No time for school?

[emmaagain]

Here's a rough guesstimate. Disclaimer: it's very rough.

5 year old child (for argument's sake) in every 24 hours might spend:

11 hours sleeping
1 hour eating supper, having bath, getting undressed and ready for bed
45 minutes getting up, dressed, eating breakfast, getting school bag ready etc.
6.5 hours at school
1 hour travelling to or from school
15 minutes doing homework

which leaves an estimate of 3.5 hours free at home on a weekday.

This assumes that the parental work schedule fits around taking them to school at school starting time, and bringing them home as soon as the school day ends - no after-school clubs in this scenario.

This also assumes that the child engages in no activities outside school and never has a friend round for tea.

My timings haven't allowed for time while Mum Makes Supper (half an hour preparation time?) which means that the free playtime with the potential of playing with Mum is down to 3 hours a day.

And if this hypothetical 5 year old is a 12-hours-a-night sleeper, then we are down to 2 hours a day of free playtime with possible parental involvement.

No need to quibble with the figures, which of course are not accurate for any family, but it's an illustration of why some HEing families just can't understand how mainstream families have time to do the whole school lifestyle thing.

I've had 8 children go through reception over about 18y. Emmaagains op wasn't far from the norm ime as an average. She also wasn't commenting on what went on in school as far as I can tell, she was just saying that the children are removed to the school environment for 6.5hrs. I don't think that's misleading in any way.

I don't understand.

My dd is in Yr2 at school and I reckon she has approx 5 hours free play time outside of school time. My ds is just 4, at school part-time and has even more free play time.

please lets not censor these boards.
for no-dissent positive advice only discussion, there are closed groups like the one HC has linked to.

Soapbox, MB and others have made perfectly valid and polite points and are entitled to do so. more than that, readers and lurkers are entitled to a fuller rounder picture - as are all parents on breast/bottle feeding threads btw!

I think it's great to speak on line to people who are different from ourselves because you can learn from that. A ghetto where everyone just pats each other on the back for being a pro or anti smacker, pro or anti breastfeeder, working or non working mother etc would just be really dull.

Totaly agree with you xenia (and that is not a phrase I have ever types before! )

I don't have an issue with HE people posting their view, quite the contrary, I find them interesting even if I don't always agree with them.

What irks me is that we are not always allowed the same freedom of expression if we choose to school ed.

There were no anti HE comments on this thread. None., we simply chose to post with our experience of the amount of time school educated children have.....something that we have some experience of, and that was deemed to be 'Anti HE', Discover life was rude to me (again) and went off in a huff.

emmaagain

you ask

'Bravo to you, and all power. My circumstances are different.

Do I really have to put all these sorts of caveats about how of course people who send their children to school have different circumstances to me, and their values and priorities are just as defensible and yada yada yada EVERY SINGLE TIME I POST?'

No I don't think that you do, but at the same time, you cannot expect to simply have your views accepted as the total truth if people disagree with you.

DS and DD aren't at school yet so I don't know how I will feel when they are at school.

However! Having meals, walking to school, getting dressed ect. are part of life, not dead time. If I can I involve my children in making supper. They haven't gone to Mars when I am doing it - they are in the kitchen chatting and playing and possibly helping (and sometimes hitting each other not to give you too rosy a picture ). I don't think you can distinguish between play time and non-play time like that. I would assume that most HE'ers don't so why should non-HE'ers?

I will agree that you are not going through the learning experience with your parents if you go to school and perhaps this is one of the things that some HE families see as a primary reason for HE. However, I don't honestly think that any child needs to spend even 3 hours of intense one on one time with their parents just for the sake of being with their parents. I would imagine that many HE children don't get this, particularly if they have a few siblings .

Discoverlife...I have no feelings of negativity about HE at all - I know it wouldn't work in our family, and in some ways I am a bit envious of people who can make it work for them. But you seem to have major issues about not allowing other poeple to speak. The OP speculated on how 'mainstream' fmailies manage it - people have explained. I can understand it when there is constant lack of understanding or criticism, but there have been threads where open discussion was invited - you are not a MN gatekeeper. And it seems to me that it is YOU who is equally eager to score points against school-edders - hence your post about the Report, on Friday. What is the point of any adversarial discussion? People are, in this country, thank goodness, given a choice about HE or schooling...what HARM do school edders do to you?

My own answer would be that since he was 5 DS has actually craved time with his friends, in school and out, over time with me. He wants me to be his Mummy, look after him, bring his triumphs and worries back to me to celebrate or soothe, but he does not necessarily wnat me to be there at the heart of creating those timphs or other experiences. And i think this is fine. bath, cooking, eating etc ARE all important daily contact time, and not, imo, to be 'subtracted' from the equation as they are in the OP.

I would love to have more time with DS, on a series of travelling hols, discovering the world - but the truth is, he wants to d it with his peers and then share it with me. Of course he does want to have experiences with his parents, but the time available is enough.

I think Blu has raised some very important points, not least the fact that I am finding my children - aged not yet five and seven - are making a life that doesn't include me; it's called growing up. And I love them, and love what we do together, and they love me too, and I realise that they are separate little people with lives and communities of their own.

Just out of interest, Emma, where is dad in your scenario?

I'm very open minded about HE - I would have considered it for primary if we hadn't had such fantastic schools. And if things don't go well at secondary (from September), then I consider HE as my first reserve.

I agree completely about family-time though, especially when they are tiny.

Ds1 didn't start school until 2 months after his 5th birthday. Ds2 started at 4+4 months. Certainly for the first couple of years on school days there was no real time for anything else - eat-sleep-read-school. But there's plenty of time at weekends and holidays, and the superb facilities and opportunities at school made up for that.

But I do think HE naturally creates division. A good friend of mine chose to HE, and she would constantly go on about what was good about it, and how she couldn't possibly send her dds to the local schools. She just didn't seem to realise that I felt she was judging me everytime she said something about HE, even though she probably wasn't. We would make time specially to see them because she wanted her girls to socialise, even though my boys really would have rather been at home chilling out after busy school days. In the end the friendship drifted apart.

It is interesting that you say that she kept on saying that 'she could never send her children to the local school'

I choose not to send mine to the local school, but my best friend does. I honstly feel that we have both made valid choices for our respective children and families as a whole. I don't need her to make the same choice as me to validate my choice, and neither does she.

Our children still play very happily together, they were round my house for tea yesterday.

i think that some parents almost approach school as a punishment

school at its best is a wonderful rich environment to be in there are paid people to look after you and nurture your development the facilities are fabulous and the sheer mixture of knowledge can bring wonderful achievements....
imagine a classroom filled with children your age activities suited to children your age dedicated staff to teach to your age.
being apppreciated and respected ,even loved for who you are making friends on your own merits without your mummy organising playdates....not having to ask mummy can we bake? knowing wednesday is baking day knowing every afternoon you can paint knowing at lunch time kind supervisors will help you -these people do a multitude of mummy tasks cooking lunch, cleaning school even taing care of your education now imagine if you will a mum at home it is a hard battle keeping up with all these tasks one man one job cant even be contemplated and its hard hard work however rewarding you may find it -some parents just arent fortunate enough to have the environment i describe above in their local schools and decide to offer it at home... IM one of them my 2 eldest are at secondary school(thats another thread tho) and my ds3 is educated at home because primary schools are failing our children, gone are the days of the grasscutter having been and teachers letting us play in the cutings all afternoon government has robbed us of this......i am not asking anyone to help me justify my reasons for H.E im asking for tolerance ,school for some is the best place in the world to be for others not so....it doesnt make me a minority in fact im part of what id hope is a majority- a mum loving her children and doing what she believes is best for them.
I donr perceive my ways are any better than anyone elses and i dont see my teaching skills as better than a professional but for now its working and whatever random posts are offered i wont be thinking ohh i will enrol in school-i might when reading martianbishops post try and see her side which i generally do but thats the joy of learning accepting others opinions.

why are we continually battling H.E v school? should we not all be united in loving and wanting the best for our children? whatever that best may be?

ohhh how preachy i sound ....sorry lol

Hmmm..! The tables will be turned on Monday when yr7 school places are announced

I certainly don't want to come across as "the local school is simply not good enough for my pfb". Even though that is what I feel!

Obviously we are choosing to pay, and many people do not have that option. But it's by no means an easy option for us, and many people I know could choose to pay if they adapted other aspects of their lifestyle.

is it tomorrow the places are allocated?
yikes my ds1 and 2 go to a secondary school in another district and boy did that tae some work ........ and of course we ALL want whats best for our pfbs ....and psb and ptb .......theres no shame in admitting you will do whats best for them.

Oh lord, here we are again with another thread which makes my heart sink....

If we start threads in the HE section which are about school / school life / how school families operate, then it is perfectly reasonable to expect "school edders" to respond to them.

Equally, if someone starts a thread in one of the school topics which is about HE, then HEdders will respond to it.

This is a public discussion forum, and everyone has a right to reply to any thread, in fact I'd say we even have a duty to respond to those which are directly relevant to us and our day-to-day lives, if we feel clarification is called for. We even have a right to join in threads in sections where we have no particular involvement - Hell I responded to one about Formula Feeding the other day! (DS is 14...)

There are forums and groups for Home Educators - if anyone wants to only speak to people who are directly involved in HE, and will by default always be positive about it as a choice, they can go there. Please.

We are actually very lucky on this forum that we don't have a regular poster who spends a huge amount of time reading the HE threads and posting completely irrelevant negative comments on practically every thread. I find the regular non-HE posters on HE threads are very polite and helpful, and I for one appreciate hearing their point of view, and would miss it if they felt pushed out of contributing to the discussion.

So please, lets have positive and interesting debates about these things, so that we can all learn from one another. We won't always agree, but that's life.

(DiscoverLife - if you are still here - I think MN provides a mix between support and challenge, but I feel that you are maybe at a place right now where you need to be supported in your choices rather than challenged about them. I wish you well in finding a suitable group or forum where the hurt you've been through recently can get a chance to heal.)

Good post, MumInScotland.