Regretting taking kids out of school.

[apocketfulofposy]

Posting here for traffic,sorry.

I have 5 children ranging from aged 6 to 10 weeks old.

We always planned to home educate after reading a book about it when ds1 and 2 were toddlers,then when ds1 was about 4 and a half,and i was pregnant with baby number 4,i decided to give our local primary a go,partly because it was just that time where he would of been going and partly because i was finding it hard with them all at home (no family on either side for 3 hours,husband who works away monday to friday,rural ish area,i cant even drive!).

Anyway reception was ok,he liked it,made plenty of friends,dc2 and 3 went to the pre school and liked it,except dc2 had lots of issues with hitting other children and just general destructive behaviour.

When ds1 started yr1 last year he hated it from the word go,he still liked seeing his friends but he really noticed the change between mostly play to mostly lessons,plus his teacher left after a term and the new one was very strict and spoke to the children like she was some kind of prison officer.

Ds2 started reception and seemed to enjoy it but after a few weeks i was called in a few times about his hitting and destroying things,they said he just physically wasnt ready to be at schoolt hat much so put him down to half days,which was a bit of a faff for me as i was in and out all day but it was fine.It didnt seem to help though and he was behaving worse and worse at school,especially at lunchtime,but strangely his behaviour at home was getting better.

Add to this the fact i was finding it hard carting them all around everywhere and i felt crap because i kept forgetting to reply to things and i kept hearing all this micheal gove stuff,i just decided to pull them out,id been thinking about it on and off for a while and just thought do it,and id id it almost on a bit of a whim.

The first few weeks were great and we all loved the novelty of not rushing around in mornings and the kids have been playing all day,and actually one good point is that they have been getting on so much better.

But apart from that i am starting to regret taking them out,i miss the routine,i miss being able to take the babies to their groups and talking to my "mummy friends"(cringe) i miss being able to go to the shop quickly with just the double buggy,i also just dont know what to do with them,and the house is just such a mess!

I know these are'nt huge things but its starting to feel chaotic and i can feel it going back to the way it used to be,before school,and it hink i underestimated how much it did for all of us.I just dont know what to do!

Help and advice please!xxxxx

I am thrilled that I am deemed to be sensible any of the time!
Thanks for clarifying the LEA situation. It was a genuine question as I couldn't find a clear answer and wasn't sure if it differs between LEAs.

Back to the parallel conversation about LA monitoring and inspection: if LAs or (even worse, from their point of view) LA staffers become legally responsible for ensuring that all children in their area receive a suitable education, they suddenly open themselves up to massive law suits from people saying schools in that authority failed to educate them adequately, and it is the LA's fault.

From the State's point of view, financially, it is very very important that the responsibility for educating children remains with the parents/guardians.

The flip side of that (which the last labour government did not like at all) is that, as long as an education is taking place, the State and its employees have no jurisdiction over the nature, style or content of that education. We can choose to avail ourselves of the educational provision offered by the State, and that can be a marvellous thing for many many children (and, frankly, if you have school-shaped children, you are very fortunate indeed, because they can and will drink up those opportunities), or we can choose to meet our responsibilities ourselves. And the State has no more business checking up on how we choose to meet those responsibilities than it does popping in, wthout any reason to suppose ill doing, to check our fridges in case we are feeding our children too much fat (or is it sugar now? I'm getting the sense the tide has turned and fat is now ok but sugar is the fruit of the devil).

Wellllll I did have a full on conversation with a shop mannequin earlier so I may not be best placed to asses that

As far as I'm aware it's the same over all of England and Wales.

I suppose put like that it is fair enough- no different than a terrible diet etc and some children have far worse to put up with than caring parents who are inadequate as home educators. I hadn't thought of it in those terms.

That was in reply to ommmward.

I'm still waiting to hear how one person can look after 5 children including a ten week old baby and two toddlers on her own on a full time basis in a rural area with no family support, a sick husband, and not able to drive, let alone actually provide any education.

That was why I started on here happy- apparently it is no problem. It was so extreme I genuinely thought I had been caught by a wind up.
I'm not sure what happens if she is ill - she is the only person holding it together.

I have 11 dc aged 20 to 5 months and have been home edding for 10 years through babies, pregnancies, life's curveballs etc. The older dc are in college or taking GCSEs from home. If you want to talk OP please message me. Home ed can work extremely well with a large family. We used a semi structured approach, have no family support and it has been hard work, but it has been worth it.

11 children!!!

Faints

I believe that the state does have a duty re checking up on each and every childs' education in this country.

I am very surprised that human rights have not got involved.

People can generally tell if a child is malnourised, food wise.
But not education wise.

It's not much different to how lone parents with lots of children who live In Rural locations with no family support cope. You do so because you have to,some people may feel that when they are school age it's a huge help because the school have them for x amount of hours some people don't

There is a big difference between checking out all parents and all children and detecting when there is a problem.

Tamer - I'm really glad my post was helpful to you. Thank you for saying so so graciously :-)

sevensev did you read my post about why the state really does not want to be responsible for making sure each child receives a suitable education? Is it that you think the state should be legally responsible, and brace itself for the lawsuits, or is it just that you wish there was a magic way of ensuring that every child gets the best possible education? There are safety nets, at least, since educational neglect tends to go along with the kind of neglect that gets people noticed by social services (and then you can just join with me in wishing that social workers had 30 hours in the day, perfect judgment, and infinite resources...)

If you search around OPs other posts on other threads she mentions that she doesn't do any activities with her DCSs. They either self- occupy or fit in with what she's doing .
Granted this may have been before they were taken out of school but I think she also mentions something about being too lazy.
So is it a desire to truly home educate to the best of ones ability, whatever form that takes, or just a can't be bothered attitude?

Inthe,

It's genrally considered bad form to go through old posts to try and trip up posters unless they are posting about the same actual subject, context is everything,people post in different ways about different things.

I often refer to myself as lazy usually in the context of bf/ff as I say I'm far to lazy to ff,that does not mean I'm really lazy it's just the way that convo tends to go.

If the op was directly referring to her children whilst they are being HE then fair play but not if she was referring to outside of school/education time or her weekends or that sort of thing.

Ultimately the only person who knows what the op does or does not do is the op. if she is not ensuring her children get an education then she is failing and neglecting them and should be prevented from doing so. But we cannot possibly know the ins and outs of every single legitimately accepted form of education and do not have access to the information required to make a decent assessment of a total stranger on the Internet,all we can do is base our posts to her on the information availible to us that we know is relevant to her situation,anything outside of that scope is irrelevant.

Well its true i don’t do many one on one activities,and by that i mean sitting at the table sewing or whatever,i do get one on one time occasionally with them though,i am taking ds2 to the natural history museum in April just me and dh (baby will be there but she will either be asleep or breastfeeding in the sling so no trouble,she is actually the easiest out of all of them)and next weekend we are taking my daughter to Brighton to see a play.

Me and the punchy one make bread every morning,we bake most days,they help me do housework and fix things,gardening,if they need me they ask,i sort something out for them and they get on with it,as they are so close in age they spend most of the time making dens under the table or climbing the tree in the garden,or just running around pretending to be she ra and he man (dhs fault) im not needed for entertainment much but when i am i am there.We read a lot and we watch films together while i feed the baby and sometimes i play video games with my eldest.

That to me isnt entertaining them,that’s just living,and they seem pretty happy with that,they never say they are bored and they get on really well,people always say they have never seen siblings get on aswell as mine do.

Yes i think its really unfair actually,my post said nothing about the day to day goings on in my house,it was just basically saying ive had a shitty week,crap things have happened all in one go and i miss having time to myself -well not to myself but just me and the babies-that i had when they were at school.

I was tired and emotional and having a bit of a rant.I realise there are things i need to fix but at the end of the day i don’t think its anything to do with education,i need to learn how to drive and i need to organize myself better so the house doesn’t get as chaotic as it has been.That is it really,im actually happy with everything else.

I use a company called sitters who i found through mumsnet when i want to take just one or two of them out or if me and dh go out on our own,its usually the same woman that comes round,i might start using them once a week during the week as well,or just when i feel i need a few hours on my own.I think that would help.

pocket

Do you have down time and education time or do you feel the children are being educated all the time?

How would you define how you educate and would any clubs/groups/structured activities (structured is not quite the right word I mean ones not led by you stuff like swimming sports drama that sort of thing) enhance their learning and fit in with your approach?

I dont think there needs to be education time and down time,learning happens all the time from everything,it might not look like what happens at school but its still learning.I guess you have to trust that children naturally want to learn,you cant always see it but you just trust that they are,a bit like breastfeeding really!

I am happy for them to do any clubs or anything they like really,the oldest 3 can already swim as my husband has taken them swimming every week since they were a few weeks old,they can swim a width already which is pretty good though i think.I was thinking of sending my eldest to beavers but i didn’t realise there was a religious element to it and im not sure about that really.

oh and i forgot to say my daughter goes to ballet,shes only 4 but very good at it :-)

I do remember reading an article somewhere that told of Oxbridge (can't remember which one) admitting a student or students who did not have any formal qualifications and had been home educated, because they decided they recognised 'something special' in them. It pissed me off to say the least. Where do you get off even applying to Oxbridge when you don't have an o' level to your name? I think it's gimmicky and an insult to people who work so hard to prove themselves through the usual, expected channels.

If you don't value formal education then surely you should reject all of it, and that should include a place at Oxbridge? If you don't think you need GCSEs or A levels why on earth do you think you need a degree?

If all you need to do is be 'special' to get into Oxbridge then what the hell is anyone bothering slogging their guts out to get strings of A* A levels for?

"I was thinking of sending my eldest to beavers but i didn’t realise there was a religious element to it and im not sure about that really."

DD was a Rainbow and a Brownie and is now a Guide. I can honestly say that religion has never been brought into it, except for the one time she had to say the promise when she was enrolled. And they have even changed that now to include people of no faith.

Please don't preclude what is a very worthwhile activity based on what is now out of date information.

The life your children lead now sounds idyllic. How do you envisage it when they are teenagers?

It sounds a lovely family life pocket but it isn't an education.
Has your eldest expressed an interest in Beavers? I always found it best to go with their interests- and if he wants to give it a try. It is unlikely to have much of a religious element, are you afraid of him getting different views from home? It contradicts your statement that you are happy for them to go to any clubs etc
Children learn naturally but they can't know what they want to learn or what they need to learn and some of it is a hard slog and some of it is boring. You need to stick with it. I thought breastfeeding would be natural but my first baby and I hadn't a clue! We would never have managed it if we hadn't had help at the start - and a lot of patient help.
I agree Jesse. I think it fair enough if the student has exceptional circumstances that left them without qualifications (e.g illness) but it is very unfair to let someone in who hasn't bothered on the lines they are 'special' and that formal qualifications are for the masses and way beneath them!
Yours was the first post on here that made me stop and think ommmward and change my mind. If we don't want the nanny state interfering in diets and bed times etc then you can't get them interfering if you have well meaning parents who happen to be fairly rubbish at HE.
In all cases they can only step in to rescue from abuse.

She is out of date with Beavers, cubs etc too,Bunbaker.

It is the lovely, idyllic parts of the country that have a real drug problem with teenagers when they are older because they have very different needs.
I see no harm in pocket's situation at the moment, formal education does start too young, but I wonder if she has thought long term to what happens when the older ones don't want the same activities as the younger ones.