To wonder why she's thinking of home schooling?

[SharkiraSharkira]

I am not wishing to sound judgemental or critical because I think that for some children/parents home schooling can be very beneficial!

I'm just trying to get some perspective from others who have more experience with it. Reason being is that dss' mum has recently asked dp about home schooling dss. He doesn't really know much about it either way but from what I do know I would think dss is better off in school for the following reasons:

He is a very sociable child with lots of friends at school. If he was at home he would have very limited opportunities to interact with his peers

He is doing well academically, and has no trouble with bullies or anything similar

Dss' mum works part time but has multiple health issues and somewhat limited mobility.

It seems to be that there would be no real benefit to taking him out of school and that she might struggle to keep him stimulated and challenged given her health issues and it might be too much for her to manage. I mean that kindly.

But I'll be honest and say I don't have any experience of it. Aibu to think it's a bad idea?

To be fair op, primary teachers are masters at writing positive things in reports, and there are often glaring omissions. It's not really a window into his school life.

Is he an only child?

No cakes, there is a younger sibling who is not yet school age.

I think this might possibly be a decision that benefits your DP’s ex instead of his son. Home schooling means no school runs etc, perhaps her health is getting worse. Maybe this is now time for your DP to ask for custody?

Your partner needs to approach and discuss why she feels this is the best option. Could her lack of mobility be the issue regarding schooling- getting him there and home being difficult? Your DSS should have a say, although that could be hard, as he may want to support his Mum, regardless of how he feels about it, or he may be happy to do so. They would still have to follow an academic programme, I would assume. Does your husband have a pleasant enough relationship with his ex to be able to have a frank discussion? Would you as a couple be in a position to assist more with pick up and drop
Offs to school if that’s the main issue? Ultimately, the opinion of your partner will hold more weight, how does he feel?

somebody who is struggling financially, has health issues bad enough to not be sble to leave bed on some says and a preschool sibling in the house doesn't seem to be suited well to be a home educator.
worst case she is in need of free childcare and housework
best case she underestimates the efford and resources needed to successfully home educate dramatically

As I pointed out in a PP, dss' mum also has mobility and health issues as well as a younger child to look after so they are a bit limited as to the activities they could do.

Well there are two things there.

If mum is in pain / not very mobile then is she struggling to get the children to school? I assume the oldest is able to make his way alone but maybe the younger one can't and she is worried about fines if she can't get her child in to school.

There can also be associated issues such as struggling to wash uniform, HE children can spend all day in PJs.

The other is that dss has two parents and a step parent, there are things you and dh could be doing with him (and younger child and any children you have).

What could you do to support dss to continue in school?

I think you just need to ask really. From what you’ve said it’s hard to see any benefit.

It depends on the reason why really.

If it’s because of bullying, no, that’s something school need to address, if this doesn’t happen, move schools, but don’t remove them from school.

Unfortunately, bullying doesn’t stop at the school gates and children need to develop the skills to cope with the right support.

Personally, I think children learn more than subjects at school, and having the benefit of working alongside different personalities, support from their peers at times of stress, such as exams etc is invaluable.

I am pmsl slightly at all the posters saying that she may be doing it to avoid the school run. If she struggles so much with that half hour a day how would having the kids around all day be more appealing?! Having them in the house 24/7 is way harder work than getting them to school.

Having them in the house 24/7 is way harder work than getting them to school.
If you struggle with mobility and getting out of the house, especially if you struggle with getting going in the mornings, then it may not be harder.

Also, it’s easy to imagine something is easier before you’ve actually tried it!

I've done both, and am just coming at it from the perspective of having very active kids so life would be much easier if they went to school and were manic there.

Although a lot of HE activities are cheap, so many are done that each month can be very expensive.

Lots of different types ofHE. Wonder what sort she likes?

A friend of a friend withdrew her year 6 child in protest at the child being placed in a lower ability group for maths. This friend could generously be called ‘highly strung’.
She had a good education but no experience in teaching.
The child mostly sat around in their underwear, eating sweets with occasional trips to the parks/shops. The ‘education’ part was encouraging the reading of fiction books.
So, at the end of that spell, they were in a worse place than before, and most definitley lower ability.
It takes a village to raise a child IMO. Dealing with things you don’t like and being in situations with conflict is part of life. I’d love to know what jobs home educated children go on to do.
Can completely understand it if the child is being horrifically bullied or refusing to go to school though. I can’t imagine the pain of sending your child somewhere you know they’re are going to suffer.

I’d love to know what jobs home educated children go on to do.

Plenty go on to do amazing things! Just like schooled children, really. Your acquaintance, if indeed that was all she was doing with her child, wasn't really home educating at all, was she? That's not education. When done right, HE is a tailor-made education for each child. It is amazing, rewarding, interesting, and very, very hard work. I think some people forget that last bit.

Whatever the reason, I would think as the child gets into secondary school years she will really struggle to give him a rounded education including science, art, music, technology, languages unless she is pretty well off or an amazing polymath herself. Superficially it does sound like she wants she wants to opt out of the hassles of going to school herself . I think your partner is going to have to discuss this with his son and the mum to try to get to the bottom of it and see how or if it could work.

If her son is intelligent, it's very possible he is not receiving sufficient stimulation in a classroom setting to fulfill his potential.
Also, teaching him at home would probably free up a lot of time for other pursuits! I had to be home schooled on various occasions and my father could teach me a school month's worth of maths in one evening!

Ask her. I've had some experience of HE organisations and many parents choose it for deeply held, well thought out reasons which you can hear about ad infinitum on MN. Unfortunately some don't. (And can I just say, I know that these don't apply to everyone but they do to some)

In my experience the biggest negative reason at the moment is that it's a current fad. Numbers of HE children have doubled in the last 6 years and this has coincided with a lot of word of mouth promotion on social media. It does seem to be picked up by some people who view it as a 'lifestyle choice' in the sense that it projects an image about themselves and their families which they believe is fashionable, presents them in a positive way and has social currency within their social circles.

The problem with the 'HE children get better grades' line that is always quoted is that it focuses on children who have completed or almost completed their HE education; that is, children who started their education when HE was seen as an unfashionable, irresponsible choice which was socially discouraged and had little voice publicly (e.g. through social media).. The parents of those children often faced social barriers towards HE which meant there was a tendency that less of these parents would have taken the choice for lightly thought out reasons and have given it very, very hard consideration before taking the plunge. Whether those results continue to be replicated when the children who have started in the recent fashionable wave reach the end of their education remains to be seen. I suspect it won't. HE on it's own doesn't make grades better, committed, well thought out and well researched HE does. I'm personally not convinced that this is something that exists in sufficient numbers in this new wave intake to sustain those numbers. A lot of people who seem to have picked up a few half understood controversial methods out of dodgy books or off the net appear to be trying to badly apply them in a half hearted way. Sometimes this translates to doing nothing.at all which is often the result of people very badly misunderstanding concepts like unschooling. Effective unschooling doesn't involve sticking your kid in front of an X Box and ignoring them then expecting them to come to you at 14 with a highly developed interest in astrophysics which will get them a Cambridge PhD when you've never read a book to them or taught them to write believe it or not.

There also seemed to be quite a lot of parents who had a bad experience at school themselves and seemed not to consider that their child might have a very different personality from them which is more suited to the school system.

Political ideas and an unwillingness to allow their children to be exposed to ideas which differ from their own was another. They don't want their children to be exposed to different ideas or thinking differently to them.

Lastly, control. Some parents seemed to want to continue to supervise their children's interactions, stimulation and relationships to a heavy degree. They may have wide social circles and lots of friends. But these can be much more heavily controlled, monitored and encouraged/discouraged by the parent involved, as can their opportunities to activities which the parent favours/disfavours and the subjects they want them to learn. Often these would be people who had very fixed ideas about how they wanted their children to turn out and felt they could mould them. This last one also feeds into the lifestyle and political reasons.

I know I'll get flamed for this as HEers on MN are incredibly defensive but their insistence that every HE parent goes into it for well thought out and sensible reasons is obviously not correct.

Get your DP to have a good talk to her and try and understand her reasons. They may be very good ones. But there is the potential they may be good ones.

I know a large family of grown up home schooled siblings. I think they mostly all went on to gain degrees and are flourishing. They were mostly home educated for lack of decent, schools nearby. They did A'levels in a 6th form college which was a train journey away. The youngest two went to mainstream school when they were the last two at home.

They are all really sociable and well liked in the community. They are very independent thinkers (like their parents) and all do their own thing. Their adopted/fostered (not sure which) brothers and sisters are younger and go to mainstream schools although one is in a behavioural unit. The parents are both working, the mother is working in education now having retrained. She says home schooling was really hard work and she was glad to finish. I'm not sure she would have been allowed to home school with the fostered/adopted children but she'd had enough.