Does anyone not see how happy the children are? I do not agree with the religious part but my goodness look at the happiness and pure joy.

When I was still a Christian, I home-schooled my kids, but it was almost totally self-directed.

My two toddlers began asking the phonetic sounds for the alphabet, so I casually sang the Sing, Spell, Read and Write phonics songs, seen for free on YouTube, and using the phonics song chart I copied from their workbook.

My daughter was still two when she asked me this during a commercial in a movie we were watching. I felt annoyed, but quickly sang her the first phonics song, showed her the phonetic sounds for some of the most used letters, and she was reading simple words in minutes.

By the time she turned three, she was reading 22-page books from the library and in a few more months, she joined her six-year old brother in taking turns reading pages from Little House on the Prairie during family read-aloud time.

My son was reading children's books on astronomy by five, and began collecting quartz and obsidian rocks, and fossils at 18 months old. He carefully organized them in rows and didn't let me move them out of order.

Both were fascinated by physics..they'd sit entranced during the 2- hour teacher recording blocks of programs on physics and science on the Kentucky Learning Channel.

They were soon taking home 200 books from the local library every two weeks..I had to use a laundry basket to carry them. I had to keep taking them further afield to university libraries to find new material.

Both loved "finding Mr. X" in algebra by five years old, and considered doing the problems a reward.

Both my kids and I are very dyslexic.

Because I have an Q of 140, and my husband got the highest exit scores in the history of our university, I thought that they did well because of their superior DNA.

But when word got out that I was having success teaching with learning challenged children, parents began bringing me learning disabled and troubled children to have 40-minute classes, they learned just as rapidly, no matter how young, or how supposedly "retarded."

I get angry thinking about home schooling here in Iowa. There are NO rules or regulations of any kind for parents to follow. Once the parent notifies the school that they are home schooling their children, they can do anything they want, or nothing, and the state has no interest in the child's education. And BOY, are there horror stories, including physical abuse, torture, starvation, and several deaths. And our republican governor and legislature do absolutely nothing! WAIT! They did do something. They just passed a law saying that if a women showed a fetal heartbeat, there could be NO abortion. And that heartbeat can show up before she even knows she is pregnant! Think about that! It's heartbreaking.

Whoa..

I have met kids who were home schooled of atheist families. They are smart, knowledgeable and can multiply 12 times 12. They may also know the Bible better then these children.

Tragic… Looked like the typical guy-needing-son lineup, too … making the daughters expendable.. Mine weren’t, and, they were homeschooled for several years. Returned A students … and stayed that way.

My wife is the local library manager. She tells me stories almost daily of kids coming to the library and talking about their ambitions. Some want to move up from MacDonald's to Denny's. A couple of kids she has working for her can't do the simplest math without either a calculator or their fingers. They know nothing about science. Products of home-schooling A really big problem here is the public school has lost virtually all it's competent teachers and if my daughter was ten years younger, it might have been necessary to either move or home-school her myself. Thank goodness she will graduate college next year with a STEM degree.

You trust your parents to be telling you the truth about things. I struggled with this as a kid, and felt guilty about my lack of faith. I knew in my heart that it was all nonsense, but it is difficult to chart your own course, when your friends and family are religious.

I have a friend who home schooled her son. As things turned out, he doesn't even speak to his parents anymore. Animosity just build up and the close proximity of his mother (teacher) and pounding of Christian beliefs was more than he could take. Church events were his only outlet and he hated these. He now has some serious psychological issues.

FFS