Unschooling

[Doman]

We are London-based and considering unschooling our two daughters when they reach primary school age.
I'd be very grateful for any advice on this from those of you who have tried it, or considered it and decided against it. What are the biggest pros and cons? Any regrets? Have you been worried about socialising your children?
I'm using the term 'unschooling', by the way, because 'autonomous home-based education' seems rather laboured to me!

Many thanks for your thoughts.

Biggest pros: it is so efficient. Never having to try to force someone to learn something in which they are not interested at that point. Life is fun, for the whole family. It's fun finding resources that respond to current interests, and gently offer new directions as well.

Biggest cons: trying to hold one's parental nerve when little Jimmy isn't terrifically talented and ahead of all of the other children at reading/maths/playing the violin/ insert alternative socially valued skill.

regrets: that when the children were smaller, I found it hard to hold that parental nerve (always in one developmental area at a time, and in the end, my fears were ALWAYS unfounded, and the child moved on in that area with lightning speed once ready)

worrying about socialising: ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. We could be out at home ed things every single day of the week if we could cope with that frequency of socialising. My children could be off at parents-don't-hang-around classes every evening. The school using families we hang out with fill every weekend and probably about 1/3 of the days in the holidays (we tend to collapse for the first couple of weeks once the schools go back, just to recover from being so exhausted). And that's on top of all the activities we do with the local HE community. No I don'#t worry :)

There's a good group on Facebook called UK unschooling network:
Post your OP on there and you'll get tons of replies

Doman - if you are still following this thread, we are in the same boat. Would be great to know whereabouts in London you are?

The UK Unschooling Network FB group is here You'd be welcome to join, but please do send a message to one of the admin, as per the information about the group, on applying