Ahh this is a bit more my speed, I'm good at comments XD

_{to some value of good}

I got this one a lot more than the "what about socialisation" question. The tldr answer is "same reason anyone picks any other school".

Longer answer, I think it came about when one of the extended relatives mentioned we needed to start lookig "now" (when oldest was 6 months old) if we were going to do private school (which seemed to be the assumption as J and all his relatives all went to private school because "everybody" knows private school is better, more expensive therefore it must be?). We said we weren't doing private school. It probably prompted me to look into schools more and from there I found out that there was slightly more than "public" and "private" school options and when I descended into the infinite interdimensional rabbit warren of different styles of homeschooling that was a headache XD

Anyway the homeschooling thing was the one that felt right so I gathered up all my evidence together and got ready to go head to head with J, fully expecting a battle of epic proportions (well epic for me because I'm hopeless at debacling).

He started off following the script but must have just played everything out in his head (he is annoyingly smart) because within 5min he was enthusiastically agreeing with me. I wasn't quite sure what to do then, but had some idea of how the sales person at the Apple store must have felt when he was fully expecting to have to talk me through decisions and choices and possibly an upsell I rocked in there and informed him "I want a MacBook with [the specs I was after at the time]" XD

Our "caveat" for doubters and subconscious out for ourselves was that "we can always send them to school if it doesn't work out". Also in the spirit of "unschooling" we decided they could go to school if they chose to go themselves. To date the boys have never been to school and middle child got through 2 and a bit terms of first year high school after she chose to try it out this year.

Interestingly, this question has been coming up a lot less recently, replaced by a statement along the lines of understanding why I chose to do it (there seems to be general disgruntlement about the education system) immediately followed by explanations of why they can't do it.