to ask for your Home Ed ideas, experiences and anecdotes?

[Fideliney]

Can we please try to keep it friendly?

I was homeschooled at primary level then chose to go to school later. Going to school was a stupid decision but by the time I realised how much I hated it, our family circumstances had changed and I couldn't go back.

My mum was single and a former primary school teacher so she gave me a semblance of formal education. I remember taking dictation from Wind in the Willows to become familiar with spelling and punctuation :)

I unschooled my teen in her secondary years. She was suffering in school - very popular and sociable but had an "I'm stupid" mentality that ruined her academic experience. She's now bilingual and has chosen to enrol in higher education here in Europe.

Planning to unschool the youngest too. I'm not trained as a teacher but I'm not trained as a parent either... I just watch my children closely to see where there interests lie and support those interests in every way I can.

I don't see HE as teaching, per se. More like stewardship. If there's someone in our community who is a train fanatic (and likes children) then if my child is fascinated with trains it is my job to put the two of them in the same room. At the moment my toddler is really interested in quantities and categorisation, so we weigh kitchen ingredients, count money, do simple addition with grapes at lunch time... It's not a sit-down maths lesson, just life. Perhaps sit-down lessons will be appropriate later and I'm open to all learning methods - I'm just not supportive of the way schools are currently structured, and I feel terrible for the children, staff, and teachers who are bogged down by them.

Wow, long post! Point is: there's at least one adult on MN who is the product of HE and got a lot out of it. Home ed often feels like a scrappy, haphazard education. And it is! That's the beauty of it, there's so much space to learn skills like self-directed learning, time management etc. And that sense of curiosity that completely lacks any feeling of "oh I must do this a certain way, in a certain timeframe, for a particular outcome" stays for life. Brilliant.

I think it's a brilliant thread.

As I posted previously my 4 are now older, youngest dd 15 and never considered home ed.

Working in a reception class now and seeing tired 4 year olds constantly pushed from numeracy to literacy to topic work/achieving targets is actually sometimes heartbreaking.

The more publicity about this as a choice to parents the better.

IceBeing

It's not all that easy to give advice to somebody you don't know. So basically .... this is what I think I would say to myself if going back in time were an option.

Education is better off being chosen for what it is, rather than for what another form of education isn't. It's a bit like emigrating. You stand a better chance of making a real go of it when you are running to a place for its own sake, rather than running from somewhere else. Don't let the list of negatives of "choice Purple" be such a focus that you end up in "choice Orange" with unrealistic expectations, in part because of "next door's greener grass" issues.

Make the child you actually have the priority.
Other people's children are other people's children and their needs, quirks and "happiness buttons" may bear little resemblance to your own kid. Examples are interesting. But not necessarily indicative of your own child's "round peg" qualities. Really look at the kid you have. And remember they can change a lot as they grow.

Be prepared to have to face making a new change in the future if your child's needs change, or you discover an earlier choice isn't such a good fit after all. It really helps if you haven't slagged off the "new" choice to everybody you know, with kiddo earwigging, as part of defending original choice. Because it's embarrassing. And you can feel like a twerp.

Be ruthless and use more head than heart. Again, it's a bit like emigrating. Don't just look at all the lovely, exciting, fabby things the preferred destination offers. Go check out the slums. Take note of the degree of bureaucracy. Find out if there are any dodgy political parties which enjoy a bit more support than you are comfortable with. Don't listen solely to what the welcome committee has to say. Find the dissenters, the underclass. Talk to them too. If you can't find them, consider that nothing is perfect, nothing makes all of the people happy, all of the time, so ask yourself how and why the disgruntled are so difficult to find.

What you discover may take of the shine to the extent you need a rethink. Or it may just be the reason why you are able to chose exactly the right "good area" for you to make a happy "first educational home" right from the start. Rather than having to lurch from city, to town, to village and back again ...wondering when you'll find a good fit that survives the honeymoon period.

Be brutally honest about your resources. Resources include things like time, energy, patience, resilience and cold hard cash. No one single choice is free. It will always cost something. Make sure you have enough of the somethings your choice tends to guzzle, so fuel doesn't run low and you find yourself grinding to a halt. With no jerry can. And a very long walk ahead of you. Just as it starts raining.

Trial runs are your friend. You'd take a car for a test drive. Test drive an education. The less of a big deal you make to everyone (inc. kid) about this being your forever car, cos it's the best car there is and all other cars are shit, the better your chances of not feeling like a prat if you end up handing it back in to the dealer, cos it makes a funny noise every time you turn left and the boot has some kind of weird anti-Tardis quality going on.

Surround yourself with people you genuinely like for who they are. Avoid "ghettoising" yourself and your child by accidentally letting your circle become dominated by "A Thing" you have in common. Cos sometimes that can mean a smaller "pool" to pick from, which can lead to compromises too far. Be especially careful in that regard when it comes to the child. Sometimes a parent feeling in good company can lead them to overlooking the "mates" compromises too far that the smaller party is having to make.

Bear in mind that an educational choice can sneak up on you in terms of trying to burrow into your sense of identity. Be you, and treat your choice as a tool. Don't let your choice turn you into a tool of validation of said choice. It sort of helps you be the boss of the choice, rather than the other way around.

Other people, even if they don't agree with the way you are leaning, perhaps especially if they don't agree with the way you are leaning, are still worth listening to. You may know your own kid best. But you might not know absolutely everything about every form of education best. And ..parents can get tunnel vision too, however much they love their children. Listening to disagreement non defensively doesn't have to mean choosing different. But it may throw up ideas and issues you might not have given so much weight to otherwise. That may mean you make the same choice, but better equipped to be good at it.

Regard people who use "just" with grave suspicion. "Just" can be a seductive minimiser of very valid concerns in terms of roadblocks. Unless your life, kid and circumstances are carbon copies of the "just" people, "just" for you may entail many miles to be travelled, a small bleeding fortune having to be spent, giving up a "non negotiable" because logistically you couldn't make it work where you live and maybe even a kid who is nowhere near as happy as they could be. If you think you've spotted a potential roadblock, taking a glass half empty stance when considering the extent to which you can get round it .....may be a better bet in terms of finding truly workable solutions, rather than band-aids.

Bear in mind that none of the above is HE specific. It can apply to all and every form of eduction. It's more "picking education" advice than specific "picking HE" advice. I've done a lot of education picking. Not of all of it good picking.

Thanks, Dutch1e, that's about what my HE young adults think and I'm pleased to hear about your experience.

For me, the best thing about never having schooled is that they automatically assume that they can go and find out about things at the level they want. DD is looking for TEFL jobs at the moment and she simply expects to learn some of the language wherever she goes. She is C1 (not so much for writing) in a second language and that would not have been possible in our local schools.

DD (no dx but almost certainly Aspie) found that she knew more and had more experience in teamwork than her peers at university. HE gave us the freedom to let academics be incidental and to work on where she really had few skills - social and relational.

At the moment my toddler is really interested in quantities and categorisation, so we weigh kitchen ingredients, count money, do simple addition with grapes at lunch time... It's not a sit-down maths lesson, just life.

We also concentrated on life. Lots of cookery, craft, music, using what was happening around us (e.g. eclipse and transit of Venus stand out), walking and mapreading. We did no formal maths until they did the OU's intro to maths course at about 14. As TillyTellTale has said, if someone doesn't have (or develop) an instinctive feel for what numbers and mathematical concepts mean, they won't be able to do anything but apply (seemingly random) rules. Maths is a strong point of mine and my DC were surrounded by logic problems and other such games. Unfortunately, maths is often taught as a linear thing when it really isn't.

Home ed often feels like a scrappy, haphazard education. And it is! That's the beauty of it

Yes! But scrappy and haphazard comes together in people's heads in different ways and that's (more than) OK.

Mammuzza: Trial runs are your friend. ... Test drive an education. The less of a big deal you make to everyone (inc. kid) about this being your forever car, cos it's the best car there is and all other cars are shit, the better your chances of not feeling like a prat

Brilliant! Although I knew I wanted to do HE before my DC were born, I never said it was forever. If someone asked about how my 3yo would get exams, I said we'd look at that nearer the time - what we were doing was working for now and that was good enough. However, I was also involved in groups and was probably rather more definite about the choices in HE settings (certainly online) than on real life.

Sigyn

Oh your poor boy, and poor you !

I get when I hear about other people's constantly wonderful times in HE groups.

Our experience was nothing like their lovely, shiny, happy people fun.

I discovered that sharing an umbrella term for education didn't mean I'd always be on the same wave length with other parents in other quite important ways. I was very out of step in "choices as a parent" style with most of my group. So HE groups/meet ups got knocked on the head. Not least cos DS point blank refused to go anymore.

I never found orgaised things like scouts/sports teams all that effective as opportunities for social bonds to develop. They were so busy doing something together, that free play together was a bit thin on the ground. And I think for some kids they need wads of the "free play" bit to actually connect.

I think if we weren't so lucky with a really fabby youth club that works like a sort of "afterschool" place and "holidays camp", I'd have been up shit creek on the social side of things.

IceBeing: My DH is considering home ED for our DD (currently 3yo). His reasoning is that the school environment is totally artificial and not particularly well aligned to deep learning. Well and the business with religion. That is a major problem as we are atheist.

That was an issue for me too, as a Christian! I agree with your DH about the school system and environment. In HE, your DD can spend days (weeks!) on one topic and then move onto another when she has got enough for the moment. It's not an issue if a 5yo can explain planetary motion but cannot read or write a story. Intellectual development is not linear (especially not for small children, as I'm sure you've noticed) and we do children no favours by putting them in institutions that pretend it is. Age groupings are for the benefit of administrators, not children.

We are both qualified to the PhD level in science and I have some random thing I got from the HEA which has to do with teaching.

That's OK - your DD is not interviewing. Teaching experience is not relevant, IMHO, until the DC are preparing for exams. I am about to put together what I need for an HEA but my experience (in teaching adults, both commercially and in uni) was not relevant to HE until the DC started doing formal courses. Then I did not teach the subjects but rather the soft skills of reading the question and laying out the answer.

Amazing posts, Mammuzza and Incognito.

We're starting our HE journey this autumn when SmallBoy (SB) should be starting Reception but isn't. To be fair I've been saying I'm home educating since they day I discovered I was pregnant but I guess that's for another discussion/debate. I've become more bold in telling people our choice/decision and am often met with admiration and questions. Only one or two people have been negative (and they have been friends) and a couple of mums of SB's peers, who are starting school in September, think I'm nuts and flat out said so (though not in a negative way). I have found a lot of slightly older and definitely older people have been the most positive/enthusiastic about it. I'm lucky that I have supportive extended family on both sides of the Atlantic (I'm an American with a British husband living in England) -- we'd HE even if we didn't but it certainly helps!

I've also always said, even in front of SB, that HE is something that is good for our family now. It might not be in the future but for now it is good and it is our path. I also tell people, especially my doubters, that it is a decision that is not set in stone and that as a family we will re-evaluate it every year and decide what is best for all members of the family (SB is an only so in that way I'm "lucky" and only have to juggle the needs of one child). I am not anti-school but I am pro-home education.

Just as I have walked away from ordinary community activities that we not meeting the needs of SB and/or me, I have also walked away from HE groups/friends that weren't good for SB. Not nearly as bad as Sigyn (poor Sigyn Jr) but one that had the ability to get that bad had I let it. I hung on for a while, thinking it was children being children, but something snapped in me and I thought "I don't care that they're still little, this isn't right and I need to stand up for my son." SB has only asked about that "friend" once since August/September when I made the stand and that was recently when he heard me talking to MrScout about a friend of mine (who has the female version of "friend's" male name) and he looked scared.

I have found it's a balancing act, for sure, balancing the needs of all of us. I have learned, though, as the primary caregiver and educator that I must not ignore my needs and wants as well. That's been the hardest thing to learn and practice. But if I get a chance to recharge (whether it's go out on my own to wander around the shops, go to a concert alone or go to the pub with friend/s that aren't related to me) everyone in the house is much happier.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous -- being responsible for a child's education is huge. But this is good for us, all of us, and I'm excited about our future.

I'm seriously considering home ed for my boy ages 4, at he's in a Kindergarten setting, which seems to be going well for him, except the minor blip here and there.

And the fact he come home saying 'bum boy' and 'I'm gonna slit your throat' which I'm told will only get worse with school, quite concerned actually

Signy and Mamuzza: I am sorry you have had bad experiences at HE groups. We were lucky to have groups in which we fitted and in which the parents were aligned on the issues of not distressing others. On one occasion my (usually very gentle) DS was cruelly teasing his (still, 10 years later) best friend . The friend's mum spoke to me and I nipped it in the bud PDQ - the young men don't even remember now. However, such things came up a number of times and the group dealt with them if needed.

IRL, I've only been involved in local groups where people were accepting and supporting of others with different viewpoints. However, I've also known of nearby groups where people were controlling or were unable to accept that one DC's "freedom of expression" has to stop at the boundary of another DC's body and psyche.

And online! I've never seen such vitriol as in some HE forums. Over how DC do or do not learn to read! It's mind-boggling.

I've looked at those numicon sets but was confused by all of the choice. SB loves science and math and I have seriously considered some (putting it on his wish lists for grandparent presents they always ask for lists, especially the American side who doesn't see him as regularly so don't know what he has and what we can physically carry back with us every Thanksgiving). What sets would you start with/recommend? And, I guess most importantly, are they something that the children can get lots (and lots and lots for those prices!) of use out of? SB is 4.8 (or is .9? Can't remember October birthday so one of the oldest of the year) and loves playing with his scales (both ordinary kitchen ones and his bucket balances) and his number line scales (1-10 on both sides and you hang a weight on the number and can do all sorts of addition/subtraction with them).

Thanks everyone so far. This is amazing. Lots of things to think about.

I am sorry you have had bad experiences at HE groups

Me too. I was really looking forward to that, I had so built up HE groups in my mind (and by extension DS's) that the "failed to meet expectations" drop was hard going.

I think if a specific person or "flavour" of people gains control of an area and gets a bit "strangleholdy" about it, you can be a bit screwed if you aren't a member of that tribe.

Mime attend school current but we had Numicon: Homework Activities Intervention Resource at home. School has multiple sets of Numicon in younger classes they are very big on it.

This set has 1-9 pieces twice and multiple 10 pieces – and that seemed adequate.

They stopped being useful to DS before Christmas of yr 1 aged 6 even at school but that may be because he’d had a lots of practise with on-line maths and game sites– and seem to have a mental framework. He was certainly able to apply his maths to everyday life situations.

Youngest in reception still uses occasionally – but gain on-line courses and games challenge her to use her knowledge and to practise the ideas she been taught in maths but obviously I’m not doing all the maths teaching.

Thanks for point me in direction of dragon box Mammuzza. We are looking to introduce algebra this summer to eldest before the school can give her the idea it’s hard so will have a look.

Do Home schoolers feel they have to try the HE groups? I was thinking we could do scouts/brownies, swimming or dancing to keep socialisation up if we do end up HE. I’d have a look at what was around but wasn’t going to worry too much is that naive?

Thanks for point me in direction of dragon box Mammuzza. We are looking to introduce algebra this summer to eldest before the school can give her the idea it’s hard so will have a look.

If you look up one day and notice your house is looking ever so slightly rough around the edge and your family have this look on their faces. Do not come back here and blame me. I did say that it is seriously addictive.

Especially if you thought you were bad at maths and algebra was legalised child torture when you were at school. It's the combo of the way they have set it up, the sheer thrill of "getting it", the melting away of a self image of "maths illiterate" and it being even better than tetris.

You have been warned !

I had to download 2 copies in the end. Cos DS wasn't getting a look in.

They have a new geometry one now.

They have a new geometry one now.

Cool - this is one area the current mathsite we use doesn't cover.

Especially if you thought you were bad at maths and algebra was legalised child torture when you were at school

Both DH and I are the opposite - we both loved algerbra not sure if we'll be immune or not .

I have a relational understanding of maths and I also think I picked it up and pieced it together myself. My sister and I both have this, we've explained various things to DM over the years and she's always amazed because she always assumed she "couldn't do maths" :( Maths is hard and boring if all you're doing is memorising a load of method with no apparent reasoning behind it.

I wanted to HE but quickly learned I am too lazy and lack patience once they get to about 3 years old. And now we live in Germany so it's illegal here anyway. I'm supposed to be doing HE type stuff with DS after kindergarten, because I've always loved the idea of it and think it looks fun but it never really seems to work out that way :( I have taught him to read which is awesome though :)

I've just downloaded Dragon Box for dd1 and me thanks mammuzza!

Jumping back in to chip in my 2 cents worth about HE groups... I didn't have much luck with them as a kid either.

To be fair to them I'm a natural introvert so only gravitate to one or two people at a time but.. (There's always a but!)... a good proportion of them were undisciplined to the point of being thugs. In mainstream school this was because there were too many kids and not enough energy/staff. In some HE groups it was out of terror that young Cyril might feel stifled, even as he was stifling another child with a pillow.

In any group there is going to be a shared interest and the other 99% of values will be wildly different. Luckily my mum cultivated good relationships with lots of people, not just an HE clique so there were plenty of chances to make friends with different age groups, outlooks, ethnicities, and family structure.

I agree that most of us surround ourselves with people a bit like ourselves and this goes double for HEers as it can have a bit of a stigma sometimes. Still, whether in HE or mainstream school, it's valuable to keep your horizons broad.

In some HE groups it was out of terror that young Cyril might feel stifled, even as he was stifling another child with a pillow.

That. As somebody else put it, above, sometimes there is a lack of "your freedom of expression ends where somebody else's eardrum health/physical being etc. begins"

On the bright side, I think I've spotted the emergence of a shift in "bitten tongue" tolerance towards that, specifically within RU and US circles accross the big pond. So perhaps it won't remain an issue to the same degree in the future.

edit for clarity

I think I've spotted the emergence of a shift away from "bitten tongue" tolerance towards that,

Thank you for the responses. Very interesting and thought provoking.

I definitely think we are more not satisfied with standard school ED than passionate about HE...so that is something to look out for.

I started reading the other thread just as it was in its final stages so I've only just caught up. There has been much food for thought.

One thing I found curious was the general acceptance that if school wasn't working out for some significant reason then trying home educating was an good/okay (depending on the poster) thing to do while that those starting off by home educating were to be viewed with suspicion/derision.

As someone who has been interested in HE since before we conceived DS (we were TTC for a long time so I had a lot of time to think about how we would parent and educate) I felt quite defensive at first.

However as I read on and considered how I felt about some of the issues raised, I appreciated what Tilly and Mamuzza were saying. When Tilly made the point about the 5 GCSES and not wanting students to be restricted by the subjects on offer by distance learning, my instinctive reaction was that "Well obviously if my child showed an aptitude/ambition for a career which required more intensive academic study then I'd recommend that they attend school or use tutors (if we could afford it) etc. if that's the best option. I'd use/encourage our child to use that educational resource to meet their goal just the same as I'd encourage them to use an educational app, make use of the library, online resources, distance learning courses or an FE college. I'm not a fundamentalist."

The I understood that was exactly the point they/you were trying to make. Don't build it up into a 'sheep go to school, special snowflakes would never set foot in one', don't get caught up in the bunker mentality . The goal of HE is not that they should never set foot in a school, it's that they should get the individualised education they need/want/deserve - in some circumstances school is going to be the best resource to take advantage of.

My son is a toddler at the moment, so we have a few years of informal education ahead of us before a decision needs to be made about school attendance. HE is one option and its not permanent. We would review that decision if our circumstances changed or if it wasn't working out for our son or one of us. Indeed, I feel the best way to broach the topic with potentially sceptical family members (inc teachers) will be that we are trying out HE because of the whole starting formal education rather early in this country thing. Either it'll be a good fit for DS and us and we'll be able to say, 'well its still working for us right now', or we'll feel we're getting out of our depth and send him to school after a term/a year/two years/etc and pretend it was the plan all along (which it would be, to HE as long as it works). Win Win. Decision made because it suits DS not because his parents are too ashamed to backtrack (though I hope I'd have the courage and integrity to do so even if it did make me feel a bit foolish).

My reason for seriously considering HE is because I am really enthusiastic about an education which is tailored to the pace and interests of the child in order to support their intrinsic motivation to learn. I also think that its important to look at the whole person, not just their academic abilities - I know some schools are good with ethos and pastoral care but I have my doubts about the local ones. Obviously I'd do my best as a parent in those areas if/when he does go to school. Those are at the heart of it but there are additional reasons like not agreeing with religious observance in schools (not Religious Education, I think its great for young people to learn about different religions, philosophies, ethics etc.) and additional benefits if we go down that route such as not being restricted to term times or deal with some of the annoying aspects of school that end up the subject of MN threads (e.g. daft playground rules, sexist uniform policies, lunch box restrictions) - learning how to conform when necessary and put up with or navigate bureaucracy may be part of British life, but I don't think its a lesson which requires 12 years or so of daily reinforcement. No doubt there will be novel irritations with HE!

Enough about me.

Sigyn How awful that you have encountered parents with a "Lord of the Flies" philosophy to their children's social interactions. I wouldn't be happy with that either. I hope you can resolve it or find opportunities for him to socialise elsewhere - youth groups?

Tilly Thanks for the information about different approaches to maths education. I had seen an academic on a TV interview say that schools don't teach maths systematically and that it leads to people thinking they can't do maths but it's great to have more information about that. I think it explains why at school I had much better results in class work and end of unit tests in maths than I did in final exams when all the problems were mixed in together. At uni there was a maths course (related to a science degree course) which started at the beginning (addition, multiplication) and rapidly progressed up to the level of mathematics required for the course. I liked that approach because although it was a quick revision, it meant you could see if there was an area you hadn't quite grasped and catch up on it and it gave you confidence that you hadn't missed something important.

IncognitoErgoSum I like your contribution here. I also want to thank you for the response to my pm that you gave me months ago, it was very helpful, sorry that I didn't reply!

It's something that I've been considering for my youngest daughter for secondary.

She has ASD and has coped really well in her primary - which has been absolutely fantastic, but I'm worried about secondary school - she'll never cope without substantial assistance and our secondaries just aren't able to give that assistance.

I'm very aware of my own limitations though - maths, history, geography and English I'd be OK, but science, languages - not a clue

It would be good if I could do a bit of both

What do you all think of something like this? structured home learning not for primary but for secondary so you can ensure everything that needs to be covered, is.