First you think homeschooling is a little scary. 
Then you think ditching the curriculum is a little scary. 
Then you think going without at least a plan and some workbooks is a little scary. 
Then you think giving your children the freedom to create themselves is a little scary. 
Then they start doing it. 
And it's not scary, it's humbling. 
Because their plan for themselves is so much bigger and more expansive and beautiful than anything you would have dreamed up for them. 
Get out of the way.

This is an anonymous snag off a youface post. And I love it because its sums up, again, the most common trajectory for homeschooling families. Like it or not, most of us start out kind of uptight and controlling because of fear and indoctrination from our uptight controlling educations. Then we let go. We discover humility in the face of our own failings. And awe and gratitude and joy and relief to witness the truth of these smart little human beings unfolding before us.

But one thing about this passage bothers me. Yes, their plans for themselves are bigger and more expansive and beautiful than any curriculum. But that does not mean they will all become brain surgeons, or graduate college before age 18, or invent new ways to detect cancer using ingredients from the kitchen. (I think some school kid actually just did that. Bravo, kid!) There isn't any pressure to be super-human or to prove anything about the homeschooling movement or parenting or any specific child's liger-skills and prowess.

Children, before plugging into the matrix of industrial expectation, formula, and curricula, are bigger and more expansive and more beautiful, all by themselves. The revelation of homeschool is exactly in what they don't need. Human life unfolding in healthy circumstances is already enough. Industrial elementary education is, for most kids, a hindrance. Homeschooled kids don't have to reinvent art or change the course of scientific thought or prove anything. Being free is enough. Astonishing simplicity is the unexpected truth. No curricula exists more complex or challenging than life on earth.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

~Mary Oliver