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

Sorry- I meant the opposite- I can't see how anyone can defend it- - not can!

DH and I live by the policy of 'it bothers you, you clean it'. It can work well if your standards are similar (ours are very low ). But I can see it wouldn't work in every household.

With the kids, so far we are going down the praise route for chores, but we'll see how that pans out, they are still very young.... We may enforce helping if we think it's appropriate. I don't think there's one rule for every household.

I may be living in cloud cuckoo land (or have particularly mindless children!) but I don't think you have to enforce helping. I think you just have to model it.

Oh, and make it make sense. Everybody wants to eat, so everyone helps get food on the table. Everyone wants to go to the park, so everyone helps do what has to be done before we can go.......

And actually, I don't agree with praise, unless it's for something above and beyond. Dp and I don't expect praise for cooking a meal (we do expect a thank you) so why should anyone else get praised for setting the table?

That S Dodd page you link to makes sense to me.

And some chores are fun if you're in the mood -try a steam cleaner for your bathroom, that's fun, & super-effective. My kids like to Hoover, & use squirty sprays. As they grow older they might like to cook or garden.

I am not talking about the one off chore. I am talking about the daily and boring.
Perhaps this is why women have such problems with men who don't pull their weight in the house. They follow the policy of 'if it bothers you, you sort it' and then they don't have to lift a finger !
The problem comes with more than one child- if one says they don't want to eat they will get themselves something different later or two want to go to the park and one doesn't.
I fail to see where praise comes into it. Why do you give praise for something perfectly normal?
I doubt if anyone modelling cleaning the bathroom can make it more appealing of hours and hours of computer games.

My son often wants to clean the bathroom with me when he could choose computer games instead. He likes to chat & polish the tiles. He can play computer games as much as he wants to, always, maybe that helps?

I think the problem with the Dodds approach is that it isn't giving everyone in the household equal value and respect. I realise that the "traditional" model often puts children at the bottom of the pecking order, but I don't think the solution is to reverse that! And I don't, in particular, think it's a good idea for boys to see women making all the compromises.

I think that is the nail on the head, Martorana. The mother compromises all the time. If they don't want to wash up she finds ways around it. The huge message is that the mother is responsible for household management and if it gets too messy for her she will get on and do it-or nobody has to bother because you employ someone.
I get the impression that you have one child, Mavis who is quite possibly younger than 10yrs. I had that for quite a while and life is much simpler, he would have been quite willing to help and chat. More than one makes the job much trickier.
You must all have wonderful children if they are all wanting to help because you model it. As a child I certainly wouldn't have done it voluntarily and washing up isn't fun after the first couple of times! I did it because it was put to me that we all had to live in the house, we all ate the meals and we all had to do our bit, as necessary and not when and if it happened to suit. I was the eldest and I made sure that my brothers did their fair share and we made rotas. There is no way I would have done it if they were going to get away with not doing it.

The other thing that I really dislike about Sandra Dodd is that she doesn't give her children any privacy. It only took a few minutes of Googling and I see pictures of them at all ages, their life history, likes and dislikes etc.

In contrast I Googled Alfie Kohn and in all the combinations I put in I only discovered he had 2 children, no pictures, no names, no ages, no gender. Nothing. That is how it should be. Deep in one interview I discovered that one is a girl and she was born in about 1996. Maybe if I wasted more time on it I could find more. In the interview she was happily at preschool in 1999 and he had no intention of home schooling (a question in the interview) he said there was no chance of any school matching up 100% but that he was more likely to be thrilled by individual teachers. Most importantly for me he actually said that he wasn't certain about things-he might change his mind. So many of these people are so certain. I can't know what I will think next year, certainly not in 10 years time.
While I don't agree with everything Alfie Kohn says a lot of it is common sense-the problem is generally in how people interpret it.
He doesn't involve his children in his writings.
Sandra Dodd appears to live through her children-they are the experiment.

I can see why people let older children write blogs etc I can never see why anyone features younger children in their blogs-especially photographs.

I read one because she was in my relative's HE group. I would be very uncomfortable. I could be standing next to her in the supermarket queue (quite likely) and I know intimate details of her life and her children's life and yet she hasn't a clue who I am! She writes really embarrassing stuff about her teenage DDs that any of their friends could read.
One thing is explained, she changed from ir being HE to unschooling and then she spent a whole page saying why she thought radical unschooling was wrong and that children needed boundaries- I hadn't appreciated the difference before this thread.

It makes me wonder what Sandra Dodd's opinion on alcohol-let them drink under age in the assumption they work out that it is not a good idea? Some people only work that out when they get liver disease!

As a parent sometimes you have to say 'no' and why.

I can see now that another HEer I knew had very timid children because she explained dangers and then left it up to them -if you can't trust your parent to protect you then you are bound to be insecure.

I agree about women compromising. In our house their dad compromises just as often, so I hope we 're modelling compassion to little children - they are only. 5 & 1 so we are in no way experts at this parenting lark.

I can't just do as my parents did, unthinking, because my upbringing wasn't very nice (nor was theirs). This approach is working really beautifully for our family at the moment & so far has helped me understand that humans are innately social, children do what we do, they want to please us and they want to be useful members of their family. (And yes, I think that treating children with respect helps this happen and the converse hinders it). But as I say, my dh and I are inexperienced. There's no way I'll skivvy for my kids all their childhoods and leave them entitled and inadequate. Most parents of little kids do most of the housework though - the children help but they're so young.

Oh I agree about privacy & blogs & protecting your kids too. Unschooling to most people who do it means being very available to your children,having a close relationship w them and being their partner as they learn: absolutely protecting them from harm.

At 5 and one life is a doddle-of course housework is fun!! If you are 5 squirting things, switching on a hoover, being allowed to run taps, have soap bubbles and pour water in and out of cups is tremendous fun!
It is a different story when they are 15 yrs and their turn and the younger one says they are are not having their turn and the older one says if he isn't made to do it then she is not doing it either because it isn't fair!

TamerB

At the end of the day she is doing the best for her children, she certainly hasn't spent hours degrading other peoples choices. Perhaps she has a life, or more important things to do.

They seem a very happy family to me, whatever they have done seems to work for them, which I'm pretty sure is their priority.
I don't think it is healthy to raise your children in a certain way, just because other people happen to do it a particular way tbh.

I have nothing at all against unschooling-I just have everything against radical unschooling.
The weather is too nice-I am off in the garden.

Life isn't a doddle, actually. But I take your point, things will change.

At the end of the day she is doing the best for her children,

That is where I take issue, it hasn't been best for her children and it is damaging. They are arrested adolescents and very indulged ones at that.
I don't mind at all that they are quite happy with it-I do mind that she puts it forward to other people.

she certainly hasn't spent hours degrading other peoples choices. Perhaps she has a life, or more important things to do

She just spends her entire life telling them a 'better' way. And she finished her radical unschooling some time ago-she could move onto something different-not say that she 'radically unschools her children of 26yrs, 23yrs and 20yrs!!

People on here are not letting their mother rule their lives-they have broken free.

No wonder people won't admit there are some parents who are poor at HEing if they will defend Sandra Dodd however bizarre. Note she didn't have unschooled in the past tense-she was in the present tense.

I'd rather concentrate on my own dc tbh, and if I have looked for info about H.ed have rarely come across Sandra Dodd and her family. I don't think she is telling anybody what to do, just saying what they have done.
I don't see any difference between their family and lots of others, there are many still at home up to age 30 these days, its not so unusual.

Sandra Dodd isn't the only radical unschooler in the world. She's not even the only one that writes about it. On phone & cba to link but joyfullyrejoycing is Pam L-something's site & it's lovely. There are lots of others too.

I think people get defensive about RU because no one really wants to be disrespectful to their kids. It feels wrong and causes distance in relationships. But we are led to believe it's necessary for their own good and ours, to use our superior power, knowledge, economic status etc to bring them to heel. Hearing it might have been unnecessary & actually unhelpful must be challenging.

I'm not at all defensive about radical unschooling! I disagree with it as a "parenting style".

I also don't think it's necessary to be disrespectful to my kids-or to "bring them to heel"

I believe, as I have said, in mutual respect. Mutual respect does not mean that a particular individual or age group does all the compromising.

I didn't say you were defensive about it, Martorana. But some people are.

She may not be the only one but she is the one that OP told me to Google. That is what I did!
OP asked for opinions (not even on an HE thread to start with - this was moved). I gave my opinions, which she didn't like and so she asked me to look at Sandra Dodd- that is what I did. I had never heard of her so it was with an open mind- I looked at Alfie Kohn in the same way. I find Alfie Kohn perfectly acceptable in general. I don't like any of Sandra Dodd's philosophy. Leaving apart whether I disagree or not, I like the way that Alfie Kohn presents his work and himself- I do not like the way Sandra Dodd presents her work or herself.
I am quite happy to be given other people to look at but I was specifically asked to look at SD.
I presume that OP wanted me to look to show me the philosophy and 'good' practice- it just didn't work out like that.

I don't 'bring mine to heel' but I point out that you can't have rights without responsibilities and mothers don't give up the first and take all the second!