Homeschooling with the Kachuraks (Part II)

Though she describes homeschooling as “incredible”, Christa Kachurak says it didn’t start out that way. 

“To be truthful, our family was not supportive in the beginning,” Christa told America’s Frontline News in Part 2 of her interview. “This was, you know, ‘I think you're going to take away from him socially. I think that this is not a great choice. I think he needs to get out of the house with peers.’"  

But Christa and her husband Drew stood firm, cut out the noise, and decided to make the homeschooling experience as exciting and fulfilling as possible for the whole family. 

Most importantly, they got honest with themselves. 

“There are days that you're not going to get done what you plan to get done,” says Christa. “There are days that you're going to feel behind. There are days that you're going to question yourself, but the truth of the matter is that's parenting in general.” 

“I mean, if you have children, there's so many days that we're like what are we doing? Are we doing the right thing by them? But we have these children for a reason and it's our opportunity to show them that education can be fulfilling. It can be exciting.” 

The Kachurak kids already finished their school year and won’t pick up again until August. 

Christa says that many parents who hear that she homeschools her children mistakenly assume she has patience. But it’s really all about practice. 

“I am absolutely not patient enough, but I have a lot more time to practice and just like anything, the more we practice it, the better we get.” 

So when Max gets frustrated, Christa uses it as an opportunity to teach him how to grow. 

“So the more opportunities I get when we get frustrated and we're trying to learn fractions, I can show him, ‘Hey. Mom sees that you're getting frustrated. Let's take a step back. Go outside, go throw the ball for 20 minutes. Come back in, let's conquer this together.’ 

“And not only does that create studying skills for him moving forward, that's how we're going to deal with things as an adult. When something gets too stressful, too overwhelming, I'm going to take a break, a step back. I'm going to breathe. And then I'm going to come back and conquer it.” 

When asked about the children’s social lives, Christa first suggested that anything is better than the social milieu in public schools.  

“Just because there's other children present, doesn't mean it's positive,” she says. 

“We would see the kids outside and hear their conversations and the fear and the bullying and the things that these kids were saying to each other on the playground. My husband and I would just look at each other and say that is not the type of socialization that we want our children to be around.” 

The Kachuraks mingle with other families in their neighborhood, especially at church or sports events, and as many as 15 other children have been known to end up at the Kachurak house. 

“It is something that we get to really, really be a part of with the children, parents and creating this community where our kids know how to be respectful. They know how to be kind. And they know when to come to us when they need a little help,” says Christa. 

One aspect of homeschool that Christa finds tougher than public school is taking responsibility. In public school, any issues or shortcomings can be blamed on the administration or a host of other parties. 

But there's nowhere to hide in homeschool, and that means self-improvement. 

“If it's falling apart, it's on you,” says Christa. “It's not on your children, it's not on your spouse, it's on you. And so I've had to do such deep reflective work on myself in order to step up as the parent that they need, and I don't think I would have had that opportunity had they been in school because you only see them for short bits of time.” 

She concluded by saying that for her and her husband, homeschool isn’t so much an option as a necessity. 

“It's become less of like a cute little culture, like this homeschool culture, and it's become this aggressive momma bear ‘You will not get in my way.’ 

“I will protect these children with everything I have,” she added. “And that's which has created such a strength in me and in my husband and in our kids. And I think that if homeschooling is not working, check in with yourself. And that's OK because we do that as parents. 

“We have to really focus, like are we doing the best job that we can. And I mess up every single day. I fall short every single day. But I've got 2 little kids here staring at me, like, OK, mom, pick yourself up, let's try again.”