Can I Home Ed and work full time?

[prisonerofazkaban]

My DD is 14 and has been out of school since easter and has recently been tutored at home by and Home and Hospital tutor provided by the LEA. The purpose of the tutor is to stop her faling behind and help her gradually get back into school. If is becoming more apparent that DD has no intention of ever returning to school so i feel like we are wasting the tutors time. They have described her as having "Anxiety based School Refusal". She has been going to CAMHS for some time now and we have met with a EWO who have all been helpful. I am beginning to think that I should give into DD and let her be home educated. I have no idea where to start or what form it should take. Do I have to actually teach her or do I just provide her with the materials to "teach herself". Both myself and DH have busy stressful jobs and I'm not sure I could fit in teaching her aswell. I know that sounds awful but I don't think that teaching her on an evening when I'm in from work would be a good idea. We have 2 young ds and it is always chaos on an evening so I don't think that this is a very good environment for learning.

Any advice would be appreciated!

The problem is not actually school, no school is going to suit. She has anxiety disorders and the problems are within herself. She is working with CAMHS, which seems the best bet, especially OP getting feedback on the situation and how she can help. To cut off the main help and advice seems foolhardy to me-especially several months down the line.
She doesn't appear to me to be a candidate for having hours and hours alone at home- educating herself. The best advice was ommmward, at the start, who said that it needed real 'out of the box' thinking to find an answer.
Telling an adolescent with mental health problems that she can manage perfectly well on her own with the internet seems dangerous. First and foremost she needs interaction with people-probably starting with her grandparents- if they are the ones who are available in the day.(it doesn't mean that you have failed as a parent if you let the grandparents take a more active part).

I would say from my experience of home ed with teenagers that it would not be a good idea to work full time. I work part time and it has been very hard to juggle everything. A lot of teenagers need to be supervised, coached and cajoled especially if they have been used to going to school. You wont have the energy for that if you are working fulltime. There is a lot of peer pressure on kids to drink and do other things these days and it is very hard for the kids who say no to this stuff. Have an honest chat with her and ask her what she wants to do and take it from there.

I don't know if this would interest you, but have you considered coaching? As in, life coaching? I realise it's an uncommon solution and one that many people don't know much about but I'm currently studying to be a youth coach (I am not offering myself or selling anything - I'm not even qualified yet!). It's a bit more specialised than life coaching because the issues children (up to 18) have, are different to those adults face.

A youth coach may be the ideal solution and there are actually lots of them about, some based in schools, some in the community. Coaching isn't like counselling, it's got a very different focus. I find that young people respond very well to coaching because it's essentially problem solving. To put it simply, a counsellor or therapist may try to understand where something has gone wrong in the past, so that they can rationalise/overcome the 'trigger', fix a 'deficit' in your child's behaviour/coping abilities. A coach wouldn't dwell on the past at all - a coach helps you come to a positive decision about your future, based on where you are, they assume (and as a result, confer onto their client) that you are absolutely capable of making a good decision (with help). BIG confidence booster there?

I think it might work for your DD because it would be a way of working through her anxiety not as an illness, but as a problem to be solved - it may be empowering for her, even at 14, to realise she can make choices about her own life that are about acting, not reacting. They may not be 100% free choices (at 14, you have to fit in with your parents and siblings etc) but there are choices nonetheless. If she's really entrenched right now, a coach could help lift her focus from what she wants right now, to what she wants long term.

I don't want to promote anyone in particular, but I know there are a lot of very good specialist youth coaches out there, and I'm sure if you google you might find someone in your area to try? If you don't want to stop the counselling, they may be willing to work alongside that.

btw I don't mean as a way of schooling her - I literally only mean as a way of making a decision about how to educate, most youth coaches do parent coaching too so it could be a family experience.