I was homeschooled, and if/when I have children they will be homeschooled too. I will under no circumstances subject my child to the public school system.
I'd like to point out, that the fact is, parents reasons for homeschooling are excellent reasons over 99% of the time, of course whenever that less than 1% messes up, it reflects badly on all.
When I was in 3rd grade I read at a post-collegic level. In 4th grade my sister - who was in 9th grade and public-schooled - visited, and we had friendly competition in math and English... she couldn't keep up, cried to mother, and I was made to let her win, or even give her answers when she couldn't come up with them on her own. We're taling a 4 grade gap, and my sister could not keep up with me on any subject.
As for how it was done, I was given free rule over my text-books and the amount of time I spent each day doing school-work depended on me, and how hard I wanted to work. Personally, I liked waking up at 4am and having everything finished by 7am when my mother and adoptive father woke up. They did fairly well in all the subjects, however, I made it clear that I prefered learning directly from the text books, and I think that's where my reading level had a great impact.
Socially, I didn't deal with children my age much, I prefered adults, and people with a decent head on their shoulders for the most part. As a result of my preferances, and due to the nature of homeschooling, I was able to enact them and maintain them. There were certainly mistakes my parents made in homeschooling, but even with all their faults, homeschooling for me was nigh infinitely better for me than public schooling could have been. Almost all parents 'could' teach their children better than public school teachers. However, doing it or not becomes a matter of priorities, personal preferances and beliefs.
The only gov't regulation on homeschooling I support is regulation to ensure proper records are kept.
