I home educate my DC AMA

[PsycheEros]

They are 8 and 6. The 6 year old has never been to school, the 8 year old was pulled out in reception. Fire away!

Further question - one of the things that non-home educators and some people in policy positions worry about is the possibility that EHE is used to keep some children ‘invisible’ and potentially at risk of harm. You won’t see those children / parents at HE events or meetings or within the network.

We all know that attendance at school is not a perfect safety net either, and we also know that some home educators have children who have been very badly affected by school and thus have developed a justified distrust of authorities.

With that balance in mind, do you think that there should be a register of HE children, perhaps overseen by a small group expert in the area who do not expect it to look like ‘school at home’? Or would you be against such a plan?

or you can pay attention to my warning, borne of decades of experience, and take steps to protect your child from potential heart break, crushed dreams and lost opportunities.

Its up to you of course

What's wrong with eating a croissant or calling your child darling? Is that a marker for being a twat? There are plenty of children in public schools eating croissants, behaving like little shits and ignoring instructions.

Parents of ND children often look like they're being ignored or pandering to their children and this group is over represented in home education. That may or may not been a factor in what you saw but it's far from unlikely.

I find it difficult the way people watch home ed children with narrowed eyes, pinpointing imperfections and attributing them to the absence of school in the full knowledge that plenty of children at school also possess these attributes and may or may not be meeting their learning potential. It's not like school is a magic bullet that will stop Teddy trying to munch his croissant during a chemistry experiment, as any weary teacher will tell you.

I do agree that any perceived imperfection in a home educated child will immediately be swooped on as "that's because they are home educated". Whereas no one would say "that's because they go to school" about a schooled child.

My kids do miss out on some things because they don't go to school, I can't give them everything they would get at school at home. Some of the things they'd get at school I don't want to give them! But equally children who go to school are not going to get some of the things that home educated children get.

Personally I haven't got an objection to a register but it would have to be clear what its purpose was. I think the danger is you then end up with a system similar to Ofsted where parents are required to follow a particular curriculum, and then what's great about home education gets lost.

I don't know about you, but I don't make important parenting decisions based on the opinion of one stranger on an anonymous internet forum.

You must have the patience of a saint OP. No break from your DCs at all?

Yes, I quite understand that risk and definitely wasn’t thinking about ‘quality if education’ as something that was part of the register. Simply knowing how many children were home educated with some level of ‘safeguarding’ oversight was about the extent of what I was thinking of - also potentially an ‘advice’ / ‘signposting’ function, as it can feel in areas with fewer HE families that once not in school a family is wholly on their own.

I get loads of breaks, during the week when they're at groups and playing at friend's houses, and at weekends when they're often with grandparents and extended family. Our family is huge (not British) and they have lots of aunts, uncles and cousins.

You see I find this so interesting.

My DS ended up educated at home (and EOTAS arrangement) because he wasn't coping in school due to unmet SEN needs. At age 11 he was literally running home from school or if he wasn't doing that he was hiding under tables in the SEN room. Put shortly he wasn't being educated at all. They were barely keeping him safe.

Roll on 6 years and after being educated at home for the entirety of secondary and doing GCSES at home he has 100% attendance at a competitive 6th form, and is exceeding expectation in both application and attainment and looks set to go to a good university.

Put shortly if I'd left my child in school he wouldn't be where he is now.

I am so glad that the SENCo at the 6th form he now attends didn't have the narrow minded view that he won't be able to cope because he was removed from school for what were effectively behavioural problems at 11.

I've just started home educating my child and have no idea where to find local home educators! There doesn't seem to be a local group on Facebook or anything

Well done me and my 3 other siblings were all home taught. I was pulled out of school due to severe bullying and my mum carried on with home teaching us all. We all went to classes for the gsces and did well.All now working. My 13 year old is home taught and plan on it with our 3 under 2s also. 13 year old just had his yearly education report from the authorities who check up and we've been told he is doing exam level maths English science already they were very impressed as way ahead of school teaching. Also we get alot more time to do family things and holidays etc. Well done yes it will be hard occasionally but kids learn so much more for sure.

There definitely will be one - have you joined the general home education Facebook groups? Home Education UK is a good one. They can usually point you in the direction of your local group.

Another thing I don't like about schools is that they are (usually) based on a system of rewards and punishments; I don't feel they encourage a growth mindset. I don't want my kids to feel they have to "do well" to obtain a reward bestowed by an adult - learning should be its own reward.

Where are you based that there are so many home ed families?

I have considered home ed but DS1 is very sociable and does best in mixed age groups of kids. He would suffer if he spent bulk of time alone or only with an adult. I would only home ed if DS would spend a lot of time in groups but I don't know if that is common for home edders?

Have you considered an alternative sch provision e.g. Steiner? What made you choose home ed over an alternative sch, is it just location ( not living near one) ?

Do you feel, though, that at present they ‘do well’ at least partly to gain your approval (as you are their parent.and really important in their lives, and value their learning so they also see that as important)? Are there areas that are important to you but where you actively choose to let them ‘not learn / fail’ because they are not motivated by them or interested in them?

Bristol.

I don't like Steiner at all, Steiner himself was a horrible racist and some of his ideas which still live on in modern day Steiner education are nothing I would personally want my DC exposed to. I would send my DC to school if the kind if school I'd like them to attend existed, but it doesn't.

Home edders can socialise as much or as little as they want to really - you could be at groups every day or only one a week. It depends where you live. Cities are best for obvious reasons, but places like Devon also have very active home ed communities.

I honestly don't think so because they don't really have a sense of what "doing well" is, we don't work that way. I might, for example, say well done for thinking carefully about how you approach that maths problem, but I won't say well done you got the answer right.

Certain things like spelling and grammar they don't love but both enjoy writing so we do that because it means they can write more independently, and that's the motivating factor for them there. Means to an end if you like.

That's interesting thanks. I didn't know Steiner had a bad history.

He was mad as a box of frogs - this article tells you a bit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-28646118

Steiner stuff in Bristol tends to attract the anti vaxx types and that's just not us in any way, so I steer clear.

This thread has been really interesting - thank you for providing such a balanced and thoughtful view throughout.

Hi OP, sorry I jumped on your thread without asking a question!

We’re intending to HE our children who are are currently under school age, from the start. I’m already in all the local groups, there’s so much going on around us I know we’ll be fine for socialising, learning with others etc. But I think I’d like to go down a slightly more structured route than the complete unschooling model (we’ll see how we evolve) and I’m wondering - how did you move from ‘just playing’ to ‘some time for structured learning’ in your home, with your youngest who never went to school?

It might have been easier as you had an older child who’s already doing work, my oldest is 2.5 and I’ve got some activity books to start gently bringing in the idea of us sitting at a table doing things together like that. Of course we do painting and reading all that jazz already, I just can’t quite picture that transition to get from where we are now to a point when he’s older and can sit and do a bit of work at a table for an hour. Maybe it’ll happen naturally? Any advice welcome!

Did it take a while to work out when to intervene, and when to let the children just get on with a task independently?

I guess in a classroom, there are more children to monitor, step in with and no time to be doing anything else as the focus is always on the children.

As an aside, I've known a few kids who went to Steiner schools and they were desperate to get to mainstream school when they wanted get some qualifications! There are some very strange aspects to the Steiner alternative education model: I remember one kid telling me about his art lessons which were very prescriptive, basically copying series of geometrical shapes and curves, everything was staged in a way that seemed to stifle creativity. Very odd indeed.

I was married to a Steiner art teacher. They taught what they wanted. They happened to be good at it.