The Shocking Truth About Family

What's one of the worst things about homeschooling? You have to spend all day with your family. What's one of the best things about homeschooling? You have to spend all day with your family. 

Here's one of the biggest lies that our culture is telling families today: adults and teenagers don't mix. Teens, preteens, tweens—they all think they're cooler than their parents, and parents don't want to spend time with a bunch of immature jerks. So...it's best if the kids are shipped off to school every morning (preferably after Dad's already scooted out to the office) so that they can spend time with their cool peers, and everyone hopes that when they get back they've got a lot of homework to do so they'll stay in their bedrooms. Then they can get on Facebook and play video games until everyone is safe in their separate beds, in separate rooms, with their separate lives safely intact.

That's the lie.  

My own experience with homeschooling has been so different from this typical tableaux, it's unrecognizable. Our homeschooling lifestyle is the only thing that has made our family business possible; my parents own a contract cleaning company, and some of my earliest memories involve sitting in conference rooms and office kitchens, doing schoolwork with my little brother Aaron while Mom and Dad vacuumed and cleaned desks. Since neither of my parents were employees at a business outside the home, we were together as a family 24/7. That's more than many homeschooling families. As the years went by, Aaron and I were able to make a generous allowance by taking on more and more responsibilities, and that's only grown so that now there's no need for us to go out and get a part-time job at Sonic to earn a little spending money.

The shocking truth is that family time—even if it's all the time—can be marvelous. My parents and brother are some of my best friends in the whole world. I don't think that there are many 19-year-old girls who can say that. My mom has taught me cooking, cleaning, sewing, home repair, and we love going shopping together. My dad works so hard and sacrifices so much for all of us, and he's a pretty fun guy. Aaron is a good-looking, intelligent, social fellow who gives the best random hugs. Do we sometimes get sick of each other? Yeah, definitely. Would we sacrifice our closeness for a more segregated lifestyle? Not a chance.

Isn't this better than a school full of peers? Isn't this better than coming home every afternoon to a house full of people I barely know?

First Photo: 32, a photo by Fidenaut on Flickr.