What will happen if I don't deschool?

[Colleger]

I'm getting quite anxious and my confidence in all things home ed is dwindling as I near the date that he would be back at school. My lazy bones wants me to deschool but my stressy side is worrying because of his age.

Tell me the cons of not deschooling please!

Remind me how old he is?

Why wouldn't you give yourselves time to get school out of your mindset, and to relax into home educating, when home education is so damned efficient compared to school, however you go about it?

Are you in touch with home educators local to you, for a confidence boost?

He would be starting Year 7 so soon to be 12. The problem I'm finding is that most HE'ers have young kids and mostly very young kids. It seems to be common in our area to HE until Y6 and then put into secondary school. Another issue I have found is that of the ones that are around his age, most of the HE'ers have been doing it for so long that they don't feel the need to make friendships as they have their own established ones. :(

I am about to start HE with dd also 12 and should be going to secondary in sept, i can also only find groups with younger children or fully established ones. I am very nervous about HE and not even sure how to start it!!

Group activities do tend to dwindle at secondary level, I've found, though it might be different in areas where HE is more common. Most of ds's socialising takes place in non-HE activities and with friends he's met outside of the HE network.

As for deschooling, I think it perhaps depends on the child and the family. I didn't deschool as such when ds came out of school at nearly 10 - we just ticked over gently until we settled into things. It's been fine for him/us - he actually liked school routine and working, it was the lack of autistic support and bullying that he struggled with and once that was sorted at home he could get on better with academic stuff. He still finds work a challenge but that's the ADHD element and would be the same however he was educated.

I guess your path will depend on what the issues are for your son, and how you think it best to address them.

I still cant get my head around deschooling idea.

kids sometimes need a break.

but hes just had 6weeks summer hols-would that count.

I would be tempted to maybe start the main core topics just a little at a time.

so maths, english, maybe science.
if hes arty let him draw.
try get some physical activity in the week.
maybe cooking-f he enjoys that.

then phase in other topics of the winter term such as

geography
history.

guess it depends if you automonous or structured.

good luck guys

Hi

As I never tire of saying, my son is now 19.

Every single August/September I would watch as parents got all of a twitch and signed up for educational programmes and bought loads of stuff from catalogues and asked each other about IGCSEs and Open University, and announced that they were going to do xyz "just for an hour or so a day"

I guess it's a bit like people mortifying the flesh and eating only grapefruit or signing up for the gym after Christmas feasting?

It generally passed. Till the next time. But it was definitely cyclical.

I wouldn't have minded so much about people buying stuff (well, apart from the anti-capitalist in me) but there were people who subsequently felt worse about themselves or frustrated with their offspring when they'd bought stuff which their children didn't use.

6 weeks wasn't long enough for my children, they were so badly damaged by school.....and it took a great deal longer for dh and me to get education is 'sitting down and being taught/doing worksheets' mentality out of our heads.
You'll know your own family best but....
we were really quite structured almost straight away and the kids hated it. They really didn't want school at home, although at that stage they didn't know what they wanted....and we certainly didn't.
In the end we took advice from other more experienced home educators and allowed a period of deschooling, with no emphasis on anything educational at all. We just did what ever interested them and us.....and eventually we turned round and finally 'saw' just how much they had learned, they had gained in confidence and got their old spark for learning back.
We've been autonomously educating ever since.
The long period of deschooling helped enormously for us.

and going back to your panic about his age, besides knowing how efficient HE is, education-once you are out of the school mindset- isn't a race, your child's timetable is his own. He doesn't have to do GCSEs at 16....if he wants to do them at all, he can do them early, or later. he doesn't have to have 10 or more GCSEs etc. One of my children has two, the other two don't have any. Hasn't stopped them following their own paths and ending up in Uni level education.
We've found with home ed, a whole world of experiences have opened up to them, that they wouldn't have had if they had been in school-and it's those experiences that have made them stand out from the crowd when interviewed for FE/Uni level courses.

And when we didn't have enough older children HE meetings local to us, we created a meeting that they would want to come to, advertised it and enjoy the resulting friendships still.

Good luck

Julie.
I love your posts, you make it sound so easy though. At the moment I am changing my mind daily from a full structured time table form 8.30 am until 3.00pm to thinking of doing nothing at all.
I am worrying almost constantly about the start of september, although we will be on holiday, when dds friends go back to school. This wasn't planned this was as booked before decided to H.ed, but has worked out well.
I don't know what I am doing nor what we will do, I know so many say that H.ed dcs can achieve alot more than schooled, but I'm guessing I won't realise this until I see the evidence. I have read books, argued my point and defended our choices now its wait and see what happens.
Exitement and trepidation are thoughts that spring to mind.

MTPP, even I know you don't need an 8:30-3 day! Lol!

I've swung back to music again with one tutorial of French and Latin a week and 15 mins maths a day.

Tomorrow will be different...

Colleger.

Ha Ha I know really, but have still got a lovely timetable all colour coordinated with week one and week two to break the monotonony.
On this timetable is as you guessed, Music all morning. Alternating different instruments between wk 1 and 2. Then during the afternoon Maths, English, Italian, French, History, Science, Geography, P.E, Art.

Tomorrow will be different... lol.