feeling a bit 'out of it'

[camperli]

started HE this term with 4 yo dd. Had a really great term last term despite feeling full of terror at whether we were doing the right thing when all her pals were going to school. Anyway, we had a great time - made lots of HE friends and had lots of playdates with kids in school (who were mostly exhausted and bad tempered about the school thing anyway) and dd seems very happy.
Thing is, while I know lots of other HE families, none of them are the mum friends I made when dd was small- they are all new relationships and while thats fine, I do feel a little out on a limb.
We are very happy with our decision and with dd's progress. Also amazed at the amount of people who say - great idea, wish we'd done it - about HE but I do long to feel normal sometimes.
Anyone else feel like this ever?

Yes! Sometimes. I remember a 'girls' night in' nearly 2 years ago when DS1 was an age to start secondary (in fact for a while was quite keen but then didn't get the school we wanted so decided against it). The four of us had known each other for nearly 12 years and I felt on the edge of things as one mum's DD was already there (July birthday so a school year ahead) and the other 2 were going to the same school (the one DS1 had wanted). I remember feeling very isolated and left out and thinking that 2 of them clearly disagreed with my decision to HE (raised eyebrows/vague tutting).

However, by then we had met up with some other great HE families, who have become great friends. I still see 1 of those 4 mums regularly but don't see as much of the other 2. Friendship circles change and move on - I feel sad but at least I have new friends to meet up with.

As my older daughter has got older I have found more to talk about with non-HE parents. That might happen for you too, camperli.

The parents of very young schoolchildren find starting school to be a huge change in their children's lives. Understandably, it dominates their thinking. Even if they are happy with school, they are often quite focused on all the little details. It can't be easy to have a young child being looked after by very busy near-strangers all day when you don't know all that happens.

In a few years this routine gets more normal to them. Their children mature to the point where many of them can handle the everyday aspects of school comfortably and sort out problems for themselves. Concerns about lunch-eating, lost shoes and inadequate bottom-wiping begin to disappear. Children and parents alike accept the downsides to school and stop worrying about what they cannot fix. Parents can turn their attention elsewhere.

My older daughter is 11 now. The conversations I have with other parents are about where we go camping, how to buy jeans that fit our kids, which sports they like, how to get cheap cinema tickets, whether they are allowed to go into town on their own, summer camps, and football classes. There does usually come a point where the HE difference is noticed: we go camping when the weather is good instead of during school holidays, my dd has time for far more activities, she can stay up late for a chess match because she doesn't have to get up early the next day, we scramble to buy black shoes for the choir concert because dd doesn't have "school shoes." But subjects relating to HE and school don't often occupy us for long.

Still, my home educating friends are the ones with whom I discuss more meaningful issues. The way some of us think about parenting and education is similar. They tend to question things more and suggest unusual solutions to problems, which I find interesting and helpful. When I'm with them, I don't mind not being normal.

Yes.

Which is how I've ended up having HE friends mainly online. And they are scattered all over the globe rather than being on my doorstep.

It feels a lot like how my long term, "expat" friendships have developed.

Initially it was lovely to find a group of RL people with whom I had in common the aspect that made me "odd" in general. To learn the ropes and let off steam when needed. But ultimately the pool was so small that a common language\nationality\educational choice wasn't enough to compensate for all the things that we didn't have in common. And I found all the niggles of being an expat\HEor, rather than being soothed by like minded company, ended up being magnified and exacerbated cos we managed to work ourselves up into a right negative state by focusing too much on the things that made us blue. I felt I was "ghettoizing" myself, isolating myself into being "different" fulltime and that felt worse than pushing through initial roadblocks with the pool of potential mates in the wider RL community.

I've got a smaller group of RL friends compared to before I stated HEing, cos some just couldn't get past it and the constant nitpicking was annoying. Plus if you are going to stick me in a box, or keep poking me based on one perfectly reasonable thing I do, then you weren't that much of a mate to begin with. But those I've been left with are far stronger friendships than they were before, thanks to the additional connecting that comes with accepting and liking people for who they are, even when they walk slightly out of step with you in some way. We has some wobbles, but I'm back to being just Sarah, rather than "That Sarah, the one that won't send her boy to school !!!!!!"

It took time and I did have a few jittery lonely months out there, two steps forward, one step back sort of thing.

I need my HE clan and love my HE clan, but having HE in common isn't enough on its own to make things work for me, there has to be more than that to give us a basis for real companionship. So I found being selective with HE\expat AND "label free" chums, while limiting the numbers, gave me the chance to develop a higher quality of friendship.

HE doesn't make me fundamentaly less ordinary\normalish, anymore than being English does. I like being bog standardish. It is far more relaxing and comfortable to sink happily into the armchair of my "highly unexciting" status than march around sticking labels on my head that jump up and down about me supposedly being "very different"

I just can't keep up the effort required to go around pretending I'm "special" ( =

Thankfully I've managed to find the right people from both my "special interest" groups and the rest of the world that are fine with hanging around me, despite the lack of bells ans whistles attached to my person.

Thanks for all your replies. We met up with some HE friends today and had a nice time so am feeling slightly less jittery. I think it is beginning of term nerves as well - as in - everyone is going back to school and I do think to myself, 'why am I not doing the same' again. When I think it through, I don't understand particularly why anyone would send children to school unless there was absolutely no other choice, which obviously sometimes there isn't.

Anyway, one of our lovely HE friends who dd is good pals with has just said she is finding it difficult to cope with HE-ing 3 young children and is going back to Holland in March. Gulp. We will cope, but feel sad about losing them.

Thanks again for your support.
BTW Sarahitaly, where in italy are you and why are you HEing there?

I'm outside Milan, the standard of education in Italy isn't necessarily that great (unless you get lucky with the school, which I didn't). My panic at just how low both the educational (and pastoral) standards can fall was compounded by the fact I was in the staffroom and could see how issues could arise (and fail to be dealt with) in the first person. It was beyond my personal comfort level and there was also an issue of my cultural expectations being at odds with the "norm".

__

" I don't understand particularly why anyone would send children to school unless there was absolutely no other choice"

_

I do. It's very much a case of horses for courses and there is no "one size fits all" option out there. Which means people are going to have different instincts, ideologies, priorities, issues and solutions.

Although most of the people where I live (HE is vanishingly rare) can oft be heard to mutter darkly in an arm wavy flip side version of the above, along the lines of

" I don't understand particularly why anyone would teach their child at home unless there was absolutely no other choice"

I get that they don't get why I picked this, I'm just thankful that some of them concluded that since in my circs, with my son, it made sense to me, and they were prepared to trust me as a parent to make the right choices for my son, despite the fact that on a personal level it wouldn't be their own choice.

You're quite right - there are different priorities, issues and ideologies all over.
I hope its going well for you outside Milan (how glamorous). Would you send dc's to school in the UK?

"Would you send dc's to school in the UK?

"

I don't think so, being able to give him a bilingual\bi cultural education has been one of the benefits that I have come to cherish. Although I can't say it was really one of my initial motivators when I first threw a fit and started looking in HE as an alternative, it was more of a happy consequence than anything else at first.

If we moved back to the UK (unlikely, my husband would dig his heels in and have to be dragged to the airport, he is allergic to summer drizzle and convinced we are all quite mad based on diet issues alone) I think I'd find it too hard to let go of the Italian side of his education.

Plus I like HEing, he likes being HEed, ain't broke, so why fix it cos of a change in geography ( =

I can't rule anything out cos things can change, he might want to go back to school, I could drop dead and there is no way my husband could cope with taking over the HEing and becoming a single parent.....but pretty much as long as it is this good for us, I'm sticking with it.

Giggling at the glamorous, my life is anything but (glowers at the laundry mountain and the fridge that needs a good clear out). Bits of Milan are very swish, but most is concrete jungle covered in graffiti. I moved out of the city by the time our son was three cos it is a hard place to live with kids (IME). Now we are enjoying "small town life" up the road and the solitude of living in a field when I am fed up with people ( =