Is it ever worth HE your child if they are not having significant problems with mainstream education?

[bunjies]

I have started to become very interested in the idea of HE and am slowly wading through all the info on this board and other websites. This may have already been answered eslewhere (so please feel free to tell me if this is the case) but I am wondering if it is worth taking my children out of the school system to HE them when they are plodding along. Not doing brilliantly but ok. I do have some low level issues with ds' attitude to school. I have posted elsewhere about homework etc and I am getting increasingly fed up with having the same old argument every night about the level of work he should be doing. Also, dd1 is not happy at her school as she hasn't found it easy to make friends with anyone, esecially as her class is mainly boys and the girls have all known each other since reception. Would it be counter productive to take her out of such an environment so that she would have even less contact with peers? Also, as the only earner I don't know how we would practically provide a HE as dh is not keen on being the educator IYSWIM.

Any views?

Hello bunjies.
This is the first question I asked as we have niggly issues with school. However, as we looked into it more deeply I became aware of other things I hadn't really thought of as issues. Time is one of our problems and by h.edding our dd we hope to have a lot more free time. Our dd has been at school for four school years and the decision hasn't been taken lightly.
I can't help you with the work aspect as I am sahm and dh works from home. However, I have heard of others combining the two.
I will say as others will tell you, your dcs will need to be 100% behind this and it is as much their decision as yours imo. It is a hard decision if they are happy and settled at school.

The situation is not the same, but my DC were electively home educated (EHE) from the start. It is not necessary to have school-related problems before deciding to home educate.

If DD1 is not happy, taking her out may (paradoxically) improve things as she would then be freer to choose her own friends from out-of-school activities (and HE groups if there are suitable ones you could attend).

I was the only earner while my DC were young and have worked throughout their EHE. I was fortunate in working from home but EHE is very flexible - you do not have to be doing things between 9 and 3, so you can fit around most work.

How old are your DC and which county are you in?

Thanks both for your helpful comments. We're still at very early stages in our thinking and so any perspectives on it are gratefully received.

I was talking to dh about it last night and whilst I know he wants the best for the children I can tell he isn't keen on the idea. We have some other questions about it but I'll look through the board & see if they're answered elsewhere before posting them.

BTW we've got 3 dcs - ds is 13, dd1 is 9 and dd2 is 7. Oh & we're on herts/beds border.

Although our DDs came out of school, if I ever had another I would home educate them from the start. There are so many benefits to it I can't even begin. If my girls decide to home educate their children from the start in the future, I'll be more than happy to support them. The only reason I didn't do it from the start is that I didn't really know about it or think about it as an option. There's so many benefits to home ed and very few drawbacks. I can't see a good reason for sending them to school any more.

Home ed needn't mean less contact with peers, btw. For DD2, it has meant more contact with peers. When she sees friends now (which is often) she positively enjoys herself. At school she was always what I would call "alone in a crowd". Having people all around you doesn't necessarily make a social experience.

Hi all I took my girls out of school finally 3 weeks ago it's been the best decision we have ever made my girls are 7 and 5 the eldest was top of her class and the tacher said to us they are going to hang back for the others to catch up with her i said you should be pushing her forward which they wouldnt do and then it came to a point when she was coming home crying saying she was bored and doing baby work so that was it.I got a lot of help off others in the uk and I even manage to post a daily diary on a site I made to help other parents to teach at home with links to free sites and resources and maybe give an insight of what i do with my girls. We're a family of jehovahs witnesses so we do quite an in depth r,e lesson. Each to their own so please no negative comments i'm just here about education. Hope this helps someone.
homeedinthetruth.weebly.com

Hello bunjies....we have made the decision to home ed DD age 13 and DS age 8 as from the new school year. DD has never settled into school and as she is due to start secondary school in Sept this has prompted us to look into home-ed. She has found year 8 socially difficult and feels she's always on the outside looking in as 'musicposy' said "alone in a crowd". DS plods along at school but as he finishes year 3 I feel that he will be lost in the system due to his incapacity for conform to ' sit still, be quiet, read this, write that ' , he's more of a hands on little fellow who loves to chat and discuss things which always seems to be frowned upon at school. Neither see their school peers outside of school only on rare occassions so this won't be missed and as we've joined a couple of local groups hoping to find new friends for them there. Somedays we're all really excited about starting the journey, other days a bit apprehensive but we'll never know unless we try. We live in Bedfordshire.

We decided to HE 5 years ago and have never regretted it, even on our difficult days. We have DS 10 and DDs 8, 5 and 3. Re. having less contact with peers, if DD is finding it hard making friends at school, maybe making friends in other environments e.g. sports/ clubs/ meeting other HErs will be easier. She can also have more varied types of social interaction in the community rather than being mainly with children of her own age all day. With regards to income, my DH is self employed and I do admin for him at home, but there also a lot of blogs etc. out there on HEing frugally.

HTH and best wishes in whatever you decide to do for their education :)