No easy way back

Deciding not to send your kids to school is quite unusual in the Netherlands. And.. we consider to keep ours at home! In the past 3,5 years we've met a couple of homeschooling families. The first family lived in Surinam. Ok, then you talk about a country where the public school system is very poor and where private schools are ofcourse expensive. And if you are in the situation of having eight children, then it's an easy choice. The second family lived in the Netherlands, but would move abroad. Ok, at first I found that quite strange. Why would you not send your children to a school if you have access to good ones? Then I discovered the privilege and the joy of teaching our children. For instance, I simply loved to design a weekboard for Boas with the days of the week and magnetic photo's of his friends, our family and of activities he regularly does, such as visiting church or preschool. When we, this time Jos was also present, met our third homeschooling family, we saw a family that most of the time functioned as a team. This South African family moved to Spain 5 years ago and has settled there to going to be involved in a church plant. We were guests in this family with three kids, 10, 8 and 2 years old, that (talking about the two oldest girls ;-) ) were polite, socially developed, obedient, eager to learn, and we were IMPRESSED. Then we remembered that nice, big family in Surinam, with children with an attitude which was quite similar to the girls in Spain's attitude. And back home we started investigating this very strange, unusual, but magic thing called 'homeschooling'. We discovered lots of interesting things, met lots of interesting people, read lots of interesting stories. WOW! What a great opportunity to raise ánd educate your children yourself. To imprent them what's right according to the Bible, to learn them God's ways, to feed their personal interests, to encourage their confidence, to be with them. There was no easy way back. We prayed over it as well and felt God wanted us to make a deliberate decision. So we decided... not to send Boas to school when he turns 4 in March, but to keep him home this year between 4 and 5 in which there won't be a compulsory attendance at school that forces him to go. So until March 2011 we just keep going with learning a lot at home, and we highly expect God to confirm our choice ... or not.