I am feeling very uneasy about how my daughter is raising her 7 year old son, an only child, who I love to bits but hardly get to see him as I am overseas for the next 5 years. She is a single parent and the deadbeat dad won't contribute a penny towards my grandson's upkeep and hasn't worked for years but has enough cash to chainsmoke.
My daughter says she 'hates the system' and is into all sorts of strange ideas, eg. avidly reads and believes what she sees on the David Icke website, the illuminati, into crystal healing and new age religions. What worries me though, is that she has never allowed my GS to have any vaccinations as she says she doesn't want 'toxins in my child'. She even told me that 'there wasn't any cancer before vaccinations were invented'. I am very worried about him not having even a tetanus jab and she refuses to use sunscreen as well.
A few years ago she said that she didn't believe that children shouldn't go to school until they were at least 7 years old, because that's what they do in Scandinavian countries. However, my GS is now 7 and she has no intention of sending him to school as she says is a radical homeschooler. She says it suits her lifestyle so she can go camping at festivals and doesn't want to have to be back home to send him to school on a Monday morning. She says she doesn't believe in children taking SATs or any exams.
I had to look up radical homeschooling online and I am shocked at what I've found. My grandson has absolutely no routine and often still up at 10.30pm...my daughter likes this so she can have a lie-in (she works 16 hours a week in a shop and my GS goes to a friend as far as I know when she is working). Sadly, my GS is barely reading or writing from what I've been shown on Facetime and from when I visited before Easter. My daughter just mainly wants to do art and has little interest in teaching any maths or science. She has no money for tutors and never goes to museums etc. (I have no idea how she pays for festivals). She doesn't really have any interest in IT and just uses her tablet to go online. Her friends keep dropping in day and night for cups of tea, chats and a smoke, they are mostly unemployed or work part time only, so this distracts from doing any kind of teaching
They live in a cramped flat so they do spend a lot of time going to the park and walking in the woods, but although this is fine for toddlers, surely not at 7 years old?
I tactfully suggested to my daughter that she really should consider sending him to school as a few months ago I was with him and he saw the local children going to school and said he would like to go too. She has always had a volatile temperament and I'm always walking on eggshells when I discuss anything with her. It seems that she has taken great offence and sent me a very nasty e-mail and hasn't taken any phone calls for weeks. I fear for his future and he may turn out to be not only feral but unemployable!
How can it be that it is allowed for children in the UK to have so little education? My parents used to say the 'school board man' would be round if we ever played truant so is there no such person these days?
I do know people whom have home schooled in the US and their kids have gone on to good universities - but they had proper lesson plans and the parents were very highly educated and supportive, so I do know it can work out fine.
This is what I found and this is exactly how my daughter is raising my GS and it worries me so much:
metro.co.uk/2016/07/18/off-grid-parents-who-refuse-medicine-home-school-and-breastfeed-son-5-6011667/
(I think my daughter follows the above mother, Adele Allen online)
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2520667/Unschooling-children-teach-games-life-experiences.html
I do wonder how the children in the articles are now doing? I should think that they would have little chance of becoming a doctor, dentist, engineer etc. if all of their education is going to be like this and that it isn't liberating....it's limiting their life chances.