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I am also a homeschooler. In Kindergarden my son went through a variety of evalutions from his teacher. I kept asking myself, "whose child are they talking about?" The descriptions certainly didn't resemble the little boy I knew. Within the first six weeks of kindergarden the analysis had started. First, his teacher thought he had hearing loss. No, that wasn't the case. Then she decided it was a speech impediment. He did have some remnants of baby talk left, but I had already noticed that it was improving day by day. Within three months of school it was gone. So no, that wasn't it either. Then we moved on to the possibility that he was dyslexic. He did occasionally write his 7's, 9's and 5's backwards. He also got confused with b's and d's. I investigated this and discovered it was developementaly noraml. Lastly, you guessed it, came the mother of diagnosies, ADHD. This was because he not only fidgetted during the 45 minute quiet time, he also occasionally sang to himself, in a whisper I might add. Question, how many of us can sit still in a doctor's office waiting room for 20 minutes without fidgeting? His teacher began to insist that we place him into a program known as pre-first. It is a retention year. That means you are in affect holding your child back. She claimed that this was based on his maturity level, which in her expert opinion was lacking. I never considered this as an option, but when I received his acheivement test scores and they all ranked in the 95% and above, I decided it was time to do some serious asking around. We were fairly new to the area, lived there about 9 months. I began asking parents of his close friends, some of whose children had different teachers, all of them were little boys. I asked about seven or eight in all. What I discovered was astonishing! All, but one, had been recommended the pre-first program due to maturity levels. This lead me to two conclusions! Either the district was attempting to fill a quota for this program, or there was just an outright intolerance for the normal developement of little boys. I confronted my son 's teacher on this and for the remainder of the year she was unwilling to speak with me. Think I hit the nail on the head!

Anyhow, my son is now in 5th grade. I also have two daughters, 3rd and 1st grade. We have homeschooled ever since. My children are well adjusted, and intelligent! I am very proud of them! We have two out-of-town businesses and we are able to bring them and their school work with us when we go to check on these sites. Even our vacations have provided learning opportunities! I'm amazed at what my children, even my 1st grader are able to tell me. They'e learning to think, not just recite. The conclusions they draw from everyday events is astounding! Okay, I'll quit bragging. Let me just say though, that I thoroughly love homeschooling, not just because of the intellectual results I'm getting, but because it has allowed me to get to know my kids in a whole new way. I not only love them, I really, really like and enjoy them.

Apologies! This reply is nearly wordy enough to be a John Kerry answer. Except, I actually did say something, not just blah blah blah.