What was your experience with home-schooling?

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I posted another thread called Special Ed v. Mainstreaming. As a follow-up, I wanted to learn more about people's experiences and opinions on homeschooling, but I didn't want to derail that topic, hence the new topic.

Did you ever have home-schooling? Did you want to? Did it work well or (looking back on it) did it actually hold you back in some way? What could have done better?

My kids were getting a lot of bullying on the school bus and begged to be home-schooled. I knew I was not temperamentally equipped so I refused, but we compromised by arranging for them not to need the school bus - I drove them. Although both have scars, I do think the social experiences of school have helped them with later adjustment.

My public school experience grades 1-6 was nightmarish for me.
So when, for seventh and eighth grade I was home schooled, it was shockingly better and was amazing. My charter school rocks even better, though it isn't perfect and the schoolwork got loaded on (Would of been an issue anyway).

I went to a hybrid flex school where I could attend or home-school.

I think I would have committed suicide by 7th grade if I wasn't taken out of public school in fifth. If my mom actually let me peruse my special interests like she claims she did when bragging to people about how she's such a great parent, it would have been better. She just took stuff I did outside of school hours and included it to show the teacher who reviewed everything at the end of the year. I was pushed way over my limit before and take away my special interests when I had meltdowns. She also would remind me I could never handle the workload in college, let alone become a veterinarian when I wanted a break once in a while. Homeschooling lessened the amount of bullies, but I still had them.

It would have been better if my mom let me peruse my special interests and didn't punish me for meltdowns and encouraged me wanting to be a vet. If I stayed in public school I either would have committed suicide or became a school shooter.

There was no "home schooling" back when I went to school....

I wouldn't have liked it, anyway. I hated school....but I hated being home even more.

I can't believe that I made it through school and University without any support, without knowing I was autistic, hating every minute of it, and hiding in libraries to escape my peers. When I reflect on any of it or I try to imagine doing it again, I have a panic attack. There is absolutely no way I would or could do it again. It was virtual hell for me. I would have to be homeschooled even though my parents wouldn't have known how to teach me. I could have learned more from a book and saved my social sanity.

There was no internet when I was in school, not even during university. I took one course through the post and it was hell, but I'd still prefer that to school. Public school? It shouldn't even exist as far as I care. It's outmoded.

same q

I wasn't homeschooled but I'm very interested in the topic and follow it fairly closely. Homeschooling is growing by leaps and bounds in the US — estimated to be well over a million currently. Twenty years ago it was mostly conservative Christians, but now it's just about every demographic group in the country.

I was homeschooled. There were pros and cons. Overall I think my daughter is better off at school.

Pros - freedom to follow special interest, plenty of time alone

Cons - my parents didn't get me or pick up on my emotional issues, so I had no one to help. Also they allowed me to only pursue my special interests in high school which means I never learnt to persevere when I'm not interested. I was severely depressed from upper primary but no one ever noticed. Im only learning strategies that help now

Was never and so glad I wasn't. I got experience all that life had to offer. I know someone who was home schooled and last I heard was in prison for drugs. I blame that partly on homeschooling. I was around lots of people who took drugs. Could have gotten my hands on really anything, chose not to.

I was home schooled for two years, 8th and 9th grade. I don't know if I wanted to be home schooled so much as I wanted/needed to get the hell out of public school. My entire school career was a struggle but I more or less got by in the earlier years one way or another. I was probably ready to be done with it after 4th since I think that's the year things really started heading in a downward spiral with virtually no 'ups'. Two things would have likely happened if I had remained where I was any longer. I either would have killed myself, I was already entertaining the idea in 6h grade or been taken by DCF (the school would threaten to contact them because I ended up pretty consistently was truant) and then killed myself.

When I first started home schooling I was happy at first but after a bit it was like a flood gate opened with everything I'd been holding back flying out. I was also really resistant to doing any kind of conventional school work...it was too reminiscent of what I knew before and I already 'knew' I was too stupid to be able to do that. This is where homeschooling has a great shine to it. It is 100% customizable. So my mother shaped it around my interests and the projects I was doing in 4H. I rode horses and worked in the barn, so that was gym. We'd play board games and I had to keep score, be the banker etc. and that would be attributed to math (and some spelling vocab with Scrabble). I still liked reading so that was good, especially with the books on tape I'd get from the state library for free. Then things like horse history, horse science, and lots of other sub groups all having do to with horses.

It may have held me back a little academically but it wasn't that bad since the only real review work I had to do when I went back to the main stream was in math, but I have a learning disability there anyway. My time homeschooling was kind of a necessary stop because the public school was destroying me and then blaming me for it. Heh.

I ended up going back to public school because my mother was worried about my social interaction. I really didn't want anything to do with the other home school kids and their events and my 4H wasn't enough for me, to her I guess.

My parents used some form of homeschooling for me all my life. I was unschooled from first grade until the start of ninth grade, which was more palatable for me than the online curriculum I used in high school. I didn't want to be homeschooled - I was a really socially-minded kid, even if my social skills were awful, and I loved the structure involved (when unschooled, I created and assigned myself my own reading lists, study periods, homework, etc). I didn't have the skills necessary to attend public school, though, so I wasn't allowed to enroll - my parents didn't know about autism or my learning disorder at the time, they just knew I had different needs and adapted accordingly.

I think unschooling worked well in some ways, not in others. I was terrible at test-taking because it wasn't a skill I needed most of the time, and I tended to neglect subjects I didn't enjoy. But I was ahead of my peers in some respects, and I could enjoy learning at my own pace in problem areas. Online schooling was much worse. I could blame my problems entirely on the particular school I was in - they were pretty awful. Very uniform, ideological, and tedious. If I'd had more control over my education in high school, I would have been better off.

if I was homeschooled I'd be even more messed up then I already am

I was homeschooled for elementary school. It helped me to learn better I think because I could do whatever I wanted learning-wise. I wasn't lazy; I studied my special interest at the time in great detail. I did lag behind in some other subjects though, but ultimately it was a positive experience for me.