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Erin
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Different paths have bought us all to this wonderful adventure of hsing 
Just how did you find out about this exciting possibility; who told you, when did you first hear about hsing, what was your first reaction  ? We invite you to share your story with us, we'd particularly love to get to know our shyer members and all of our new members, we have lots of new members. Everyone please feel free to join in.
To share my story; I was 16 yrs of age and an elderly lady from Victoria was visiting with another. These ladies headed the Concerned Parents Association of Australia (mum was often involved in 'interesting' political groups  ) and were doing a tour. The younger lady hsed her children and the older lady (in her 60s at the time) was Catholic and was enthusing about all the Catholic families down in Victoria who hsed. We had never heard about this option, at that time hsing was illegal in NSW (I'm talking in the 80s)
Mum was convinced, she pulled my younger siblings out of school. Yes, it was illegal and yes, we were 'discovered,' an interesting tale for another day.
So I found out about hsing when I was 16 and knew it was the adventure I wanted to share with my children. Small problems of husband and said children were overcome later
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Erin
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Paula in MN
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Erin, what a fun topic!
My cousin had always homeschooled her sons, and when my brother and his wife lived in Japan they homeschooled their 5 kids.
I never thought about it for me, because my only child at the time was doing well.
Then I had two more children, and realized I wanted to be home with them more than anything. I did send my dd11 to Kindergarten for a few weeks, and we all hated it.
Even with all the legal junk we've gone through, I've never regretted the decision.
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 Paula
A Catholic Harvest
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Christine
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I married my husband when I was getting my teaching credential. 3 months later, we conceived a little blessing from God and I knew that I wanted to stay home. A parishioner and friend knew this and told me about a Catholic homeschool family that was looking for a full-time tutor, four days a week. I started tutoring for this family when our first child was 2 months old. It was so rewarding and a wonderful invitation to homeschool. When the family moved about a year later, I started tutoring for another Catholic family. My husband was very impressed with the children in this large family and so we decided to homeschool. He has been my strongest supporter and help from the beginning.
Homeschooling has been such an incredible blessing to our family! I honestly believe that it was God who called us to follow this path and I am happy that we accepted His invitation.
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Christine
Mommy to 4 girls, 5 boys, & 2 in God's care
Memories of a Catholic Wife and Mother
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Mattie
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Fun!
When I first got to Steubenville from France there was a couple of "weird" kids on campus. They dressed like in the 1800s and it really puzzled me!
Come to find out they were homeschooled. To me homeschooling was a completely foreign notion and never heard of! But it must make you weird or mean that you are weird... I swore never to date a homeschool kid... Or to EVER have anything to do with it all together!
Well, instead I married one and I am now homeschooling! And yes, he IS weird, but in a good way  ! And we are very happy to be homeschooling and to be weird (jeans are still my main clothing staple, though, I have not transformed into Ma Ingalls... )
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Mattie
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melanie
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My mom homeschooled my two younger brothers for a couple of years...I was already grown and living in another state, and I thought she had just lost her mind. Then, when my oldest was a year old, I read Homeward Bound and it made me cry. I'd had my "reversion" by then, and I really wanted to homeschool, but I was a single mom and figured I'd never be able to do it. Then, I remarried (the first marriage was just in the courts) when my daughter was 6yo, and she was having a great deal of trouble in school, so I pulled her out and started homeschooling...she was later diagnosed as dyslexic. So, that was how we got started. Never say something will never work out for you.
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Melanie
homeschooling Maria (13yo), Kain (10yo), Jack (5yo), Tess (2yo), and our newest blessing, Henry Robert, born 4/23!
slightlycrunchycatholic.blogspot.com
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kristacecilia
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I had a friend in high school while I was living overseas and I was public schooled while she was homeschooled. I ended up 'homeschooling' myself the last year of high school by a correspondence school because the public school where we were living was not very good.
I went to Steubenville and met tons of homeschooled kids and families of employees who homeschooled. At first I was completely against it. The idea was just too 'out there' for me. Only crazy people did that sort of thing. Normal people sent their kids to school. I remember when DH and I were engaged and he told me what the Catholic schools were like in Canada and it became a real possibility that someday I would need to homeschool. I honestly remember praying and saying to God that if He wanted me to homeschool, He would have to completely change my heart on the subject.
Well, He did. ;)
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JuliaT
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When I was single, I had a few friends who homeschooled their kids. This always intrigued me. I just knew that this was the lifestyle I wanted if I ever married. When my soon-to-be dh and I were talking about marriage, hsing was one of the issues we discussed along with finances, how many children, etc. I don't know if I would have married him if he had been against hsing.
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Julia
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SallyT
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I was a public high-school English teacher, and I thought homeschooling was for lunatics.
I thought that all the way through my oldest daughter's first two years of school in England. Then two things happened: some friends of ours pulled their troubled young daughter out of school to homeschool, and we met another American family whose children had been homeschooled until they came to Cambridge.
The latter family's children, far from being the (I know, I know) unsocialized weirdniks I expected them to be, were the nicest kids I had ever met -- I remember talking to their 8-year-old and thinking, "This child is having a RATIONAL CONVERSATION with an adult she just met five minutes ago." Meanwhile, I witnessed the utter transformation of the former family's child. She had been one of those awkward, miserable kids who can't relate to other kids and mainly relate to adults by tattling on the kids they can't relate to (so much for school as socializing factor). When I ran into her, just a few months into her first year at home, I asked her some offhand question -- "Do you like Brownies?" -- and she amazed me by answering in a sunshiny way I would never have thought was in her character, "Oh, YES!" and proceeding to carry on a rational, cheerful conversation in much the same vein as the as other child who had so impressed me.
Man, I thought. I'd really like my kids to be more like that . . .
At the time, my own oldest daughter was perfectly happy in school, though looking back I can see with 20/20 hindsight that all wasn't really well with her. By her third year in school, the situation was starting to tank -- she was happy enough, but we weren't happy with the school, and then the next year year *she* was unhappy . . . and having met those other families, my thoughts turned automatically to homeschooling.
And here we are.
Sally
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violingirl
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I was actually homeschooled for much of my education along with my siblings through the 80s and 90s. We were all homeschooled K-3, and some were homeschooled more than others depending on where we lived at the time and other circumstances. I attended traditional schools 5 years out of 13, but some siblings had a few more years of traditional school than I did.
I always intended to homeschool my own kids. :)
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Erin
DS (2005) DS (2007) DD (2012)
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pmeilaen
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It was my husband's idea! Being from Germany, I always hoped that my children could attend a Waldorf school. When we discovered how expensive they are in the U.S., my husband suggested homeschooling. He had always thought that it was a weird thing to do -- some of his cousins were homeschooled -- and had always told everybody that he would never do such a thing. But weighing all the options and wanting to give the children a bilingual education, we decided to give it a try. It shocked all relatives, especially the German ones because it's not really an option there, but we haven't given up!
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Eva
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Mary K
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our neighbors behind us homeschooled. we had a new baby and had already been discussing supplementing her schooling with classes, field trips, etc. when she was older. after discovering homeschooling we decided to drop the school part and do it at home-though were rarely there.
mary-ny
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guitarnan
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This thread is so lovely!
We are a military family. We'd sent our children to Catholic school all along (and those mid-schoolyear moves were horrible). We got orders to an overseas base and one day my husband came home and told me that I just had to homeschool our children because the base school was so bad and the only other option was sending our children to an Italian Catholic school run by nuns from around the world. While this worked for some of my friends, it would never have worked for my ds. The base school was definitely off the agenda. (When we got there I discovered it was even worse than I'd been told...not the teachers' fault, either. A sad situation.) I argued mightily! No...not me...I don't have the patience...
But the Good Lord had other plans. Within days homeschoolers were popping up everywhere in my life. A panel discussion at church. A friend who'd been homeschooling her older son because there was no room in the Catholic school our 4th grade sons attended...she gave me a Kolbe catalog. Coincidence after coincidence piled up. Finally, one day, I stood in my kitchen, looked up to Heaven and said, "Okay! I'll do it!" And all the "coincidences" stopped happening.
We thought it would be temporary. Then, two years later, we moved to a rural county in West Virginia and the bus ride for my son would have been over 1/2 hour each way - dangerous. And, sadly, the school dd would have attended still had maps with the USSR on them. That was two more years. Then we came back here and my son had no desire to go to a traditional high school. And here we are, finishing up our eighth year...so far.
Every single time I've had doubts or worries, the Good Lord has put a person or event into my life to remind me why I'm doing this. (Even today!)
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Nancy in MD. Mom of ds (24) & dd (18); 31-year Navy wife, move coordinator and keeper of home fires. Writer and dance mom.
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stefoodie
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Our first exposure was to a very successful (by secular world's standards) couple who homeschooled all their kids... the kids were great leaders, confident, well-mannered, helpful, and successful in their own right. We thought -- we'd like some of that!
At the time our oldest was a baby. Then we put her in private (Reggio-Emilia) preschool, and I thought -- that's it! We need RE schools for her! After preschool graduation we found out we could not afford to send her to the RE-inspired school nearby. The tuition was more than our mortgage!! So we thought we'd put her in Catholic school instead. We lasted 2 months.
Enter homeschooling. Until we moved. Then public school because we thought "we just need to be in a good school district" and we did the in-and-out-of-homeschooling thing through several moves and school districts. All the while I kept up with my research into hs'ing, reading the Colfaxes and all the "classic" homeschooling books. Finally in '01 we went back to homeschooling.
We were doing okay, but I was really looking for something that was classical and CATHOLIC. Unschooling also appealed to me... so when I found like-minded folks online, I bought the CM books and Real Learning, and that's when the real journey began. Met AngieMc IRL in '01, I think, then met Macbeth, MicheleQ and Elizabeth in '02 IIRC .... kept on learning from them and the lists mentioned above (Willa, Chari, etc. were on the CCM lists) and I figured if I wanted to keep on learning how to homeschool the Catholic CM way, I'd better follow them here too! The rest, as they say, is history.
ETA: Our exposure was to "worldly success" and that's what got us into hs'ing in the first place, but boy, how that goal has changed through the years, thanks to the example I've seen here and other Catholic homeschoolers who "homeschool for heaven, not Harvard".
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stef
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mom3aut1not
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When I was pregnant with my oldest (about 27.5 years ago), I met a Catholic mom who was pregnant with her fourth child. I didn't really get to know her until I joined a moms' Bible study group when my oldest was 0 mos. old. I don't remember exactly when I learned that she hsed, but I definitely remember noticing her hsing when my oldest was a toddler. Hsing in MI was a huge hassle then.
I was attracted to hsing as my oldest got older, but I didn't seriously consider it for several years. (An article in the Seton newsletter convinced me that I could not homeschool.) We didn't homeschool until our other options became untenable.
In Christ,
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robinhigh
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A little pamphlet of Catholic Heritage Games... later to become Catholic Heritage Curricula. I had never heard of it before and when I started, I didn't know of anyone else doing it. I'm such a loner...
I was a young single parent living with my two toddlers, newly converted from being a very ignorant cradle Catholic, heard the distinct call of God to do it. I quit college, and God made a way.
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Erin
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Ladies
I am soo enjoying reading all your journeys  Each story is so interesting. Thank you for sharing, I feel as if I know you all so much better. 
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Erin
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Angel
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My first exposure to homeschooling was -- watching a large family of impeccably dressed kids get out of a van in the parking lot of my college because they were going to a homeschooling conference there and, of course, being about 20 and a bit into grunge at the time, thinking, "How weird!"
And then hearing the owner of the Sylvan Learning Center I worked at through college complain that none of the homeschoolers who signed up with the center knew any math. (Of course, she hired mainly college and grad students instead of teachers with certificates because she said the *teachers* never knew any math either. Sigh.)
Then my mom was having such a hard time with my younger sister in high school that she started researching homeschooling. (She ended up moving schools instead.)
So, fast forward several years. Now I have a 3 - 4 yo child with all sorts of "weird" things about him -- late-talking, won't pedal a tricycle, throws giant temper tantrums, stays up for hours in the middle of the night, and has an enormous appetite for information. Thinking he needed some "socialization" (and bowing to pressure), we put him in the public school preschool. What a disaster. The teachers couldn't handle his idiosynchracies (though he always behaved well at school) and treated him as if he had uniform cognitive delays instead of just problems getting the words out. I complained and my neighbor told me that I was going to be labeled a "Problem Parent." My ds would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning the night before school and *stay awake* until it was time to leave in the morning. He didn't have a whole lot of words at that point, but if you asked him if he had fun, he always said, "no."
So I was talking about it to my mom one day and she said, "It's only preschool. Why don't you just take him out."
And I thought, oh.
So we took him out of that preschool, and the next day I went to the library and found a book called The Unschooler's Handbook which convinced me that even *I* could homeschool my kids. I convinced my dh, and -- here we are.
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Angela
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vmalott
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The year was 1995 and I was pregnant with my second child while training to become a childbirth educator. One of the required books to read was You Are Your Child's First Teacher by Rahima Baldwin. It explained the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, which I thought was weird. I thought homeschooling was even weirder, since, you know, everyone can get on with their lives once their children are in school!
When our oldest was K-age, we put her in our parish school. She loved it and learned a lot. So, we registered her for the next year. 1st grade was lousy for her because she had a not-so-nice teacher. She was also ahead in reading, but falling behind in math. There were a lot of times that I had to be called in because she had gotten sick to her stomach an hour after arriving. I had to do something.
Somehow, the topic of homeschooling came up in conversations again and again, out of the blue. A neighbor who was a teacher on leave was asked to do a portfolio review for a homeschool family. The builder of our house and his wife homeschooled their kids. A new friend I had met via an internet list used babysitters who were homeschooled. And on and on...The friend and I both laughed how we "could never do that!"
The turning point was when I took my son in for K registration five days after giving birth to our fourth child. Naturally I had the baby with me. Four other parents and I were sitting in a Q&A meeting with the principal. The principal didn't utter a single question about our new little one! Now, in a large school I could understand this, but this was a small parish where all the school families knew each other. I already had a kid in the school. My hubby was on the parish council. So, it's not like the principal didn't know me.
There were other anti-family things that had ruffled my feathers that had occurred throughout that year as well, so by the last day of school when I picked my daughter up, I knew we weren't headed back there. By this time, I had investigated Kolbe (which I had considered very briefly for DD's K year) and had purchased the Little Saints preschool curriculum for DS. All I needed was to meet some real-life homeschoolers. I attended an info meeting that was held by the Catholic support group and I was sold. The moms were great and the kids were well-spoken, yet so normal!
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Valerie
Mom to Julia ('94), John ('96), Lizzy ('98), Connor ('01), Drew ('02), Cate ('04), Aidan ('08) and three saints in heaven
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Becky Parker
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When we moved here to Michigan, one of the first families we met homeschooled. That was 1992. I was a classroom teacher and, while I was always amazed at the kid's behavior and respect I could never imagine homeschooling. We became close friends though, and still are.
Move forward about 8 years and I was a principal for a small Catholic school. I had 2 children. A family came to our little school that had previously homeschooled. They were all very bright (there were 4 kids in school, 2 more still at home). One day, the little girl in 3rd grade asked if she could go into the church during recess and pray for a special intention. I was amazed!
Anyway, the following year I became pregnant with our 3rd baby and decided it was time to stay home with my kids. I hated leaving them at a sitter all day. Two years after that, our little school closed because enrollment had gotten so low.
That's when my husband suggested we homeschool. I was scared to death at the idea! Teach my own children?! GASP! But, the example that the two families we had met along the way showed us what a beautiful thing homeschooling can be, so I knew it would work out. And it has!
I always remind my kids when we are out in public that they represent homeschoolers and Catholics everywhere. They don't always behave (sigh!) but I want them to see that people might notice and they could give people a good, or a bad, impression. The impression I received from the homeschoolers I met along the way was good, and it made the decision easy for us to make ... well, after some prayer anyway!
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Becky
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CatholicMommy
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For myself, I've always wanted to be a teacher of some sort or another; I was public schooled all the way through; if I knew any homeschool families, I was oblivious to the fact.
In high school, I did a lot of work at the local elementary schools and was doing a lot of thinking about the school system - how your education can be so adversely affected by a good or bad teacher, how the good teachers burn out trying to keep up and the could-be-improved teachers either used to be the good teachers and burned out, or never cared to begin with. This was all the way through, but more true with the older grades, as the teachers for the younger grades tend to be more "loving" towards their tiny students.
Then one May 1st, my grandmother's neighbors left her a May-Day basket; they later came over to chat and I learned that they homeschooled. While I could have used the word "weird" to describe the mom and the children, it was a wonderful sort of weird - I can talk to these kids. They know what they're doing in life! They have time to make May Day baskets for the neighbors without taking away from their schoolwork. They had (GASP!) MANNERS!!!!! 
It planted a seed.
I graduated, pursued an associate's degree in child development, planned to transfer to a 4-year school for a degree in special education (specializing in emotional disabilities), but my continued work with the public and private school systems (I was subbing) just kept reminding me I really wanted to be home with my children (as if I had any at the time!).
Then one day I subbed at a Montessori school. I fell in love. These children had the same "weirdness" as those homeschool kids I'd met. I LOVED it! I did lots of research and after one subbing stint of 2 weeks, I was totally sold. I then moved to Belgium for several to work as a nanny - the girls went to a Montessori school and my convictions only grew stronger.
I came home and made my final plans: I would finish my degree in child development, transfer to a Catholic school to get a degree in theology, then take the AMI Montessori training (after long discussions with the head of school where I had subbed, it became clear that this was the best option - a story for another thread!).
Well, now we skip over a broken engagement (through whom I met a family who became the lynch-pin in my homeschool decision), a year as a nanny in Virginia, my transfer to Ave Maria College, an unfortunate incident just prior to starting classes and I'm holding the most beautiful little boy in my arms - as a single parent. The mother of the above mentioned lynch-pin family was my doula for my son's birth and she was a single mom with her first child. While she had worked and sent her son (and 2nd/3rd children) to a Catholic school and supplemented in the evenings; I knew that wasn't for me. I was a teacher - so any employment I would have would be teacher-related.
So how do I do it as a single mom? That's a thread for another day, except to say that we've used a variety of options: 1 year in a Montessori school (while I was in training); use of family for anything longer than a few days at a time (they live further away); dear friends; having a family day care in my home and tutoring others' children; and having other jobs to which he comes with me.
Thank you for this thread!
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Garden of Francis
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: How Did You Find Out About Hsing?
