to tell teacher friends to stop with the negativity over our decision to home educate?

[teaandaflorentineplease]

We’ve made the decision to home educate our child. Fulltime school isn’t right for our family, and I genuinely believe that play based, informal learning suits early childhood far better than sitting at desks from age five. I’d have been open to flexi-schooling if our local school allowed it, but they don’t so we’ve chosen home education.

What’s surprised me is the strength of the negative reaction from our teacher friends. These are people who regularly describe the state of education as dire. Dreadful behaviour, no funding, days spent on crowd control rather than actual teaching, children falling through the cracks, classrooms falling apart, pressure to hit their academies’ targets rather than do what’s best for the kids, they can’t even afford gluesticks. This insight into education from a teacher’s perspective has also informed my decision to home ed.

However when I said I was going to home educate, suddenly schools are wonderful and I’m making a terrible mistake. It started a few weeks ago when a teacher friend mentioned our children will be in the same class and since then the comments about how awful home ed is have kept coming. I’ve been shrugging it off to avoid an argument, but I’m getting increasingly frustrated. I’ve spent years validating how broken the system is, for both teachers and children, and yet the moment I choose to opt out of it, it becomes the only way to educate a child.

For context, my husband and I are both well-educated and take our child’s learning seriously. I feel comfortable teaching the early foundations like reading, writing and maths, and we plan to build projects around history, geography, science and whatever else our child shows an interest in. Beyond that, we haven’t planned anything because our child is still one. As we go through it, we’ll learn about what works for our family, and we’ll have seen how other home ed families approach things as children get older. We haven’t ruled out school further down the line either; it might turn out to be the right fit at some stage.

I’m not looking to convince anyone or get into a debate about home ed vs school. We’ve made our decision and we’re comfortable with it. I just find the contradiction so confusing and a bit hurtful. These are people who in some cases we’ve know for years, know how seriously we take our child’s wellbeing, and have spent years telling us the system is broken. I want to say firmly we’ve made a decision and we don’t want to hear anything else about it, but I also don’t want to lose long standing friends over it.

Yeah, I don't really buy the socialisation argument to be honest. Many kids have suffered long term mental health issues because of negative school experiences. Look at how many adults still talk about school bullies casting a long shadow over their lives.

In an ideal world, navigating peer relationship would be fine at an early age if done in a safe environment where there are consequences for physical aggression or bullying. But unfortunately schools are so underfunded and in some cases poorly run that it isn't a safe environment anymore. If you apply this logic to an adult workplace environment, you wouldn't brush off workplace bullying or violence in the adult world and call it socialisation skills. So I don't understand why we apply a different standard of psychological safety to our children.

A confident and happy kid is going to be able to deal with life's challenges much more effectively than one who has been traumatised by bullying and aggression. They will be able to see poor behaviour for what it is rather than accepting it as the norm.

Resilience is not built from surviving horrible experiences but by building a core foundation of self esteem and self worth. This is what I've learnt after a long career in the military.

But if your child hasn’t experienced bullying or aggression particularly and has gone to a decent albeit not perfect school and has developed lovely friendships at school that’s valid too.

I think new parents need to be a little careful not to get a skewed view from sites like this. Those whose children have struggled significantly are more likely to post. The majority whose kids quite enjoy school wouldn’t feel the need to say so - plus it sounds boastful and unkind to those who have had difficulties.

That's true but those types of schools are increasingly rare these days and also depends very much on the class. It's luck of the draw in many ways. Also behavioural problems can exacerbate as friendship groups fall out or home problems bubble to the surface.

If you have a school that you can trust to deal with bullying and social issues head on then absolutely it creates a safe environment. If you don't then it's a much harder journey to navigate.

I think it's a little disingenuous to say the majority of kids enjoy school. The numbers of kids being moved to HS and moving schools in a bid to find a better place do not support that argument at all.

At one years old I don’t think this decision is ‘made’… You have another 3 years to gage your child’s character and whether he/she engages with you on a level that you could teach them.
You also have 3 plus years to look up your local homeschooling community, contact local authority to see how you’d go about it and whether they support with anything. I think in our area there is a homeschooling community that meet up regularly and support each other and the children socialise and have outings together to museums and theme parks! I have this fantasy in my head that parents with different skills would set up online lessons for other children whose parents perhaps lacked in that skill.. or that they’d book regular ‘team’ days where kids go out rock climbing or do tasks that encourage team building and social interaction. But I don’t know!
I know homeschooling is much more common in America than here, particularly amongst families with children who don’t fit societal norms! So as a result they’d have more support in place.
on the plus side you have a while now to research this in your local area, and if there isn’t anything locally in place to support parents and children who homeschool you could set something up!
In many ways I wish I’d homeschooled, school hasn’t been a particularly happy place for us, kids are horrible and honestly we’ve come across school staff that are bullies too!

senior school is a tragic mess right now! I have never wished time away but seniors has been awful and I can’t wait to see my DD leave !!
The education system is definitely broken, part of me definitely wishes I’d homeschooled or at least looked into it and made an informed decision! Especially since my DD has always been keen to learn and was a dream to teach during lockdown. I just doubted my own abilities to teach her… again though, I regret not researching what resources were out there available to homeschool!

Also do you plan to have more children? It would be tough to homeschool a child with a baby or toddler to look after too.

As for your teacher friends maybe

• We haven’t totally ruled out school but we are looking at all our options and will decide closer the time which suits our child best!
• Having listened to you all talking about how broken the education system is and how misbehaved children are - we are definitely looking seriously at home ed!
• Thanks for your opinions guys, I’ve heard you all, and appreciate your views - however can we respectfully please not discuss this anymore - if I want any further advice I’ll ask for it, until then please let’s leave it here!!!

I wonder if your teacher friends are a little jealous as they aren’t in a position to homeschool but would actually love to. A girl in my DD’s year went through primary school and her teacher mother decided to send her to private school for seniors because she felt standard senior schools weren’t really fit for purpose!
I’ve known so many senior school teachers who struggle with where to sent their children because they know the system!!

I hope you don't mind me coming back to this thread, but I'm stirring risotto, which is a fairly unexciting task. I've just clicked on 'see all' for your posts. Over the last two days, you've been on here, constructing very long posts quite a lot. So it looks like you're either breaking the no phones around your child rule or not spending very concentrated chunks of time engaging with them.

I do wonder if what your friends are reacting to is a combination of perceived criticism of them and quite grandiose pronouncements from someone who a. has no idea yet what will serve their child best in the long run, and, b. doesn't seem to spend much time with them?

"I have this fantasy in my head that parents with different skills would set up online lessons for other children whose parents perhaps lacked in that skill.. or that they’d book regular ‘team’ days where kids go out rock climbing or do tasks that encourage team building and social interaction."

^This does indeed happen. (And not just online... it happens locally face-to-face)

I'd love to hear from some who does HS about what a typical week consists of. Various people have mentioned incorporating day trips, sports or other interest clubs, meet up with other parents etc. But there are things most parents do on top of school.

How many hours a week on average would be spent at specific HS clubs that aren't generally accessed by school children i.e. excluding normal after school and evening clubs available to all. What is the split between general social meetups vs organised activities?

YABU to choose to do this when your child is only one. They’re not sat at desks aged 5. Reception is extremely play based. You’re denying them the chance to be as well educated as you, plus all the socialisation that goes with school. Fair enough if you try it and it doesn’t work, but you’re mad to decide this so early on without even trying a nice small local primary.

I think this is mental for a one year old, how can you even know what suits him?

His needs will be different in a few years time. It's kind of like you are saying you have have his best interests at heart without knowing what his interests will be in a few years.

@user678435 Have you ever tried an oven baked risotto? Different texture, but sometimes when you can do without the faff . . .

I increasingly feel the op is desperate to give up work and has decided if she powers on now she can give up in three years to home school. This would explain her decision to use nurseries so much now but then pull her child out when they reach school age. I think this is underneath her decision to home school.

i am not the best toddler parent. I am much better at parenting a school age child. You’d be better off op sending your child to school and working part time or very flexibly so you can do many drop offs and pick ups as well as spending the holidays with them.

I’m not denying a minority struggle at school and that’s awful but the majority don’t and are fine. Deciding your child is in that minority when they are one seems a it premature to me.

And yes I can only conclude driven by the parents agenda rather than the best interest of the child who is a baby so how can the op
know?

How is that different from parents who plan to send their DC to a local Primary school?

The advantage of school is that the children encounter new ideas. If their parents are claustrophobic and helicopter-y, they see there are other ways to live. They socialise without Mum being present, which changes the dynamic entirely. If Mum’s not there, you take responsibility for your own life, which is the only way you can build skill and confidence. They build their own reality, rather than staying tied to the apron strings.

If your child hadn’t gone to nursery, you would have been an over-anxious and controlling parent, denying them the kind of risky free play that is essential to their thriving.

In your place, I would wonder what else both I and my child might fail to learn in the future, if we both stayed trapped in our little bubble.

It is one of parenting’s great joys to see your child become independent, until they end up not needing you. Your child is one, this might seem like a remote and ridiculous idea. But it is the goal of parenting. And micro-management is not the way to achieve it.

Local primary school is from 3yrs upwards. How is that the same as deciding for a one year old?

Agreed. My sociable and extrovert 4yr old was chomping at the bit to go to school. Super excited. She’s just about to leave it now and, honestly, she’s loved pretty much every second of it.

But…your children have just gone to a shit school - which begs the question of why you moved into the area and sent them there!

My children’s school is literally nothing like this. Because it’s a good school…..

Op should perhaps consider moving to near a school she likes.

I wish you all the best and agree you should just respond to friends with something like, “we think this may be what works best for our family “.

You know your child best and will know what suits them best. However as a mother of three I would just add two points of caution:

1. Be really careful about increasing days at work for a plan you don’t/can’t know (as you have said yourself) will work in the future. So many parents would love to have more time in the key formative years. It’s so important. Also you are effectively also sacrificing your DH’s ability to play a bigger role here - in a different scenario could he go down to 4 days for a few years?
2. Most of the parents I know that have home educated (and I will admit many of these have been down to circumstances rather than active choice - although they have embraced it) have done so in later years. If you can find the right school primary can be great. It’s secondary when it becomes more data driven, impersonal and rigid.

Plenty of parents plan for primary when their children are babies, or even before. Start attending church and get their children christened, move house to a better catchment, save up for private school fees.

The thing that prompted the comments that made OP start the thread was a friend with a similar age child commenting on them both being in the same class at school - no one seems shocked at that parent assuming the local primary will be best for her baby years in advance.

I don’t think OP thinks her DC will struggle she just thinks she can do significantly better than “fine”.

In my experience, a lot of teachers massively moan because their jobs are really challenging (and they justifiably rail against the misconception that they have an easy 9am-3pm with long holidays). But they are passionate about their jobs and know that they make a real difference.

I think perhaps you have placed too much importance on their complaints about work. And the teachers may now be worrying that their griping has led you to (what they see as) a harmful decision and so now feel a bit of a responsibility to convince you to rethink.

I think it’s going to be hard for them to act enthusiastic about your homeschooling plans so if you want to keep the friendships you probably have to A. avoid the subject (which is a bit sad as your child is obviously major part of your life and it sucks to skirt around the subject) or B. keep the topic on the table and deal with their negativity and hopefully move through it to a place where both sides have at least got everything out of their system and can discuss more positively.

I do think it’s annoying when people offer unsolicited opinions or are judgey.

Anyone here up for putting a date 3 years ahead in their diaries and checking in with op to see how she’s doing and if she’s changed her mind 😉

Naive PFB springs to mind

Giving this any thought when your child is a baby is just ridiculous.

Home education is against the norm of our society and culture so you need to develop much thicker skin if you do decide to do it.