Self employed and home education

[Blissfultiggy]

Is anyone self employed and work from home while they're home educating two kids?

I really don't want to send my kids to school, my DD is nearly 2 and my DS is only 7 months so I have plenty of time to think, but I'm already finding it impossible to get any work done. If I'm lucky I can get some done on a weekend when my husbands home but I don't want to spend every weekend working when that's the only chance we have to spend time together as a family.

Does anyone successfully work from home as well as home educate? Is it just there age and it will be easier when they're at school age.

I need to find about 3/4 hours a day to work. I can do 1/2 of those on a night while they're in bed

Why don’t you want to send them to school?

Educating a child is a full time job. Do YOU think you’ll be able to wfh and home school, honest question.

What the first poster said.

Do you not have childcare now while you “work”?

You will continue to short change both. It is not sustainable, and not fair on your children or on your employer.

Educating a child is a full time job

This.

If you consider a FT job to be 35 hours and you need to do other work for 20 hours a week on top, that's a 55 hour week.

Your question is really 'do you think it's reasonable to sign up for a 55 hour working week for the next 10+ years?'.

Most people would say no. Sounds miserable.

I’ve known lots of people work part time while home educating. Finding childcare can be tricky, it’s been either a childminder who targets HE families or a forest school provision. I’ve also known two families that have done a child swap so got a day to work that way.

Mumsnet is pretty anti home ed. Yes it's possible and you do not need 35 hrs a week to home educate young children. There are also lots of options springing up all the time in the alternative education market now with the increasing numbers of children who are being home educated.

OP is self employed.

you do not need 35 hrs a week to home educate young children

Young children grow.

If op wants to do this long term she needs to think about more than spending a couple of hours doing colouring and counting beads with a 3 year old.

But the question still stands, how does she currently manage to work while looking after two small children?

I had to WFH fulltime during lockdown with a 5 yr old and wouldn't recommend it.

Yes 5 yr olds are more able to concentrate on something than a 2 yr old but not for more than a few minutes.

Realistically the day looked like this, and bear in mind DH was WFH too so was completely involved in the process.

6am-9am - I would work, while DH got DD up and ready for the day
9am-12pm - DH would work while I took care of DD
12pm - 3pm- we switched
3pm - 6pm - we switched and I'd sort out dinner
6pm - 8pm - we switched, DH would do bath and bed
8pm - 10pm - DH would finish off any work while I did the housework.

Trying to work uninterrupted just didn't work, every 5 minutes it would be

• mummy how many syllables are in xxxx
• mummy why are elephants grey
• mummy I'm hungry
• mummy I'm bored
• daddy can we go to the park
• daddy i'm hungry
• daddy how do i do this maths
• mummy what is history why is stuff called history, when does it start being history....?
• daddy can you do Lego with me, drawing with me, painting with me, cards with me.....

"I need to find about 3/4 hours a day to work. I can do 1/2 of those on a night while they're in bed"

I think this is do-able with school aged children. During the Covid days, I trained my kids to play upstairs in their rooms, for a few hours each morning, while I worked. Then we did school work in the afternoons.

It worked so well that we took the eldest out of school and home educated him for another three years!

During the mornings the two of them lost themselves a really complex and interesting make believe game which lasted for months. In itself, this is good for kids development. Its how the Austen sisters developed their creative muscles!

One to one tuition is quite intense. You will find that you don't need a full 5 hour "school day" to see them make progress. There's never been more apps and resources to help you either.

As you get to know the home ed community in your area, you may come across paid childcare options like forest schools or activity clubs that will give you a bit of alone time. You can also exchange play dates with other parents.

Good luck!

I do, we run a farm (veg) and I home educate 2. I put my heart and soul into their education, but we fit in around the farming. Both DC are interested in different aspects of the farm (which does help as sometimes DH has one while I have the other) as they each spend some time on those as part of their learning, geared towards their future career (one livestock one horticulture). However far more important though Home Educating managed to turn my eldest around from an anxious wreck who could barely write a sentence in P6 to a confident and articulate person who knows that her dyslexia and ADD do not mean she's "rubbish, slow or dumb" She had thoughts of self harm and cried herself to sleep at night when in mainstream school and now she has progressed to gold level in her ice skating and is entering online competitions in her art. She's confident in her learning and no longer scared to ask for help or admit if she doesn't understand something and has planned herself a career through learning tailored towards her own style rather than having to fit in with that of 30 others. I do sometimes get behind in the farm paperwork and have to work late etc but overall it's doable

Ignore posters who imagine home ed must be like school. "Full time"? Yes, in the same sense parenting is, it's 24/7. You'll answer a million questions, help them do things, take them places. But that doesn't mean your children need your direct attention all the time. They'll also be learning by drawing, playing, and exploring.

Really the challenge when you work from home and you have several young home educated kids is not education but childcare. I don't know many under-8s who will reliably entertain themselves for several hours a day while their parents work... and you'd need to hope you're lucky enough to have two such children!

I think @unlimiteddilutingjuice got lucky, and @Objectionhearsayspeculation's situation is a bit different from yours in that kids on a farm are able to join in or be more self sufficient given the environment.

No way would my eldest have amused themselves for long at five. I burnt the candle at both ends by working while they slept. That wasn't sustainable, and I ended up using a childminder instead, which was a brilliant solution that suited both of us. We happened to find a CM who was a home educator, so there were big kids to play with and she took them to home ed activities and museum trips etc. My younger child would have happily entertained herself for large portions of the day, I believe, but I had given up work by the time she was born, so I never tested that theory!

Anyway, I think your plan is viable, but you'll need to be open to the possibility you'll need some form of childcare to make it work.