To home ed my dd

[Mishmashfamily]

After reading posts and posts about unhappy kids/parents at school I'm really considering it. Also I hate the fact that strangers that are apparently 'in charge' of our educational welfare can dictate when we take our children away, what they are taught ect....

I came out of the school system with nothing and had to learn every thing through college , taking courses. I think I could do a better job.

Would you do it?

My ds is learning Spanish and Arabic, as for independence he regularly goes away with his grandparents to three or four times a year, where he skis, toboggans and cycles.

If it makes me controlling to remove my child from "education" that was making him punch himself in the chest and stomach and hit himself on the head and tell me how what a "bad boy" he is, I hold my hands up.

brokenhearted

I'm sorry that your experience of H.ed wasn't very good, but your experience is your own, everybody will have a different time.
It sounds like your mum was very controlling, I'm controlling when it comes to letting my dc hang around on street corners, just as mine were. I went to school though.
It doesn't work for all families, for some its amazing.

Oh and I didn't get any quals at school but I am half way through a degree with the OU now with distinctions on my last module.

There's not just one route.

I have excellent relationships with my parents and siblings, but I would have hated to have never got away from them, to have them knowing everything about my day, to have to rely on them as to which friends I saw etc. I loved having a separate life, them only knowing what I chose to tell them and seeing the same friends everyday, regardless of whether my mother liked them or not.
We all did our own thing and then we were fresh to see each other.
I also need to be taught, I don't just pick things up. Teaching is a real skill and my parents were not even good at teaching the things they were expert in. A good teacher can make subjects come alive. I also need the stimulus of others learning the same thing.
Even today if I want a new skill I go to a class with a teacher.

I think negative social experiences are a major backdrop of adult life (or at least mine).

I do think I would have coped better with life in general if I had grown up learning how to cope with it, if I had learned how to keep my head down early, read social cues etc.

As it is, I went from a world where I rarely interacted with anyone outside the family, to a world where I have to interact with people all the time. I found (and still find) the change distressing, and something I was completely unprepared for.

Not having followed the curriculum (my parents made up their own) has also put me on what feels like a permanent back-foot in terms of relating to many other people, and the knowledge they share and take for granted.

Its also not just my experience, there is an obvious massive social difference between those of us who were exclusively HE, and the younger ones who were sent to school.

However, I do recognise that this is my experience and mine alone. I don't think school is always right, or HE is always wrong, just wrong for me.

I have looked at OU several times but it wouldn't work for me. I wish it would.

I'm sorry for your experience, brokenhearted. But that doesn't sound typical of the home educated families I've encountered. Nor are they 'stuck at home'

And you can definitely teach your children science and languages.

Just a thought. (I also am pro HE if the circumstances are right)
Be clear that over reliance of a child on one teacher/mentor/parent can have some downsides (I know this can be mitigated by accessing HE groups):

1. if child ever reintegrates at secondary, the experience of multiple teachers trickier
2. child has everything invested in one person; so crap day at school=crap day at home

On the plus side, lots of flexibility and a great chance to explore the curriculum in a personalised fashion.

Have you considered flex-schooling?

Sparkly I would do the same thing and you did a great thing for your DS getting him out of there.

OP isn't thinking like that though, and that worries me.

My children (including my older teenager) say they loved being home educated so much that they would also home educate their own children in the future.

brokenhearted you can do access to medicine courses, you can do GCSE'S at night school, your results at 16 ruled nothing out. I understand that you'd be angry at having HE forced upon you and it's fine to be angry about that but the outcomes you describe are not true for everyone.

My DC took her IGCSE Biology early and passed with grade A. I alone taught her, though I only studied Biology up to 'A' Level.

This is not unusual in the home ed. community. If you ask on the home ed. board you will find many similar examples.

I think there's a lot more going on with your Mum than HE

brokenhearted55a Have you thought about trying for a degree of some sort (multiple routes in), and then for graduate-entry medicine?

I realise that may not be plausible for various reasons, but thought it might be worth throwing out there.

I teach other subjects, not studied at A or degree level, too. Plus, autonomously/unschooled home educated children manage to gain places at university (and at medical school)

Agree with Sparkly about your mum.

I share the H.ed of dd with the rest of the family, even the extended family are onboard.
You don't have to sit at a desk, with workbooks. You don't even have to write things down to learn.
IMO the best words a teacher can say is I don't know, we'll find out together. There is nothing wrong with that.
I can just manage basic maths, dd struggles too, so dh helps us both because he's better at it than us. He is also a pedant and dead good at grammar and that.

Brokenhearted when I was doing an access to maths and science course, they were very firmly pushing us towards doing degrees in "Biomedical Sciences", at the time there were not enough students to fill places, certainly at some of the London universities. Might that be a route you would/could consider?

Well I did say would/could? Not "do it now!"