Survey Results, Homeschool Challenges, and New Sponsors
* This post may contain affiliate links or sponsored content. *
I want to thank the 300+ of you who took my survey last week. I was hoping to get at least 300 responses and I got quite a few more than that, so thank you for taking a few minutes out of your busy day to let me know who you are, what’s on your mind, and what you consider to be your greatest homeschool challenges.
Several of you said you’d be interested in seeing the results, so I’m happy to share. It was no surprise to me that 99% of my readers are female. It makes me feel a little old knowing that I’m older than the largest percentage of you now, though. {sigh} Fifty-one percent of you are in the “thirty-something” category.
(You can click on the screen shots to make them bigger if you’re having trouble seeing them.)
Again, it was no surprise that the majority of you are homeschooling parents or grandparents. The next biggest percentage are those of you who are considering homeschooling.
The age-ranges of your children are pretty evenly spread from infants to school-age children, with the biggest group represented being the primary grades (1st-3rd grade).
Also fairly evenly spread were the number of years you all have been homeschooling. The majority of respondents are subscribers, with the next largest category being regular readers. Did you know you can sign up to receive Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers right in your email?
Most of you read WUHS either via RSS feed subscription or by visiting the blog. Some of you mostly read on Facebook and just a few through Twitter. About 3/4 of you read on a desktop or laptop with about a quarter of you reading on a mobile device.
Do those of you on mobile devices like the look of the mobile-optimized blog? I don’t like it quite as well as Blogger’s option, but I do like it. I think it’s clean, neat and very functional…but what do you think?
Most of you, like me, are the primary decision-maker when it comes to your homeschool curriculum, with a little more than a quarter of you deciding with your spouse and a few of you deciding with your kids. My oldest is going to get a pretty serious share of the input on her curriculum this year.
A lot of you were really interested in the answers to the last question: What is your greatest homeschool challenge? While there were a wide variety of answers, the most common themes I heard were:
- Maintaining consistency
- Having confidence in yourself and your ability to educate your children
- Schooling a wide variety of ages, particularly when there is a baby or toddler in the mix
- Trying to do it all (i.e. organization/time management)
- Keeping the kids (or yourself) motivated
- Homeschooling with special needs (dyslexia, ADHD, etc.)
- Getting started (I’ve got an eBook coming out soon that may help, based on the Homeschooling 101 series.)
- Choosing Curriculum (This post with tips on choosing homeschool curriculum may help.)
- Learning to relax and enjoy the days, rather than just trying to mark things off the to-do list
- Having patience with your kids (To which I say a hearty, “Amen!”)
I also had at least one person comment on the mid-winter doldrums, which I have so experienced, and “mother-in-law” may have been mentioned a time or two. Just saying.
The saddest challenge comment I heard was from a homeschooling parent who said that her family are secular homeschoolers in a predominantly Christian area. She said that she doesn’t have a problem with the Christian homeschooling families, but they treat her family poorly.
Yeah, that one is probably going to get a blog post because it’s not the first time I’ve heard a comment like that and, y’all, that’s not the message we want to be sending.
I hope to tackle some of the challenges with some blog posts over the course of this school year. I hope I’ll be able to offer some tips and insights that might help alleviate some of the challenges and make your homeschooling experience more rewarding.
Those are the survey results, now, I’d like to take a couple of minutes to introduce you to some of our new sponsors. I’m very excited to welcome the following:
In case you missed it, I reviewed the Lexercise dyslexia testing a couple of months ago. I’m so excited to be partnering with them for the next six months. Josh is going to begin working with one of their therapists next week and I’ll be sharing updates as we go along. I’m very hopeful that this therapy will help him learn some techniques for overcoming his struggles with dyslexia.
I just love Barb, the creative talent behind Harmony Fine Arts. It was her passion for nature study the sparked our family’s interest. In her fine arts course, she shares her passion and excitement for fine arts study as well.
See the Light offers a variety of products to help you teach art at home, while integrating the Bible with art. We’ll be reviewing See the Light’s Art Class over the next few weeks with a full review scheduled for late August.
In addition to our newest advertisers, I’d also like to invite you to visit our continuing advertisers:
Just another big thanks for taking my survey and a big thanks to WUHS sponsors. I’m looking forward to addressing some of your homeschool challenges.
Which challenge are you most looking forward to reading some strategies for helping you overcome…or, at least, deal with a little better?
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
Loved the results of the survey. Always interesting who reads what you write. I am also looking forward to your post about Christians not being nice or supportive of secular homeschoolers. It is a shame that some people can’t help others out because of how the believe. You never know if they have ever heard about Jesus and you are just ignoring them. You could be the one to plant that seed. Yeah, that topic hits my heart hard. One of the reasons why I started blogging about homeschooling is to help others regardless of how they believe. Okay, I will now be quiet on the subject. 🙂
Interesting about the secular homeschooler.
We joined a large Park Day group so our child could have the same group of friends to play with each week. There were several Christian kids her age there. All have left because the mom were being treated poorly by the influx of pagan families – and, yes, quite a few describe themselves that way. Interestingly enough most of their kids are sweet, outgoing and kind.
That’s really sad, too. It’s like I said on my Facebook page, “I know that there are a lot of beliefs and fears and misconceptions and many, many other things that play into the relationships between Christians and non-Christians. I know that I’ve been guilty of this myself sometimes and it’s often hard to know how to be true to your beliefs without compromising them, but still love the people that Jesus would love, which, incidentally, is everyone.”
That was really interesting Kris. I was encouraged that I am not the only one who struggles with consistency. Have to really think about that one and see what advice I can give myself! lol!! Can you write about that first?! 🙂 Seems like we all struggle with the same things. Have a great day!
I have seen the group thing go both ways. As an unschooling Christian family, we have been treated poorly by both traditional Christian homeschoolers and non-Christian unschoolers. I think it is sad because our local homeschool group is completely eclectic and inclusive. We have managed to get along for over 6 years without major incident. You have to have a lot of grace and set your assumptions and judgments aside.