Home education support thread

[AMumInScotland]

A positive thread for parents who are home educating, those considering home education, and all others who want to contribute to the discussion.

But taking as a starting point the fact that Home Education is an equally valid choice, taken by parents for a variety of reasons, and is not illegal, immoral or fattening....

oo, I disagree about fattening. We've been baking this week..

• hadn't thought of the baking - all that weighing and measuring and counting, and talking about how the heat affects the mixture... could be extremely fattening, now you mention it!

justa - that's fine m'dear. Lurk, post, absorb

If you want to start a debate, start a debate thread. What winds me up is when some poor harrassed mum starts a thread asking for advice and all and sundry come on with their negative assumptions and opinions.

But really, if that is my problem, I shouldn't read MN.

That's the reason for starting this - it would be nice if we could have one which is at least intended to be about positive support and help, and not about a specific contentious issue - as you say, a request for advice so often goes off on an argument tangent...

Hello, just posting to get thread on my watch list and to register my presence

it's early days for us so will be mostly reading / asking rather than helping, if that's ok

Justa - I saw you, and figured I might as well be the one to start it

A year ago, it was me reading and lurking, so I'm very happy to have people doing the same thing... There's nothing quite like it for absorbing how other folk do things....

I should maybe explain who I am - I'm a mum to one DS (14) who was at school until the summer. In September he started studying through an internet school and is working towards GCSEs, which puts us very much at the "school at home" edge of HE and a long way from the autonomous child-led type of education which tends to be what people think of when they consider HE.

We had no particular issue with school, but were looking for something particular for DS and ended up looking "outside the box" and found this as an option, which is working very well for us so far.

I'm here too
Celebrating 7 years today since the children walked out of their schools for the last time

Now aged 20, 18 and 15 Home ed is the single best thing we did for them.
They are well educated, articulate, confident, have self belief by the ton and have a social life that is the envy of their schooled peers and cousins.
This is completely the opposite to the situation when they were in school.

And we did all of that without any formal work at all until DS chose to go back to FE college, where he fitted in very well academically and socially according to the tutors as well as my ds!

Our lives have changed beyond recognition in those 7 years.
We now live a joyful life together.
joyfullyrejoycing.com/

Congratulations on your anniversary, Julie

I'd like to join your thread too please, if I may? my ds is 5 and now in his second year of school, it has been a bumpy old road already and at the moment he is enjoying a really positive experience. But I am very interested in HE and just really beginning on this road of gathering facts and ideas. my dh is less keen than me, hence why our ds is still in school. our dd aged 3 attends a small nursery in the afternoons, and it is a wonderful happy time for her. I will prob be nagging with lots of questions while I compile my ammunition thoughts on why we should switch to HE!

ooh what a great thread title.
dd is only 18months but we are hoping to HE when the time comes and a support thread sounds wonderful.

But WHAT about socialisation?

AND can HE'd kids do GCSEs?

(ps I have just had my very own copy of the teenage liberation handbook land on the doormat. Would recommend to everyone, it is great for adults who want to think through their own attitude to learning)

The more the merrier - but it's really not meant to be my thread - just reading justa's comments on another thread which was getting heated reminded me that we don't have a general encouraging and supporting thread going at the moment, and it can be very daunting to join in some of the more heated discussions when you just want to say "er, how does that work then?".

There's a lot of people on here who have way more experience than me, who'll be in a much better position to give advice. As I mentioned above, I'm only at the fringe of HE and have only been doing that for a term so far, so I'd feel a right fraud if I meant I'd be providing the support

Hello, can I join too please? I'm relatively new to HE and am just finding my feet with it all.

I have a 6 year old, a preschooler, a toddler and another on the way and am wondering how I am going to fit everything in in the next few months! We are quite structured at the moment but as the weeks go by I can see us moving more and more towards a more autonomous approach.

It will be good to read about other people's experiences, especially as I don't have much support locally.

Hello everyone!

Been lurking in the online HE community for a couple of years but not had much contact with the HE world IRL. Been to a couple of meetings but DS's age (he's 3.5yrs) meant neither of us were able to get much from them & then we had a really crappy year last year so I've not got out to many more.

But we are now settled again finally & so I'm looking forward to starting DS's HE socialisation. He already has quite a few schooled friends of varying ages as my MIL is a childminder but he just looks at me blankly when I mention HE as he has nothing to relate it too atm.

So... now there's a bunch of us around, is there anything specific that would be useful to discuss?

Illegal... Nope - home education is legal in all parts of the UK, although the legislation varies between different parts so it's best to be clear before you decide to start

Immoral... Nope - as parents, we are responsible for our children, and by actively choosing a type of education which we believe will allow them to thrive, we are definitely making a moral choice.

Fattening... As SueBaroo mentioned earlier, it can be...

Some useful links - you've probably found all these already, but it might be handy to have them in one place....

Education Otherwise - lots of legal stuff, FAQs, local contacts (if you join).

Schoolhouse - specific to the law etc in Scotland, which is slightly different.

Home Education UK - Mike Fortune-Wood - a broad range of HE topics including legal stuff

Anyone suggest any others which would be helpful when starting out?

hello, i flexi school my kids, they attend a local primary 2 or 3 days a week, then are at home the rest of the time. for the first year ds1 was totally home educated, but then we found a school that was willing to be flexible

its working quite well on the whole, tho we now have a new headteacher who is not quite so flexible.

she is wanting me to provide a written record of all the 'work' we do at home, she even gave me a timetable to fill in anyway i need to write a bit about how we let the boys learn autonomously, how lots of their education is through reading and talking, they never stop asking quesions

they are 8 and 5 so i dont think they should be doing loads of written work anyway, and interestingly both boys are ahead at school esp ds1.

so if anyone has any ideas as to how i can write/ get this across to the new head i would be most grateful

Hi, I have a 3.5 year old who we are thinking of HEing at least to start with. I'd love to hear how other people who have mixed school and HEing have got on. Do the children cope well with the change? How do they settle in school at a later age? How did you decide when to try school & has it worked? Before starting school, were local schooled children (& their parents) happy to include your HE children in things? SO many questions......SORRY!

other good places to start;
www.homeed.cjb.net/

www.he-special.org.uk Information for families with children who have special educational needs.

www.muddlepuddle.co.uk is a webpage especially for HE families with children under 8 years old.

www.infed.org/biblio/home-education.htm An article that compares ?formal? and ?informal? home education styles

jollydo
my children are much older than yours and came out of school aged 13, 11 and 8, seven years ago.

none have ever wanted to return to school but ds chose to return to FE college and do A levels and fitted in very well academically and socially.

I have though, also known other home educated children who have chosen to go to school at some point. All have fitted in well socially and academically, some have then chosen to stay there and some have found school too restrictive and have returned to home education.

My children haven't had any problems with fitting in with none HE activities, dd2 for instance did dancing classes and was part of a dance company which performed publicly, went to Explorer Scouts and was part of a choir and went to a residential singing school with them too.
When she went to Brownies we did have situations where some parents told their children that home education is illegal or that dc couldn't be getting a good education if they were taught at home by mom.
My dc have just shrugged it all off and described our HE if asked-having been to school they knew absolutely which was better for them.

In my experience of knowing hundreds of home educated young people, they are much more confident and self reliant than schooled children, as they are used to being spoken to with respect and not talked down to by adults. They are confident and can cope with any situation.

I'd really suggest finding a local HE group and seeing if you can pop along for a chat with HEers in real life.

the Education Otherwise and Mike FWs HE-UK websites mentioned by AMumInScotland have links to local HE groups.

Thanks Julienoshoes. I have just joined Education Otherwise and they are going to give me details of my local group, so I will go and meet them. It's all very exciting but obviously worrying too, as it's such a big decision to do something so 'out of the ordinary.' I think HE would really suit my DS at the moment & am almost decided to keep him out of school until year 1 anyway. I suppose that gives me plenty of time to fiind out more and decide. My main concern is that I wouldn't want him to feel excluded from things locally and like he was too 'different' even though being a bit different is no bad thing!