The Homeschool How To

#147: She Took Her Son Out of School for Two Years… Here’s What Actually Happened

• Cheryl - Host • Episode 147

Share episode

In this powerful episode, Cheryl sits down with Anya, a seasoned mom who made the courageous choice to pull her son out of school during a season of deep grief — and discovered that unschooling was the unexpected key to his healing, growth, and confidence.

Anya shares how losing her son’s father, navigating the chaos of COVID schooling, and tuning into her child’s emotional needs led her to take full ownership of her family’s educational path. What followed included incredible personal growth, restored mental health, and the realization that children often learn more outside the system than inside it.

Together we explore:
 • How unschooling helped her son recover emotionally and academically
 • Why children can easily return to public school without “falling behind”
 • The impact of grief, trauma, and stress on learning
 • Why emotional intelligence matters more than worksheets
 • Homeschool myths that keep parents scared
 • Real-life skills kids actually need (and how school suppresses them)
 • The hidden pressures on parents from schools, doctors & society
 • Why confidence, connection, and slow childhood matter more than curriculum

If you’re considering homeschooling, curious about unschooling, or questioning the one-size-fits-all school system, this episode will give you permission to trust yourself — and your child — more deeply.

Connect with Anya: www.theangelwearsprana.com
Instagram
Youtube
Facbook

 A Connected Christmas Unit Study! Start making Christmas memories today!!

📘 The Homeschool How To Complete Starter Guide
Thinking about homeschooling but don’t know where to start? Cheryl created this comprehensive guide, compiling insights from interviews with over 120 homeschooling families across the country. From navigating state laws to balancing work and home life — this eBook covers it all. Stop feeling overwhelmed and start feeling confident on your homeschooling journey.

Support the show

Instagram: TheHomeschoolHowToPodcast
Facebook: The Homeschool How To Podcast

Speaker 1:

Welcome. And with us today, I have Anya. Anya, thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Um, what state are you in? I don't think I actually caught that.

Speaker 2:

Right now, we are in Arizona. We used to live in Minnesota.

Speaker 1:

Okay, awesome. So, how long have you been homeschooling?

Speaker 2:

I homeschooled at least three different years. Um, I did that because of my children's father died. And during that time, I felt that was during COVID, and I felt for my youngest, who was about 11 at the time, way too much for my son to deal with grief and go to school. You know, that was kind of at the time when he was passing. So I learned through a lot of experience that our society does not know how to handle grief. You know, one week off when your child's parent dies is just it's not enough. They shouldn't be forced to just ignore that some big event happens and then just move on. And I only had the confidence to do this because this was my third kid. And I've already had, you know, children through school knowing that this was not going to be right for us.

Speaker 1:

So did you just homeschool your one child at that time?

Speaker 2:

Yep, because my other kids were teenagers. It was during COVID, they were doing school online, and it was when they were going back and forth, you know, in school, not so everything was very not scheduled. It was just that type of thing. So I just knew my my little one was too young, and we ended up skipping an entire year of school, and absolutely wonderful things happened to him when he did not have to go to school. It was, I can see that other people might be very afraid to be like, oh my gosh, what do I do if I take my son out of school? I've actually taken him out of at least two years of school, and he goes right back into school and completely catches up.

Speaker 1:

Really? So when you take them out, are you are you homeschooling? Are you doing a curriculum or any sort of um, you know, uh intentional learning with them?

Speaker 2:

Or I planned to do life. I planned to. I tried to do a curriculum. I tried to, you know, because I I am one of these more um tree huggery, let's teach things, let's I'm one of those moms. And what I noticed was every morning he fought me and did not want to do it. Even when I bought all the stuff, and I was like, with what our family's going through, I can't handle this right now. And I just made our house the school, like it's the it's it's unschooling, and I planned to homeschool, but it turned into unschooling. And the thing is, my son was after a couple years of doing this, he was actually very like the shortest and smallest kid in his class. And after at least two years of unschooling him, he's completely grown. He was sleeping 12 hours a night, didn't have the stress of having to get these assignments in, and now he's like average sized when he before he was the smallest one in his whole class, including the girls.

unknown:

Wow.

Speaker 1:

So okay, how old was he when you took him out of school?

Speaker 2:

11. He's 16 now and back in regular. He he chooses now to be in public education. Like it, I don't have to make him go. He does it on his own because he's had both options.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that's interesting too. So how long had you kept him home? Did you say three years?

Speaker 2:

Um gosh, I can't even remember. It's at least two different school years, but we would like to skip a year and then we moved from Minnesota, Arizona, and then I put him right back into school, didn't miss a beat, didn't miss anything, wasn't behind in anything, just jumped right back in. That's what I think people don't understand is if you take your kid out of school for a year, depending on the situation and the time, nothing will happen. Bad.

Speaker 1:

Nothing. Wow. You know, that's that is crazy. I have never really thought of it in those terms because the unschoolers that I talk to, they're still unschooling. So it's not like they would know if their kids went to public school or traditional school, you know, your kids on par or not. You know, I talk to people who have graduated their unschoolers and they're successful in life, but they're there's not really like a metric to say, okay, did you learn anything at home? Did you learn anything at school? Here you go.

Speaker 2:

Now that I am what I would call a seasoned mother, you know, a seasoned mother, I have had three kids. My youngest is 16, and I've seen it. And now I realize that they don't need every little bit of that structured environment depending on the situation. It's it's not a black and white thing to say, oh, I'm gonna unschool, my kids are never gonna go back. The world is so a mess right now that you this is a great time to make informed choices. I went to four years of college. I have a business degree and plenty of other education. The last thing I wanted my kids to do was to go spend $30,000 a year and go into college. For what? Yes. For what? Unless you they're in school, community college, part-time, have jobs. We have to stop this mentality of thinking I have to get through this much education to be what society wants me to be as a person. These kids are way smarter than that. I mean, I really want people to look at this and go, these kids are all cheating with AI. Every single one of them is. And we are lying to ourselves if we think that they're actually learning something from all this AI youth.

Speaker 1:

Yes. And then when you think about the money that you would spend, not just on a community college, but on four years away and room and board, they're coming out with at least $200,000 in debt if they did a four-year school with room and board. I mean, it's at least two. And then when you compound the interest on top of that, oh my God, it's gotta be like a million dollars. I I should do the math on that. There's it's just setting them up for never being able to own a home or being able to be a stay-at-home mom if they choose that later in life. Um, it's really convoluted. It really, really is.

Speaker 2:

And it, I think it really did take the confidence of being, you know, my last child is four years different than my first two. So the first two are two years apart, and then there was a four-year gap. And I think that was enough time for me to see like this education. We all know this deep in our hearts. We know we don't need to go to school every single day for seven hours a day, the way the system has designed it. We all can look back and say, I didn't really need that. My son got his first job, and he was given this job when they normally don't hire 16-year-olds, and he's more responsible than any of the other employees there because he wants to be there. He knows the discipline from home. I did the disciplining in the real mothering. I didn't have I haven't had a TV in my house for at least 10 years. We don't have cable. If you don't sit in front of that TV all day long, you gotta get your life stuff done. My son knows how to cook. He knows how to do his laundry, he knows how he has a checking account, he has his own debit card. He they they work.

Speaker 1:

Those are so important to teach them. Just those real life skills. And then other things kind of flourish from them. Well, here's a debit card. We're gonna talk now about how interest works and how debt works, and um, you know, how you can gain interest if you have money in, you know, certain types of accounts, and how you have to pay interest if you're taking out money, you know, alone from the bank and really getting into those conversations. Because yeah, again, with the college debt, they never teach you that in school. That, okay, well, your loan might be 200,000, but here's what you're actually paying back. Nobody has that concept. I mean, would we how did your son yeah, go ahead?

Speaker 2:

I just want to ask the question would we buy a house if the the whole price of the house was on the document before we bought it? Would we really do that? Oh, you're so right.

Speaker 1:

I mean, I'm sure it's there somewhere in like the amortization schedule, but they're not showing you that piece. Why don't they? Sign here. Why don't they?

Speaker 2:

That's my question. Why don't we ask how much am I paying for this before I even sign into this?

unknown:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yes, definitely for the college. I don't remember signing anything for college loans. I'm sure my mother did, but they were still in my name. So geez, I that's that's so weird to think about that you know, your parent can just take out these loans for you. I'm sure there's been some sort of things to go south with those.

Speaker 2:

It came I I'm a single mom and I did not sign those paperwork because my kids weren't properly motivated. They didn't want that experience, and they lived through a life. I didn't pay off my student loans until I was a single mom with three kids in 50-50 custody. I had a party on the phone with a woman when I finally finished paying it off.

Speaker 1:

Uh now, what made your son want to go back to school?

Speaker 2:

Uh, I feel like after staying at home and he, I mean, he slept 12 hours a night. We eat healthy food. I don't have a TV. We moved out somewhere. We're in Arizona, and it's a little more country out here where you he's a boy. He had to be more physical. Like the job he has right now is very outdoors and physical. That's what boys need. I think we all know this. These boys aren't misbehaving, they're not in the proper environment. And the system is not going to make good choices for us. The system is set up to do certain things. If you don't like it, you have to put up a boundary and say, I'm not doing that. People think, oh, they won't let my kid back in school. Really? Yeah, they will. They'll let your kid back in school. There's moms out there who are like, I refuse to force my kid to do this. They pass the kids anyway.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. It's time to start taking back ownership of like, this is my child and this is what we're going to do. Um, I think, and that's that was one of the biggest reasons that I started homeschooling because when they wanted to mask the kids, and I was like, oh wait, my kid's three. I don't want to mask on him. And it was kind of like, sorry, you have no say in this, mom. And I was like, wow, we really don't have any say over our kids. But could you demand it? Like, we just feel the same with a pediatrician. You feel that you're stuck until you know your rights and what you actually can and can't do.

Speaker 2:

I mean, they literally tell you that you can't go to school without all these facts. I have been fine sending filling out conscientious exemption forms for my kids since they started school. I mean, I didn't know, but I was ahead of the game. I I felt you they they cannot make you have these vaccines. There's conscientious exemption forms. They tell you one thing, what happens in reality is something completely different.

Speaker 1:

Well, you're right, but there are five states where we don't have exemption. Like they won't allow us to submit an exemption form because I'm in New York.

Speaker 2:

Okay. And so that's just in my experience in the two states we lived in. That was my experience. I will correct myself with that.

Speaker 1:

And well, no, but but in 45 states, and you're right that people don't know that. It's people think that you have to have everything on the schedule because the pediatricians they do get paid more money. They want a certain, a very high percentage of their practice to be fully vaccinated, and they get you know kickbacks for that, um bonuses for that too. But um we so we think that if they don't ask you, do you want this at the uh appointment? They just say this is what he's due for today. So you do it, but yeah, only in New York, California, Connecticut, wait, hold on. New York, California, Maine. I think I won't go go into the other two, but um because there's some back and forth, I think, on the Mississippi, um, because they like got their exemption back and then they lost it again. But there's five states, and so if you're in the other 45, you can submit an exemption form.

Speaker 2:

I think people need to actually sit down in their own self and think, why would they want me to have this? Why? You know, people are just like, oh, we know that the we have to understand that these pediatricians are getting paid to do this stuff. It's not necessarily in the best interest. I'm not sitting here telling people vax or not vax, go to school or not go to school. This is the time to make conscious choices. Like I knew my kid could not function in that school and be healthy in the situation that we were in. So I did something about it. Did we get judged? Yeah, a lot. We got judged a lot. But he's 16. It's frustrating because I know the truth for me and what's right for my family. I mean, I have I would go to the doctor and say finally, okay, this is a vaccine that we are getting at the time. And I would get yelled at and lectured because I didn't get all the other vaccines. I'd just look at them and say, no, that's not what I'm doing. Walk out. It's not fun. That's why I just haven't shared a lot of this information because it's frustrating.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Were you judged and criticized by family and friends? All of them.

Speaker 2:

The doctors, family, friends, but none of them were gonna be there for me if my kid was gonna be sick. And I had, I mean, I had to look inside my soul and be like, is this the right thing or not? Like, this is why I didn't send my kids to daycare. I'm not saying it was easy. It drives you crazy, three little kids, two two in diapers or a baby. Our society is not set up correctly. We shouldn't be letting people do this. It's supposed to take a village. It's so wrong. And I now I don't have little kids anymore, but I look at these parents and I'm like, how are you doing this with how everything is now? I haven't lost my empathy. It's the same thing. Like, I could everyone knows you send your kids to daycare, they get sick all the time, and you send it's so stressful. You have to make a certain amount of money to pay for daycare. My daycare when I had my first baby was uh $250 a week, and I was only making $500 at the time. That was in 2003. And I had a business degree and a professional job. That is the number one reason why I have not worked a full-time job.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well, and so the daycare thing is interesting too because I sent my son to daycare at six months old. And then when I had my daughter, I had already pulled him out because of the masking situation and decided, you know, I think we're gonna homeschool. So I started uh I started the podcast when she was born, actually. But um I worked for the government and I was like, can I really quit a job with a pension and the health insurance in the house? And uh that was really hard too. But I haven't regretted it a day. You know, yeah, we don't have the income, you know. But I can make more money later when my kids are older and don't need me as much. I'm never gonna be able to get back the years that they were small. And now that I have been home with my daughter every single day since she was born, I see all the things that she needs throughout the day. And then I feel bad because I'm like, oh my God, my son needed me and I wasn't there. Um so, but you know, yeah, you live and learn. It's a cool perspective to have, at least to give other people who are debating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm a very old soul, and I had issues physically where I didn't know if I would be able to have kids. So then when I did get pregnant and have kids, when I could, I'm like, I just asked myself this question. This is not a judgmental question because it was very, very hard to be home and be the one that the the kids have to follow. People don't understand. You are giving up a piece of your nervous system to regulate that child's nervous system. As someone who has done her shadow work and her inner child work on a deep level, people don't understand that you have a child to mirror things from your childhood so you can learn and make better choices. People don't understand that. That's funny.

Speaker 1:

Because I just saw a post, I think yesterday, that said something to that effect. Like your child is supposed to show you I don't know, teach you something about yourself in your childhood. I don't know. But that makes a lot of sense. There's certain things that you know my son does that trigger me for things in my childhood. And, you know, um, I have really had to look at like, okay, what can I do to react better or make a better connection with him? And I'm still not there.

Speaker 2:

I'm like we're moving out of I don't know. I treat we're moving out of this idea where I'm the parent, you're the child, you do whatever I say. We're we're moving into this. What is this relationship teaching both of us? And when I after I had a spiritual awakening, and God showed me what my purpose is in life was, I got to look back at everything I did as a mother, and it was things that were trying to heal my inner child and doing things for my kids that either I didn't have or I improved on that people don't understand that that is a very deep reason that we come into being is you know, coming in just being born is an experience, and giving birth to other beings is an experience. And did you learn from your experience in your childhood and treat your children better than you were treated? Or, you know, I my parents did not eat healthy, we drank all that Kool-Aid and all that sugar. I never allowed that for my kids, and yes, my family gave me a really hard time. My family was putting wine coolers up to my children's mouths when they were kids, thinking, oh, it's no big deal. You're just I'm like nowadays that would be seen as insanity. I mean, I had family members saying, Oh, you're not gonna make your own baby food. Darn right I did. Took a vegetable, put it through a little mill. There's your baby food.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Well, and that's funny too, because I remember like thinking, like, oh, uh people that make their own baby food, that's crazy. And then now that I'm part of the homeschooling community, which they tend to be just more health conscientious, I'm like, yeah, you're right. You're just taking something and putting it in a blender. It was that easy.

Speaker 2:

I mean, it was I we we didn't have a lot of money, but I didn't think about it at the time. I was busy, you know, I was taking care of three kids, getting things done every day. I worked part-time and I was home with them. My kids are really sensitive, you know, to all kinds of different things because I'm sensitive. And I did what I had to do. It was a regular schedule, nap times, early bed times. And I am thankful that at that point, where I lived in the Midwest was a little bit a suburb that was a little bit further out. Not dangerous, outside all the time, four seasons. It was a great childhood for them. I don't have to look back and think I did not do enough.

Speaker 1:

So now um, I want to go back to a little bit more about your son going back to school. I know you said that academically, he didn't miss a beat. Like he was right there, like math and everything.

Speaker 2:

Everything. I realized that it was really more of him. The problem that I noticed with my youngest son is that he spent so much time, and I did not even hook up his phone until this year. He has been going around with a phone that only hooks to Wi-Fi. And I realized the number one problem with him in school is that he's so used to all these fast videos that he has a hard time slowing down to actually learn anything because everything is videos and online. He doesn't like reading or anything. And he does it. He has to.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So now well, that was kind of leading to my question that I was gonna ask next was how did you know, like, did you notice anything socially different? Like, okay, now all the kids in his grade have phones, so you know, we have to join the crowd for that, or they all have social media pages. Like, what was that like?

Speaker 2:

I don't fall into that crap. I'm just too strong of an old soul to do that. I realized very early I didn't want these kids to have their phones. Their father gave them to them. I didn't. Um, I realized that I already had a little bit of a social media addiction and I didn't want to pass that on to my kids. I just, I just have never done that crap. I'm not afraid of disappointing my kids for something that I think is morally good for them.

Speaker 1:

Um, well, this has been so cool to hear about, you know, just giving parents the confidence of one, you can take ownership of your family and your children. You are their parent. Um, the government does not own them. And two, just, you know, they will fall right back into whatever the like you don't have to worry about the rigorous schedule with sitting down for reading and math and science and history and art and you know, making sure they're learning Latin and Greek, you know, they're gonna be just fine that they are resilient and they're gonna learn what they want to learn when they're ready to learn it. Do you have advice to the parents that are saying, you know, I do have that inner child that, you know, my parents did things wrong with and I want to fix it? Um, are there how do you even go about doing that? Do you need therapy? Do you need, you know, or is there stuff we can do at home?

Speaker 2:

My advice is we're probably doing way more than we need to be doing to make ourselves happy and well-adjusted, giving kind people. Most homeschoolers know the people that have been doing it for a really long time, they only homeschool about two, three hours a day. The the experienced people who have done it for long periods of time. I've only done it sporadically for particular situations. But the ones that have done it for a long time, they know that it doesn't take six hours or seven hours a day to teach children what they need to know for each year of their growth. The experts all talk about emotional intelligence being the number one quality that makes a person successful. There's all kinds of research about this, and that is, in my opinion, completely true. If you can feel people, read emotions, take direction, have self-discipline, these are all godly qualities that we teach our kid. And you know, even the fact that when we're like, oh, you have to do your homework because of this, I didn't tell my kids that. I didn't tell my kids go get A's. I'm like, get at least C's. That's it. That's all I've told them. And most of their classes, they end up getting better grades because I don't push them into it. I mean, I have that bottom level of what I expect. And if you don't do that, I'll get involved. But I don't have to push them to do it because they just they know what they need to do now. Especially my last kid when he got a job. He was able to put that stuff that you learn from school in into real life situations. That's what we're lacking. These kids don't have real life skills anymore because they've just been told what to do. I also want to say for our family, I don't like team sports. Not my thing. My son was into scootering and skateboarding at the skate park. He has learned so many relational skills from having to get along with other little boys at a skate park with no adults there. I mean, yes, there's adults looking and you know, but it's not like a football team where a football team, you know, coaches saying, do this, do that, don't do this, don't do that. They have to learn it in a natural way to relate to other people.

Speaker 1:

That makes so much sense. Anya, thank you for being here today. I um I hope the recording came out smoothly. I know we had a couple of technical errors, but what you had to say was so inspirational and really make people kind of stop and think about what's really important. So thank you so much for being here today.