to consider taking my DD out of a perfectly good school to HE?

[FigsAndWine]

I am considering taking my 8 year old DD out of school and home educating. My reasons and reservations are detailed here

I've read a bit about HE and I'm feeling more and more that I want to do this. The two people whom I thought would be really negative about this (my best friend and my DM) have been very positive about it and think it would benefit DD. My DP thinks I'm a bit nuts (but then he does anyway... ) but will support my decision. My exDP (DD's dad) is also in a good postion to HE, as he is self employed and therefore flexible with his time, and is very involved with DD.

The school DD is at is a good one. It is over-subscribed, good with outstanding features according to ofsted. I just think that DD would thrive more out of a school environment. It will be a squeeze financially to afford extras (trips, classes, activities), but we could manage. I work part time and could fit HE around this.

The reason I'm posting in aibu is because I know all the reasons why I want to do this; I guess I want to hear some opposing opinions so I can feel whether they are enough to make me change my mind.

Fire away!

The only children I ever knew that were HE grew up to have serious social interaction problems. They did have friends and did interract with other children, just really oddly. They are family BTW not just people that I have seen around.

It has got to the point for one of them that although she is at Cambridge, she is having enormous problems - not because of the work but because of the way she speaks to people and just the way she is. She has been suspended more than once. Her sister is not so bad, but she is very introverted and at 30 has never had a boyfriend (maybe nothing to do with it, but as an outsider it does seem to, to me).

Purely for this reason, I wouldn't HE unless 1) there was no schools local enough to me; 2) there was a serious bullying issue that the school refused to sort. From reading your initial post, I think you would be mad to take her out. It sounds like it is all about keeping things in one place and having her not experience anything 'bad'. Get yourself more organised in the mornings and take her to museums etc at the weekend.

yabu, children need proper socialisation with their peers, she needs to form friendships and work within groups and teams within this. even if she is still friends with these kids out of school shel miss out on the bonding that happens there.

If the school was awful and you had nowhere else to send her then id say yes, but i think in the situation you are in now you would be disadvantaging her

Whackamole - I know some pretty odd people too - rude, introverted, nit that great at interacting with other people, making friends etc - they all went to school. Should I deduce from that that it must be to do with them going to school? There are also plenty of 'normal' people who have gone to school and plenty that have been HE too. In fact, given that the majority of people go to school, I reckon you are more likely to find an 'odd' schooled person than an 'odd' HE person.

Knittedbreast, you can still do those things in activities outside of school. Most of the friends I have now are through activities I do/have done or people I have worked with in various jobs over the years. I am only really in touch with one person from school.

Oh ffs, I haven't read all the posts but some of them are just ridiculous. Especially the "personality disorder and no social skills" one. Jesus, how narrow minded can you get?!

I was HE for the majority of my schooling years and I can safely say I do not have a personality disorder and have adequate social skills. I also have a degree, a son and I am happily married.

The concerns about your relationship with your daughter are probab

Not read all of other thread (just OP) or all of this thread so apologies if this has already been addressed but my reservation would be with your comment about why should she adapt to fit into the school routine if it makes her stressed (paraphrasing).

My response to that would be because that is what is required in life in general. I'm not sure it is the best preparation for adult life for you to shield her from having to adapt to an uncomfortable situation because she can't do that all her adult life.

At some point she needs to learn that when she gets a job she will HAVE to adapt and will sometimes feel stressed but that is part and parcel of life and earlier the lesson is learned the better IMO.

Obviously you know your daughter and the situation better than anyone on here, but those are my thoughts based on what I have read.

mummyandpig but not everyone is the same. I was HE for the most part and I DID have difficulties interacting with people. I also have no frineds left from my school years as I didn't have many as HE can be isolating. I feel as if something is mssing when I see friends I have not at work mentioning their school days and the friends and expereinces they had from it.

whoops!

*probably well founded. I had a really difficult relationship with my mum over the time we were HE. Lots of shouting because I didn't want to do certain things at certain times etc etc. We're fine now though and tbh you'd be having arguments with your daughter over school related issues/getting frustrated with her anyway.

Socially, your daughter has already had 4 years in mainstream, "normal" education. She will have learnt by now how to socialize, get along and build relationships with other people. That is a big plus. Does she have friends at school that she could carry on seeing if you were to take her out of school?

Not everybody who has been HE'd has social interaction problems, not everybody who has been to school has social skills.

And any statistics on the subject would be likely to be skewed by the fact that some children are being HE'd precisely because they cannot cope with certain social situations. Eg. children with Aspergers whose schools cannot cater for them. Those children wouldn't magically start fitting in if they were forced back to school- they have been taken out of school precisely because they weren't able to cope.

And some children are HE'd because their parents have awful social skills or because they belong to some reclusive religious sect- so naturally that will be reflected in the way the children are.

It doesn't mean that any child who is HE'd will turn out with the same problems.

Any more than my state school educated dd will fail her GCSEs just because some other state schools in the county have appalling exam results.

A1980 I agree, HE can be isolating, for everyone involved. However, it's the responsibility of the parent (and in some cases the child, depending on age) to make sure it's not. School is not the be all and end all of social interaction.

I'm sorry you feel you missed out. Did you ever attend school/6th form college of anything similar?

Brief as I can't be bothered to write an essay.
A great many of my close & respected friends/family HE their children, I know a handful of adults who were HEd themselves.
I used to think I might like to HE one day... but The more I am exposed to HE, the less enamoured I am with it.
I still think it's probably no worse or better on average than school-education, but the list of negatives I can think of are amazingly long.

It is not clear to me that OP would get any time away from her DD if she HE'd?

I think go ahead and try it for the rest of primary. If you cannot get back into the current "outstanding" school, she can move back into schooling at secondary. It is not that long.

However, if you are going to do it, plan it and IMO (just my opinion) don't do it all intuitively. You know you have a temper and you are not patient and not that good (you say) at explaining. So have a plan of action first. How are you going to manage your day so you don't explode. What are you going to do when she doesn't get measuring angles and you are determined that she is to master it? etc etc

What I would do if I were you after checking out whether you actually like the HE groups around you which offer various things is, plan to get up an hour or so before dd so you have time FOR YOURSELF. Not to plan, just for you, to wake up, to have your coffee and read a book or potter about, whatever you need to wake up in calm. Then I would think about how I am going to handle frustration if things are not going the way I want and my patience is running out. This can be stuffing a fist in your mouth or saying, oh just excuse me a moment and leaving the room to punch a pillow - whatever you need.

Alos plan her social life for the first 3 months -you can adjust, drop , add but have some structure to this so she is not lonely.

Plan in some breaks for yourself. You need time away from dd because you are both quite strong characters.

Good luck with it

i dont mean people you are still in touch with, i mean at the time.

why on earth would you want to take a child away from their peers at the most important time of their lives unless for serious reasons such as failing school?

i know you can meet friends at clubs and groups and see them outside school but mostly children socialise at school and learn to work together that way there,AWAY from thier mothers. i think you need to let go a bit, she deserves her imdependence and life away from you, not in a negative way.

"children need proper socialisation with their peers, she needs to form friendships and work within groups and teams within this"

She can join Brownies and Guides. Also do drama and link up with other home educated children in the groups that are run for this purpose in many areas. Fig - your daughter may be more enthusiastic and have more energy for other activities once she's not at school.

If I decide to HE my 8 year old ds, I'm going to find a really good independent after school club that he can do several days a week so I can spend some one to one time with his younger brother, and so he can meet up with other children to do activities.

School is not the only option when it comes to children socialising.

No one can make this decision for you, but if you do it you should be honest in acknowledging that you want to do it for your own reasons and not because your dd is unhappy at school just now. It's totally normal for kids to have a bit of trouble settling in at the start of the school year; it doesn't mean that they won't settle and be relaxed and happy. It's exhausting for them at the start but will soon be less so once they get used to the new routine.

I was home educated all the way to university and I would never home educate my own dc. Too lonely. I never had a real friend until I got to university. My ds1 thinks he would like to be home educated (complains about school as most children do) but I look at him with his playdates and birthday party invitations and lively social life and I am just so happy that he is able to have that kind of ordinary childhood.

My mother was also a very intense person - had the best of intentions in home educating - but it was very hard not to have other adult role models apart from my parents when growing up. When my mum was upset with me it was catastrophic, like the end of my world. We had no space away from each other. Very unhealthy for us both. As an adult I moved thousands of miles away - not ideal but it was the only way I could forge a healthy life of my own.

KB, at the time the people I would have considered my 'best' friends were people I knew from outside of school. People that I did other activities with and shared interests with. These are people I am still in touch with now. Some friendships in school are pretty much just a way of having someone to get through the day with. They don't really flourish outside that environment. I'm not saying that people don't socialise in school or form good,lasting friendships -some will - but it certainly isn't the only, or necessarily the best, place to do this.

DS1 is away from me at his activities. He has his independence and his life away from me there.

You should really talk to adults that were HED rather than the parents that are doing it now.

what the difference is I think with relationships at school is the seeing each other 5 days a week. If you meet up with someone once a week at a science club and then the club folds and you don't see that person again but start judo and see a nice dc there 2 x a week and build up a relatioship but the dc then drops judo and so you are with other dc all the time doing things but the relationship doesn't have the time to develop into a friendship that lasts. That might be a problem compared to the situation she has now at school?

The biggest problem might be the personality thing. Is there some way of doing a trial run?

"Why should she have to go somewhere every day that makes her stressed and upset?' "

Well because sometimes that is how the world works unfortunately. What you do about it is to try and find a way of making yourself less stressed and upset or find another place to go. You are taking away her choices in this matter.

I meant to add to this thread - I'm a qualified secondary school teacher, though I only worked in this sector for a few terms before moving in FE.

What got me thinking about HE was seeing how little work and real learning goes on in many schools. Over the years I've come across so many 16 year olds (who usually have no diagnosed learning difficulties) who've had 12 years of schooling but are still unable to use basic punctuation or construct a decent sentence. And the number of secondary school pupils in the UK who after 4 years of French or Spanish tuition at school still can't hold a simple conversation in that language. It's really shocking.

Sitting in a room with 29 other children and a teacher with a packed agenda for the day just isn't conducive to good concentration or creative thinking for many children. Which is why people with the money to choose often opt for private education where the adult/child ratio is much, much better. And teachers in state schools have piles and piles of marking, so the quality of the assessment - which is where so much of the learning takes place - isn't great. In my dc's school the TA's seem to do a lot of the marking for the teachers, which I think is really poor.

When I started teaching A level English I used to work myself up into a rage (in my own time mind!) about how incredibly narrow your average English teenager's frame of reference is.

Even middle class kids in this country are often fairly culturally impoverished.

That's what makes me want to HE my ds. To have the chance to explore the things which interest them in real depth, instead of being shackled by the national curriculum.

As for doing things like museum visits and extended projects after school - nice idea, but my children are knackered and stressed when they get back. Just getting homework and piano practice done, getting them fed and walking the dog is enough to occupy us all.

I'm curious to know what your DD thinks of the idea?

"Why should she have to go somewhere every day that makes her stressed and upset?' "

Well because sometimes that is how the world works unfortunately"

Because of course there's lots of evidence that children who have to deal with stress, bullying and unpleasant social situations turn into much better adjusted, confident and competent adults than people who've had happy childhoods who haven't been exposed to a lot of unpleasantness isn't there?

"..how incredibly narrow your average English teenager's frame of reference is.

Even middle class kids in this country are often fairly culturally impoverished. "

I don't doubt you I am afraid, but could you say a bit more about it? I'm not sure I am clear about the deficits you saw.

those MNers who were HEd as dc and do not think it was good, or don't want to HE their own dc, I'd be really interested to hear whether you were aware during your time HEd that it wasn't something you were really happy with or was it a realisation that came to you more as adults when you felt aware of what you had perhaps missed out on

Is that clear? Probably not!