Getting over the traumatic times leading up to dereg

[milou2]

I am finding it very difficult to move on from the memories and feelings associated with the desperate conversations I had with my son before I deregistered him. My relatives and friends concentrate on what will happen in the future, how is he doing now, yet I have this huge need to share how bloody awful it was trying to keep going with a terribly unhappy child. Don't they care? Can't they see that something pretty major had been going on for us to have got to this stage? It's also the guilt, how could I have not acted sooner on my child's distress?

Please share your stories too. Any tips on how to share with friends and relatives in a way they can cope with?

milou2
I know exactly how you feel
Folks still say to me, "home education must be hard"
No! Actually -sending desperately unhappy children to school every day was very bloody difficult.

My son is aged 20 now. he seems to be happy and relaxed in his life and says he is content but got very drunk recently and returned home from a friends party in the early hours and we got talking-and another load of sh1t came out about the time in school

I will never forgive the people who did this to my son, never.

and yes the guilt is awful. Guilt about that and guilt about other stuff to do with his health.

Then I remember i did something about it. I got him and his sisters out of there.

They tell me that was the best thing i could have done.

TBH I gave up in the end on talking to none friends and relatives about it. I only talked to home edders about it-and watched and listened to families who had been doing it longer than us and whose children were older.

Eventually the results spoke for themselves for most of my family-and in the end if they still didn't get it, it's their loss not mine.

So meeting other home edders if at all possible and getting a 'positive HE fix' was my way of coping-oh and going to HE camps and gatherings where our way of thinking is the norm!

opps!

sorry that should read I gave up on talking to none HE friends

Thankyou, that's a lovely message to wake up to!

My son to b 12 year old refuse to go back to the steiner school she once attended.
We went to spain for two years and for reason to personel to explaine had to come back to london. Weve been staying with friends who became enemys untill i found a room in an old ladys house for 100 pounds a week. I sorted out the steiner school for her getting a bursary etc (which was hard)
now she reuses to go shes ays she hates it there the work,she says she learns nothing,
the children in her class and the whole steiner thing she want o go to a state school. Im worried i thought the steiner school would be the best school as i thought there approach was a softly softly approach.
what should i do . After a sleepless night and a big fight this morning with her shes now in bed.

Hi 1964, there have been a lot of (very very long) threads on here about Steiner schools, and a lot of people have been very unhappy with them, with issues like the work being boring (lots of learning by rote - parrot-fashion) and children not being allowed to move ahead even if they are finding it easy and boring. There's also tons of stuff about Steiner's beliefs - very odd, reincarnation, gnomes, not intervening in bullying because of "karma" - I don't have any personal experience of it, but you/she are certainly not alone in being unhappy with the education there.

Did you look at the state schools in your area? You don't explain why you wanted a gentler approach for her, but you might find there are state schools which would help her to settle in and make friends, and they ought to look at what level she is at in different subjects and put her in the right classes.

Or you could take her out of the school and home educate her, either just till the summer or longer term. There's lots of help on here if you'd like to do that.

I'm not very clear about English ages and school years (Scotland's a bit different) - would she be changing schools this summer anyway? (if you went with the state system instead of Steiner I mean). You could always keep her out and then start in a fresh school after the summer, if you think school would be the better option for her.

1964, my children HATED steiner school.
They were bored bored bored.
There was constant nasty physical and emotional bullying, which the staff igored, because it is to do with past life issues and karma.
The teachers shouted alot.
The curriculum is rigid to a degree, based on Steiner's anthroposophic model of pedagogy, whivch is spiritual, their main task being to lead the child towards the spiritual, and away from the apparent world.

The children are being primed for reincarnation you see......
Eurythmy is a stance and dance for preparing the children to communicate with the spirit beings which will show themselves sometime in the future.

There is copying from the board, and listening half day to one teacher telling myths as historical fact.

No wonder your child is discntented. She probably isn't learning anythng but knitting because she's so rigid with deadly boredom.

There are some old threads that may interest you

here

here

Good luck whatever you do.

It's a huge decision to move them, but in our case, and all the otheres here, it's ben a massive relief to all concerned.

Milou2. It is very hard for your friends/ relatives to truely understand the stress you have been through.I'm sure it's not that they don't care.

I see it a bit like having a traumatic birth. Other poeple don't want to hear about it over and over again, they want to focus on your lovely child. But it's still eating away at you, and you have to keep going over it in your head.

How is your DS now? Has he healed?

1964 - you've probably seen the "responses" to your post on the Steiner thread by now, which gives you a flavour of just how much of a heated topic it is! I think it might be a good idea if you were to start a new thread (maybe in Secondary?), asking for advice about your daughter, schools, home education, etc. Probably best not to put Steiner in the title though, unless you want them all to pile in again...

Milou2 - Lynette's comments about how its similar to a traumatic birth set me thinking - have you tried to write out everything that happened, how you felt about it etc? I find that can help me to stop going round and round the same ground, and to feel I've reached a kind of resolution with things. I haven't been through what you have with schools (we just chose to HE for practical reasons) but I know it can be hard when other people are just putting it all in the past before you feel you've been heard.

amum, good idea.
Particuluarly if you want to keep thebee away.
These things happen eveywhere anyway, as Juieno's experience shows.
The guilt is horrendous.
My kids are ayer for two of them, nad two years for the othe, out of their school horrors, and talk aboutit still.
New things keep emerging.
It makes me feel bad that some of the stuff they took for granted, and didn't even tell me at the time.
And that their teachers, most of whom knew totally what was going on, did their UTMOST to hide and protect their reputation.
So the stress of all that, and the lie that was being lived, by the school really, must have made ie all worse.
Awful.
But we must stop feeling guilty.
We nly do what we think is the best thing for our kids at the time.

Does anyone know about the Maharishi school in Leistershire.

Hi 1964 - you'd be better off starting a new thread in Education as you'll get more people reading in there

Someone gave me a link to the Maharishi school a while back on here. It looked interesting.

Amum is right, start a thread in education and the same person may come back.

Marharishi School use transcendental meditation

1964 - good luck with your search for info on the school and for finding somewhere your daughter will be happy. It will probably be obvious when she is happy, my older son keeps on telling me how much he likes his secondary school! And my younger one is so different now he is home educated: bouncy, smiley, a lot less stressy.

Everyone else - thanks for your help re my query, I felt so much better once I'd got it down in type - the wonders of mumsnet! And thanks for responding to 1964 for me.

milou, it's such a relief isn't it, when they tell you they love school.

Don't beat yourself up aboutit. We only do what we can at the time, and what we feel is best.
If they're happy, they can learn an incredible ammount in an extremely short time.
If they're unhappy, they will learn hardly anything, except a skin of survival and anxiety, which could takes years to shed and rebuild confidence.

We HE'd for a while between schools, and the relief was tangible.
My 13 yr old has hardly looked back since her secondary school, she's a different girl, as are my younger two at their primary.
There are hitches and set backs, but generally , the stress of before is gone.

Hi There,
I?m new to Mumsnet but am finding the information about these schools fascinating and feel they really need more research, I would love to interview some of you about your individual stories?
I am a final year journalism student and think this would be a perfect topic for a piece of work I am currently working on, I think it needs revealing.
Northern has already agreed to help me but unfortunately the thread where I previously posted this message to which she replied has since been deleted all of a sudden!!
I can interview you in person, on the phone or by email, whichever any of you would be most comfortable with?
It would also be fine if you wanted .o use a pseudonym.
I would love to particularly from anyone who either had to withdraw their children, whose children are still in these schools or people who went to the schools when they were little.
I think I have set up CAT so that any of you can contact me, if Northern could particularly CAT me that would be great after our last thread disappeared!
Thank you so much and I hope you can help me
Robean

You can also contact me on [email protected] if you prefer? Robean