Homeschoolers Are a Fraternity of Sort

If ever there is any consolation in the challenges we encounter in homeschooling our kids, it is the beauty that we see in the last 7 years, particularly back to the time when it all began, 2 years further back in time.

Our son during a homeschoolers' common activity back in June 2009. We were homeschooling our son for a year already when this photo was taken.

Having read up what we could about homeschooling nine years ago (that was in 2006, when our son was only 3 years old) and after having prayed hard about it, my wife and I said, "This is it!" We stuck to that decision unwaveringly since. We crafted our life and career decisions around it.

Looking back, we weren't even aware about the Catholic Filipino Academy (CFA) when we made this decision; nor were we aware of any homeschooling provider, Catholic or otherwise, in the Philippines at that time. We just somehow jumped, as a matter of FAITH in God, that He would lead us there, and He DID! As it turned out the CFA was established on the same year when we made our decision.

That moment of decision by itself was (and is) beautiful, coz what followed after that were a series of landmarks in our life --- both good and bad --- that happened all because we said, "This is it!" In God's grace we relished those moments with passion.

Back in 2010, we sold almost everything we had except our work equipment and one piece of sofa ... and we moved back to Laguna. But, you know what? Homeschooling continues. In the picture above, class was on-going.

When I wrote the blog post I published on March 27, 2010, I was scraping dirt after failing in a business and retreating to the province to start anew. We were homeschooling our son for 2 years already by then and our dire financial situation did not deter us from that direction. To paraphrase Invictus, our heads were "bloody, but unbowed".

Now we're back in Quezon City and our homeschooling continues. It is our gift to our two kids.

A recent family "wefie" during my birthday last month. Time flies :)

Most people, including a few of those close to us, do not understand us. That hurts. But then we do not really expect people to understand. People do not need to. They just have to respect it and make smarter statements. But to those who sincerely want to understand why we do this, the articles in my blog say it all.

We get lots of affirmation from people who understand homeschooling. This one in particular is from someone called "Danny", a contributor of "Didache". You have no idea how much his words inspires us, repeatedly. He wrote this back in Feb 4, 2013 in my Cool Catholics blog and I read it at every chance since then:

Hi Marvin & Rhia,

Thank you for posting some of my reflections in Didache.

I am happy to note that you are homeschooling your children. My 2 children who are now graduates (from DLSU ADMU) were both homeschooled up to high school. This is the BEST education a parent can give!

Blessings!

Danny

Homeschoolers are a misunderstood lot. But homeschoolers couldn't care less. We *know* what we've got and we would not exchange it with anything else. We are a tightly knit 'fraternity' of some sort, bound by our common dreams, struggles and rewards for our children. We're happy we're doing this. Our children are happy that we're doing this.

Most importantly, we believe we give glory to the Lord by doing this.

Ad Maiorem de Gloriam!