A Reflection on Safety, Autonomy, and Mother’s Intuition

I’m not homeschooling because I believe I’m some untapped academic prodigy who can outperform the entire public school system. I’m homeschooling because I refuse to gamble my daughters’ safety on the hope that everyone else in the building is paying attention.

We like to pretend motherhood is soft, sentimental, and covered in pastel Pinterest fonts—but the truth is, it’s survival work. My instincts didn’t appear out of nowhere; they were carved out of a lifetime of watching the world prove, again and again, that children are not as protected as we want to believe.

This isn’t fear—it’s recognition. It’s the evolutionary alarm bell women have been carrying since the first time a mother felt the air shift and pulled her child close without knowing why. It’s the same instinct that made our ancestors grab their babies when the night went too quiet, the same intuitive jolt that still hums under our ribs when something feels “off,” even if we can’t articulate it yet.

Modern society calls this overprotective, dramatic, paranoid.
But let’s be honest: mothers notice everything long before anyone else is willing to call it a problem.

And in a world where school shootings are normalized, bullying is digitally amplified, and daycare horror stories come out faster than legislation, I’m supposed to ignore that instinct? Smile, drop them off, and hope for the best?

Absolutely not.

I’m homeschooling because I trust my intuition more than I trust a system that keeps asking parents for faith it hasn’t earned.

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The Risks I Can’t Ignore

Every generation swears “it’s not that bad,” and then the headlines say otherwise.

• School shootings have become so routine that we’ve turned lockdown drills into normal childhood experiences. In 2024 alone, there were more than 340 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, resulting in over 200 injuries and deaths (Sandy Hook Promise, 2024).
• Bullying still shapes kids’ lives long before social media ever does. Nearly 1 in 5 students ages 12–18 report being bullied in school, and 1 in 5 are targeted online (National Center for Education Statistics, 2024).
• Sexual harassment and assault are happening younger than most parents want to believe. Over 60% of reported student victims of sexual misconduct are girls (U.S. Department of Education, 2021).
• And daycare—the option I’m told would give me a “break”—isn’t always safer. Reports of inappropriate restraint, overmedication, and neglect happen more often than anyone admits. A 2022 study found that nearly 15% of preschool-aged children in daycare settings were given medication for behavioral control without consistent medical oversight (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2022).

Call it paranoia if you want. I call it pattern recognition.

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Why Home Feels Like the Only Safe Bet (For Now)

Until my girls are old enough to follow direction in a crisis, speak up when someone crosses a line, and articulate when something feels wrong—even if they don’t have the exact vocabulary yet—I’ll keep them home. That’s my threshold. That’s my peace. Motherhood isn’t just about teaching them to survive; it’s about timing. And right now, the world demands skills my toddlers shouldn’t have to master just to exist safely.

Homeschooling isn’t about wrapping them in bubble wrap and pretending danger doesn’t exist. It’s about pacing their introduction to it. It’s giving them the space to grow into their voices before the world tries to shrink them. It’s teaching confidence before compliance, discernment before deference, awareness before independence.

Children aren’t born with instincts for red flags—they learn them by watching the adults who love them most. I want mine to learn from me, not from trial by fire in environments that are overstretched, understaffed, and too chaotic to catch every warning sign.

And daycare? I know it would lighten the financial load. I know the “break” people swear I need lives inside those four walls. But I’ve seen too many stories where convenience became catastrophe—where “easier” turned into something irreversible. My job is to protect them, not to outsource that protection because capitalism keeps whispering that a mother’s worth is tied to productivity, income, or how thin she can stretch herself.

I can sacrifice comfort. I can sacrifice sleep. I can work overtime in the cracks of the day.
But I will not sacrifice them.

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Motherhood as Rebellion

There’s a specific kind of guilt that creeps in when you choose safety over convenience—like you owe the world your trust, your children, your compliance. As if protecting your kids is somehow an inconvenience to everyone else. But trust isn’t a default setting; it’s earned through consistency, accountability, and proof. And the world hasn’t earned mine.

So yes, I’ll stretch the grocery budget until it thins out like old fabric. I’ll work after bedtime with the hum of the dishwasher as my only coworker. I’ll let the dishes wait, let the to-do list grow, let comfort take a backseat if that’s the cost of raising daughters who know—deep in their bones—that their bodies, minds, and boundaries are non-negotiable.

Because the fundamentals? Reading, math, science, all of that can come later. Skills can be taught. Confidence can be nurtured. Academics can be caught up with the right tools and the right timing.

But trauma?
Once it takes root, it rewires everything.

I can’t unteach fear.
I can’t undo harm.
I can’t rewrite experiences stamped too early on a child’s nervous system.

So if I have to choose between academic timelines and their emotional safety, I will choose them every time.

And I won’t apologize for that—not now, not ever.

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References

American Academy of Pediatrics. (2022). Use of psychotropic medication in preschool-aged children.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2024). Student Bullying – Indicator in Focus. U.S. Department of Education.
Sandy Hook Promise. (2024). Gun Violence in Schools Report.
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. (2021). Sexual Violence and Sex-based Harassment or Bullying in U.S. Schools.