Reasons we homeschooled; retrospective gladness

This year we have a 12th grade daughter, Katie, graduating who has homeschooled ever since first grade. Before that she went to a Christian kindergarten, a Christian preschool, and before that a secular preschool. We also homeschool a 2nd grade son, Tim, who has never been in a preschool or kindergarten or school environment other than Sunday school and Awana. I thought I'd blog here the reasons that started us homeschooling, and some of the reasons I'm glad we did so.
We had Katie in Christian kindergarten, expecting to put her way all the way through Christian school if we could do so. I was mildly exploring the idea of homeschooling, but not very seriously at the beginning. We had a couple of family friends who were just starting to homeschool when Katie was approaching first grade.
Katie hadn't been especially happy in kindergarten, in a class of only ten children. Her teacher was sometimes temperamental, I noticed when I helped in her class. She would be readily irritated at certain students, and inconsistent in her discipline methods. She would give a child a mark for each perceived wrongdoing, and these marks would accumulate the whole year through. Whoever had the least marks at the end of the year got first choice of a set of creations the children had made together, and on down to the last choice going to the one who got the most marks. It seemed unforgiving, inappropriate, discouraging, and at least somewhat unfair.
In addition I found her teacher's choice of reading books to be somewhat poor. There were many books I remembered from childhood that I wanted to share with Katie, classic books that stood the test of time, with more realistic, less silly scenarios and a calmer, more earnest attitude than those the teacher read.
While Katie was in kindergarten, she was bored. She had been reading since she was three and the summer before kindergarten, she had earned the mayor's award for reading 100 books. Most of the other children in her class were still learning the alphabet at the start of the year and when I helped in the classroom at the end, I was surprised to find that they were still having trouble with it. The teacher actually asked her to read the story to the class sometimes when her own throat was sore. We didn't feel that Katie was learning much in the classroom environment, and that was another aspect through which we could accommodate her needs by homeschooling.
Katie found a half school day a long time to be away from home, and only dreaded the full days that she knew were to start in first grade. I loved the idea of having her home and spending more time with her. At the time, also, we had the opportunity to travel with my husband within the state for his work. This was an exciting concept to him. We definitely wanted to give her a Christian education, and homeschooling offered that possibility and the flexibility to choose the curriculum, the place, the time, and every aspect for optimum potential learning and family benefit.
Private education was also an expensive concept for us; we were barely making ends meet most of the time and it was improbable that we could keep her in a private school consistently, considering our financial condition. So that was another consideration in favor of homeschooling, which could be done well at a cost of only a few hundred dollars per year.
I have never been overly confident of my own capabilities, especially being a rather disorganized and random person, also with a tendency not to finish projects that I start. But in those days when I was starting homeschooling, my confidence was definitely not in myself but in the exciting confidence I was gaining in following God's lead. Katie and I had been in Bible Study Fellowship from the time I was a new Christian about 4 years previous to this time; through this and through life circumstances, I was learning a great many things about faith in God and actually seeing these concepts work out in my life. The changes were vast from the bewilderment I had before being a Christian. I never would have dared homeschool before that, and I'm pretty sure that it's a good thing.
I was amazed when I first attended a curriculum fair at the quality and variety of curriculum possibilities that were available. It was an absolute banquet of learning levels, learning styles, teaching methods, resources, advice...it was fantastic. It is a shame that these curriculum fairs aren't visited by those who never would choose to homeschool--there are so many educational and fun things that any child would love to try, and that any parent would love for a child to have but would probably never discover apart from these fairs.
The benefits to homeschooling are phenomenal. You can put God first throughout the day and show how all subjects point to His truth and His work in humanity. Family relationships are close and trust in one another is strengthened. You know almost everything that is being taught to your students. You know what discipline methods are being used. You know their weak points, what subjects and concepts they are grasping and which escape them. You can cater to their strengths and work on their weaknesses. You hopefully care about your students more than any unrelated teacher is ever likely to. You can tailor your students' curriculum to their learning style, level, taste, interests. You can conform to those aspects of classroom education that you like, and avoid those you don't--rising early or late, sitting at a table or desk or on a couch, using different days of the week as suit your family, traveling or having field trips according to your family's interests and opportunities, schooling according to the traditional school year or going through the year with various small breaks throughout.
It's amazing the timing that God gave to present our family with the possibility of homeschooling, and that in spite of the reasons for which we started, the reasons I've been glad we did are now much different. I was not concerned in those days about peer pressure and influence, but now it's easily the top reason I'm aware of in these days to be thankful we were directed toward homeschooling. The focus of Katie's life is spared from being tempted to appeal so much to fellow students' approval at the cost of following God's lead. She also gets most of her input for her life choices and attitudes from family and from faith rather than from peers who have little if any more wisdom than she has. These considerations make a more significant impact for the present than any difference in the quality of learning that she had from that of her peers. At twelfth grade, students are beginning to make decisions and forging habits that may affect them for life. Some of these decisions have to do with what to do after graduating, such as whether to attend college, what college to attend, what major to choose, how to pay for it, what job to seek, whether to attend church and where, and how much to follow the example and advice of their parents. Some decisions and habits they are establishing are lifestyle-oriented, such as developing a quiet time in the daily routine, whether to work on Sunday, whether to date, how focused they are on driving safety, whether to get a My Space blog, whether to see a certain quality of movie, what kind of music to choose, with what friends they spend time...these choices are innumerable and, to one extent or another, each may have great impact for the present and even in the distant future. Following peer influence in these items could turn out well, but it might just as well be unfortunate or disastrous. For just the matter of peer pressure versus the promotion of family relationships, if it were only that, I am extremely thankful for the privilege of homeschooling.