Jody,
Sounds like you are speaking from experience regarding CFS and Homeschooling. Where you doing any Home schooling after you became ill ?
Do the Education Authorities carry out any checks on Education standards in home schooled children ?
In the UK Homeschooling is allowed but frowned on and is not encouraged. What is the attitude in Canada.?
I think a lot of parents welcome the break from their children that normal schooling provides and would find the 24 hour a day attention that would be required for Homeschooling to be too much for them. On the other hand you have the reward of seeing a child make the progress that perhaps he would not make in normal schooling environment.
Any budding geniuses in your classes?
liverock,
We started homeschooling in 1987 when our oldest was five. I had my first taste of CFS in 1992, when it would hit for 6 wks then disappear -- about twice a year, triggered by a cold each time. Most of the year I was fine though, we'd just have to quit school for those 6 wk periods, then resume.
That changed in 1999, when it moved in full-time. I started really down-sizing my role, fortunately the oldest was 17 and youngest was 9, so it was possible to have the older ones do their own stuff more, and help the younger. Things got very difficult but I was still convinced it was the right choice.
In Ontario the Education Act is very minimalist in its requirements. We learned after the first few years that there were essentially no tests or evaluations required, so we stopped providing any. Other provinces are more stringent. And of course, if people in an area don't know that requirements are minimal (ie., if their schoolboard doesn't broadcast that fact and they don't hear it from a homeschool support group) they will end up doing whatever they are told is required. But that's another story.
When we first started 23 yrs ago (is my math right? Wow!

) it was considered pretty weird by and large. Not quite so much these days ... but still weird. But a tolerated weird.
It's alot of work but at least it is your own rules and work. Not a teacher or school that arbitrarily is telling you what your child must do. If for instance your kid isn't ready to be able to read, it's no pressure at home ... you wait until signs show that they are ready. But it can be torture for that kid in school where it is hit upon every day.
So more work, but you choose your own, and less interference from outside to burn up your energy and peace of mind.
One who tested in the 90th percentile for Ontario but has not chosen to go to college or university. One who went to college and didn't like what she was taking, and has opted for now to waitress as she travels the country. One who is married with two kids. One who graduated with honours from the Early Childhood Education program and works in daycare (ironic, considering she was homeschooled.

). And one who is home with cfs -- but at least when he got sick at 16 we didn't have pressure and complications from dealing with sending him to school or not.