Home Education, before primary or after?

[ThirtyFlirtynThriving]

My nearly 4 year old starts school in September.

My initial plans were to send her to primary school, let her makes some friends, learn the social aspect and get a good feel for the discipline/regime side of going to school. Then I planned to let her choose, secondary school or home education. As I’m aware she may want to stay with her friends if they go to the same secondary.

If at any point she doesn’t enjoy school, has an issue with bullying, mental health decline I’m prepared to just pull her out and home educate.

But now I’ve started preparing for her to go to primary school I’m wondering whether she should just be home educated from the start. Is there any benefits to home education from primary age?

I suffered incredibly poor mental health in school and I’ll go the the end of the earth to help DD avoid feeling the way I did. It’s affected me into adulthood and I wish my mum had been able to home educate me.

I just don’t know when is best to start.

"It’s affected me into adulthood..."

This is another way it is affecting you and you need to reframe it before it affects your DD as well. Do you have a partner or family member that can give a sense of perspective, if you are overreacting to a small child falling out, for example?

You actually don't know how your life would look if your mum had HE you, you don't know if you would have better MH. You might have retreated further from society, stayed in a very small comfort zone and not met anyone to have DC with, for example. Try to see the positives from the life you had alongside the negatives.

HE works for some people, is a last resort for others but for you it will be compounding a problem you have already, rather than fixing anything. Don't do this to your DD, don't even present school as optional in the way you propose, present it as fun and the default. You know there are options if things did go badly, but as the adult you do not put that decision on to a very young child.

She takes part in international debating competitions, model United Nations and public speaking. Plays in a school orchestra which wins competitions on a monthly basis, ditto with the choir. She plays for school and county in netball and hockey. I lose track of what she’s doing from one week to the next. Next year she is off to Austria and Italy with her friends, led by the fantastic and inspiring history teacher. She couldn’t have done many of those things in home school.

That's quite similar to the list of things my older child did while being home educated. They were on the go constantly, on big and small adventures: sports, residentials, choirs and bands, drama. There are all sorts of opportunities out there. Home ed parents share them on local and national forums. The vast range of options is hard to picture if you don't have experience of home ed. My kid actually had more time for all of this because of not being at school for 30 hours a week. (In fact, some kids who are elite athletes or performers opt for home education because it frees up time for them to follow their passion as well as having time to relax and see friends.)

You could argue that it takes more time to arrange all of these things separately. On the flip side, there is much more to choose from if you aren't restricted to what your particular school offers, or what the school makes available to the individual child.

For our family what has worked is home education for our daughters after primary age. The boys needed to be deferred if they were summer born then coped well, needed some extra support. The girls very much needed to be removed from the education system after year 6. They re entered at either 16 to college if felt able to or 18 to open university. All have ASD.