In this personal monologue, Katharyn Havens recounts how she decided to homeschool her child, describing a six‑month period of research, listening to podcasts, and internal questioning before putting a plan in place, followed by a year of unpaid leave during which she lived with family. She explains the context of her son’s hearing issues, delayed speech, and a school’s suggestion of dyslexia, which she challenged and ultimately disproved by teaching him to read within a year using simple, low‑cost tools such as a wall‑mounted timeline with string and index cards. Havens emphasizes that homeschooling does not require elaborate curricula, shares the emotional highs and lows of the journey, and encourages other single parents that the process, while scary, can be magical and rewarding.
Chapters
Okay, so keeping it real, you want to know how long it took me to decide to actually homeschool the first time? Because I've done it 3 separate times. It took me 6 months from the time that I thought maybe I want to do this to actually putting the plan in place and proceeded to then take a year of leave without pay. So I left my job because I'm a single parent, don't have many options, Luckily, I could take a year off, like a sabbatical, and I went and lived with family, and that's how I did it. But certainly 6 months of real questioning and listening to thousands of hours of podcasts. And you might be in that same situation. You're thinking about it, you're getting ideas, trying to figure it all out, and it's okay if it takes 6 months, but if you want to do it in a faster way, Part of what I want to do with my channel is really to help you along that journey and help you know that you can do this. When I started, I had no experience as a teacher really. I just knew I wanted to be with my child, and there came a day when he was sitting on the floor crying and I was sitting on the floor crying next to him, just fed up and spent. I mean, we had been through a long journey with his hearing issues, and he was late to speak and then late to read, and then the school saying, you know, he's behind, and then they said he might have dyslexia. And at that point, I had reached my limit, and I said, you know what, I don't think so, and give me 1 year and I will tell you if he has dyslexia. Turns out he doesn't, and I did teach him to read in that year. It was a year of simple living, and we didn't have a lot, and I didn't have a whole lot of plans. I had basic stuff like that timeline on the wall, a piece of string with little index card pieces on it to put names and events in history so that I could start teaching him how things fit in the timeline, like in a physical, visual manner. And that was it. It was just really simple. So it doesn't take a lot to start, but I know the leap of faith is for real and it is scary. And even now I have days of, you know, I'm not doing enough and maybe I'm not giving him enough. And then I quickly turn around and realize, no, this is the most magical journey ever. And even when I'm not so-called teaching He is a lifelong learner and he loves learning, and that is what we're trying to do. So you too can do this.
