Things you wish you’d know when you started HE

[Evergreentree]

So, after a couple of years of trying to decide an ed psych report has finally made us decide. We are going for it and I am very anxious about the whole thing!! What should I know? Any tips, advice and wisdom? We are going to spend Jan just attending meet ups to get to know people then go back to basics as dc is very behind but I’m going to take his lead learn through what he’s interested in. Just feel really worried I might mess it up!

That it doesn't matter what picture you have of how home ed will work, you have to be ready to tweak and change it to suit the child you have and to keep tweaking and changing as what suits them keeps changing.
Parents are often the ones who benefit most from home ed social events, the moral support of other home elders really helps. At the very least it can help you feel less alone in your panic and worry as they are normal, even long term home eders get hit by waves of it sometimes. That said it can take time to find people you gel with, use online support groups and FB to help you make connections with people.
There are so many excellent educational rates offers open to home educators, we've been to do many amazing places over the years on 'field trips'. Look in the group files of FB groups you join, ask local home eders and always politely email and ask anywhere that you want to visit if they offer an education rate for home eders - no where has to but many places do during term time and school hours.

Following on from one of itsstillgood's points, there are many effective approaches to home education. In fact, HE parents often say "there is no wrong way to home educate". But I wouldn't go quite that far.

In fact, think there is a wrong way to home educate. Namely, if your approach is making you and your child unhappy, you haven't got it right yet and you need to keep experimenting. Learning shouldn't be unpleasant.

This can be a difficult lesson for us parents to take on board. After all, nearly every one of us were brought up in the school system, where it was taken for granted that a sizable portion of our "learning" would be unpalatable to us. No pain, no gain. We had to go to school whether we liked it or not, so we could become educated people who could get good jobs.

The school system can't accommodate an individual child's needs very well. But outside of the school system, you can. Make his happiness your priority and the learning will follow on.

Outside of school, it really truly doesn't matter at which age your child masters any particular skill. There are no deadlines.

At school, your child was "very behind", as you put it. The rest of the class was doing things he didn't understand, and they weren't going to wait while he grasped ideas in his own time. At home, that won't be a problem. He can always learn whatever he is ready to learn, taking as much time as he needs.

He isn't behind any more. "Behind" has no meaning here in the wider world, out beyond the walls of those fixed-age classrooms within which every child is expected to learn the same things at the same times and in the same ways. Now he is in a new place where he can be himself and feel good about himself.

I've home educated two children. One has average academic aptitude and the other has a learning disability. But in terms of their educational needs, there is no fundamental difference between them. Since each has a completely tailor-made education, the fact that their age peers at school might have been learning something earlier or later was of no consequence at all.

My twelve year old is learning to read. She is thrilled that she can now follow the doings of Biff, Chip, Kipper, and Floppy (especially Floppy!). Her pride and delight at this new ability is not tainted by any sense that the achievement is overdue. Nobody has ever told her that she was behind. Nor has anyone tried to make her do it before she was ready, so she doesn't associate reading books with failure.

I am also considering HE as my child is really not thriving at school and we now suspect an auditory disorder. I am concerned about getting it wrong (though there seems to be lots of resources) but also about ensuring they have enough social interaction. I gave tried to find local HE groups but each one I find seems to be defunct..any pointers on where i should try.?

Look for your county or nearest big city on Facebook, plus "home ed" or "home education". That's where all the social meet up arranging happens around us.

That it doesn't matter whatever a child learns to read/write/do advanced algebra.
That there is no need for "lessons", everything is an opportunity for learning
Kids learn best if they are interested in something. There is no point trying to learn Latin if what they are really interested in is theoretical physics!
That targets and levels are meaningless outside of school.

I have been HE for 15 years and have five kids. One is now a nuclear chemist, one is a conservation biologist, one is in sound production, one is going to uni to study aeronautic engineering and the 16year old is still finding his way. Three of the have ASD, one is dyslexic/dysgraphic and my DD has some social issues, so they have all had their battles to fight. School was a disaster for the ones who attended until we removed them. If I were to have my time over, I would try not to focus on what they couldn't do and making ridiculous "targets" and just embrace where they are.

That should say whenever a child learns to read etc.

Thank you

Does anyone have experience of working full time and HE...any pointers? I am a single parent who works full time but mostly from home.

Saracen thank you for mentioning my ‘behind’ comment. You are quite right and I appreciate that different perspective, one which I will enjoy getting used to!

How old is your DC and if quite young, what provision will you make for their social life. I only home educated for a year and the only reason I'm not still doing so is that no matter what I did, I could not provide my DS (now 6)with enough social interaction. I went to all the meet-ups within a 90 minute radius, established a meet-up centre for HE families, arranged for DS to join local sports clubs and other activities, etc. But I found that there just was not the will/ability from other local HE families to put in the effort to meet up as often as was needed for many of the children to have satisfying friendships. It was fine for the older children who were fully literate and could stay in contact in various ways but for the little kids, who just wanted to make consistent friends to play with, it wasn't happening.

DS is at a forest school now where he sees the same small group of children every week day, we usually stay at school for 30-60 minutes after school so they can keep playing, we have playdates with classmates a couple of afternoons a week and at weekends. He has afterschool activities several days a week and to be totally honest, if he could have more time with his peers he'd take it in a heartbeat, as would all his classmates. Not all children are the same and I accept that my DS is on the upper end of the need to socialise scale but most young children have a very strong need for many hours a day of free play with other children.

It's all very well to say that children get plenty of socialisation when just living their lives with you. And they do get very important types of socialisation that many children miss out on. It's important to take your DC out on errands, to see you interacting in the world. To experience interactions with lots of people from all walks of life. Those are great experiences to have, my DS has always been with me during those experiences and he is confident and articulate as a result. But those experiences aren't a substitute for play and real peer friendships. Children learn an enormous amount from just being left alone together and figuring out how to navigate their own relationships with people who aren't inclined to make allowances for them in the ways that adults do. If you don't live in an area where he can play freely with friends most days, you might have to work extremely hard and be really inventive to ensure your DC has satisfying friendships.

I don't honestly know what I'd do if my son didn't have his current, very unique school to go to. He'd crumple in a regular school, it would destroy him. I have absolutely no qualms about the educational aspects of HE, we unschooled and he was many years ahead on every subject. But the struggle to provide him with access to friendships was enormous and I was failing him.