Why We H/School (Part 3): The Bottom Line

I've been thinking a lot about my posts from a couple of weeks ago about why we h/school.  Here is a link to those posts in case you're interested:

Part 1
Part 2

Then, just this past weekend, Geoff and I attended an h/school conference and the keynote speaker, Todd Wilson, summed up in just a few words what I really believe:

We h/school because we think that home is the best place for our kids.

I imagine that this might be a controversial thing to say or, at the very least, a statement that sounds anti-feminist (which I'm not).  But it is what I believe, whatever that says about me.

There's a further sentence that I have heard Dr. Gordon Neufeld speak a number of times (both in person and on his DVDs) that has resonated with me a lot in the past few years, especially on hard days.  He says that...

...We, as parents, are our children's best bet.

I find this statement to be so encouraging - that, even on the hardest of days, even when I'm not having a great parenting day, I am still my kids' best bet.  It inspires me to be my best, knowing that I am the best shot at mothering my kids have.  And it's true that there's no one (at least on earth) who's going to love them more than me (and Geoff, and Seth's/Lizzie's first parents) and no one as devoted to their care and well-being.

Combined, I think these two statements sum up why we're h/schooling:

We school at home because we think that home is the best place for our kids and because we know that we are our children's best bet.

That's it in a nutshell.  We don't h/school because it makes economic sense.  We don't h/school because we don't want to put our kids on a bus.  We don't h/school because we want to keep our kids in some kind of protective bubble (though we do hope to keep them a little less worldly wise at this tender age).  We don't h/school because we think we're superior to an existing education system.  We school at home because we think it's the best place for our kids to grow up and because we believe God has entrusted us in particular to parent and raise these kids and that we're they're best bet.