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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.

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Original poster

how did you 'discover' HE?

11 replies

ilove8pm · 12/01/2008 20:59

Hi. I am still quite new to MN and thoroughly enjoy reading the HE threads. I have a ds age 5 and dd aged 3. I knew very very little about HE apart from a brief exploration of alternatives to school as a teenager. (I attended school, never tried any alternatives, just little research into them). My ds attended a local nursery and enjoyed the most wonderful year there. The group was small, and he thrived. I naively (SP) assumed school would be a similarly positive experience for him, but he has had a very unhappy year there. This was the trigger for me finding MN and your threads! I have recently posted on the SEN threads, as I now believe my ds may have Aspergers, but its undiagnosed. (thanks for bearing with me on this long thread!!) anyway, he is happier this year, having a wonderful, enthusiastic and positive teacher is a big part of that, but I think longer term we may still HE. I really wondered how you discovered HE? Was it a gradual process or was it through your own childhood HE experiences? Or another way? What books would you recommend for people who are interested in HE? I dont know anyone in RL who HE's, and I would love to meet people who do. I have visited the education otherwise site but am hungry for more information! thanks for reading this.

OP posts:

Mehetabel · 17/01/2008 17:54

Before my son was even conceived I met a lovely family who were home educating. The mother gave me an Education Otherwise leaflet, which I stuffed in my pocket, and kept. 3 years later when my ds was around 2 I dug out the leaflet and got in touch, and never looked back. He is 22 now

At that time there were 4 families HEing in our big city, now there are over 200, and it is much better known. Our local home ed group meets several times per week. There will probably be a group near you.

needmorecoffee · 17/01/2008 18:03

after 3 years of dragging my son with aspergers screaming and kicking to school I looked up school phobia the first day we got the internet. There was a link to a HE site. By 10am I was down the school with my de-reg letter demanding my boy back. 2 weeks later took the other 2 out too
So it was a bit sudden and I found out more afterwards.
I expect there's an HE group near you somewhere.

FillyjonkisCALM · 17/01/2008 18:19

I've always known about it. My mum trained as a teacher in the early 70s and had most of the John Holt books lying around the house. I also had HE'd friends. The main reasons my brother and I went to school were economic-my mother was the only wage earner most of the time-and also, I think, confidence on my mother's part. HEing I think was a pretty middle class thing back in the 80s, and my parents were kind of teetering on the brink here. We did a lot of cultural stuff-art galleries and so forth-but lived on the top floor of a council tower block and went to sleep to the sound of air guns...

When I get really pissed off at all the intrusive questions and the nagging feeling of being on display, I do remind myself that if I hadn't, as a child, had the benefit of exposure to HE'd kids and their parents ideas, I probably wouldn't have considered it such a no-brainer.

Runnerbean · 17/01/2008 18:34

2 1/2 years ago I knew nothing about it, didn't even know it was possible.
I wanted to go into teaching so did two years voluntary work in my dds classroom as well as a classroom assistants course.
I wasn't entirely happy with my dds education, she's a bright girl but just wasn't being challenged at school.
I've always done workbooks at home with her anyway and I suddenly thought, if I'm confident to teach a class of 30 and I've done a pretty good job with my dd so far, I wonder if there is such a thing as educating at home?

I googled it and found Education Otherwise.
That was it.
A few agonising (it was the hardest decision I've ever made in my life) weeks later I'd deregistered.
Best decision I've ever made!

I really wish I'd known about it sooner, why is the option just not given to parents?

I know some threads on hear get quite heated about HE and I really don't think MN is the best forum for it to be discussed, but at least we are bringing it into the open and people actually know it exists.

gibberish · 17/01/2008 18:38

My youngest sister was HEd and mum was a member of EO.

juuule · 17/01/2008 19:21

Stumbled on it 3yrs ago while becoming more and more dissatisfied with some aspects of the school system. Wish I'd known about it earlier.

Julienoshoes · 17/01/2008 19:43

Our three dyslexic children had been unhappy in school for a long time.
We already knew that our youngest child was so much more severely dyslexic than her older siblings she could not possibly go to the middle and high school that they were attending, as the schools had not coped with the older two's level of dysability, so we were looking for alternatives for her.

Then one New Years eve our lovely 13 year old son burst into tears and told us he didn't want his life anymore.
That pulls you up quicker than anything!

We promised him we would find a way to change things and he went back to school while we searched-and seven years ago this week, I stumbled across the EO website one Friday afternoon.
The deregistration letter went in on the following Monday morning.

Wish I had known long before about home education-I'm passionate now that parents should be told-give parents the correct, accurate information so that they can make an informed decision on what is best for their family at that time-school or home education.

As someone else has said on another thread today, I meet people all of the time who simply do not know that home education is an option-and I meet some desperate families who are frantic for their children and they do not know until I tell them that there is another option and that it is not hard to do.

discoverlife · 20/01/2008 17:57

DS 10yo is SEN and was struggling and unhappy at school (unhappy being the mildest most polite term I could use), we had talked about taking DS out of school but thought that all the usual (untrue) negatives were insurmountable, eg. it was illeagal, having to work 6 hours a day, having to keep up with NC, etc. so had put it down as a wish. It was MN that pointed me in the right direction over Christmas and the de-reg letter went in on the first day of term and DS hasn't been back since.

Julienoshoes · 20/01/2008 20:01

in response to discoverlife's post!

thebluefoxategreensocks · 23/01/2008 20:02

I (and my 6 younger siblings) were all home educated from the start, so I've always known about it! It was a positive experience and I would recommend it to anyone. My husband was also home educated. We plan on homeschooling our children too, though the oldest is only 2 just now.

fillthatnappylittlekiwi · 23/01/2008 20:51

we fell into it by accident a couple of years ago. DD was being bullied to the point of cutting and bruising (from other children) and being sick from stress ( at 4 years old) and I wasn't leaving her in school to be treated like that so I took her out, and her elder sister at the same time. I didn't know if it was legal or not, knew nothing about it but fell on Google. Found all the legal bits, knew I was right then went from there, The girls went back into school one year and one term ago, and came out again the start of this term.
I love it and it suits the whole family, so all 5 of my children will be home educated. . Life's way too short to have their childhood destroyed by feeling the need to conform.(just my opinion)

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