Can anyone tell me about the deschooling process in teenagers?

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me again

I am rather getting ahead of myself here as it really seems like DSD (13) wants to be HEd but it needs organising first. Exciting though - we really feel she will be better catered for at home because she does not learn or show her ability in the normal schoolish way.

I'm just wondering what deschooling might 'look like' to the parents. She's miserable at school and utterly exhausted, so she will be glad to be out of there, and she never enjoyed traditional learning due to struggles with dyslexic-type symptoms. But understandably she has a schooled mindset - in terms of thinking 'in subjects' (ie something is either history OR maths OR whatever else) and that learning only happens at set times. I know this is normal and we shouldn't expect it to happen overnight, but are we supposed to try and help it along? By her age I guess we'd expect it to take about 7 months.

Our view of learning is very different from hers, and crucially from her mum/siblings who she lives with. I wonder what it'll be like for her going home to them doing HW etc and feeling so different?

Also because she's always struggled she really hates writing and reading, so should I really expect this to resolve itself after a while? I know in my head, and from reading threads on here, that it's likely to work out, but it's different when it's someone you love... Remembering all the times she's cried over HW and spelling tests and knowing that suddenly the pressure could be on us to get her through just makes me worry.

Would really appreciate any thoughts :)

Have PMed you.

Not heading for bed, so I can post something now. :)

I think it is quite a difficult situation. Most people deschooling will have the DC living with them and will be able to do more or less what they like. In your position, I think I'd position it as starting the summer holidays early (well, they start in June in Scotland, so you could decide you're following those terms but be English again by August :)).

If she wants to be doing "stuff", you could suggest a project for the next month or two weeks - making an outfit, cooking a complete meal from scratch (including shopping), finding out about a local item of interest, planning a holiday away, it does not really matter what the topic is as long as she is interested. She can do some reading, writing, maths, etc. in almost any topic and you can organise trips out as well.

As for reading and writing, you could read to her anything that needs reading. With writing, if using a computer is easier, then she can do that or you would write/type to her dictation.

Have you met any EHE people in your area yet?

Hi

My son has never been to school so I can't speak from direct personal experience, but through my volunteer work for Education Otherwise in the past I have been in touch with a lot of families who have taken their children out of school. It seems to me that the key things are to recover a sense of self-worth, for the young person to believe that he/she is "not stupid" and in the longer term to wake up every morning looking forward to the day rather than dreading it. This will be achieved in different ways by different people. Some need to do nothing formal or structured and think of it almost as convalescing or recovering from school. Others might need to plan small scale achievable goals with a lot of one to one support because the freefall of complete lack of structure and endless responsibility for making choices is too overwhelming.

Here are a couple of dyslexia links which people have sent me in the past and said they found useful

www.xtraordinarypeople.com/
rossmountney.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/dont-call-me-stupid/

Thank you both (and SD Thanks for the pm I may take you up on it when I'm not so ridiculously snowed under with my own studies :()

Unfortunately the school aren't able to have a meeting yet, but we are meeting with DSD (not her mum) in a few days to have a proper chat about her feelings/hopes/plans. Also to explain a bit more about how HE/flexi might work. If anyone has any ideas for this I'd really appreciate it :) (will also be bringing back any of her questions to put to you clever bunch!)