[LunaSea97]

My parents are angry at my sister about how she homeschools and they use ME as an example. My sister has become the negative stereotype of what is "wrong" with homeschooled children.

My niece stays at home all day with her mom and her younger brother (my brother in law works) and works out of workbooks. She LOVES to learn. She likes to do the workbooks for fun and can work on them for hours. She is extremely smart-she once spent an hour explaining all the details of volcanoes to me and she has an amazing grasp of government and policies (she's in 2nd grade)-but no one seems to notice or care because she can't read. All of her workbooks (math and reading) are kindergarten level and this is what people see. She can do the work in the workbooks but she can't read well enough to read the instructions or even something simple like a Dr. Seuss book. Everyone (and I do mean everyone) in our family feels my sister is causing damage by isolating her child and now they are even more strongly opposed because of the reading issue. They don't seem to understand that children learn differently and that my niece's reading skills just haven't caught up to the rest of her knowledge and now my sister is constantly under fire because of the "homeschool stigma" that has been created.

My sister is constantly compared to me, "the good child". My daughter went to traditional preschool for 2 years (because of her age) and then kindergarten. I made the decision to homeschool because she is an assertive, active child; she is not the type of kid to sit still for 8 hours and she has interests (art, sciences, dance) that were not being covered extensively in school. I have her in Girl Scouts, I work close with the school to make sure she is meeting the requirements of our district and I also belong to a local homeschool group as well as our state homeschool group. She attends physical education classes at the Y (she does a few different dance classes during the week) and we also have a museum visit every day. We do lots of projects and very little sit down work although she does do weekly tests to cover the material we have learned that week and then a larger test once a month to cover the material for that month (these are for portfolio purposes and to make sure she is on track).

The reason this is all possible is oddly enough because I am a single parent with ONE child to take care of. I have set up our schedule to allow her to be in classes while I am at work (I work a morning shift starting at 5am) and that frees up our time in the afternoons to do her projects, tests and visit museums. I did all that work because I HAD to in order for our homeschooling to be successful. I certainly never thought it would be used to make my sister feel bad.

I am constantly used as the barometer though BECAUSE I am a single parent and because my daughter is younger (and she can read) and we have mountains and mountains of paperwork to prove what we are doing (I keep two portfolios-one for myself for legal purposes and one for her dad), we are actively involved in the community and my daughter is actively involved in sports, Girl Scouts and has a lot to tell about the school work she does.

No one seems to take into account that my sister does not have the schedule that I do (my daughter is involved in outside groups to free me up for work), the money to do what I do (I am single but receive child support-she and her husband are running a family of four on one paycheck) nor does she have the resources I have because we live in completely different states! 99% of our museums trips are free because we live near NYC and can take advantage of the free days at the numerous museums we have nearby. She doesn't have to be the same as me! I am tired of my sister being compared to me because homeschooling means a lot to her, she doesn't have a lot of readily available resources that are in my area and other than my niece not being around other kids a lot (which IS true) she does not seem in any way held back academically. It aggravates me to no end that she is expected to teach like me when we don't live anywhere near each other and we have children with entirely different personalities.

Does my sister actually NEED help or have I just overcompensated to get past a challenge (being a single parent)? She and I discuss homeschooling all the time and she seems very knowledgeable on the subject.

[Fr_Chuck]

Does she give the child any of the standardized tests like the CAT test or others. This will show if they are up to the grade level they are suppose to be.

Reading levels would be serious to me also, but she needs to be tested ( all home school kids need to be)