Do you wish you had been home schooled for the first few years of high school?

[Higgeldypickeldy]

I'm just reflecting on what an absolutely shit time I had during my first two years at high school. Third and four year were slightly better and fifth and sixth year (I'm in scotland) were brilliant fun. I wonder how my experience would have been different if I had been home schooled. The trauma from those first two years (when now looking back I was still so very young)has stayed with me all my life. I'm probably in the minority but if my child seemed to be having a similar shit time I think I would pull them out if they agreed.

Why wouldn't you want to delay the trauma if you could? Isn't a happy childhood worth having, even if you're bound to suffer later?

Do you think so? In terms of social skills, I found that school was a really poor preparation for adult life. After I left school, no one was ever half as unpleasant to me. What I learned at school was to keep my head down, conform, and turn a blind eye to other people being picked on because if you say anything it will be you next. And unlike in adult life, there is no escape. You can't quit and go to a different school.

I wouldn't have been taught that not everyone is nice. I learned how people interact with each . I came across people from different religions, countries, different family backgrounds. As a teenager I learned about sex and drugs and other teenage behaviour, just by absorbing that knowledge by being around other teenagers.

My parents, particularly dm , would not have taught me any of that. I don't think she'd have taught me anything bad.

I know some people are bullied or have a traumatic school , but i still stand my opinion that even these people will have learned things that haven't come out of a textbook.

When I was at school, in the late 90s, the only people I knew who were home educated had either been expelled or pregnant. Now , in some areas, there are home Ed communities, and they social with each other.

Not me because I loved school. My now adult DD hated it though so I did pull her out and homeschooled up until year 9. That was the right choice for her and still talks about how happy she was in those years. Reluctant to go back for GCSEs but it was fine and ultimately came into her own during ALevels at college.

No, my parents were worse than school. School was fucking awful but it was better than home!

I know not all HE kids are lonely.

But I have met loads who are over the years of home educating myself. You see so many posts in home Ed groups of parents saying their child is lonely, looking for meet-ups or pen pals.

I’ve spent a lot of time at so many home education groups and activities over the years, been part of countless online groups - I’ve seen it first hand.

It’s something that not a lot of home educating parents want to address though. And a lot of them I have met have been so anti school that they alienate themselves from other families at after school groups - I’ve seen that first hand too.

It’s that argument of school is forced, you are in a room with 30 other kids that happen to have been born in the same year. My middle child is at school. it’s 4 form. She had a pool of 120 people in her year, she has the potential to get on with at least some of them, and children in other years.

The home education groups I currently attend are just as artificial. you are with other home educated children that attend those groups that their parents have chosen to take them to, with a finite number of other home educated children. And for all the talk of friends of different ages - with the best will in the world and a shared interest in a game or an activity, a 14 year old isn’t going to want to hang out with a 9 year old.

I always get accused of being anti home Ed when I say that - ridiculous as I did if it for years with my eldest and now again with my youngest!

I’m just realistic and honest about the people I have known and things I have experienced.

And don’t forget, I am taking as someone who ate my lunch in a fucking toilet cubicle everyday for 5 years, so I know how shit school can be for some children too.

No. Not for a second. I was happy at school. Both my ds's have been happy at school.

Absolutely not. School was the place I could escape from my home life. And high school was where I met my closest friend (still is decades later) and I'd stay at her house at least 1 night each weekend too.

HE wouldn't have offered me that freedom.

Such a brilliant post @Chunkycookie . I don't have experience of home schooling or a view about it, but I think you are very brave to be searingly honest about your experiences. I take my hat off to you!

No. I was fine at school.

If DS had had issues at school I would have moved him to another school. Home schooling would not have been an option. I work full time and I'm not educated enough to do it myself, and I couldn't have afforded private tutors.

No, the support and friendships I had in school were really important to me at that age. I actually did home school the last year and I wish I'd stayed in school. I just sort of needed the school and my mum to have provided a bit more support, which no one seemed able to do because I was 'so smart' and I had no 'behavioural issues' so I didn't fall into any category that needed extra support other than I didn't want to go to school. Looking back now, I wish I'd just been in school.

School wasn't socially the easiest; I found my tribe at uni, but it did get better as I went up the school and classes mixed more between sets and block A/B. I did always have friends but they weren't aways the best fit.
I loved learning so it was interesting and stimulating. Mine was good at extra-curriculars and I made use of them whether friends joined in or not.

Home life was quiet and dull. On the cusp of going to secondary my brother went to uni and my dad died so the family shrank massively. I did one activity out of school so vast chunks of evenings, weekends and holidays were me entertaining myself. I lived out of catchment and mum was slow to allow independence anyway.

It was pre-internet (just!) so the reality of the time and circumstances meant that Home Education would have been very bookish and isolated. I gained a lot through school and learned a lot about myself through the opportunities it gave me. Even where the direct message was wrong- e.g. PE teachers about my sporting ability, it was other aspects of school like DoE that gave me the tools to reach an alternative outcome my way.

The internet and social media have done a lot to connect people in the HE community and widen experience. It still tends to split roughly into unmet SENs, or alternative mindsets as the two main motivators though.

DS is autistic and has no social motivation, but being in an academic and pastorally minded mainstream school is the best avaliable path for him. It would be difficult to holistically develop his skills in HE and would be easy for him to become too socially isolated and not pick up the range of experiences that he'll need to function well in adulthood. He has great potential for technical niches, but he does need to pick up certain skills that he's not enthused about to be able to be employed and find a happy slot in adult life. It's not a perfect set up , but it's the best way to give him the foundations that he needs.

I was home schooled for my first year of secondary school. I think it at least exacerbated if not caused some of the issues I have had with life in general.

I wish I had been for all of high school but my mum wouldn't have been a very good teacher. High school was hell on earth, i experenced extreme bullying. It has affected me ever since and is partly the reason I have a rubbish job and no career 25 to 30 years later.

I had a bad time at one high school I went to due to bullying but I got through it and I now know I learnt strategies to deal with it. Home schooling would have done me no favours at all.

Wow no, the complete opposite, I would have a shared being homeschooled.

I liked being pushed academically, and being in the classroom environment with lots to stimulate me. Reading a textbook (this was pre-internet) wouldn’t have been the same at all.

Sixth form college was even better (more independence) and uni was better still, because at each stage I was learning more interesting things, at greater depth.

I had an almost identical experience to you, also Central Scotland in the 80s. I did have some good friends who were also academic, thank goodness. “snob” was the standard insult for anybody who actually wanted to listen to the teacher.

I agree home schooling would not have been the answer. OP, what makes you think your parents would have been able to do that?
Did you not make good friends in first and second year?

Would have lost the opportunity to meet and make friends but if was on autistic spectrum I'd have preferred home school in a small group.

@Chunkycookie please don’t call yourself thick. You write really well, painting a picture, communicating emotion. You clearly are very intelligent, assessing the benefits and disadvantages of school and home ed, and meeting your children’s individual needs in the best available ways. Those bullies, teachers and pupils, you had to put up with as a kid didn’t know you.

I just find it frustrating sometimes that home educators will not address the fact that sometimes, home education and especially the social side can be difficult.

I get it, I really do. The amount of negative comments I have had over the years is astounding. You do anything outside the “norm” and you open yourself up to criticism. When you home educate, people who don’t tend to take it as some sort of personal criticism. They go to great lengths to point out how wonderful their child’s school is, when you haven’t asked and don’t care.

I have found a lot of home educators to be extremely defensive and I get it, honestly I do. But this morning, three home ed facebook groups I am part of all have posts from parents saying their children would love some friends, that they are lonely. And they aren’t meeting those friends organically, the other parents are responding about their own lonely children. And they won’t respond to a post by a parent who they have disagreed with in the past, or who have posted something they didn’t like. So it’s just as forced and artificial as they accuse school of being.

I am headed out to a group today with my 3 and a half year old. Not many people at that one speak to me as I told them my 10 year old has always gone to school. I think some see me as some sort of home ed traitor as I don’t believe it’s for every child, just as I don’t believe school is for every child. You have to treat siblings individually according to their personalities, not your personal ideals. My 10 year old thrives at school and would have been miserable home educated. My other two are completely different personalities so I chose to educate differently.

The group we are going to today is for all ages. No matter how much the parents sit and pat themselves on the back about how their children have friends of all ages, those children do not communicate with each other. You cannot make a 5 year old and an 11 year old be friends. I home educated my son until he was 11, I have seen the same thing play out in countless groups over the years.

I will say though that my eldest, who is now 21 is not happy that I am home educating his little sister. while he WAS happy being home educated he saw the difficulties other children had socially and he’s worried about his sister not having friends (I made sure with him that he did a lot of out of school activities, most of his friends were actually kids that went to school, but that took a lot of money on activities and time and dedication from me to make connections with the other parents - see, again, artificial socialisation, just like it all is, home educated or in a classroom with other children born in the same academic year).

Would my 3 and a half year old have more little friends if she went to nursery? Of course she would. Now all the other children her age have gone off to nursery, our pool of potential friends is much smaller. I can take her to soft play all I like and say, “look, she’s socialising with kids of all ages!” But she’s not going to form relationships with any of them or see them again. We’re sort of limited now to people I am meeting at home we groups. I am a very friendly and sociable person, but I find it hard to gel with people at those groups sometimes.

Now, I am not making sweeping generalisations, but lots of the parents I have met at those groups had an awful time at school themselves. so they are coming at life with certain feelings of their own at play. so while I am the one quick to say, “hey, would you like to bring your child over to play, or meet up for a coffee or the park sometime?” I have often found that other parents don’t want to do that. Which is fine. But then we are back to the argument of home Ed socialising being largely down to the parents making connections.

My son saw how I was treated by many of the other home educating families as I wasn’t a militant school hater and not against doing formal work. I didn’t realise how much of if he picked up on as a young child, but he did.

I really wish more people would be honest about the drawbacks and problems instead of being so aggressive in the “it’s all so wonderful” narrative. Everything in life has its bad points and honesty and transparency makes life a hell of a lot easier all round.

Not in terms of the academics, but socially it was really horrible during the first 2-3 years. No established friendship group, people that dropped me like I was nothing after being (I thought) good friends with me for quite a while. There was also some low level bullying, some of it racist. Dealing with periods for the first time too. Can think of quite a lot of ways it would have been better to be at home.

I’ve always felt like this.

My innocence was stripped from me. I went from a sweet girl who had so many hobbies and was very academic to smoking, drinking and having sex all before the age of 14. I now have trauma relating to some of these things and it breaks me that I wasn’t able to choose who I wanted to be, I just conformed to these extreme things so I would stop getting bullied. I went to a pretty good school according to ofsted at the time and yes, they were great at arranging councilling for me along with anger management and Camhs intervention, but the damage was done. I’m now learning to enjoy the things I loved in childhood again, that’s who I really am and although it might be later in life I deserve to explore those things!

I really want to home educate my child so she can decide who she wants to be without external input. Kids are so impressionable at that age and their hobbies and likes get shunned if they’re not seen as cool. We also want to be able to travel with her as much as possible and I hate that schools put a barrier against this too.

I will possibly look into small primary schools, but if not I will ensure she is mixing with other kids as much as possible and will attend as many groups and activities as needed, but the idea of her going to secondary school terrifies me, unless she asks to go, in which case that will be her choice!

Nope, toxicity at home … would have been hellish - sorry you struggled OP.

No I don’t. I had a great time at Secondary school and wouldn’t have wanted to miss any of it. In the first and second year (as it was known then) I was very square and had a similarly square group of friends. We all worked very hard but had fun together too. By the third year, I was working less hard and school became more about the socialising possibilities! I never bunked off though or got a detention and passed all my GCSEs.

God no. I would have died of boredom and learnt nothing.

I can see how home schooling works really well for some people - it probably would have suited my DH who is an autodidact and a misanthrope & never saw the point of lessons or lectures. But I needed structure and sociability.

Being around other people my age, and out of my mad dysfunctional home for 6 hours a day, was what kept me going.