the Parent – Young Teen Relationship – Homeschool Programs need to adapt to the changing parent – young teen relationship as our young children begin to get older. As soon as we seem to feel respected as not just a parent but as a real teacher, our children begin to discover their own unique identities.

If you’ve got a blog post or article about the middle years, I’d love to post it here!  If you’ll submit it below, I’ll share it with all our CHEERful readers.