by Carla Raley

Created on: August 19, 2009   Last Updated: August 21, 2009

As a mother of 10 children, ages 33 to 2, I have been homeschooling for 18 years. My first two children spent some time in the public school system before they began to homeschool. Three of my children spent a couple of years in a Mennonite church school before I decided to take them out and continue to homeschool them. The others have or hopefully will be totally homeschooled.

My oldest son was totally homeschooled until he went to college. He took the SAT and made a 790 on the verbal section, which put him in the top 1 percent of test takers. He had a 4.0 grade average at the community college he attended and graduated from there Summa Cum Laude, then transferred to Georgetown University in Washington DC, where he also interned at the White House. He scored 170 on the LSAT, which also put him in the top 1 percent, and is now attending Virginia Law School.

My third son took the THEA at 16 years of age, and was admitted into college also. My second daughter took a test in junior high school, and the principal of the well known Christian school where she took the test told me she had scored as high as he had ever seen anyone score. This same daughter took the GED and scored high enough to earn a small scholarship.

These results make me feel like my method of homeschooling was successful, if it was unconventional!

When a parent begins homeschooling, they often meet with MUCH opposition, and they can be a little insecure. They will likely overbuy curriculum, feeling like they need almost everything they see. They may try and structure their homeschool like the public school system, whose efforts at educating children can be questionable, at best, these days. What a homeschooling parent needs to understand is that they know their child and their child's learning ability better than anyone, and they should trust their instincts in teaching them.

When we began to homeschool, I used all the textbooks, tests, and everything else I felt like the school system would use to educate my children. I spent quite a lot of money, only to struggle with my children's different learning styles. One child learned very quickly on just about any curriculum I used. Another one I soon discovered had some learning disabilities and struggled with reading, while doing very well in math. Still another needed my constant coaching to stay on course. All the while, I was pregnant or nursing and had little ones at my knees.

I struggled on, but soon had

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