CG>  GA> It's so much easier to give them the attention that they need at 
home.
CG> 
CG>  See, that's what *I* thought but I'm not getting any support from my
CG>  son's father.  HE seems to think that I wouldn't have what it takes to
CG>  home-school my child, but I can't see where things could get any worse
CG>  with him.  Especially since he does SO well one-on-one and he can't get
CG>  that much of that in a traditional school setting.
That is hard, when you don't get support for your efforts and concerns from 
the other parent.  However, once you get very clear on all the advantages of 
homeschooling, you may be able to sway his thinking.  Besides the one-on-one 
attention, there's the ability for your son to learn at his own pace, and to 
learn the things he is most interested in learning.  This is not available at 
all in public school, where the teacher has to teach 20 to 30 kids all at the 
same time, inevitably teaching too much for the slow students and too 
repetitively for the gifted students... also, they don't learn to follow 
heir
own instincts and learn what they are interested in because they must follow 
the teacher-dictated activities.  At home they can gain the confidence of 
self-directed learning.. which is, I think, why my son is now so adamant (at 
the age of six) that he wants to be homeschooled.  He really likes to do his 
own thing, and insofar as that includes a gradual learning process I'm very 
happy to work it into our educational objectives.  There are certain things 
that children /need/ to learn at each grade level, but there are lists of 
these things to help us be sure that they are included some time during each 
year... and the rest of class time can be self-directed by the child.  Since 
there is only one child instead of 20 or 30, there is also a lot less time 
wasted on class discipline and logistics problems.
Well, I hope this helps.
Zaynab
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