To Homeshool or not to homeschool, that is the question...

Homeschooling is truly an individual choice. No one can tell you whether or not homeschooling is right for you. You have to come to that conclusion on your own. But I guarantee you that many people will try to give their opinions. For some reason homeschooling is one of those topics where everyone has an opinion and will try to force it on you.
Homeschoolers run the gamut, from every walk of life you can imagine. Rich to poor, one child to many, all races, all religions to atheists...you name it, there are homeschoolers.
Some choose to homeschool because they want more religion in their families lives and don't like that religion has been taken out of public schools. Some homeschool because of the current lack of safety in schools. Some homeschool because they feel their children are getting (or are going to get) lost in the cookie-cutter design of public schools. While still others homeschool because they want their children to be more advanced that what is currently offered in the form of education from public schools.
Whatever your reason, don't worry, they are valid. No matter what anyone says, your reasons to homeschool are important and have led you to wanting to homeschool or having actually started.
For us it is a combination of things. My son, who is now 6 and a half, started kindergarten last school year. If you would have asked me on his first day if I would homeschool...I probably would have looked at you as if you were crazy. That's just what I thought at the time. After half a year things definitely changed. We have a pretty good curriculum here at our local public school but it wasn't fitting my son. Like all boys his age, he was more interested in playing. We constantly received letter telling us that our son was in trouble for not sitting down, not waiting to be called on, not focusing only on his work. We were spending all of his free time after school working on homework. We live in a pretty rural area so he wasn't getting home until 4:15, then homework and reading practice then dinner which left him having to go to bed at 8pm so he could be up by 6:30. The poor little feller wasn't getting any sleep at all and absolutely no free time to play!
He went from loving going to school at first to hating it and crying about going daily. It was awful. Then throw in an older child harassing him on the bus, then his teacher telling me she was worried about him because of not wanting to do his work and next year (1st grade) was full of hours of school work and he wasn't going to be able to sit long enough to complete it.
I was through, my hubby suggested homeschooling and during the Christmas break I checked into it further. I thought I might give it a shot the next year but after his next letter home from his teacher, we decided that it was time.
I was nervous and shaking as I called his school to inform them that he wouldn't be attending any longer. I was told I needed to call the school board to find out what curriculum I needed to use. This was incorrect by the way. All I needed to do was submit my notice of intent.
I will say that I am not a lawyer so I am not liable and not in any way asking you to follow my advice here. What you need to do if you are considering homeschooling is to find out your state laws before proceeding. You can find them through a few good websites such as Homeschooling.about.com; hslda.org, etc. just google your state homeschool laws (ie, Tennessee homeschool law) to find out more.
Homeschooling.about.com also has a good list to see if homeschooling is right for you.
But that was a year ago, and things are continuing on smoothly...well smoothly most of the time. Just like life there are ups and downs to everything and every day is different.