Hi everybody!
Over the last couple of days I have been giving serious thought to taking my 7 year old out of school to home educate her, I have read as much information as I can icluding stories from people who choose to educate their children at home. The problem I have is other peoples stories make mine seem as if I am over reacting to a situation. Perhaps I am and the best thing for her would be to leave her where she is.
The situation is this, since my daughter first started nursery I had concerns that she didnt seem to quite fit in with other children, when we were waiting outside in the morning she had little if any contact with the other children who would run around playing together, if she tried to approach them to talk or join in there seemed to be an awkwardness (not from her) or they would ignore her. I found this odd because she was a very confident well spoken child, I raised these concerns with the school on numerous occasions and they assured me there was no problem. This problem persisted and during a parents evening when my daughter was in year one the teacher expressed that she too had concerns and they extended to her ability to concentrate in school, the teacher had to keep her at her desk during class time and had to set her work seperatly because she would not take in any information unless it was one to one, however her work was to a high standard and she was well ahead of other children in her class, it didnt make sense to me so I spoke to the school nurse who put me in touch with a child psychologist, after a meeting with her she thought it was best to view my daughter at school. After this happened she contacted me to say that she was not at all concerned and there was not a problem at all in school and a couple of days later the teacher told me that there was no issue in class and that there had been no need to involve anyone?? By this time I just wrote the school off, we were moving to a new area so I just kept my fingers crossed that it would resolve.
Starting the new school was fine and for the first couple of weeks there was no problem, until problems with with twin boys in her class arose, they are horrible and very badly behaved, she has been physically hurt by them on countless occasions and the thing that they say they want to do to her are just disgraceful, I have been in contact with the school about the issue and they assure me they are dealing with the situation but its not that they are targeting her, they are doing it to everyone but the other children dont seem to be bothered by it, they just think thats how they are. To add to it the same problem of her not intergrating is again apparent, the teacher has set her a target to try and play with the other cildren at break times instead of playing by herself but my daughter tells me that the other girls tell her there are too many playing or something similar so she cant join in. The same issue occurs out of school, when we first moved in children were knocking for her all the time then it slowed down and now it has stopped altogether, one boy even told her not to knock for him anymore because he didnt like her and didnt want to play with her. I spoke about this to his mother as we are friendly and she had been wondering why they dont play together anymore so she asked him about it and her told her its because my daughter is wierd and she says wierd things so nobody likes her.
I do agree with the schooling system but obviously it doesnt work for every child. I'm concerned that her experience of school is so negative it may cause her to give up altogether when she is older, she is ahead of the children in her class in every subject, the education she is receiving is great and is not suffering due to the issues with other children so would not want to jeopordise that. I just want her to be safe and happy.