The Life of a Homeschool Dad
by Carolyne Falank, MS, PhD, scientist and Lou Falank, BS, Registered Maine Guide
It’s the first Monday of September and you find yourself in the middle of a tornado. You are scrambling. You need to get lunch made as you wrangle your toddler to get dressed. The dirty breakfast dishes are still on the table. You start to doubt that attending a local homeschooling outdoor “get together” group (which- mind you- was found through a Facebook search) was a good idea for the day. The probability that you will be the ONLY homeschool dad is quite high.
Nonetheless you persevere knowing how important it is to build community. You get there 10 minutes early, scanning for a familiar face. Not everyone is openminded, that is a fact. A stay at home dad can be met with confusion and maybe even ridicule. Yet you stand tall and walk out of the car with a smile on your face and enjoy your time in a group of at least ten women. We might be a rare exotic breed among home educators but don’t overlook the dads, they homeschool too!
New Options for Home Education
Times are changing! Many families are switching traditional household roles including those in home educating in order to fit their own unique lifestyles. There are many different flavors to this. Mothers going to work while fathers stay home, both parents working part-time and taking turns educating their children. One parent working from home while educating their children. A single parent or both parents working full-time outside of the home and educating during the evenings and weekends. Enter the homeschool dad.
Tips for the Homeschool Dad
We have found that following certain steps have helped us to build a successful home education environment where the dad is the stay at home parent.
Some of these steps include: Having both parents on board. Ensuring each parent understands what their roles are in home education allows for expectations and goals to be clear. The expectation in our household is that one parent oversees all of the curriculum and instruction. Then the other is responsible for activities outside of the home (field trips, co-op, enrichment programs).
This sets us up to work as a team.
The pressure of homeschooling, if left unchecked will take a toll. It is a toll on your mental and physical health, your marriage. Eventually it could lead to burnout.
Remembering to not to lose sight of who each parent is as an individual. Nurturing your own emotional and physical well-being is important! The same as making sure your family has food on the table. Avoid burnout by remembering to connect with our passions, set personal goals, and take action for ourselves. Even just one small step in the direction of a goal, or a dedicated activity that you pursue could still light that fire in your soul like it used to.
Most importantly the Fire within Needs Tending. If you start a fire, and expect it to keep you indefinitely warm it will eventually burn out. However, if you tend the fire by continuously feeding it and reigniting it, it will always keep you warm. It isn’t always sunshine and rainbows! We frequently have to lean into ourselves and our marriage to crawl out of the trenches sometimes.
Although the unfair stigma may still linger around men who decide to stay at home it is becoming more the norm with over 2.2 million fathers within the US staying home. Whether you are a single dad or one who stays home when your partner works, you deserve recognition for everything you do. It is an important responsibility and you are just as adept of doing it as anyone else, regardless of gender.
Check out some of the field trip options we have listed.