We tried our son in preschool at three years old, because we felt we had to. It felt wrong from the get go and didn’t go well. We pulled him out within a couple weeks.
We had already been thinking about homeschooling, given our travel plans, and so we stared to explore the idea even more. We didn’t get far into our research before we discovered unschooling, a style of homeschooling that lets the child explore subjects of their choice at their own pace. Given we’d been following our child’s lead since birth, it was a natural fit. He’d been steadily growing and learning, so there was no reason to think he’d stop just because he’d hit “school age”.
So we officially chose the homeschool route. In our state, mandatory education starts the year a child turns 7, so we had no pressure to hurry in enrolling him.
Finding online groups really helped solidify for us that we should continue as we were, so we have.
As we’ve learned more we’ve sunk into partnership with our child even more. We’ve met other families (online and in person) that are walking a similar path with their kids.