to ask for your Home Ed ideas, experiences and anecdotes?

[Fideliney]

Can we please try to keep it friendly?

[MistletoeBUTNOwine]

Good luck keeping it friendly on AIBU! Are you nuts??

I love HE. Dd has just gone on a 3 day road trip with her nana to a safari park- and it won't be jam packed because it's 'term time'.

Being able to do what you want when you want

[Fideliney]

Are you nuts??

I must be

[WeirdCatLady]

You do know this is going to go pear shaped don't you?

The rabids will be on here soon :(

If you want positive HE stuff I recommend the HE boards.

[magicalriff]

I think this would be better suited to the HE boards than AIBU. There's plenty of existing such threads there also.

[Fideliney]

Well after the fourth person on the HE punch-up thread said it would be nice to have a more positive thread but didn't start one I suddenly felt a sociological experiement come over me.

(No idea why I chose AIBU though, I'm blaming my tweaked prescription )

[Fideliney]

The thing is if HE only ever stays on HE boards, no-one ever gets their preconceptions challenged.

I know you are both right though (and will remember your kind warnings when I'm mopping the blood up).

[WeirdCatLady]

I gave up on the other one when I was told I wasn't qualified enough to teach dd, so I merrily listed my qualifications and then got called smug.
Can't win with some folk.

For me HE is brilliant as it means dd can learn at a pace which suits her health issues and we have great fun together :)

[Floralnomad]

I agree entirely with weirdcatlady and will now hide this thread ,as that's what I ended up doing with the last one .

[GrouchyKiwi]

Haha, I'm too wimpy to start my own thread of this ilk, and didn't feel qualified to since I have no experience with it, just an interest in possibly doing it with my daughter!

I've read a fair amount on the HE board, but it would also be helpful to read about negative experiences, or problems people have.

Or even positive experiences with school after people considered HE but decided against.

[WeirdCatLady]

I think if people are willing to say "this is what I believe but I recognise there are other equally valid perspectives" it would be fine. Unfortunately, some people are only interested in beating others over the head until they agree with them, which will never happen.

Personally, I don't wish to debate with people who consider what I do to be on a par with child abuse.

(Pulls up chair and gets mop and bucket out)

[HicDraconis]

My boys were home educated for a while (bullying issues at first school, took them out to put DS1 back together as he was pretty broken).

It was great :) the days had a reasonable routine of breakfast / clear up / sort laundry. Mornings were maths and English, sometimes workbooks and sometimes just talking and asking questions. They helped make lunch, they helped clear up. Afternoons were dog walks, running around in the park and climbing trees. Evenings (when I came home from work) they showed me what they had made / drawn / liked most about the day, we had dinner and bedtime stories.

We weren't tied to roll, morning bell, term times, specific holiday times, no bullying. It was hard work though and DH was on his own as I was (still am) working 50-60h weeks.

There's a huge home educated community here - they do science days at boys college, music groups, gym groups, they organise trips to fun places (one parent will organise event for their DC and send info out on a mailing list - we still get the mailing list so we can go occasionally).

They are back in school now but their home ed time was very beneficial.

[Fideliney]

Well our story is that mainstream education failed my DC who has an ASC and a statement was proving extremely hard to get. In fact school was making him very ill. He is now in a small school and very happy but I wish I had followed my instinct and delayed his start in formal school by a few years- it would have saved him a lot of suffering.

[HicDraconis]

Oh good grief. I just started reading the other Home Ed thread and gave up. We aren't weird, child abusers, fanatically religious, hot housing whatever else! We're a normal MC family who took children out of mainstream school for a while because it was failing them badly.

I have more than enough qualifications to be able to read the NC, devise lesson plans, set goals and targets for my boys ... Sheesh those comments made me angry!

[Fideliney]

Some of the hostility is just baffling isn't it?

[Fideliney]

I've read a fair amount on the HE board, but it would also be helpful to read about negative experiences, or problems people have. Or even positive experiences with school after people considered HE but decided against

Very good point Grouch. I'll pop back when I've finished cooking and carefully formulate a sentence or two on that subject

[magicalriff]

My sister was home educated for a time. She was bullied to the point where she talked about suicide so she wasn't forced to return to school. She tried several schools but didn't last more than a few days as her confidence was shattered. It saved her at the time, as she admits.

She's done well and is now a primary school teacher. She's not actually a fan of home ed, though, (adopted for sheer necessity) but doesn't openly criticise.

[thebodylovesspring]

It's funny isn't it.

I never ever considered home Ed for my kids and it's far too late now as youngest 15 but I honestly wished mumsnet had been around when I had those decisions to make as I think it would have been something I would have definatly considered.

Ds1 started school at 4 full time and was palpably too young.

I am a TA In reception class and am saddened really at the shear amount of pressure and relentless numeracy/literacy/targets.

I really wish you well and I think it's a super debate to have.

School is seen to be the only option for kids at 4 and it shouldn't be.

[magicalriff]

Negatives:
Arranging your own exams, for your child, as an external candidate is a pain in the rear end. We had to travel to a college miles away. Thank goodness for the home ed exam groups (yahoo and facebook).

Knowing that the blame will be yours if your child does badly in said exam

[HicDraconis]

Grouchy our boys went back to school because we felt it the right thing to do.

DS2 did miss the huge group social interaction (but had never had any problems with school - we just didn't want him spending 6h a day in a place that had failed DS1 so spectacularly) and liked the structure.

DS1 would be much happier even now at home but we felt that he needed to learn some things that school teaches better in terms of socialising and coping with different sorts of people. He still attends a one day school class where he is in a small class of 8 for the day and they spend all day on one topic.

We chose the second school carefully, had chats with the head and teachers, and other parents (most of my colleagues' children go there) and so far they've settled back in very well.

An unexpected bonus was that my father came over to visit for 4 months during their home ed time so they got to spend a lot of time with their grandfather which all 3 of them loved.

[TillyTellTale]

GrouchyKiwi I just want to assure you that finding maths difficult due to instrumental teaching is entirely normal. If you know anyone who is known as 'good' at maths, I'll bet a £5 they had some contact with a teacher, a set of books, or a youtube series that did relational understanding. Instrumental gets results early on, but by A-level, if not before, you have an exercise book of notes like this:

'If problem looks like A, use method X on page 49
If problem looks like B, use method Y on page 110
If problem looks like both of them put together, say fuck it and walk out of the exam, unless there's an xy term in it, in which case use half of method X, step 3 of method Y, and then put brackets around the result, and write it as the answer.'

[Liara]

We're home edding atm. Whether we will do so or not for the duration is yet to be seen.

The dc are doing really well, far, far ahead of where they would be if they were at school round here, on no more than 1-2 hours of formal 'schooling' a day. Fortunately dh is a really good teacher and enjoys challenging them and keeping them interested.

The main downside imo is that it is very hard work - there is no time when you drop off your dc somewhere and leave them for a good few hours. All our home edding friends are too far to do drop-offs, so social interaction tends to involve one or the other coming over and staying there for the afternoon - not a problem as they are our friends too, but time consuming (we are very busy!).

[IncognitoErgoSum]

I HEed from the start and my DC were almost totally HE until uni (one did a term in a UK primary and a term in a German secondary - which has probably outed me to anyone who knows us from the Home Ed board - and the other did a year's worth of A levels at our local HE college).

I accept that it was totally my decision to start with and we were autonomous learners with no teaching. Both DC knew they had the opportunity to try school if they wanted and they did plenty of other (out-of-school, or out-of-not-school in our case) activities that they could choose to stop if they wanted (within parameters).

If DD were on here, she would say that she would not have wanted to have been in school. DS is less vocal about it but, since going to uni, is glad that he did not go to school until he was 18.

I would be interested to hear perspectives (good or bad) from adults who were HE.

[CrohnicallyExhausted]

tilly interesting. I'm pretty sure I never had contact with a teacher that did relational understanding, at least not early on (say, primary age). I was taught by old fashioned 'carry the one' type methods. I know I never came across books with it, and definitely not YouTube (as it wasn't even invented then, I don't think!).

Nevertheless, I am 'good' at maths and I definitely have relational understanding. Is it possible for you to develop it by yourself, as a by product of being shown method X and method Y, and having a 'eureka!' moment? Is it a cause of, or product of, being gifted and talented maybe?

[kazzawazzawoo]

I took dd out of school when she was 7 to home educate, because she was having a tough time with a teacher who couldn't understand quiet children and bullying problems. We had a great time, visited lots of museums, libraries etc, took regular nature walks, went to the theatre, read lots, met with a he group. No stress getting ready for school in a rush, it was a great time.

[CeliaFate]

Can I just ask a reasonable question : how do you home ed a secondary aged child? Do they do exams?