When women are pregnant they usually have things that they become pretty adamant about when it comes to raising their soon-to-be-born child. For some it's breastfeeding, or co-sleeping, or (at least in the South) making sure the kid will be a star athlete.

For David and I, we became pretty passionate about homeschooling Cute Kid.

Pre-birth, homeschooling is what I preached. David and I both went to public schools, and we're both pretty freakin' smart human beings, but I deeply wanted to be homeschooled as a kid. I was extra smart and found school to be the most boring, useless time of my life. I was put into a gifted program, and the 1-2 days a week that I spent in that class during mid-elementary school are really about the only parts of school that I carry with me.

We did enrichment activities, like hikes where we did plant identification, or worked really hard on art projects for contests, or learned to play chess, or learned computer programming (in the mid-90s in the 5th grade, that shit was weird). I have more memories of that time of my education than all the others combined.

That's the kind of education that I wanted to give my kid.

Of course, after actually having Cute Kid, I started my biz and thought it would be better to let her experience school. We put her into a 2-day-a-week day care, which worked really great. She loved the program, and even though it was religion-focused (something we were not excited about) we liked it too.

And it was great for helping me grow my business at a time when maximizing growth was insanely important for the further advancements in our family's security.

Then kindergarten-time came and it was the natural shift. David and I didn't really talk about homeschooling anymore. So, into kindergarten she went without much thought.

And we've hated it. Very quickly I learned that Cute Kid, like me, wasn't built for school. She grew grumpy and angsty, needed more naps than ever, and grew into some nasty behavioral issues. We kept waiting for her to grow into this change of pace, and it never happened.

During Christmas break we saw a huge shift in her. She became happier and more well-manored. She passed out from tiredness less. We almost took her out of school right then, but instead decided to let her finish her year so that we could transition ourselves into this new model of living with at least a bit of planning.

Here are just some of the reasons we're shifting into homeschooling:

one. Children these days are frighteningly horrible.

I honestly don't remember issues like Cute Kid has now when I was a kid. The things that she comes home telling us appall me. I kinda want to kick kids' asses (metaphorically, of course) on a daily basis, which has made me very not active in her day-to-day at school; I stay away for their sake. Name-calling, pushing, lying: the kinds of things that you see in movies, but I always thought were overly-dramatic because I never experienced them on this level, are totally real.

And because she's around it all day, she has begun picking it up. And that pisses me off. The best we can do for her is to remove her from it. That is not what the real world is like.

We can teach her what friend relationships really look like, that being a friend with a boy does not mean that you're his boyfriend, and that if you like someone you don't push them, you hug them.

That's what we want to teach her.

two. teachers don't get paid well enough to handle what they have to handle.

Trust me, I'm not blaming the teachers. I'm blaming the system.

If I got paid $100 for a $1000 project, I would not give it my all. Especially not after several years of consistently getting shorted and over-looked. That's what teachers deal with on a constant basis, and, folks, you get what you pay for.

three. we want more for cute kid than traditional school will give her.

David and I both have degrees that we will most likely never use. David even has an advanced degree. We have many friends with degrees that they will never use. I work daily with clients with degrees they will never use. And almost all of us are still paying them off, working jobs that those degrees did not help us get.

There is a serious issue in the traditional system, and we're going to break free of that. We'll teach Cute Kid to make her own life, to be fearlessly independent, to know she can go to the restroom whenever she damn-well please, and that she does not have to know exactly what she wants to do with the rest of her life at the age of 18, and then invest tens-of-thousands of dollars in something she knows nothing about.

We'll give her experience, truth, and freedom. We're proof that this system works, so who better to guide her along?

four. with great power comes great responsibility.

Uncle Ben has it right. David and I are lucky enough to have built a life where we can homeschool Cute Kid quite effectively. We have the flexibility, the resources, and the knowledge – nay, the power – to homeschool Cute Kid, and because we want nothing more than to have her grow up to be the best human we can help her to be, it's our responsibility to provide her with the best that we can give her. And our best is to teach her all that we know, and learn together in the process.

five. worst-case-scenario, we send her back.

We've totally went into this knowing that, if need be, we'll just put her back into school. I'll be the first to admit that we're scared to death, I'm not the most patient person in the world, and we love our alone time. So, if it doesn't work out, we'll just put her back in and foster her growth on a secondary level.

Though we'll be pretty hard-pressed before we get to that level.

And so, as of 2:30 this afternoon, we'll officially be homeschool parents, and Cute Kid will be educated on our terms. On the terms that have made us successful and happy human beings. And I'm pretty gosh-darned excited about that.

Now, don't worry. This is not, by any means, going to become a homeschooling blog. We're just experiencing a huge shift, and some things will begin changing. Hopefully only for the better.

Photo by Abraham Rowe Photography