Parents are beginning to see real benefits to educating their kids at home, and some are considering a permanent transition after a trial run during the coronavirus pandemic.

West Seneca, New York parents Brohdny and Mandie Ricketts said “the transition was rough” when schools closed down in March, but they’re now “seeing the light and how they can grow” through homeschooling, WKBW reports.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

“There’s been a lot of things I’ve always wanted to do with them, it’s just hard because they’re always at school all the time,” Mandie said.

“The transition was rough, but it’s cool now. We’re seeing the light and how they can grow,” Brohdny said.

The couple were initially overwhelmed with the responsibility of educating their fifth grade son, Brodhny, and daughters Trinity, in third grade, and Jailynn, in preschool, but the experience helped them work together to find solutions.

“Problem-solving for Mandie is talking it out,” Brohdny said. “So, I’ve learned that if she asks me anything, she might not need my answer, she might just need my ear or my feedback.”

“Before all of this stuff, we actually were tossing the idea of homeschooling, but it was with the understanding that I would only do two or three days a week,” Mandie said.

When they realized homeschooling could be a reality, Brodhny rearranged his priorities and work to spend more time with his family.

“Through my prayer and my faith – I’m led to be here with my family and be present,” Brodhny said.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

The couple set a schedule and crafted lessons built around their faith and values. They’ve also incorporated practical life skills into the curriculum, with a little help from grandma.

“They have to get up in the morning before 9 o’clock. We do a family devotional and then they have to eat,” Mandie said. “They each learn differently so we kind of do one thing more geared toward her (Jailynn) one day and then kind of more towards the other one. But make it so that it might be 5^th-grade level – but they’re all getting something out of it.”

“A lot of kids don’t know how to maintain their apartment, or to do dishes, or to clean, so we want to give them these ideas and stuff,” Brodhny said, adding that there’s also a lesson for his kids in the couple’s decision to go with homeschooling.

“What I want them to take from it is to be able to adapt and overcome any situation,” he said.

The Ricketts aren’t the only ones taking advantage of the coronavirus-imposed homeschooling. Hillary Bates, a mother of two in Grandview Ohio, told the Columbus Dispatch the changes she’s witnessed in her kids in recent weeks have convinced her to keep them home next year.

“What I’m noticing – getting to see these strange, unasked-for-experiment that we’re in – is that (my kids) are happier, more engaged students. They have more time to pursue their own interests and are less anxious, and just generally flourishing in a lot of ways that make it hard for me to imagine that I will make a decision to send them back to school next year,” she said.

“They’re very articulate about what they appreciate about this experience, and they both tell me they’re happier and that they don’t want to go back to school.”

Clintonville resident Megan Garbe, mother of four – two her own and two in foster care, also noticed her kids are flourishing at home.

“I thought that they were going to miss the environment more, and they really don’t,” she said. “The other day, I had them reading about spiders, and then they had to draw a web specific to ta kind of spider and write a paragraph on their own about what they learned about the spider and why this spider has that kind of web.

“Nadia (8) was very interested in having the web be exactly how it’s supposed to be, as far as the artistic part of it. (Hudson, 10,) was much more about the science-y part of the spider – what the spider activity was, and how the stickiness of the web made it more attractive for the bugs that specific spider eats. So they both did the same project, but they both did it in very different ways, and that’s perfectly fine.”

Garbe told the Dispatch she has no real issues with local public schools, but it’s hard to deny how well her kids are doing without them.

“Moving to homeschooling isn’t really an issue with the school or the social environment or anything that they were getting at CCS,” she said. “It’s more, ‘Wow, this is working well for us.’”