Book Review: Anyone Can Homeschool by Nicki Truesdell
“I’m not qualified.”
“My child has special needs.”
“I don’t have time.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“My child would fall behind.”
“We can’t afford it.”
These comments are among the numerous objections given by parents when they consider the idea of homeschooling. And I sympathize with many of them. After all, thinking about discipling your own children all day, every day is so out-of-step with the world that it is fraught with unknowns for those who have never done it. Though Scripture reveals that full-time discipleship is the normative standard for families (based on, for example, the merism in Deuteronomy 6:7), the fears and concerns associated with such a radical commitment are very real. But according to the title of a new book by Nicki Truesdell, anyone can homeschool. Coming in at just under two hundred pages, Anyone Can Homeschool first addresses these common objections, and then finishes by equipping convinced parents with the information they need to get going.
Answering the Objections in Part 1
In Part 1 of the book, Truesdell addresses the most common reasons people give for not educating their kids at home. And if you’ve spent any amount of time considering and discussing the issue of education, you know that there are many. A full chapter is given to each of the most common reasons, as follows:
Chapter 1: Rethinking School
Chapter 2: Teaching and Learning
Chapter 3: Home Education on a Budget
Chapter 4: Special Needs
Chapter 5: The Single Parent
Chapter 6: The “Unqualified” Parent
Chapter 7: Chronic Illness in the Family
Chapter 8: From Two Incomes to One
Chapter 9: Dads, Grandparents, and Other Family Members
Chapter 10: The Only Child
With such a comprehensive list of obstacles (some of which you may not have even considered), what this suggests is that Truesdell has not only considered them, but lived through them. In fact, she explains just as much in the introduction to the book:
In September of 2002, I suddenly became a single mom. I had two daughters, ages two and six, our clothes, and my car. I had about $200 to my name and no source of income. I was living in my parent’s not-quite-finished new home. The future looked very bleak.
Besides my parents and a few close family members, everyone expected me to put my daughters in school and daycare, get a job, and live like everyone else.
We already had one year of homeschooling behind us, but that was in a comfortable home, and I had been a full-time stay-at-home mom. How in the world was homeschooling going to be possible now??[1]
As if those credentials weren’t enough, Nicki goes on to explain how she went on to homeschool as a remarried mother of five kids in a 960 square foot home, how she’s been plagued by chronic migraines, and how she herself was homeschooled by a mother who only had a 9th grade high school education! It’s no wonder that she writes, “If you have a desire to homeschool, I want to show you that there is a way. It will require your time, your flexibility, some research, and an investment of yourself, but it can be done.”[2]
To that end, Nicki goes point-by-point through the objections. For example, in the chapter regarding finances, she talks about how she educated on a budget, purchasing used teaching handbooks, finding free worksheet resources online, and leveraging resources at her local library. In the chapter about single parents, she talks about the jobs she worked that allowed her to bring her kids with her, the slow-cooker crock-pot meals she planned, and the community of like-minded people she was surrounded by. In the chapter about “unqualified” parents, she talks about being tutored in math by her uncle when she was a child, her family’s involvement with homeschool cooperative classes, and online curriculum options.
Needless to say, the answers she provides are not merely theoretical. On the contrary, the chapters are littered with names of actual curricula she has used, real costs associated with her decisions, and practical ideas to overcome the concerns set forth. As if that weren’t enough, Truesdell also includes transcripts of over a dozen questions she’s asked of other homeschooling parents, which provides even more “real-world” perspectives. For example, in the chapter on special needs, Nicki interviewed her friend Tiffany, a homeschooling mom of a ten-year-old son who falls on the high-functioning side of the Autism Spectrum (in addition to having a number of other disorders). Tiffany walked through a typical day, including how to manage educating her seven-year-old daughter while helping her son. And in the chapter on other family members, Nicki interviewed a woman named Vicki who has been homeschooling her grandchildren for six years—grandchildren who are now fifteen and seventeen years old. Vicki explained how bullying at school led to the homeschooling journey, and how the kids began to flourish in just the first year at home.
Truesdell makes it clear that education is no different than any other area of parenting: where there’s a will there’s a way. I think the point is well-documented in the first part of her book.
Getting Started in Part 2
Nicki begins the second section of her book by saying,
If you’re convinced that you can do this homeschooling thing, congratulations! My job here is done! Have fun!
Ha! That would be cruel, wouldn’t it? I’m not going to give you the pep-talk without the how-to.
Consider this second part of the book your checklist for getting started. I’m going to walk you through the steps to take, and it will require some homework on your part.[3]
This second section helps parents identify the steps to take in beginning to homeschool, with the following chapters:
Chapter 11: Getting Started
Chapter 12: Choosing a Curriculum
Chapter 13: The Struggle is Real
Chapter 14: The Law
Chapter 15: How to Get Started
Chapter 16: Encouragement for the Long Run
Recognizing that many parents will begin homeschooling by ending their involvement with public school, Nicki first sets forth the necessary steps: Withdraw (including notifying the local school district), De-school (especially addressing issues like bullying, learning disabilities, staff issues, or other negative experiences), and Assess (reviewing school records, giving your child placement tests, and determining your child’s educational abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and interests).
Next, Truesdell describes how to choose a curriculum. Those already involved in homeschooling know that this is often—and wrongly, but understandably—the first question asked by those considering homeschooling. With that in mind, Nicki reminds the reader that Chapter 2 describes learning styles, which should first be determined before considering curriculum options. She then walks through considerations related to the decision.
In Chapter 13, Nicki addresses the reality that homeschooling does not solve all your child’s problems. Instead, it provides the proper environment in which to solve them. Throwing down a much-needed rebuke, in accordance with Proverbs 27:6, Truesdell says,
It’s common when you tell someone you’re homeschooling, to hear a parent proclaim, “I could never spend all day with my kids!” It’s probably because they have not taken the time to teach character and discipline. They have created little monsters and don’t want to deal with them.
Don’t be those parents.[4]
Phew! As is common throughout the book, though, Truesdell goes on to offer important words of encouragement as well:
Dear moms and dads, just remember that this could be green beans at dinner or picking up the mess in their room. The strong will is there, but it can be tamed. And it is worth your time. It is worth your patience. It is worth digging deep down inside yourself for that unconditional love of a parent.
You are changing their childhood and you are changing your family. It is a process. It’s full-time parenting. And it’s worth every minute, every discipline session, every tear, and every hug.[5]
The book finishes with important counsel regarding legal issues, government involvement, the issue of school vouchers, and encouragement for the long run.
A Vital Coffee Shop Conversation
Anyone reading the book will walk away with the impression that Nicki is a veteran to homeschooling. And they’d be right. As a second-generation homeschooler, Nicki has lived through decades of homeschooling which has allowed her to identify essentially every major issue that homeschooling parents have had to grapple with when making the plunge. Though certainly written for both mothers and fathers, I suspect that this resource will appeal primarily to mothers, as they are typically the ones facing the day-to-day details of their children’s education.
But that’s not a bad thing.
On the contrary, one of the greatest failures in modern evangelicalism is the almost complete absence of older women discipling younger women in the kind of domestic duties that are clearly outlined in Titus 2:3-5 (and though it doesn’t need to be said here, I wholeheartedly recognize that there is a reciprocal failure for older and younger male discipleship as well). Thus, while reading through this, I envisioned Nicki sitting across the table from a new homeschooling mom at a coffee shop, calming her spirit, strengthening her resolve, fielding questions, and explaining all of the necessary details to overcome challenges. Thankfully, that kind of coffee shop conversation has now been captured in written format for the rest of us to read and recommend. Can anyone homeschool? I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book and consider that claim.
You can find out more about Nicki Truesdell at: https://nickitruesdell.com
You can purchase her book at: https://nickitruesdell.com/anyone-can-homeschool-by-nicki-truesdell or https://www.amazon.com/Anyone-Can-Homeschool-Overcoming-Obstacles/dp/B08GG2RKPN
References:
[1] Nicki Truesdell, Anyone Can Homeschool (Monee, IL: Independently Published, 2020), 1.
[2] Ibid., 7.
[3] Ibid., 143.
[4] Ibid., 163.
[5] Ibid., 164.