A number of people describe homeschooling as 'do it yourself education' and the majority of parents assume that they are the 'you' in 'yourself'. As a consequence, many parents who have busy lives making a living or undertaking other important activities, and especially single parents, dismiss any thoughts of schooling their children at home out of hand. But are they wise to do so?

Homeschooling has been with us for an extremely long time now and involves more than 1,000,000 kids in the US alone and experience demonstrates that are many options open to parents today. Indeed, it is perhaps not surprising to find that parents in almost any situation you can think of have found the solution to homeschooling their kids.

We are all of course familiar with the traditional two parent family with dad out at work and mum looking after the home and this model makes homeschooling a fairly simple option. Since the 1960s however society has changed markedly and today there are a wide variety of family situations including, single parents, extended families, same-sex couples, role reversal and much more.

Every situation carries with it both advantages and problems for homeschooling and it is a question of studying both and then finding ways to overcome the difficulties and enhance the advantages.

As an example, a number of parents turn to their extended family or friends for assistance and ask family or friends into their home to help. This is nothing new of course and, for many years, it was common for families to offer a friend or an older family member like an grandparent a place to stay in exchange for assisting with the care and education of the children.

Help can also often come from neighbors. Many 'stay-at-home' moms are already providing day care for children and, as homeschooling continues to spread, babysitting services are being extended more and more to include homeschooling.

In a lot of instances families are also combining their resources to provide homeschooling on a 'group' basis.

Yet another popular option is that of employing a tutor. Nowadays tutors come from a wide range of different backgrounds, in all age groups and include both specialists, such as those teaching music or languages, as well as of course general tutors. In fact, it is quite common to find ex-private or public school teachers who have become dissatisfied with the 'system' turning to tutoring because of their deep love of teaching.

Most parents think that private tutoring is quite simply out of their reach financially but, after some careful research, they are generally surprised to learn that the cost of engaging a tutor can indeed be within their reach.

Yet another very important consideration is the children themselves. It is often surprising how well motivated kids are by the independent nature of homeschooling and a lot of parents discover that teaching a child at home can be considerably less time consuming than you might think.

If you find yourself tempted by the advantages of homeschooling over the poor quality of the public school system then do not fall into the common pitfall of dismissing the idea out-of-hand. Take time to examine the choices open to you and you could well be surprised to discover that it is easier than you think.