It sounds like you are doing a great job with homeschooling. But, respectfully, my parents did not. I had very little formal education beyond the age of 6 or 7. I had virtually no parental guidance or support from the age of 10 as my father was living in another country from us for work and my mother was too preoccupied with the affair she was having with our neighbour. I was left to shoulder the burden of being my mother's co-parent to my three younger siblings at the age of 10. It taught me to survive but it didn't educate me. So, no. My mother didn't think much about my interests at all. My success academically is partly due to my personality and partly due to the fact that the second someone was there to teach me formally I absorbed as much as I could. That only really happened once I put my foot down and took myself off to school at 12. You are right, the school system is far from perfect. But I could have been allowed to find that out for myself and then make a decision about which worked better for me. That was never an option and I do resent it. Also. When I did go to school, it did nothing to dampen my love of learning despite not being an amazing school. I get where you are coming from, but arguing that my success is due to my home 'education' is invalidating the precise thing that I have written about.