to want to home ed my eldest dd?

[argeybargey]

I always wanted to home ed our eldest dd but went with the local primary for several reasons that I won't go into here. It is a good school,progressive, and is excellent in many ways that I consider to be important- like pastoral care,approach to environment as well as academic.But I am questioning if it right for my dd;if school is right,for that matter.

To be honest since she started there there just seems to be so much crap that seems to come as part of the package ,and I often think that it would be so much easier if we were home edding and not having to deal with all of the other,negative crap that goes along with the playground,specifically.

My dd loves learning and enjoys school life but lately isn't as happy, and finds the social side bewildering at times - specifically having to deal with other children excluding her or just being generally rough or mean to each other. I know it's par for the course but she's not an instigator and I just feel like why should she have to deal with all of this crap as she is a sweet kid and I hate seeing her sad.

Am I being unreasonable to not want to have to deal with,or for my dd to have to deal with,all of the playground crap?

What does the child want to do?

I think HE can be a great idea, but the thought that you want to HE to protect your dd from the general roughness of other children (rather than a specific bullying problem) would seem to ring alarm bells. The situations where I have known HE to work are situations where the child has had a good social life with lots of contact with other children.

I think that you have to be very open minded and it depends entirely on the DC. I agree entirely with cory-the DC still needs to socialise and HEed DCs will be the same mix as schooled DCs i.e. all sorts.

It is true about the universities, though certainly not all of them. My friend (schooled) applied to medicine and 3 out of the 4 she applied to told her that 2 of her GCSE A* didn't count to them becuase she had taken them earlier than the others. In their opinion that meant she hadn't worked as hard as someone who had the same amount of qualifications but had got them all in one sitting. I've only ever come across this from medicine and law courses though which are ridiculously competitive. They might treat a HE child differently in this regard I suppose due to the totally different style of education, I have limited experience of HE children and parents and neither are anywhere near university stage.

Ironically the 2 children who I know are completely different to each other, one absolutely thrives in HE and loves it and seems like a bright and well socialised child. The other (aged 11) has been begging to go back into school since she was 9. Her mum keeps huffing about her daughter not appreciating what she is doing for her. This girl seems very behind socially for her age with her peers and even though she does seem intelligent she doesn't really have any friends her own age. I think it really can depend on the child and especially if they already have experience of school I think it is very unfair not to let them have a say. I can see this girl really resenting her mother in a few years sadly. I hope I'm wrong.

It all goes to prove musicmadness-you ask the DC and not mumsnet!

My DD went to an oversubscribed village school with a good OFSTED and a nice upeer middle class intake.She enjoyed the 'school' part of school very much but the 6 girls in her year group were nasty little madams (or under the control of the nasty little madams).the social exclusion thing is the worst kind of bullying,almost impossible to deal with.Poor DD had got to the stage where she wouldn't speak to anyone outside the family or one or two of teh teachers.Eventually she started havng health problems and on teh GPs advice we moved her.The change in her was phenomenal.She is now a happy,very popular and confident girl.
It could very well be just the cohort your DD is with rather than her social skills which are the problem.

I agree-oversubscribed, good Ofsted and nice middleclass intake mean nothing! Visit the school and see it,, warts and all on a normal working day.

Absolutely PM

My sons school had the best ofsted report in the county. Means nothing.

lequeen
I was a parent helper at my sons school for some time - well, from nursery - and I saw what you saw from parents whose children were in school...children who did not have the proper uniform, never did their homework, werent read to at home, some of them didnt even have a winter coat!!

Bad parents are bad parents, whether they HE or not.

It has always surprised me how many HEers are actually teachers by profession!

I am sorry you have such a negative impression of all those who HE.

But you must see that your post was incredibly one sided?

Ok, I accept your experience has not been a good one and I have certainly met some - erm - odd HEers BUT to tar us all with the same brush is very unfair.

School is great for some kids, but not for others. Simple as that.

I am not sure if you said in your post, but were any of the kids you tutored (sorry if I got the wrong end of the stick there BTW - I thought you meant home tutoring) were SEN?

I ask because quite a percentage of the HE kids we have met at groups, meet ups etc (I would say 80%) seem to have aspergers, ADHD, autism or behavioural issues and are being HE because there is little or no provision by the LA.

Sometimes, as parents, we HE because we simply do not know what else to do!

LeQueen, maybe your view of HE is one sided because, by default, the ones who hire a tutor are more likely to be those who are struggling with the whole HE thing?

I tutor maths privately. I've tutored a large number of schooled children privately for maths. Every single one of those children was struggling with maths in some way - that's why they came. If you were looking at just those children, you would say school was utterly useless at teaching maths, and children from school came out badly educated. But it would be ridiculous to make the leap to assume that those children are indicative of every child in school, because there will be many schooled children doing amazingly well - and the same will apply for HE.

I can see why you would have a jaundiced view of HE if that has been your experience, absolutely. I've just seen a very different side of it, that's all.

If the GCSE thing was right, how come many high performing schools are putting their top sets in for early GCSEs in maths or science? Dd is doing part of her science in Yr 9 and has been told she will probably be doing her maths in Yr 10- she is not abnormally clever at either, but this is what they do in top set. The idea is to fit in some kind of AS level after that.

I think that LeQueen is getting a hard time but if she has only seen the nutty element-e.g.those who think their DCs are wonderful without appreciating that exam boards are not interested in anything other than their questions-she is going to have a jaundiced view.
Parents who are more clued up and sensible are not going to approach her-they would have worked out a path to exams earlier.

I have tutored DCs in maths and they have huge problems because they do not have a logical mind, or have missed chunks, or failed to make the connection or 101 reasons. I know that DCs in the same classes are fantastic at maths because I teach them. It is just as well or I could conclude that schools can't teach maths! What I did discover from my tutoring was that the outcome was directly related to the efforts of the DC. The brightest, who knew all his tables, did worst because he didn't try and didn't want to be there. I had some really weak ones, but they wanted to succeed and they did-and they deserved to.

I'm not too keen on Kumon maths.

I absolutely agree with other posters that socialisation can work just as well with HE. The only thing that worried me slightly about this thread was the OP- where the OP specifically said that she wanted to HE not to aid socialisation or achieve a better educational experience or get away from a specific bullying problem (all of which I think are excellent reasons), but to avoid having to deal with the general "playground crap"- in other words, with other children. If you don't want your children to learn to negotiate around other children, then that is a problem that is quite apart from whether you HE or send your child to school.

Kumon is a Japanese system with worksheets (I may be wrong) I think that the repetition helps but I find that DCs who go are inflexible and will say 'That's not the way that I do it at Kumon' whereas to me, maths is all about being open to new concepts and seeing connections.
I agree with cory-over protecting a DC is a mistake IMO. No one should stand for bullying but you have to learn to get on with others and there has to be give and take.Human nature isn't always nice and there will be exactly the same mix in HE as school-the only difference is that in HE you can avoid rather than deal with it-but isn't it better to deal with it? (I am not talking about bullying).

I HE two of my dcs; one is in school. I've also worked in primary schools so I reckon I've some experience of the issue from all sides iykwim...

the trouble with HEing a child who has had problems with dealing with other kids in school is that you then have to take the dcs to HE meet ups.

A lot of HE parents will tell you that HE kids are kinder gentler more inclusive and more open to dealing with other kids etc etc than schooled children. This is largely bollocks imo. I have found that children act like children wherever they are- you will get the lovely friendly ones and the nasty ones your dd will want to avoid. And whereas at school the staff can sort out playground problems (if they can be arsed ) at HE meet ups you are left with parents...and we all know how impartial and objective they can be when their dc is involved in a dispute with another

YANBU for considering HE- but if you and your dd are happy with all other aspects of the school I personally wouldn't make the move to HE purely for social reasons.

SpringHJ: how does your school'd child feel about the HE'd siblings? Is there no jealousy? I reckon that if I HE'd my 2 DSs but DD stayed in school (she loves it) I'd have to stay at home all day with the DSs, just to make it fair to DD, so that DD didn't miss out on something fun they got to do instead (like a trip out). I guess I'm wondering how you convince your school-ed DC that things are "fair". (Also, my limited experience of HE was that it took all my time all day to get the HE done, so we'd have to say at home all day anyway... yeah, I know it doesn't work like that in other HE families, but they don't have MY DSs to contend with!)

And... I hate staying home all day. That right there was a complete Red Flag why I could never do HE fulltime.