How long before family accepts HE?

[lougle]

My Dad has expressed his concerns that DD2 is 'just playing' and 'not learning'. She's been out of school 4 weeks now.

I know my Dad won't understand that play can be learning, but how long does it take families to understand that it doesn't have to be chaining to a desk from 9-3, 5 days per week?

[morethanpotatoprints]

Oh lougle you do have my sympathy.
We were met with mostly good comments and support except for fil and dhs half sister.
Can you believe they said "What about her education" and although I'm a qualified teacher (not that that helps with H.ed) I'm not qualified to teach KS2 Maths and because of this dds education will suffer.
Sometimes they don't want to hear, even when you point out the teachers in primary are not always qualified to degree level in the subjects they are teaching
All I can say is you know you are doing the right thing and you know where not to seek support
My mil and her dh are the opposite and always looking for ways to support, making suggestions etc.

[ommmward]

Tell him firmly that the 2007 Guidelines on Elective Home Education for Local Authorities recommend allowing for a period of getting settled and established before they make any kind of enquiry about the style or content of the education taking place, and that experienced Home Educators have a rule of thumb of allowing one month of that "deschooling" period for every year the child spent in school, assuming there was no trauma in the school experience.

Tell him you're using that settling in period, you're finding your feet, and you'll be ready to talk about the approach you're taking in . In the meantime, if he wants to help you by reading any of the key literature on home education and chatting about it with you, as you develop your educational philosophy, that'd be FAB, once he's done some research on different HE styles. And then point him at Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison. ;)

[maggi]

The first months are the hardest with curious friends also asking questions. You learn to stay clear of the negative people but immediate family is harder to avoid.
Sometimes even clear proof that your system is working and creating an intelligent, sociable and achieving young person, even then, the on lookers can appear to be blind. They insist on crying 'But when is he going to get an education'. There are many ways you can justify yourself to these people but if they don't believe their own eyes, what can you say?
In your case, 4 weeks is very early days. It will be very alien to your Dad if this is the first case of homeschooling that he's had contact with. Have you tried the we-are-just-trying-it-out-for-this-year approach to placate him? If he is ok with computers then get him to look at some home ed websites. Give him a long list of famous people who were home ed (check whether his favorite sports people or celebs were HE). Reassure him that you will monitor dd progress (even the unschoolers notice when the children are doing something new, so it doesn't have to be progress charts and check lists). Perhaps give him a task so he feels involved such as taking dd swimming once a week or woodwork or whatever rocks his (and her) boat. Once he's done that activity for a few weeks discuss with him how much dd has progressed in that activity and go onto explain that is how you are 'teaching' other subjects too.

[lougle]

Thank you all. I don't think he's meaning to be negative, he was just raised in the Scottish System in the 1950s, where not only did everyone go to school, but everyone went to the school nearest to their home.

He thought I'd have to get permission from the 'board of education' and get assessed, etc., and I don't think he can quite believe that it is so 'open'. It probably doesn't help that my LA, so far, haven't even made contact - no phone call, no letter, nothing. In fact I phoned them to make sure they'd had the dereg. notification.

Also, being 6, DD2 sees everything we do as 'just playing' so that's what she tells everyone she's doing.

[Nigglenaggle]

A good deal of what they do in school when they are very young is 'play' though. They are only really at the very start of formal education at 6.