Help! DS hates not being at school!

[Piglette]

I'm looking for reassurance here. I had my 13 year old son in floods of tears last night begging to go back to school after 2 weeks of HE. We look him out because the quality of teaching at school was dreadful, he wasn't working, had achieved nothing in 2 years and his school weren't interested in helping. He says he likes learning at home but misses the whole school experience, his friends, working in a group etc.

Is this a sign that he's not suited to HE or is it just early days? Please help I'm distraught that we've made the wrong decision!

LastSummer, if you don't mind me asking, why is her home education solitary? Is there nothing going on near you that you have found? Are you unable to take her out to meet up with others in the day? Have you just not "gelled" with anyone?

It's not meant to be a criticism, but home education shouldn't need to be solitary unless you want it to be. Mine kick around with other kids before, during and after school times, every day. If I think of, say the last fortnight, I cannot think of a single day they haven't been out and about meeting others. Too much so, sometimes!! It would be nice to be a bit quieter and sit around at home but it never seems to happen! My DD1 in particular would have found home education a miserable experience if she was just stuck at home all day with me. Not that she doesn't like me, just that she's a social animal!

x post with Julie

I remember that feeling so vividly from my childhood! I hadn't been to school butbI was so very jealous of the groups of scehoolfriends I knew. They were my friends too, from BrowniesnandnGuides and choir and orchestra and all the rest, but I was always justnon thenoutside ofthe group because we didn't havebthe shared experience ofnthe school day. I had other he kids as friend's too, but they were only friend's because they were the children of my parents children who were he tot and that was all we had in common.

Maybe there weren't the home ed children around then, seeker. It's sad you always felt on the outside.

You'd probably find things are different nowadays. There are over 150 families on our local facebook home ed group alone. We meet so many home ed people my children have been guilty of actually forgetting that some people go to school and asking schooled friends for sleepovers on weekdays . You could never feel you didn't have shared experience!

This is all so encouraging, I can't thank you all enough. Certainly I recognise the not wanting to work alone scenario that several of you describe and I accept that he needs that. Whilst I love the idea of 'deschooling' and taking time off to have fun, I can't help panicking that if he does end up returning to school, he will have missed so much work because we've just been enjoying life. He's already 2 years behind from having done no work at school!

Our aim in all of this is to get him some good GCSE's so presumably we have to decide now whether to go the deschooling/autonomous HE route/IGCSE or stick to the NC and get him back to school to do GCSEs... then how do you know which GCSE course to follow??

We are trying to meet up with other local HE kids, but most of them seem to be younger and teenagers seem to be a bit thin on the ground around here (Tring/Berkhamsted) but early days! 13 is such an important and impressionable age that the idea of going down the wrong path is very frightening.

How do you know he's two years behind?

If he's currently two years behind, what do you have to lose from following his lead?

The someone-else's-agenda route doesn't seem to have worked out brilliantly for him, does it?

Was he happy in school?

Poor lad. Send him back to school and tutor him yourself in the evenings to get him up to speed if that is what his work needs. Teenagers often need a kick up the backside when it comes to schoolwork.

If he is not onboard with HE then he will massively resent you in the long run. And yes, I do have experience of HE. How is he going to meet a girlfriend/have other normal teenage experiences if he is home educated and alienated? I realise not all HE children are isolated but still.

Julie/Posy: We're in a fairly remote part of Greece. Home education is illegal for Greek nationals, so all the other kids are at the hopelessly inadequate local school.
Piglette: You don't need to worry about starting work on GCSEs for another year. Meanwhile, your son may find BBC KS3 Bitesize and Mathletics a painless way to catch up with his school-going pals.

LastSummer, that makes sense. :) I have a friend, in a different country, in a similar situation.

Piglette, agree strongly with LastSummer's point above. He's only 13 so you can safely take a year learning whatever you want and still have time for GCSEs. Or maybe pick just one subject this year that interests him and look at the GCSE for that, and spend the rest of the time just doing whatever he wishes. I wouldn't plough through the KS3 curriculum, it's a complete waste of time. IMO, of course.

If school has been a bad experience for him, you may find he learns a surprising amount just being, with no pressure. When my DD1 came out of school at 12, her spelling was atrocious. Years of school spelling tests had done absolutely nothing to improve it. Within a year it was faultless. I did barely one single minute of spelling with her that year. But she got hooked on a website where they had a lot of fan fiction, and she got into writing it. (She usually complained about writing for me - that was work ) I think people on the website pulled up bad spelling, and she had and incentive to check it. She's just achieved an A in English Language IGCSE at 15, with very little formal English lessons since she left school at 12. It doesn't necessarily have to be the hard graft you think.

It can be harder to find HE teenagers when you first come out. My eldest, who came out at 12, certainly found it harder than my youngest, who came out at 8.They will be out there, but they're often off doing their own thing rather than going to groups with parents. Ask around, see if anyone of the HE people you have met know of any. Maybe someone on here knows what goes on in your area. Might be worth a thread with a separate heading.

Sarah - Sent from my iPad

Mine has just gone back to school (first year middle, 11yo) after 2 years HE.

And it wasn't for the 7.50-1.37 (with one ten minute break) hours or the avalanche of homework.

He had three sports clubs, over 15 hours a week of youth club and going to play with his mates all the time while we were HEing, but he still missed the social aspect of school and asked to go back.(about ten minutes after I triple checked he wanted to continue with HE and ordered an expensive load of books)

Kids are all different and some will always yearn for that "in the thick of it" enviroment of school regardless of what style of HE their parents offer.

2 weeks is still early days so that might not the case for him, but don't beat yourself up if HE and him turn out not to be the perfect fit.

How about asking him to give his all, to catch up as much as possible in English and Maths (with your help) over the next couple of months with a view to returning to school in a better place ?

If the objective is motivating to him (do the work, get back to school) that is more positive than "if HE fails I can get back to where I want to be". Possibly the focus on improvement rather than missing school will give him time to adjust and appreciate HE, but if not, at least the time out will have gone some way to improving his educational foundation before he does go back, which might have a knock on effect back at school.

I feel for you love, you must feel awfully between a rock and a hard place.

Was he part of the decision to HE?

Lastsummer says - "If school has been a bad experience for him"

Was school a bad experience for him?

and as seeker asks, "Was he part of the decision to HE?"

Did he want to be HE and has now changed his mind?

I know you say he is 2 years behind. So is he still at the level that he was in y6? is that what you mean? Sometimes children don't move up the levels much in the first year at secondary due to all the new things they have to take in just moving into the secondary school environment (lots of things to learn unrelated to subjects). If this was a problem for him then I can understand the decision to HE, but if he was happy at school and you brought him out because his levels were a problem for you, then it might not have been such a good thing imo. You say the teachers are no help. Could this be because they recognise some children have a dip and he seems to be working well enough so would expect things to pick up later? Therefore, they can't see the problem? Although, I would have expected them to have explained this to you.

I realise I'm just speculating but without a bit more background it's hard to know what to say. I just think that being in 'floods of tears' and 'misses the whole school experience, his friends, working in a group ' seems quite a sad situation for him if the only problem was that he was 2years behind. If he was happy at school I think I'd concentrate on finding out why he was 2years behind and addressing that first.