We haven’t always homeschooled our children. Bill attended public school for Kindergarten through the first semester of third grade. The year that Bill was in the third grade, Dylan was in Kindergarten at the same school. Bill was an excellent student, and from the time he was in Kindergarten his teachers all said he should be in gifted classes. However, it wasn’t until the end of second grade that his teacher formally requested that he be tested for the gifted program. That July, Bill was tested, and as expected, his IQ was very high: 144 for Verbal IQ, 125 for Performance IQ, and 137 for Full Scale IQ. His vocabulary tested "off the charts ... past college level".

I was very excited about his third grade year. He was to be in a multi-grade class with an integrated curriculum, and he would go to gifted classes every day for some of his subjects. Bill, however, was not so sure. Second grade had left him feeling very stressed out. He was so far ahead of his classmates that school was very boring for him. He refused to do his homework because it was “too easy”. He hated school, even though he excelled at it. He faked illnesses just to stay home. His temper flared at every little thing. I knew he needed to get out of the public school system, and I dreaded the thought of living the next 18 or so years by someone else's schedule, so I mentioned the idea of homeschooling to him and he was hooked. He was ready to quit public school and start learning at home.

Billy did not like that idea at all. He wanted Bill to try the gifted program to see if that made school any better for him. Billy told Bill that if the gifted program turned out to be nothing more than extra homework - which we had heard it was - then he could start homeschooling. I wanted to take Bill out anyway, but I knew I needed to be submissive to Billy and just take it to the LORD in prayer. So that's what I did.  

As it turned out, being in the gifted program DID just mean more homework, and the subjects Bill went to gifted class for, were not the subjects he was strongest in! Being in gifted class was also just another way to say, Bill is in classes one grade ahead of his peers. So, he went straight from 2nd grade math to 4th grade math- subtraction to division, with no learning of multiplication. It was a nightmare! 

Bill was so stressed out, that he would refuse to go to school. He would fake being sick several times a week, and the stress actually did make him sick more often than normal. And we thought his temper was bad before - he became absolutely uncontrollable after just a couple of months of "gifted" classes. It got so bad, that one day when he refused to go to school and we tried to force him to go anyway, that one of our neighbors called the sheriff's office on us! 

That morning, after Bill calmed down enough to get in the car, I took him to see the school psychologist. I explained the situation to her, and she said, and I quote, "All he's getting from the gifted program is extra homework. He's not cut out for the public school system. There's nothing we can do to help him."

Hallelujah!

Billy stuck to his word and let me pull Bill out of public school at the end of the first semester. I had had plenty of time to research homeschooling, plus I'd been homeschooled myself for a few years, and with all the stress public school had offered, I knew enough that I didn't want to do "school at home" with Bill. I decided that we would do unit studies along with LLATL and a math program.

One day we went to the park and there just happened to be a group of homeschoolers there. It turned out a couple of women I already knew were in the group! That is where I met HyperMusicMom. Having a homeschool support group REALLY helped a lot! It wasn’t long after that, that we started attending our church, where we met even more homeschoolers, including Contented.

After Bill started homeschooling, Dylan decided that he didn't like school, either. Billy made him finish Kindergarten at the public school, and he started homeschooling in the 1st grade. Gradually, homeschooling became more of a lifestyle and a conviction than an educational alternative, and I now consider my children “homeschooled from birth”. I hope that this lifestyle and conviction is passed on to each of them, so that my grandchildren will be homeschooled, too.