The Hardest Part of Homeschooling

When people ask about homeschooling, they usually ask about curriculum.

What do you teach?
Which books do you use?
How do the children take exams?

Those questions are reasonable. But in our experience, the hardest part of homeschooling had very little to do with teaching.

The difficult part was handling the concern and pressure from family.

When we first began homeschooling, my mother was worried.

She lives in South India, while we were living in North India at the time. Whenever I spoke to her on the phone, the conversation would eventually return to the same concern.

She would ask the same kinds of questions again and again.

“What will happen to the children’s future?”

“How will they find a job?”

And sometimes she would add, “Without going to school, how will they learn to be disciplined?”

Whenever we visited her in Bangalore, the topic would come up again. Much of the conversation during those visits would revolve around the same worries.

I never took it as criticism. It sounded to me like a mother worrying about her son and his family.

She had always worried about my decisions. Even when I decided to work only three days a week, she would ask whether that would be sustainable. When my wife chose not to work, she wondered if that would be financially safe.

Those questions were familiar. They came from care, not hostility.

So I didn’t feel much pressure from them.

Around that time, a friend contacted me. He had heard about our homeschooling through Mahendran, with whom I had recorded a podcast conversation on the subject.

He invited me to his house so we could talk about it.

I met him and his wife, and they were both enthusiastic. They had many questions, and we spent several hours discussing how homeschooling might work for their children.

After some time, they decided to try it.

For the next year or so we stayed in touch. Occasionally we exchanged notes about what we were trying with our children. In a way, it was encouraging for me as well. It was reassuring to know that another family was experimenting with the same path.

Then one day he told me they had decided to send their children back to school.

I called him to understand what had happened.

He said the homeschooling itself wasn’t the biggest difficulty.

The harder part was the reaction from family.

Whenever they visited his parents, the conversations would become tense. His parents were deeply uncomfortable with the decision. They worried that the children were missing out on school life and falling behind others.

Over time, those conversations became exhausting.

He also felt uncertain about the progress he was seeing during the first year. Without the usual markers of school—tests, report cards, ranks—it was harder to reassure himself that things were moving in the right direction.

Eventually they decided to return to regular school.

After that conversation, I began to notice a pattern.

Several parents who tried homeschooling were not discouraged by teaching itself. The real strain came from the constant questioning around them.

Family gatherings could be especially difficult.

When relatives meet, the conversation naturally turns toward the children.

Someone shares that their son won a school prize.
Another talks about exam marks or a new certificate.

If your children are not in school, you have very little to contribute to that kind of conversation.

There are no report cards to show.
No ranks or medals to mention.

Even if the children are learning many things, those forms of learning are not easily visible in a social gathering.

Over time, that can make parents feel uncertain. The relatives asking questions are usually not trying to be harsh. They are simply comparing what they understand.

But repeated often enough, those questions can create doubt.

Parents begin to ask themselves the same question others are asking.

“Are we doing the right thing?”

Sometimes the children feel it too. When cousins talk about school competitions or certificates, a homeschooled child may wonder whether they are missing something important.

That combination—family concern, social comparison, and uncertainty about progress—can become heavy.

In our case, one practical factor helped.

We lived far away from most of our extended family.

Our relatives were in Bangalore and Coimbatore, while we were living in in Panchkula, far away from them. We met only once or twice a year. Because of that distance, we were not part of frequent family gatherings where these comparisons naturally happen.

The questions still came up, but only occasionally.

In professional circles the reaction was different. At meetings or associations like TiE or NASSCOM, people would sometimes ask how homeschooling worked.

Their questions were usually practical.

How do the children socialize?
What curriculum do you follow?

Those conversations were easier to handle because they came from curiosity rather than concern.

Family pressure is different. It carries emotional weight that is harder to ignore.

There was another reason the pressure did not affect me as much.

Homeschooling was not the first time I had made a decision that others found unusual.

Over the years I had made several choices that invited questions from relatives and friends. I had dropped my caste name when I was young. Later I chose to work independently instead of following a traditional career path. I also decided to structure my work so that I worked only three days a week.

Each of those decisions had raised its own set of concerns from people around me.

Because of that, I had already grown used to explaining my choices and quietly continuing even when others disagreed.

Homeschooling, in that sense, was simply another decision that did not fit the usual expectations.

Looking back, I’ve come to believe that this may be the hardest part of homeschooling for many families.

Teaching the children is rarely the real obstacle.

The harder task is quietly continuing with a path that many people around you do not fully understand.

For parents considering homeschooling, this is something worth thinking about early.

The question is not only how you will teach your children.

It is also how you will handle the conversations that will follow that decision for years.