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

Ah, you beat me to it Sulis.

Even if you outsource the day-to-day delivery to school, the responsibility stays with you, the parent...

A box bicycle (Cristiana's one brand) might be useful, you can put a baby car seat in one & still have room for the older kids. And you might be only a few weeks from driving, that will change things a lot for you.
Your kids are so young, really you need social input from outside more than they do, so yes, get your friends to call round & let the kids play. You have a garden, excellent.
Your littlest is just 10 weeks. That's so new, & your hormones & sleeplessness will be challenging. My baby is 1 now & I'm doing far more with my 5yo now than I have for most of the past year, he's still fine, has learnt loads.
Good luck, glad you're having great days again. It sounds idyllic for the children.

thatswhatimtalkingbout Wed 05-Mar-14 10:00:57
"You should take convenience out of the equation as your primary decision point."

this sort of puritan nonsense on mn really annoys me. The OP has 5 children, no car, and an ill husband. I think she should put convenience pretty high on her list of factors to consider. Not to be selfish - but because whatever she does has to work with one woman's energy behind it, so she has to be clever about how she uses that energy and not piss it away on quixotic high-minded idealistic quests. Anything that has workability and convenience built into it at the outset has a greater chance of making everyone in this family happy.

I posted in a thoughtful and non judgemental way. I was one of the few to offer concrete suggestions in either scenario and wished the op well. I get called puritanical for my trouble.

There is nothing puritanical about suggesting looking at a situation from a different angle when things are not working out. Helpful, hardly puritanical.

Argghh this is what pisses me off most about MN....

LAs do check on HE provision, to ensure that the children aren't missing education in the legal sense. However, decent LAs recognise that education can take many forms and that includes the autonomous approach. It doesn't have to be a books and paper format as it's understood that many HEers choose the child-led path, which can be very successful.

Some posters seem to be saying that the LAs do check and some say not.
Is it different county to county?
Perhaps I need to google.
Or are different posters meaning different things?

As regards grammar and everything else.
A parent's mistakes and lack of knowledge are in danger of being passed on to HE educated children.
I for one am a classic example of liking some subjects at school and hating others. But school has thankfully managed to eradicate all of that from mine, and they liked subjects across the board.

LAs are legally obliged to identify children missing education and, where necessary, enforce School Attendance Orders. Their invovement with HE is to satisfy themselves that children who don't attend schools ARE receiving an education so that they can be discounted as CME. Unfortunately some LAs get confused about this and that causes problems between them and legitimate home educators.

different posters are saying the same thing in slightly different ways.

The LAs can make informal enquiries if they have reason to believe an education is not taking place.

However if the LA asks, case law says we'd be sensible to respond.
The choice of how to give information about home education though is always the parents.
Parents can choose whether to have a home visit-but there is little value for the parent in doing so, or send a written report.

If the LA then had concerns then they could ask for more evidence.

My grammar is fine if i need it to be,i just dont have the time or inclination to check it for mumsnet,plus im breastfeeding at the same time.

No. Look, I'm sorry to nit-pick but no-one says 'I should of' as a slip up or a typing error. If you don't know you've written something nonsense then you can't correct it, even if you do have the time or the inclination to check it, can you?

Anyway, I don't wish to derail the discussion or humiliate you further but I really hate that defensive stance of 'I can do it when I need to, I just can't be bothered because it's only a forum' nonsense. That may be true for ignoring the odd typo or missing the odd capital letter, but it doesn't wash with fundamental grammar errors, such as 'we done' 'we was' 'or 'should of.'

If you write that way it's because you speak that way.

Surely "something nonsensical"?

"A parent's mistakes and lack of knowledge are in danger of being passed on to HE educated children."

And children in schools are in danger of being indoctrinated into the misconception that we can't learn what we need to live a rich and full life without being in schools.

Home educated children frequently educate their parents in things they don't know about. My children read things I haven't written, speak to people who are not me, watch tv programmes that I haven't produced or acted in. They have many, many other influences besides myself and they know lots of things I don't know.

I'm inclined to think 'nonsense' is fine and this person on the internet agrees with me.

At a simplistic level,one might observe that 'nonsense' is usually a noun and 'nonsensical' is always an adjective. The trouble with this is that the noun 'nonsense' can be (and is frequently) used in the position of an attributive adjective - especially in collocations such as 'nonsense verse'.

Also, any distinction between 'That is nonsense' and 'That is nonsensical' is very very slight; in effect the meanings are identical:
noun: 'The thing you are saying has the noun complement nonsense'.
adj: 'It is characteristic of what you have said that it is nonsensical.

My feeling is that 'nonsense' is more widely used, and with less precision. If something is nonsense, then it's just vaguely somewhere in the realm of what is silly/stupid/pointless...; but when you describe something as nonsensical you are saying that it lacks sense. But as TP said, the best thing to do is probably to check in a corpus.

To my mind you owe your children the best education you can to equip them for adulthood and being able to provide a living wage for themselves and their family - if they choose to raise one. It's just not good enough to do a sub-standard job based on what is more convenient at the time.

streaky. Your answer is misleading, because according to the link, yes they have to be informed if a child is taken out of school.

But after that, a parent can reject having any interaction with them.

www.netmums.com/children/home-education

I've been thinking about this thread a lot overnight.

My immediate reaction to reading the OP's posts is that she is not providing enough structure and variety for her children to allow their natural sponge-like learning (which I absolutely accept and agree with) to get cracking. I also have concerns over the children being socially isolated (not be HEing per se, but by the specifics of the OP's circumstances).

But, truthfully, I can see that I'm reviewing the situation through many prejudices of my own, some of which may be reasonable, many of which will not be. I know that I don't have what it takes to HE my children, and I suspect that feelings of - not sure exactly what the right word is here, jealousy or inadequacy perhaps - are clouding my views.

So - may I ask the HEers on this thread (including OP, of course!) for your thoughts?

1. I can see that digging for worms (natural science) and Minecraft (problem solving) can be educational as part of a rounded overall experience. How much of the day do you devote to such activities, compared to say reading, writing and numeracy?

1. I can absolutely see that 20 mins of one-on-one learning can be just as beneficial as 2 hours in a class of 30, if not more so. If you have more than one HE'd child, how do you manage to give that one-on-one time? What do your other children do? (Mine, for the record, would interrupt constantly and smart-arse DS2 would try to do DS1's work for him - hence my question!)

1. Could you manage without support from HE groups? Is that the primary means by which your children's social and emotional education takes place? (Not sure that I've got the language right there - I mean their ability to rub along with other people, interact with their peers, work in teams, etc. Sorry if my words aren't right.)

1. Is there anything about school-based education that you miss? Does the answer change with the age of your children? For example, as a teen my favourite subjects were chemistry, physics and biology, which I imagine are difficult to replicate at home (I mean the practicals, more than anything).

1. How much of the success of HE'ing comes down to the personalities of your children? Are there situations in real life where HE'ing works for one (or more) child but not for others?

1. Very roughly, how many HE'ing teens take exams? How do those that don't take exams demonstrate their educational attainments (in the widest sense) when they need to? Do they need to? I can see that HE'ing would be an excellent preparation for self-employment, but not all of us are cut-out for self-employment, so I guess that at least a handful of HE'd children do end up in salaried employment. Do universities recognise HE'ing without exams?

I do appreciate that many of these questions come from a place of ignorance, and I do hope that none cause offence.

Local Authorites, that is.

That is an excellent post Cinnabar and I agree with everything you've said. I too, am bewildered by people who would choose to do it, but equally I am slightly in awe of people who do it, and do it well.

But I am concerned that too many people do it for the wrong reasons and do it badly.

I would also be very concerned about the final outcomes for many of these children at a time the pressure to have formal qualifications and the competition for even the most mundane of jobs is so great.

Sevensev The school has to be informed if you are deregistering the child. It's their responsibility to inform the LA. Parents don't need to - the process is that the school will remove the child's name from the register and advise the LA then the LA's EHE team will contact the family to satisfy themselves that they are providing an education.

Good thoughtful questions CinnabarRed
"1. I can see that digging for worms (natural science) and Minecraft (problem solving) can be educational as part of a rounded overall experience. How much of the day do you devote to such activities, compared to say reading, writing and numeracy?"

we were totally autonomous, so no adult imposed structure, living consensually-so for us they spent as much time as they wanted on whatever they wanted to do.
And as of course something like Minecraft is such a wealth of educational opportunities, it includes reading writing and numneracy.
We didn't divide the time unnaturally into subjects as schools do, they just lived and learned all the time, doing what ever interested them

To be honest i dont really care if my grammar is bad,i really dont,it means nothing to me,for what its worth i got a B in gcse english so that just proves i remembered what i needed to for exams then forgot most of it as i didnt need it any more.

The kids will learn what they need to,if they want me to teach them to read formally then i will use one of the many reading/writing resources online or even hire a tutor.i dont mind,its up to them!

Im not going to post on here anymore as theres too many people who haver no idea what they are talking about,just silly mainstream middle aged women clutching their pearls "but...but,what about maths????" its actually quite funny to read,so thanks for that!

" I can absolutely see that 20 mins of one-on-one learning can be just as beneficial as 2 hours in a class of 30, if not more so. If you have more than one HE'd child, how do you manage to give that one-on-one time? What do your other children do?"

Our life was lived like one long summer holiday...all the ay through their teens until they chose to go to college. So when one child was absorbed with something, you can spend time with the other.
Or maybe one will choose to come shopping with you, whilst the other stays at home with Dad...
Or one goes off to spend three or four days staying with friends
Or one of the other HE parent takes one of the children to an activity they like, whilst you go off with another to do something they want...

We didn't set formal work at all..so no worries about one child doing the other's work. Not relevant to us at all

The LA sent me a form to fill in i just sent a letter back confirming i am home educating and that im not interested in any support from them,but will contact them if i change my mind in the future.They said that was fine.

apocketfulofposy come over to the FB Mumsnet HE group- you'll get sensible solution based comments there.
You'll need to message the admins though on applying if you are not already a member-but they are watching this thread, so will be expecting you.

Cinnabar I can only answer from my own viewpoint and we don't home ed autonomously. As I said upthread my son has HFA so needs a fair bit of structure.

Your point 3: We no longer have much interaction with local HE groups. Most of my son's academic education (and indeed his social life) takes place in the community. I did make a lot of use of HE contacts in the early days till I found my feet but once you know what you're doing and have the confidence to stretch, it's no longer necessary. I think it's about preference - lots of families I know are heavily involved in the HE community and there's certainly plenty going on, but each to their own.

Your point 4: Yes, there are things that HE doesn't provide, but for us the balance is definitely in favour of HE because my son's needs weren't catered for in school and he was very badly harmed. The few things that we can't manage in HE are well worth the sacrifice to have his mental health intact and to see him thrive. Science IS possible (my son has A*s in Physics and Chemistry and is on target for the same in Biology this summer) - he goes to group sessions in a local science centre and some of our HE group have arranged for a local university to put on some GCSE level lessons. It's all do-able, you just have to be a bit creative.

Your point 5: Children vary. There will always be situations where one will thrive and others won't. That's the same in school or HE, I think.

Your point 6: Most of the HE teens I know (there are quite a few) do take exams and get high grades. Some then go on to sixth form college, a couple I know have gone into apprenticeships instead. I think it's less possible nowadays to enter university without academic qualifications than it used to be - certainly the colleges etc I've spoken with have said as much.

Does that help?

Bobbysgirlfirst - thanks for taking the time to reply, which I really appreciate.

May I add an additional question (or, rather, bunch of linked questions!). When your teens went to college, how did they manage the transition from HE to formal education? Did they identify any 'gaps'? How did their peers react to their HE background?