Episode 8: Is Homeschool Right for Your Family? 7 Questions to Ask Before You Decide
You're listening to Episode 8 of Modern Homeschool. June is the month moms quietly start asking themselves the big question: is homeschool actually right for our family? Today I'm walking you through the seven questions I think every family should sit with before deciding, including the gut check most people skip. This isn't about convincing you. It's about helping you actually decide. My mission is to help modern families homeschool with structure, flexibility, and a life they love, so let's get into it!
Episode Highlights:
1. Identifying your real why (not the surface one)
2. The "what does your kid need" gut check
3. How to look honestly at your family's actual daily life
4. Why budget is rarely the real barrier (and what's coming next week)
5. How to have a real conversation with your partner
Resources Mentioned:
FREE Homeschool Weekly Planner: https://www.chantymacias.com/weeklyplanner
Getting Started With Homeschool Guide: https://www.chantymacias.com/guide
HSLDA State Laws: https://hslda.org/legal
Connect with your podcast host:
https://www.instagram.com/chanty.macias
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Hey, hey. Welcome to Modern Homeschool, the podcast where families thrive together by learning how to create a life of freedom, connection, and education that actually works. If you're curious about homeschooling, thinking about starting, or already in the thick of it and wondering if you're doing right by your kiddos, you're in the right place.
I'm your host, Chanty Macias, and here we talk about real-life homeschooling for modern families and creating a life around your family first. Because homeschool isn't just school at home, it's a whole new way of living and learning. Let's do this!
I am so glad you're here because today we're talking about the question, the one you've been rolling around in your head for weeks, maybe even months, the one you've Googled at 11:00 PM after a hard school pickup, the one you don't quite know how to say out loud to your husband, your mom, or your best friend.
Is homeschool actually right for our family? If that's the question sitting in your chest right now, you're not alone. June is typically when more parents start to seriously consider homeschool rather than any other month of the year. The school year just ended. You've watched what works and what didn't. You've got a whole summer to decide, right? And there's a quiet voice in you that keeps saying, "What if? What if?" So today I'm not gonna tell you whether homeschool is right for your family. I'm not in your home. I don't know your kid or your kids. I don't know your work schedule, your marriage, your financial situation, your bandwidth, or the 50 million little things that only you can see. But what I can do, and what I want to do, is walk you through the seven questions I think every family should sit with before making this decision. These are the questions that helped us decide, and they're the ones that I now ask almost every mom who DMs me asking me what to do. So grab a coffee, grab a notebook if you got one because you're gonna wanna write down some of these questions and/or answers, and it'll help guide you. So let's actually think about this together, okay?
Question one is, what's actually pulling you toward this? Before anything else, I want you to ask yourself what brought you here. Not the surface answer, like the real one. Maybe it's something that your kid said one morning. Maybe it's a teacher conference that didn't sit right with you. Maybe it's a friend who started homeschooling and now her kids just seem, I don't know, different, lighter, maybe more themselves, happier. Maybe it's that you've been watching your child shrink a little bit, not academically or physically, but in their spirit, right? And you can't quite name it, but you just know it in your gut. Or maybe it's something bigger. Maybe public school worked just fine, but you want something more. More time together, more flexibility, more family, more learning that actually matches your values. And there's no wrong why, but you definitely need to know yours because your why becomes your anchor. When it's hard, and oh, trust me, there will be hard days, your why is what keeps you in the boat, okay? So write it down. It doesn't have to be a polished sentence, just, like, the real raw version, the truth.
Question two is, what does your child need that they're not getting right now? This question is about your child specifically, not, like, kids in general, not your friend's kids or your sister's kids, not the average kid that you see in school, okay? Yours. What does your kid need more of? Or kids. What do they need less of? Some examples I hear all the time are she loves to read, but they make her sit through the same lesson she already knows, and they make her do the same thing over and over again 'cause they need to stick with their curriculum guide. Okay? He needs to move, but he's in trouble for it every single day because he can't sit still in a class. She's curious, and they're shutting her down for asking way too many questions. He used to love school, and now he cries every Sunday night when he has to go back the next day. She's bored. She's just so bored, and no one seems to care. When you hear these examples, did one of them make your stomach drop? That's your kid talking through your gut. You gotta pay attention. Homeschool doesn't fix every problem, and I need you to hear me on that, okay? But it does give you something traditional school structurally cannot. It's the ability to teach your child instead of the middle child of a classroom of twenty-five kids. That alone changes so much.
Question three is: What does your family's actual daily life look like? So I need you to get real honest here. What time do you wake up? When does work start? Who's home during the day? What does your evening look like? Where and when do the meltdowns happen? And whose are they? What's already on your plate that you absolutely cannot drop? I'm only asking because homeschool is gonna live inside your actual life, not the Pinterest version of your life, okay? The real one. You got laundry, work calls, dentist appointments, the dog or dogs, the dishes, all of it, okay? The families that I see thriving at homeschooling are not the ones with the most spare time, and this is something that everybody typically assumes. They're the ones who looked honestly at what they already had, and they built a homeschool rhythm that fit, not the other way around. So some questions worth answering on paper are things like: When are you most available to focus on your child? When does your child do their best learning? What support do you already have? It could be a partner, a family member, a flexible job, a co-op nearby. What options do you realistically have? What do you need to give up or rearrange to make this work? Could you start small, maybe even just two subjects an hour a day and grow from there? If you finish this list and you feel like there's a version that could work, even, like, a scrappy one, that's a real sign. Most thriving homeschool families start real scrappy, and they make it work.
Question number four is, what's your real actual budget, and can you make it work? So I'm gonna talk to you about this in way more detail next week because episode nine is all about how we did year one under $1,000 with a Florida scholarship that pays for homeschool that most families don't even know exists. But for today, just know this, homeschool does not have to be expensive, not even close. There's a version of homeschool that costs about $200 a year, and there's also a version that costs $5,000 a year. Both are valid. Yours will probably land somewhere in between, depending on the year, the curriculum, and the activities you choose. What I want you to ask yourself right now is just, do you have any budget for this? Even a super-duper tiny one, because most families who think they can't afford it actually can. They just haven't seen the real numbers yet. So hold this question real lightly for now. We'll go deep onto it next week.
Question five is, are you ready to be the primary educator with some help? Here's where a lot of mamas get tripped up. They think to homeschool, they have to be a teacher or an educator or have a license to teach or be certified or have a degree in it. You don't. You have to be the organizer and the guide of your child's learning, not the sole instructor of it. You're gonna be using curriculum. You might be using online classes. You could use a tutor or take your kids to a co-op or outsource some online classes on Outschool or YouTube. There are so many options, right? You might trade subjects with another homeschool mom. She does art, you do science. You might lean heavily on some apps for things like math while you focus on reading. You might do absolutely nothing on Fridays like we do. You might have your husband teach woodworking or finance on Saturdays and count that, right? That's learning. You're not creating lesson plans from scratch here. You're not standing at a whiteboard. You're not standing in the front or, you know, in a chair lecturing your child all day. You're a guide, a planner, and the person who knows your child best. That said, you do need to be the one who shows up consistently, imperfectly, day in and day out. And ask yourself honestly, do you really have the bandwidth and the willingness and the patience to be that person? Not perfect. No one's expecting you to be perfect here. Not all the time, but just be mostly there. If the answer is yes, you've already got the most important qualification.
Question six is, what does your partner or your co-parent actually think? And this one is huge, and it's the one that I see moms try to skip past the most. Homeschool will affect your entire family, okay? Um, hey, we're real here Your partner needs to be at least on the runway with you, even if they're not actively participating, okay? Now, if they're seriously opposed to the idea of you homeschooling, you need to have real conversations before you make the big move. Not because they get veto power over your parenting at all, but because the resentment is really, truly corrosive, and you need each other for this, okay? You don't wanna have any issues in your partnership, in your marriage, because you're not agreeing on something so vital and such an important decision as homeschooling, because it really does affect the entire family.
Next week's bonus question I'd encourage you to sit with is, what is your partner actually worried about? Is it money? Is it socialization? Is it what will people think? Their own qualifications? Like, you can't address fears you haven't actually named yet. So I'm gonna talk more about this in episode 10 in two weeks. We're literally doing an entire episode where Laz answers and shares the questions that other dads ask him the most about homeschool, and he's gonna answer them, which is so exciting because dads talk to dads, right? Just like moms talk to moms. And what Laz says to a hesitant husband is probably way more useful than anything I could ever tell you here in the podcast. But for now, have a real slow conversation with your person. Not a pitch, very important, just a conversation. See where it goes.
And then question seven, the last one, is what does your gut keep telling you? I saved this one for last on purpose. If you've been carrying this question for weeks or months, your gut has already been talking to you, right? It's been whispering, then nudging, then maybe getting a little louder every day, right? Pay attention to it. Here's a little exercise for you, okay? I want you to sit somewhere quiet for two minutes. No phone, no kids, no podcast. Like, you could pause me and, you know, it's, it's all good. Picture your child a year from now in the public school path you're currently on or you may be thinking about. Just notice what comes up, the tightness, the ease, the picture in your head, however it may sway you, okay? Now, picture your child a year from now homeschooling. Same thing. Notice. That gut reaction is your data. It's not your whole answer, but it is some data that you can use to inform your decision. The mamas I've watched make this decision well, they definitely don't make it from fear. They didn't make it because of one bad week at school or because you didn't get the answer you wanted at a parent-teacher conference. They made it from clarity. Their why was solid. Their family conversations were so real. Their gut had been confirming the same thing for a while. So if that's you, you might already have your answer. But if you're still uncertain, that's also okay. Uncertainty isn't a sign that you shouldn't. It's a sign you're taking it seriously, and you should be proud of that. So sit with the questions and then come back to them. Nobody has you on a timeline here.
So now let's talk about what to do with your answers. If you answered these questions and you're leaning towards yes, here's what I want you to do this week. I want you to write down your why in one sentence and put it where you'll see it. I want you to tell one person that you trust with your whole heart that you're seriously considering this. I want you to look up your state's homeschool laws on the HSLDA website. This is a huge first step. And I want you to grab the free Modern Homeschool Weekly Planner because it'll give you a real feel for what your planning could look like in a very simple way, which we love. And if you answered these questions and you're leaning towards no, that's a clear answer, too, okay? There's no shame in keeping your kids in public school at all. So many of the best families I know do this exactly. So the point of this episode wasn't to convince you. It was to help you actually decide instead of staying in the fog, 'cause we don't like to be in the uncertainty here. So here's a quick recap.
The seven questions were: What's actually pulling you towards this? What does your child need that they're not getting? What does your family's actual daily life look like? What's your real budget, and can you make it work? Are you ready to be the primary educator with some help? What does your partner actually think of it all? And what does your gut keep telling you? Save this episode, come back to it, talk through it with your partner if you can this week, or share it with them. That's a wrap on the seven questions. I hope this gave you a real framework to think with instead of just spinning on your head. If this episode helped you, will you do me a favor, please? Share it with one mom in your life who's been on the fence. Just one. You might be the reason that she finally figures out her answer this summer. Next week, episode nine, we're going deep on the money side, how we actually did our year one of homeschool for under $1,000 and a Florida scholarship that pays for homeschool that I genuinely don't see enough people talking about among other scholarships in the country. If money is what's been holding you back, don't miss it!
Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. I truly love creating this space to support you on your homeschool journey. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to connect with you. Come say hi on Instagram or TikTok and tell me what resonated and what questions you still have. I read every single message, and your stories help shape future episodes.
And if you know another parent who's considering homeschool or needs encouragement, share this episode with them so we can support more modern homeschool families together. Remember, homeschool doesn't have to look like school at home. It just has to work for your family. See you in the next episode!