Help.. trying to decide if I should home educate

[jomoo]

I have two children ds who is 12 and dd who is 8. My son was diagnosed (after 6 years of asking for help) with ADHD/ODD last year. He has had an awful time at primary school, I feel incredibly guilty that I forced him to go to school for 4 years when he was obviously so miserable (although school were telling me he was fine in school so I found it difficult to make a decision and he refused to move schools even though he was miserable. Anyway, he has started secondary school last september and since then he has had numerous detentions, he's been on report 5 times and is very often described as disruptive in classes. I am having real problems with his school to get any level of support put in for him and I am becoming very frustrated with it all.. From comments made to me I get the impression that school feel he does not have these conditions and he is just 'choosing' to misbehave this way. Although they recently admitted they had no experience of a child with Oppositional Defiant Disorder!! So they have taken what I consider to be a heavy handed approach, which isn't working and is having the opposite effect!!
My ds frequently refused to go to school or makes up illnesses.. he does this atleast once a day every week. When I talk to him to get his opinion on school he says he is bored and doesn't like school, but then who does :-)
He is very clever and is underachieving and I feel that if I home educate him that he would learn more from just being at home and will improve his life skills but I am worried that this might not be the best thing for him.
I have been considering taking him out of school for months but cannot make the final decision which is frustrating me now.
As I am a single parent I worry if financially we will be ok.. how has every one else found this? I'm also worried that socially this might not be the best option because he also has social difficulties I don't know if I would be making it worse for him to learn social interactions if he isn't at school.

I would also take my dd out of school if I did it with my ds as she to is very clever and is always telling me she's bored.. she was gifted when she first started school (assessed in her first year) but this has gone down hill and she is just getting by now (shes in yr 3) which I find very frustrating.

Any help I would really really appreciate. I have mentioned this to my family but they say I can't do that! and all kids would stay off school if asked.. so really unsure what to do although deep down I want to take them out. Thanks

Shoot me if you want but I am a teacher and have never heard of ODD. It sounds like a condition that many teenagers have...
Joke aside, have considered moving DS to another school with better SEN provision?
If you are a single parent and are planning to home school it strikes me that you will have a lot of roles to fulfill for one person.
If DS struggles socially, taking him out of school will not help but make things worse IMO.

If your daughter is just getting by now, maybe she is not G and T after all... You could always provide her with extension activities at home rather than taking her out of school altogether.
You guessed it, I am not in favour of home education!

For you ElsieR ODD:)

ElsieR - I'm puzzled as to why you would post on a home-ed forum advising against home-ed to someone who might benefit from it when you have no understanding of home-ed and are prejudiced against it anyway.

Jomoo: I have no experience with the conditions that your son has and so couldn't give you any worthwhile advice. Except to say that I have met home-educators who are single parents. And I have heard and know of parents whose sen children have thrived once out of the school environment.
Hopefully, someone with more experience than me will be along soon to give you some advice that is more useful to you.

I have changed my screen name..
ElsieR I am also not sure why you chose to post on this. The fact that as a teacher you have never heard of odd just highlights to me why school has been such a challenge.. perhaps as teachers you should have to complete training on some less known disorders? If that was an attempt to suggest it does not exist then all I can say is that unless you have lived with such a child then you will never understand how awful it is for the child and parents.
I may have worded this post giving the wrong impression.. it ended up being more of a rant on my behalf sorry. My son wants nothing more than to have friends, do well at school, fit in etc. but finds that incredibly difficult - he will not move to another school because he has a few friends at the moment and he it is a case of sticking with what is familiar with him.

My ds was G&T according to her teacher when she first started school and during her first years in school.. I was told she would go up a year although this did not happen and when I asked why I was told that the headteacher did not agree with putting children up a year.. so that was not me just assuming that she was a gifted.
Thank you Juuule :)

How do you cope financially now? Think about how you can alter that to work with losing that 6 hours a day of state-funded childcare. Is there family who could help out with looking after the children while you work for some of the time? Remember that HE doesn't all have to be done by the mum (an Aunty or Grannie might be able to take on some of the responsibility), and that it definitely does NOT have to happen 9-3 every day.

I'd have a clear idea of how to make things work financially and practically, and then just go for it. There is a HE single parents yahoo support list here

go for it!

because he also has social difficulties I don't know if I would be making it worse for him to learn social interactions if he isn't at school.

You may find that it would be better. Your DS and you would be in control of his social interactions and he would be able to walk away if he was stressed. You'd be on hand to talk to him, remind him of the strategies you'd decided to apply and help him to work his way through the minefield. You'd also be able to talk to him about it afterwards because you'd know what had happened, because you'd be there.

If someone posts that they are trying to decide whether to HE, then presumably they want both sides of the case? In which case the views of someone who does not favour HE would be as useful, if not more useful than the usual"HE is wonderful, no problems, not a cloud in the sky" love fest?

You can do that, so your family are offering incorrect information.

Not all kids would choose home education, though quite a large number would jump at a day off here and there. Snow days seem very popular.

This online list (which can be joined from this page) is very welcoming to parents who are considering home education for their children with special needs:

www.he-special.org.uk

Am not pro any ?one size fits all? education, or dismissing any form of it, if it works.:)

I know a child with all pervasive ODD and frankly it?s a pretty awful situation for his (L/P) mum, regardless of if he?s in school, h/e or neither. She has my respect. The amount of energy and reserves needed to cope 24/7 without respite, was huge, but she found him easier to manage with the flexibility H/E gave her, and apparently being surrounded by other h/e kids with very different and varied structures made triggers rather less obvious.

After several years of school disasters, exclusions, etc, then several more of h/e he got to a point where he successfully went to an unusual school that?s pretty much run by the kids themselves.

As a L/P H/eing an sen child, alongside other exhausting carers roles, ElsieR?s not wrong that ?you would have a lot of roles to fulfill for one person? (though you?d have one less of ?helpless mother supporting unhappy situation?) It may be however the only way you can get the needs met.

But yes you might be overwhelmed. Only you will be able to tell what you can and can?t do, or how bad things need to get before anything would be better.

My (ASD) child?s social struggles have been sorted out by h/eing, as his education now includes teaching him functioning well in an N/T world rather than watching him fail to get it by osmosis amidst claims that school is as good as socialising gets for kids like him.
(Also been helped by the noticeable personal qualities of most H/e children we?ve met.:))

If your boy?s as energy consuming as my friend?s, and I was intending to h/e, I?d leave his sister in school until I?d definitely settled and sorted her brother, and then if I thought I could provide better than she was getting, go for it.

@seeker: "If someone posts that they are trying to decide whether to HE, then presumably they want both sides of the case? In which case the views of someone who does not favour HE would be as useful, if not more useful than the usual"HE is wonderful, no problems, not a cloud in the sky" love fest?"

I agree. It's good to have both sides. However, only well-informed opinions are helpful. Wild speculation by people who have no experience is useless and annoying. There's plenty of that available from random strangers in the bus queue already.

If I were wondering whether it would be a good idea to emigrate to Kenya, I would be interested in opinions from people who'd lived there and liked it as well as people who'd lived there and found it difficult. I wouldn't be at all interested in hearing the views of people who weren't even sure where Kenya was! It's offensive for such people to come along and say, "I think that's in Africa, isn't it? Those people all live in mud huts and speak funny languages, don't they, so it's a daft idea to think of moving there. You'll only catch a horrible disease and die."

I second the recommendation of the HE-Special list. It's quite a good place to get balanced, well-informed views from parents with experience of school and home education. Many people there have had their children in and out of school over the years, as the child's needs evolve or the available school provision changes.

"However, only well-informed opinions are helpful"

You see, my issue with this is that the prevailing view on mumsnet seems to be that if you are well informed, you must be pro HE - and any even remotely negative view is the product of ignorance or misinformation.

Maybe talk to other local home ed people (esp those with sen children) and see what support is about in your local authority. (SEN not quite as straightforward for HE sometimes, depends on the condition.) As a lone parent, it could get a bit lonely sometimes.

However, I think the principle of home ed is a wonderful one, and even if it's just for a while it could be just what your DC needs. There will be other ways he could gradually succeed socially rather than at school.

In your shoes, I would definitely visit ALL your local schooling options and talk to 'both sides' to see the pluses and minuses. I do think the system is stacked against HE. Certainly for the funding. Schools get paid per head to educate, but parents get nothing as far as I know. Check out possible subsidies for education materials, leisure centre/museum visits etc. And find out about the LS home ed officer, I think how helpful they are varies from one place to another.

Good luck!

There's no budget for a parent to electively home educate, and tbh I'm not sure that's wrong, but if a parent can prove that their child's SEN needs can't be met by their LEA, they can go after funding for it, either through a private specialist placement, or through H/E. (if they can show how they'll spend the budget) Both these options can be named on part 4 of a statement.

In 2009 Essex gave a group of parents who refused to send their kids to an uder acheiving school, £10,450 to pay for tutors from I suspect the desire to avoid adverse publicity.
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/5120448/Parents-get-10000-state-grant-to-pay-for-home-schooling.html

You don't know what you can achieve, until you actually have a go at it.

"You see, my issue with this is that the prevailing view on mumsnet seems to be that if you are well informed, you must be pro HE - and any even remotely negative view is the product of ignorance or misinformation."

It wasn't ElsieR's negativity which caused me to jump to the conclusion that she had no knowledge of home education. It was the concern about a parent fulfilling multiple roles (only likely to be a problem in a formal teaching environment) and about home education causing increased difficulties with social skills (which could conceivably be true, but is vanishingly rare according to HE parents, most of whom say the opposite). These are the worries of someone who has never seen home education up close. I would lay good money on it.

There can be disadvantages to home education, no doubt about it - but these aren't the ones! The real disadvantages of HE, those which are experienced by a substantial number of people, you will see discussed on other threads.

But I don;t agree. I think that there are issues that need to be addressed about a parent having multiple roles and about the social interactions of HE children. I'm not saying that they are necessarily disadvantages - but they are issues which need to be addrsessed more seriously than the usual mumsnet "Oh, it'll be fine!"

And as far as I can see the only problems that are ever talked about are concerned with bureauocracy and legislation, not about HE per se. "If only the authorities would leave us alone everything would be fine"

seeker, I fear I am starting to trample over jomoo's thread with my own agenda here, namely the agenda of discouraging people from expressing authoritative-sounding opinions about HE when they have no actual experience of it. I'd be glad to continue the general discussion with you and others elsewhere if you want to start another thread.

No doubt the OP will post here again if she feels that ElsieR's concerns may be relevant to her particular child. I hope I don't seem to be closing that avenue off! I just don't wish to be annoying or distracting by having a spat with you which is unrelated to her topic.

Does that sound like a good plan?

Good point, Saracen. Sorry, Jomoo - I rode my hobbyhorse roughshod over your thread!