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Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

Has anyone home educated alongside working full time?

30 replies

AlexanderHamilton · 28/03/2017 14:22

If so what does your child do during the day? Is it feasable to work a full day then come home to start home ed evenings & weekends. Ds also currently does various extra curricular activities too.
Would the LA not look very well on this type of arrangement?

OP posts:
AlexanderHamilton · 28/03/2017 15:20

His CAT results put him in the top 10% or something in most areas academically I sometimes wish they were lower.

OP posts:
Branleuse · 28/03/2017 15:22

id consider doing interhigh if I were you, although it would still have homework, but he would be less isolated. My cousins kids attend interhigh and are getting on well. Its 9 till 12, so the rest of the day he would be free to either do homework or hos own stuff, but at least he would have some structure to his day. You cant really do other sorts of home educating if youre not going to be there.

Saracen · 29/03/2017 12:43

I disagree with the people who are saying it's impossible to combine FT work with providing a good standard of home education, and I would suggest that perhaps they don't have a very wide experience of HE. Certainly some teens do need a lot of support with their learning, particularly if they are working through a specific curriculum which doesn't match up well with their strengths.

But others don't, especially when they are doing what interests them rather than being made to do homework which isn't appropriate for them. Your child doesn't sound like one who needs a huge amount of support to engage with learning: "He will spend ages researching the Americsn war of independence or composing music on Sibelius software or writing drama scripts but gets overloaded by homework tasks." Home education often looks very different to school and does not typically involve the child spending hours a day working on an academic programme while his parent sits at his elbow.

More commonly, parents help kids track down the resources they need, and perhaps give them a little help if they are really stuck on something - or help them find someone else who can step in and explain. That isn't incompatible with working full-time.

I think your real challenge if you are thinking of HE is ensuring that your son doesn't get bored and lonely while you are out at work. Even adults who work from home often don't choose to spend all day every day at home but prefer to have some variety and a change of scene. If I were you, I'd be thinking about whether it is possible for your son to get out of the house doing something every day, whether he can connect with other people online and/or in person, whether a friend or relative can perhaps have lunch with him sometimes to see how he's getting on and ensure he isn't finding the day too long, whether he can get some exercise.

Do you live where there is decent public transport, and is your son able to use it to get out and about? What sorts of places might he go? If you don't have friends and relatives on hand, might you hire a childminder to spend some time with him? Maybe a local HE family could take him to activities?

Clearly you must be of the opinion that he can be left home alone safely or you wouldn't even be considering home education. He doesn't have to be supervised 24/7, but it might be nice for him to have someone on hand some of the time and not be alone for eight hours every weekday. Of course, if he settles into a more typical natural adolescent sleep pattern then he may not be awake for all of those eight hours anyway, which will make it easier.

user1471537877 · 30/03/2017 09:54

Hi Alexandra

I'm an interhigh mum, if you've any questions feel free to dm me

DD and quite a lot of her classmates are on the spectrum

in the past 2 years DD has gone from a suicidal non attending, isolated child to a happy performing girl again while with interhigh

For her the reduced stimulation and ability to join in on her own terms has actually allowed her to come out of her shell

the fact that there are many more just like her in the school gives her a sense of 'herd' as they tend to make less demands on each other and get on

lizzyj4 · 06/04/2017 10:41

I work full time and HE my youngest son, who is a similar age, but my office is at home so I'm around throughout the day.

Being out all day isn't ideal, but I have a now adult child with ASD and am very aware of how difficult school can be for later teens on the spectrum. If he'd been able to HE (unfortunately not in a position to do that at the time) he'd have jumped at the chance, and he would have been a lot happy than having to suffer through school, even if that meant being at home alone during the day.

If you know other HE families, it might be possible to set up some kind of reciprocal arrangement, so that you share education, etc., so he's getting a mixture of experiences and doesn't feel isolated (if you feel that might be a problem for him).

I agree with PP that Interhigh or another online school might also be a good solution. My youngest son is with Interhigh, so he has timetabled lessons throughout the day as well as online interaction with teachers/other students. They also monitor attendance in lessons, so you can check that he's going to lessons and you can request exemption from homework if that's a problem. We find them excellent.

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