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Thanks so much for the reply... I tried to read the whole thread but as I came into it at 300+ posts, I'm sure I missed a lot. ;)

I plan on homeschooling our 9 month old, and I've already decided we'll be joining HSLDA ... probably when she turns 4 or 5 and the "fight" begins, (and when our situation is a bit better). Their website is a wealth of information: it is even helping us decide where we should live. (PA vs NJ or CA or OR - where family is) and what we'll be up against.

As for their fee of $100 a year - it's a lot for us now all things considered - but it's a pittance in the long run. It's less than ISP fees which helps make things relative, and it's protection for my children.

Hello.......

Having nearly completed our HS'ing with our two children..I can give you some personal experiences that maybe of some help to you in the future.

We started when our oldest was 4 yrs. old...she's now almost 18 and finished.

We started in So. Calif. and never had one problem with the Government School District that we lived in. We joined groups of like-minded HS'ing families....CO-OP's they called them. We "filed" with an umbrella school that helped with our "needed" paperwork. We even joined HSLDF....

If I remember correctly after 2 or 3 years we stopped using the umbrella school...( There was a fee...maybe $100 a year..) and we stopped HSLDF...too. We found that in our case...they were unneeded. Although each individual School District is/was different in Calif...And "trouble" tended to be directly correlated with whomever the District Superintendent was.

All in all...CA. was and to the best of my knowledge remains a fairly easy state to HS in. We now live in OK...and it's just as easy...if not easier.

My recommendation to you would be to hook-up with some HS'ing familes in your neighborhood/city and find out the in's and the out's.....

HS'ing our children has been the absolute best thing we've ever done FOR our children.

Best FRegards,

Regarding PA vs NJ, my husband and I are both originally from PA and when we had our daughter (now 6), we finally landed with a mortgage in NJ, after living in NYC and elsewhere. For the first 4 or so years of her life, I loudly and regularly expressed my desire to return to PA where most of our family members still live.

Then I began to be interested in homeschooling and soon determined that remarkably, NJ is one of the easiest states in which to homeschool. There are very minimal regulations, no yearly requirements, no submissions to school districts etc, and if any local official requests info, it is their burden to prove the request as necessary in the first place. Kindergarten is not compulsory, official schooling is required by law to begin at six but even so, NJ homeschoolers are innocent until proven guilty.

At the same time, I discovered that PA is often much more restrictive and can be tedious in its requirements, although that seems determined by where you live specifically - certain areas/jurisdictions are more invasive than others, apparently. Some Freepers in PA say they have never had a problem with anyone while others say it's been daunting.

At any rate, I no longer nag about moving back to PA, as we intend to continue homeschooling indefinitely, and of course have joined HSLDA anyway - there are SOME problem cases in NJ and you just never know! And of course, there's no comparison between the cost of living in NJ vs PA - housing cost differences alone are enough to make one weep. Hard.

Something else worth mentioning, as someone else said, there are so many local homeschool organizations out there. Countywide ones, secular ones, religious-based ones, statewide ones (ENOCH here in NJ is good), plenty of places that cater to homeschool groups, for example, the county group we started with offered gymnastics at the local gymnastics school, also swim lessons at the local swim school, with discounted rates for the group. The one to which we currently belong has a "learning center" every other week where the kids get together for class with their age groups (I just finished co-teaching my daughter's third semester class, which was on birds), have gym etc, also belong to the same swim school, go on monthly field trips to places like the Crayola factory in eastern PA, planetariums, museums etc.

There are so many resources, so many groups, socialization is such a non-issue. I just spent a couple hours this morning shopping for a first grade curriculum, the options are mindboggling! :) I need to find a program that allows for the moderate inclusion of my 2 1/2 year old son, or he'll drive us all crazy during school. And congratulations on the birth of your daughter, she is beautiful. We just had our third and final, another daughter, on Dec 22.