I am not a very patient person, in fact, my tolerance level is usually at ground zero. So when someone tells me, “I could never homeschool, I have no patience," I get it. Sort of. I never would have thought that I would have so much patience for homeschooling my children. But I do. Here’s why:

They are my children.  

Think of all the times you have had your patience tested as a parent. Remember when they were first born and all the sleepless nights you had? What about potty training, and that time your child cut her own hair? Remember the time your son threw up in your bed or in the car? What about the constant bickering between siblings? Or fighting with your children to put on their shoes or do their homework? All of these things required boatloads of patience. Homeschooling is no exception. If you have enough patience to parent (and clearly you do), you definitely have enough patience to homeschool.

Now consider this: The exact society which tells us that we can’t possibly have enough patience to deal with homeschooling your own children expects teachers to have enough patience to handle a classroom of up to 30 children at a time. Yes, teachers are saints, but are they magical? Did they somehow get the patience you were supposed to have? If they can do it, so can you!

You know why homeschooling seems difficult? Because anytime you start something new, it always is. No one begins as an expert. To get good at anything, it takes practice. Remember when your child first began walking and kept falling down and getting frustrated? You didn’t say, “Oh well, you can’t walk. You’ll never be able to walk.” Instead, you encouraged your child to get up and keep trying. Patience is a skill that needs to be nurtured, whether we homeschool or not. 

Do you work? How many times have you said, “I’d never have the patience to deal with clients and a boss!” Although you may have felt like that plenty, I doubt you ever said it out loud. Somehow you were able to channel the patience to hold down a job and develop a career. When you think about it, many circumstances at work are ones that you have no control over. You can’t tell your boss what you really think, or teach rude or demanding clients how to behave, and you certainly cannot discipline your lazy co-worker. However, as a homeschooling parent, you do have the ability to control the situation, teach your children how to act respectfully, how to respond to things, and how to take initiative. It just takes a little work.  

Life, in general, requires patience. Every day we encounter situations that test our threshold- traffic, annoying people, lost packages, waiting in line, computer problems, family drama, things needing to be fixed …the list is endless. I can rattle off five things just today that have required me to summon up all my patience and it’s not even noon. If you have the patience required to get through your daily life, you have enough patience to homeschool, and the longer you homeschool, the better you will get at it and the easier it will become. 

My new book, Homeschool Happily: Yes, You Can! is available on Amazon NOW.