Ask any parent involved in homeschooling why they opted to homeschool their children and you will discover that there are roughly as many answers to this question as there are people involved in homeschooling.

Often, parents want to take their children out of the public schools because they see the public school system as being a failure, or as being positively harmful to their children. Other parents decide to school their children at home on religious grounds, or because they want to instill certain values into their children which they see as missing from the public school system. Whatever the reason for teaching children at home, there is little doubt that most parents choose homeschooling because they see it as the best educational choice for their children.

For most parent there are two sides to to the homeschooling equation comprising those things that it brings to the child and those negative things that it removes from the child's environment. Peer pressure and bullying are widespread in our public schools nowadays and can place children under considerable pressure and, on occasions, even place them in danger. Teaching your children at home allows you much more control over just who your children come into contact with and how they are influenced.

In terms of a child's growth and academic development there is no doubt that, in the majority of cases, homeschooling produces superior results and this is seen in things like homeschooled children winning the National Spelling Bees and the number of homeschooled children attaining degrees (often Master's degrees) at many of our finest universities and often at very young ages.

Not surprisingly many people hold that such children are merely gifted and that their success is due to their natural genius rather than to any homeschooling. But, if this were the case then it is certainly true to say that we are blessed with more than our fair share of geniuses in our youth. The fact of the matter is that the numbers simply do not support this view.

The numbers, which are produced not merely by supporters of homeschooling but by bodies such as the US Department of Education, clearly demonstrate that homeschooled children do far better than their publicly schooled counterparts with homeschooled children a grade ahead by the time they reach the age of 12 and as much as four grades ahead by the time they reach the equivalent of the 8th grade.

Although the majority of people think that homeschooling is a reasonably modern phenomenon it has actually been with us for many hundreds of years and is a well tried and tested system which has certainly stood the test of time. Homeschooling has of course changed a great deal over the decades and much of the philosophy underlying homeschooling today comes from the work of advocates of the system back in the 1960s.

Homeschooling is most certainly a difficult option and is extremely hard work for most parents, particularly in the early days, but there can be no doubt that it works and the rewards for both parents and children make it more than worth the effort. Parenting4Dummies.com provides a comprehensive and growing resource of information, advice and articles on many aspects of parenting including parenting teenagers and also provides comprehensive advice for choosing a homeschooling program