after all the stress daughter has changed her mind!!!!

[purplypink]

well, i posted a few weeks ago about telling the in-law, ao here goes...

we told the in-laws, as we thought, they were very negative but by then we had made up our minds and my hubby was so strong!!! felt like such a relief to have it all said and done.

I phoned the school on the monday morning head was a complete idiot and it just confirmed to us that we had made the right decision.

that same day we attended the local home ed group, which was great and really supportive, my dd1 was different again and was actually quite confident (well for her!) and I really enjoyed it.

HOWEVER.... things have changed in a short period of time, my DD1 said she missed being in a school and would like to go to a small school!!!! she refused to even talk about old school (not that we would ever send her back there, it makes me cry to think we sent her for so long) but would like a fresh start.

we have found a country school about 6 miles away with only 10 students per class. only thing is she wants to try it till the summer and then see how she likes it?

we are now really unsure what to do.

does any one else have any advise.

It seems to me that you could easily go either way: try the new school and see how your daughter likes it, or try home ed first with the promise that she can go to the new school next year if she wants. Very often kids have to check out their options in order to be fully on board. Your daughter might need to be sure in her own mind of whether school is a possibility for her. This is probably quite an uncertain time for her.

HE parents are somewhat unusual in that most of us let our children make the final decision as to whether to go to school. It can be difficult to home educate an unwilling child, the more so because you'll get a lot of criticism for doing so from other people... whereas if you were sending an unwilling child to school you'd be in the same boat as a lot of other parents and people would be sympathetic, because after all we all know that "children have to go to school."

Some parents do home educate a child who would rather go to school, either because the child is too young to be allowed to decide (possibly true of a six year old, especially if you feel school would harm her) or because the child is suffering terribly at school but does not have the perspective to recognise that she needs to leave. An example of the latter is my friend who removed her suicidal nine year old from school over her protestations; it turned out that the girl had believed she ought to stay out of loyalty to a friend who was also being bullied. I don't think it would be unreasonable to tell your daughter that she has to try home education for a while and then you'll see how it goes. She has only been HE for a few weeks and hasn't had a chance to find her feet yet. If she'd just started school and was having a bit of a wobble you might well insist she carried on going for a while longer before making a decision.

On the third hand is there any risk that if you start off with HE and later want to try the small school, there might be no place available there? I know you said it only has ten children per class but I also know that some small schools don't have a large capacity and it could still be the case that it is nearly full! It could be worth asking the headteacher about that. If the school is nearly full then perhaps it would make sense to grab the place while you can, knowing that she can always leave later.

You could still home educate your younger child regardless of whether the older one ends up in school.

What's the new school like?

sorry for starting a thread then disappearing but our internet went kerput! back online now!
We went and had a visit at the school, we all really liked it. we applied and were told it would go to appeal, but beause she was being 'home educated and the powers above wanted to see her back in mainstream education' she was given a place and HER choice was to start monday!!! so far she has really enjoyed it, she says its very quiet, the children are able to play with different year groups (not able in other school) and the teachers all talk nicely to them!
I am sad not to be home edding as I think we would have done really well at it but she had to have the final decision and we will give it a good shot.
We decided not to tell her that home edding is still an option as i dont want her to think she can do it if things get tough or she has a bad week but at the bottom of my heart I know we can still do that.