Did anyone see the home ed discussion on The Wright stuff this morn? (23/5)

[MakeMineaMartina]

missed a bit, but there was a guy in the studio who'd worked wonders with HE.

one caller bemoaned the missing the social side of school as she was He'd.

and another said something like 'the next person who asks me if my HE child gets a social life Ill do something to them!'.

Im with that one.
that's got to be the most annoying question 'does your DC see other friends then> doesn't DC have a social life?' GAAAAAAAAAHHH!!

none of your effing business!

then theres the 'doing SATS?' -no, special needs, doesn't do sats.

any other annoying or nosey questions that drive you mad?

I don't HE but can really see the advantages. It's strong locally and very social. I once read a statistic along the lines of 60% of the time a child spends in school is spent waiting for something to happen. I may be misremembering the figure, but it's probably not far off

That guy was called Christopher I think. He was brilliant, I absolutely loved him! Would love to HE

I just wish Id known about HE years ago, what a lot of stress DC and I had with schools.

, it just wasn't for DC.

now I have a happy stress free child with a calmer life.

I love HE ing.

Lovely positive messages about HE.

Then my dh went and spoilt the moment by saying why didn't I teach ds about the penguins (as Christopher had brilliantly shown how you can make a child's interest in penguins into a cross curricular topic). I had to pick up my jaw from the floor. We have not used 'penguins' as a topic but I have beautiful, colourfull charts of each topic, that I use each term to show how we have covered the NC subjects. Grr to dh for not paying attention. Luckliy I'm not HEing him.

P.S. Ds(14) was told this week by a tutor this week, "You are the best pupil I've had for many years"

Awww maggi, how wonderful for your ds (penguins or no penguins)!

I am always amazed how many people ask if "the school" mark her work and assess levels etc.
Some think we pick up work on a Monday morning or something similar. I always ask which school would this be?

Why do people ask about friends and socialising? Do their children only see children at school and you can hardly call school socialising anyway.

The best one is when they talk about following the n.c I'm almost hysterical by this point.

I don't mind genuine questions of interest, but wish people would think it through first.

Some people ask about the benefit, differences, etc. I am happy to answer however little knowledge they have on the subject, as long as its an educated question.

I just remembered

My fil and half sil asked "What about her education?" when we told them we were taking dd out of school.
They also named my degree and said I wasn't qualified to teach maths.
So neither was dds teacher at school then as her degree was technology.

My MIL still makes comments about lack of socialization. She sees ds weekly and knows all about the clubs, HE groups, his friends plus the gangs of children which attend here (I childmind). Conversely he was so unhappy at school that he had no friends and wouldn't attend clubs.

Personally I think MIL finds it a challenging concept that ds is doing better (hugely better) than if he were at school. Her son (ds Dad) had problems at school and the culture at the time in the country they lived in, was to send teenagers to boarding school. Similarly she finds it hard to accept that ds has an opinion and thinks he's being babyish if he plays (he's 14). Both of which is probably due to hardly seeing her own children from age 11 to 17. She sent them away as children and got back young men (who both immediately emigrated to this country).

My point is: perhaps some of those people that get really incredulous/rude at HE are feeling guilty or jealous about it? Anyhow I try to make allowances for harsh comments....but it can be hard.

We are considering HE for ds4, but will start him of at primary school land see how it goes. We are in Scotland and in an area where there is a strong HE network.
After our many many difficulties with school with Ds1,2 and 3 (serious difficulties), we will have a very low threshold of removal with DS4.

I'd like to point out that much of what passes for socialisation in schools would be better described as brutalisation.
Huge amounts of time in school are also wasted on "crowd control", so the effective teaching time is very much shorter than the school day therefore I think HE could be much more relaxed and still achieve more than "real" school with much less pressure... After all, you'd be tailoring it to the individual child not a class of 25.

Agree with Raw about the so called socialisation in schools.

Mine gets more work done at home as shes not lining up for the next room/queing up for lunch/falling further and further behind as she has learning difficulties/homework is HOME work, so no more than she can manage/no more school run so in that hour we used to take getting her to last school-traffic etc, we get more work done.

and she socialises with plenty of people when we go out shopping-learning how to interact in shops, paying at the till etc, or day trips which are fun and educational too.