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!

I was talking in general terms, not a specific scenario.
If I decided to home educate, for example, I would see my role as being the one to be teaching/ supervising them all day and wouldn't 'hand over' until my dh gets home from work, at around 6pm. So allowing for a little bit of family time, that would mean I couldn't do a job until after about 7pm. I would imagine the situation could be similar for a lot of other people.

People seem to view many things as only being possible in a school setting. To be perfectly honest the only things I can think of which are completely unique to school and couldn't be replicated at home are negative things.

Most people I know who freelance and home ed will work during the day if their DC are elsewhere or occupied elsewhere.

Not really sure what point you're making? Just a general muse on some jobs being difficult to home ed around?
Two brain surgeons aren't going to be able to work full time and home. A single parent working on an oil rig isn't going to be able to home ed or send their child to school.
DH and I both essentially work full time and home ed.

Allowing your child to eat a croissant whilst on a climbing wall is both unhygienic and potentially dangerous.

but if you need that spelling out I suspect you might be one of the types of parents who sees no problems with their ‘free-spirited’ child doing what they like!

Both are competitive and will try harder at things like times tables because they want to do well within their class.

This, personally, I don't get at all. I don't like competition to be better than others as a motivating factor. I would prefer my children were motivated to learn and improve simply because learning is joyful. I think we have that at the moment, and I'm not sure we would if they were in school.

Fair enough. I did sort of expect that you'd answer along those lines because if your DC were mostly motivated by having friends around them then you probably wouldn't be home educating 😆

I am impressed that you can clearly make even the boring things like times tables "joyful" though! And self motivation is supposed to be a big indicator of later success in life, so kudos for managing that so well for your DC.

We use musical multiplication and a times tables game, both of which they love.

Not really sure what point you're making? Just a general muse on some jobs being difficult to home ed around?

Yes, precisely that point!! Because reality for many people is not that they have a wonderfully interesting role that they can do while simultaneously teaching or supervising their children all day. Great that you manage to both work full time and home ed too!

Sure but I don't think I or anyone else have said or implied that everyone should be home educating? I know it's not possible for many if not most. But it is for us, so we do it.

I disagree. I home educated my children and have always referred to it as home schooling. Nobody has ever questioned me on it. I did not follow the national curriculum so no particular reason other than that's what other people around me called it. It must be a fashion thing because this was a few years ago.

I’m surprised at this as everyone I know that home educates in the UK (basically all my friends lol) calls in home ed, rarely ‘homeschooling’. It’s a very American term.
I believe the reason to be that we don’t try to (or have to - which I understand is more common in the US) replicate school at home so it sort of detaches us from the very idea of school.

That said, it’s really just semantics. I’m certainly not offended by the term ‘homeschooling’.

I honestly think the home ed community has bigger fish to fry than constant debate about home education vs homeschooling.

Hi OP,

Do you know anybody who home schools their child with SEN? I know high school will crucify my child. Im happy to put them through primary while they cope but frankly think I could do a better job of GCSEs at home. I think 1-2-1 would work better for them.

This is a pipe dream really, I would never afford to do it.

Absolutely loads. I would say SEN children are very highly represented in home ed for the exact reasons you mention.

Absolutely loads. I would say SEN children are very highly represented in home ed for the exact reasons you mention.

That's really interesting and gives me food for thought about the future!

If you join one of the Home Education UK facebook groups you'll be able to see loads of people are in a similar boat. I found those groups really helpful before we deregistered.

I know a woman who home educates her children. She does the unschooling. My concern is that one of the children's best and only friend appears to be a dog. The other one just plays on a computer all day. Your way seems much better to me, I worry those girls will one day resent her not giving them an education so they can go to uni or do A levels. I think she was bullied at school and decided she didn't want that for them.

The real privilege is having two parents who can afford to work full time and pay for childcare. We could never have afforded this nor would this have fitted our working hours , so like most working class families, we juggled shifts and ad hoc bits of childcare from when our babies were six months old. Carrying this on when they hit ‘school age’ was a no brainer really.

Many home Ed families come from backgrounds where full time preschool childcare was not a possibility either financially or for some, philosophically so the need for school was not so acute and it opened up choices. For more privileged families where both parents work Monday-Friday 9-5 then I can see how school is essential and home education really feels like an impossible option.

I think there's some truth in that @sandberry, but equally a privileged family who can afford childcare for pre school children are more likely to be in a position to live on one salary, if they choose for one parent to stop working.

I know we (and many of our peers) spent the equivalent of an entire salary on good quality nursery provision from when our children were small. Therefore we could have afforded to have one SAHP if we wanted. Granted, only having to pay for wraparound hours once they started school felt like we'd won the lottery but that certainly wasn't our motivator for them going to school.

I've ended up with really settled easy children actually! But one does have issues that mean it might look like he's ignoring me. He's not. I expect you'd miss that.

Anyway the point was, these issues go on at school as well. Children try to eat during everything. They fight. They smoke. It must be aggravating to contemplate what life is like in the typical comprehensive if your goal is to spot a anarchist pattern amongst home ed kids.... You think no one does these things at school??? You think teachers have a magic classroom control weapon that looks different to 'Please put it down'? As a teacher and home educator I can assure you they're the same kids and we're all fighting the same battles. Some children have insubordination in their psyche due to all sorts of factors. They take that into school, into home ed groups, into extra curricular activities. Home education doesn't make that big a difference. They're just children.

We decided to home ed because our eldest was an anxious child. We now know that's because she's autistic. HE works well for our family so we continued doing it with our younger children as well.

One thing I will say for those who are considering doing it is that you don't need to stay loyal to one style of teaching. We started off more structured, and are currently having a period more akin to unschooling in that there isn't a lot of formal lessons or book work. My children are really into design at the moment so I'm letting them run with that while we make some changes to our house. (They still have to do maths, though!) They are also very avid readers and will pick up a huge range of books throughout the day - both fiction and non-fiction, including poetry.

When we're through this period we'll get back into our more structured routine.

Some! Don't tend to mix with them much as they're very anti structured home ed as a general rule.

Anti vaxx is not an opinion, it's a cult. Much like I wouldn't let my mixed race kids be exposed to racist people, I prefer not to expose them to anti vaxxers.

I agree but parents being the educators means they can limit some of these disappointments to an extent, even if they don’t realise they’re doing it. School isn’t the only place to develop resilience but I know the paid activities my children attend, I have more say and more involvement in the goings on in school, where so many things happen each day that I have no involvement in or control over.

Anyway, if you home educate I’m sure you’re happy with your choice, just as i am with sending them to school. You can only do your best and nothing is perfect!

I'm not doubting you that many children experience more horrible things at school that they do in outside life but for me that's really not a selling point!