To wonder if this is what people mean by gentle parenting

[pleasemothermay1]

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3699191/Outrage-parents-allow-child-toilet-Morning-floor.html

Not sure why a one year old wouldn't have a nappy on as she clearly is not Notts trained at that age my one year old would be become destressed to be constantly wet

And what's the no medication about surely social service would become involved if they got very ill and parents did noting

Very odd

OMG Wibbly :o that's so funny. Did you make that yourself?

Wow Bath she sounds interesting. Was it Adele herself?

They were kind of woo. Last time I saw them a new little one was born, apparently she wants to go to school but they won't let her as it doesn't fit in with he rest of the family and they have to think of them as a whole etc. Hmm

LB77, we home ed/unschool, and have told our son he is free to choose to go to school if he wants. He is five, and currently does not want to. He has lots of schooled friends to ask them what it is like, and none of them term it glowingly! Should we feel he is not thriving, we'd consider school. I don't see that happening though, certainly not for a good few years.

we're all different, I didn't mean all home schooling parents are like the mum I mentioned. I feel it concerning when it's because the schooling would be inconvenient for them or not fit into their schedule. I also know another homeschooling family who say the same, they do childminding so the school runs aren't convenient for them. I thought this was an odd reason for not sending the children to school, but I think the money they made from the childminding was important. All a bit strange.

My DCs also know they can go back if they want. DS is absolutely adamant he doesn't :o (he really hated school - I was literally dragging him there some days) DD is more ambivalent as she did enjoy some aspects of school, but we've always made it clear that HE doesn't have to be forever.

Yes, same as Cag, DS knows he can try school and come out any time. He is not keen on trying yet. As well as his friends/cousins who tell him about school, he's seen a few TV programmes about kids at school, and thinks he gets a better deal.

Issues is wonder how many home schooled parents

Will admit

Yes I am doing a shit job my academic abilities are below par and actually they wou old be better of at school

I bet zero

I not a doctor and don't think I know better than Somone who has had 7 years of education and also has al the medical equipment to hand

pmm1, I went to school and had teachers who were below par.
I passed certain exams because I self-taught in my own time.

If my children were not thriving, we would of course rethink our choices. Currently, at their young ages (eldest is 5, so mainly him really!) he is beyond thriving, very happy, well-rounded, and enjoying his childhood. We have always said we will revisit our choices regularly. Certainly at primary age, we are more than capable of helping our children learn. And that's a big thing to understand - we facilitate learning - encourage them to follow their interests, rather than be told what's what, to a set timetable, trying to teach 30 kids at the same time. HE/US works for us so well, because he gets so much more attention, and he learns fast because he is learning what he wants.
Should my children want to become doctors, they can do the necessary qualifications.

- cool unschooled kid.

No I didn't Cagliostro I just saw a link to it in the comments in the A's crowdfunder and went to have a look

I don't think in their wildest dreams the Allen's saw this fiasco panning out like it has!

I don't know really, they must've realised how this kind of crap is generally received by the general public. I still think it was a cynical move on their part hoping for TV sponsorship. No such thing as bad publicity and all that.

I HE ds. We got asked to leave a HE group. I suspect it was because my thoughts on HE was different to the others. Ds does on line schooling and I don't stand for rude behaviour and bad manners.

Separately we did know another HEded girl who at 10 years old when we sat down to eat proceeded to throw her food at other children.

Her mum didn't think it was a problem and she thought table manners were restrictive.

All ds's friends go to mainstream school

Oliversmums is it because you were not gentle parenting, and not letting your kids get away with bad behaviour. What happens when they grow into adults, and they start throwing food in restaurants and behaving badly! People will not stand for that, nor will employers. Ah they will want to do something creative and artistic, so the rest of society have to support them!

Oliversmums is it because you were not gentle parenting, and not letting your kids get away with bad behaviour.

Gentle parenting doesn't mean bad behaviour or no boundaries.

Has anyone linked to this yet?
Someone has set up a 'save the Allen children' Go fund me page
www.gofundme.com/2gbxbeh8

Yes - not far back.

I just thought and so did ds (privately) that their attitude was very rude to people.

It could also be that I was speaking to one 16 year old who didn't like being HEded but was pulled out of school because her sibling didn't want to go to school. Because she was into similar stuff to my school attending older dd and we had been looking at colleges I told her about dd and which colleges we were interested in. I did think the whole idea of HE was to be able to integrate back into society at some point.

It is actually really sad how many myths/misconceptions that are stated as fact regarding children who are home educated. I HE'd all of mine from the beginning but they are deciding one by one that they want to go to secondary school. When we went for an interview at the highly selective grammar that my eldest dc got a place in the HT said that he was concerned about my dc getting up in the morning as there was a lot of research to show that HE'd children find it hard to wake up at a normal time

My second dc to go to school said she started hating HE as strangers (that includes people on the bus, doctors, shop assistants etc) would comment on her "illiteracy" and a few even felt the need to test her reading on the spot. She said the best thing about going to school is that people now assume that she can read and write

I hated our HE group, it was run by someone like the woman in the article, she knew it all and had to inform us lower beings. She was quite aggressive towards anyone who wasn't anti-school or who liased with HE officers from the LA and just came across as very patronizing and controlling she then had a breakdown and put all of her children in school. There were very few in the group who did not seem to have anger towards the school system and so much talk of "the poor sheep sitting in school" There were quite a few families (the man and woman would both come) who were home educating their babies and seemed to need an outlet for their alternative views.

It was then taken over by a lady who was a fundamental christian who attracted a lot of like minded people and the group became that way inclined by default. The group signature became "Yours in Christ..." and the narrative of the group changed to "we are so lucky that our children are being saved from bad influences". They were super strict and enjoyed very rigid, organized activities in the group meet. Autonomy was frowned upon.

Sorry posted too soon! My point was that I would have loved to have had the opportunity to live somewhere where we had greater choice regarding HE activities.

London bridge, our group sounds much the same but I did meet one group at a large meeting who seemed to be more in tune with ds and myself.

HE is great and made better if the local group is good but it definitely depends on the area you are in and finding a group with the same expectations.

What's with all of the kerfuffle about the 5 year old not being able to read or write? Doesn't ALL the research point to poorer outcomes in long term literacy when a child is pushed to read before their natural readiness. And that natural readiness while being as early as before 2 for some children tends to be around 6, 7 or even 8 for most. My DS has been obsessed with numbers and letters since he was 19mo and now at 3.5 can read quite well and can write and type a little. But it's all been self-led, if he had a different personality and wasn't interested in reading I can easily see how pushing him would make him lose what interest he has. In fact I've arranged for him to go a pre and primary school that follows the Scandanavian model of all art, music and play, preferably outdoors, until the year he turns 8. (Even though getting there is such a massively, expensive inconvenience as I have had to learn to drive and buy and insure a car in order to be able to get him there.)

There were quite a few families (the man and woman would both come) who were home educating their babies

OH I've met some of them!
They often send their toddlers to "forest school" 3 days a week or steiner kindy - but that doesn't count, because it's alernative and child led and they're "HOME EDUCATING" their babies/newborns because they decided before their babies were born that they want to be HE parents….

These parents of "home educated" babies usually fall into the subset of HE parents who do so to dissociate with us awful conventional families

Sorry you've both had bad experiences of HE groups, London and Oliver :( I think the fact you describe 'the HE group' is quite telling, that where you are it is/was one group of families who stuck together (a clique, perhaps?). We are lucky that there is no 'group' here, it's just a huge amount of families who do various things, loads of different parents arrange the meetups/teach classes (I run maths classes for example and DH is setting up a sports group soon) and organise trips, so there's no one prevailing 'alpha mum' or group IYSWIM. Everyone just takes or leaves what's on offer. There are various FB groups for different areas around the county, and people just post stuff on there to see if there are any takers. But from what I gather it wasn't always like that - there is one mum who when her eldest first left school organised pretty much everything, simply because there weren't many other HE families around, and there were falling-outs etc. But as the years went on the community has evolved and there is nobody 'in charge' anymore. Perhaps that is purely down to how the numbers are increasing locally, and as that seems to be a national trend (I think?) perhaps it will become a more open 'scene' everywhere.

I've only had one negative experience with another HE mum (we've been HEing 1.5 school years now) and that was when we went to a social thing organised by a radical unschooler, and I was lightheartedly saying to her how I've been so surprised how busy we are with home ed activities, and that some weeks we hardly have any time to sit down and do any book work :o and she looked me up and down with this face and said "BOOK work? Oh, we don't do THAT." and then proceeded to ignore me. :o

Yes Cag for us it was the case that there was literally one group, so it was like it or lump it. I think a lot of people stayed (despite the rather horrible behaviour of the leader) simply because there was no alternative. It was such a shame that we didn't seem to gel with anyone. The last meeting that I went to (after it had been taken over by the fundies) we were sitting in a circle chatting and the conversation turned to how many hours per day was enough book work for a 3 year old The consensus seemed to be five hours a day 6 days a week