Is this a realistic plan? Looking for tips and experiences…

[OneDayIWillLearn]

I am considering taking my son (who is finishing year 3 now) out of school either at the end of the calendar year or end of year 4. I have a work project/ commitment which ends in November which is why I couldn’t really earlier I don’t think.

My plan would be to offer him HE for a limited time e.g. two years out but go back for the start of year 7. Or would one year out be better (mid year 4- mid or end year 5?) so he ends primary school back in school to ease the transition to secondary? We might not want him to go back in year 7 I suppose but I would want to start out with it as a time limited thing.

The things I’m nervous/ unsure about are:

• how much work I could realistically carry on doing. I work for myself so can be quite flexible about when and how much I work, but for money and my own sanity/ enjoyment/ future career prospects I’d like to be able to work 15-20 hours a week still ideally. But is that unrealistic? How do people make work alongside HE work for them?
• How to handle it with my daughter. She’s finishing year 1 (recently turned 6) but she’s a very different character and getting on well at school. I feel she’s in the best place for her for now and the HE experience for my son would not be what I think he needs if she’s around at home all the time too. But she - perhaps reasonably! - will be very jealous if she knows my son is at home with me every day!! Is it ok to tell her she can have the same opportunity when she gets to the same age, if she wants it, but leave her in school for now?
• How to make sure I stay close enough to the curriculum to make sure he could go back into mainstream school if or when he needs to. Maths is my particular concern - do people use certain resources or books?
• how to discuss it with him as an idea and how to manage expectations. Is it best to say we’ll try it for a term first rather than a year or two?
• I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I’m worried about it feeling overwhelming too and worried about a sense of losing some of my own freedom….is this a common worry at the start or is this a sign I might not be the right person to HE?

For background….my son doesn’t have any SEN diagnosed and has always been ‘ok’ at school, nursery etc but has never really loved it. We moved house and he started a new school in January. In some ways he’s settled fine and he’s doing well with the work, but he says he doesn’t have any friends and because he doesn’t like football or playing tag, he finds it hard at playtimes. He’s never really liked going to school and though he did have friends at his old school, it took him a long time to make them. But he gets on well adults and older cousins and can be very chatty and funny. So part of me is thinking ‘just give it more time’ but part of me is thinking ‘he’s young for such a short time and this could be really fun and enjoyable for us both’. And I just hate to see him being unhappy and getting called ‘weird and annoying’ by other kids ☹️

I am a trained secondary English teacher with ten years experience, though I haven’t taught for 6 years. So I feel pretty confident I could handle the education side of things - probably up to GCSE if needed, and higher in certain subjects.

Anyway, sorry for the long and rambling post, but any thoughts or experiences would be greatly appreciated!

It sounds like your reasons are to avoid a particular situation, rather than actively wanting to HE. I’m not sure that’s ever going to work - and that goes for anything tbh. I also don’t think giving him the choice is particularly healthy either - rather than develop resilience you’re teaching him to avoid tricky situations, rather than empowering him to deal with things.

You also seem focussed on maintaining his education, shouldn’t you be focussing on developing his socialisation as that seems to be the root of the issue.

All in all, I think that sounds like a great plan, especially managing your son's expectations by telling him it is just for a while. The main challenges are with your work (you'll need to sort childcare somehow; what job do you do?) and your daughter (unless she enjoys school, she WILL be jealous).

In terms of timing, some of your ideas may not be viable. Are there plenty of vacancies at his current primary school? If it's full when you want him to return, he'd have to go to a different one. That's a lot of changes. Going back in at the end of primary school would just be more disruption for him, when he'll be having secondary school to adjust to soon anyway. For a child who takes a while to make friends, that seems really hard. Plus many kids don't like Y6. Depending how your son's school/teacher handle it, it may be a lot of mindless SATs drill.

If I were you, I would plan to home educate him until the end of Y6, but tell him you're going to see how it goes. However, one term is way too short for a trial of home ed. You'll only just be settling in. One term in, if it doesn't feel like a good fit, there is a strong chance that you could tinker with how you are doing it and improvements could be made. After all, few people would give up on school after a single term, and school is far more take-it-or-leave-it than home ed is!

I couldn't disagree more. What if you had always disliked your job, or your relationship: would you stay put in order to "develop resilience"? Knowing when an environment is a poor fit for you and looking for a better one is a very healthy thing to do. Sometimes it seems as if adults expect children to suffer through things which we wouldn't tolerate ourselves if we had the choice to leave. The OP's son has been at school for FOUR YEARS and has never liked it. That's a long time. Why not try something different now? This is hardly a case of throwing in the towel at the first opportunity!

Choosing to leave and find a better situation IS empowering him to deal with life's challenges. My first proper job was stressful for me because it didn't suit my personality, though I was good at it. It always felt difficult and somewhat unpleasant. My colleagues were very nice, but weren't my type of people. We never got past small talk. It took me several years to figure out why I was unhappy there. Then I changed career, after which I loved going in to work and had a brilliant time with my new colleagues. Would you have advised me to stay in my first job?

I doubt there's much wrong with his social skills. He does get on well with some people, who appreciate him for who he is. Maybe there's something wrong with the social skills of people who would call someone else "weird and annoying".

My SIL took her older boy out of school for anxiety related reasons.

her younger girl was very, very upset that she still had to go to school and it caused a lot of problems.

she eventually home edded both.

Except he’s going to be going back to school!

If I hated my job I’d be planning to get a different one. Not avoiding work for two years.

Thanks for the comments, and also apologies as I think I probably posted while my thoughts weren’t very clear this morning!!

It is (or would be) more of a positive choice than I think I made it sound - I did love the teaching part of being a teacher but ultimately wasn’t comfortable with the wider institution. I’ve often thought at length of what I think the ideal school would be like and how far it is from the schools we have! And I would love to have the freedom to explore ideas and be creative with my lovely son. We have a lot of shared interests and I think it could be a really fun and stimulating time for us both.

I’m also not dead set he would have to go back in year 7 - if it was going well for us all at home I wouldn’t. I really didn’t enjoy secondary school myself. But I am nervous of cutting off that option by going too rogue I suppose when I am so new to the idea and don’t know how it will pan out.

Re my daughter, that is tricky. I am not against the idea of her being at home too in the fullness of time but it would be a really different dynamic. She is very confident and socially outgoing, and I know my son often feels overshadowed by her. And while i am potentially finding my feet with HE I think I would find it overwhelming to try and meet both their needs. But I do suspect she would find it hard to be going to school while we were at home. Perhaps she would accept it as ‘fair’ though if she is given the same opportunity at the same age? I do need to think about it more though.

With hindsight I think what I really should have posted on here was for ideas of books or resources to read around HE to get me more in the zone of different ways people do it and approach it - any recommendations?

I’ve read the Education Otherwise webpage and joined the local Home Ed Facebook group but would quite like an actual book to read….

I also think it's ok to change your life to one that is more enjoyable/fulfilling - staying in a situation you dislike isn't building resilience.

Working 15-20 hours a week isn't a problem, depending on your child and your work he could do things independently in that time or go to clubs/classes, childcare, forest school etc.

The two things I would consider is - home ed is fun and your daughter probably won't want to go to school when her brother is having a lovely time at home. And your son may well not want to go to secondary school.

Changing Our Minds by Naomi Fisher is a pretty popular book amongst home educators though I don't agree with her about everything!

If you want to follow the National Curriculum you can look it up on gov.uk, or Twinkl has spreadsheets that list all the parts for each year in each subject (and in fact publish their own home ed lesson schedules etc linked to their resources too). You can also still use quite a few of the resources that primary schools use if you actually want to - for example White Rose Maths sells workbooks individually and has associated videos explaining each double page of them on YouTube.
You'll find, however, that most Home Edders don't follow the NC exactly if at all, because one of the key advantages to the lifestyle is having academic flexibility.

I'd also say that I think working 15-20 hours a week alongside home educating a primary aged child is unrealistic unless you have a partner who is covering those hours of childcare for you - you will find you are with your child all day everyday and after they go to bed is when you need to do your planning (not writing lesson plans, but finding resources/groups/working out logistics of trips etc), plus chores that couldn't be done in the day because your child needed your attention or you were out somewhere together. Don't rely on "groups" to cover you as these are often a) parents stay b) only an hour long and probably somewhere you had to drive to so you'd be sitting in a car with a laptop and no wifi and c) your only opportunity to talk to other home ed adults and empathise/swap ideas etc.

Sorry to highjack the thread! But I’ve been reading loads of Naomi fisher lately and am really intrigued about which bits you don’t agree with…? If you don’t mind me asking :-)

But he IS (so to speak) "getting a different job". He'd be having a different type of education, before potentially returning to where he's unhappy. He wouldn't be avoiding education for two years. If I could take a two-year sabbatical from the job I disliked and do a fun job instead for a while, I'd jump at the opportunity, even though I knew I'd be returning to the original one later. Wouldn't you?

True, I might hold out hope that my enjoyable two-year break from my unpleasant job might be prolonged indefinitely. If that didn't happen, I'd be disappointed to have to go back to my old job. But if it wasn't possible to stay in the satisfying job, then I'd still rather have had those two good years than not had them.

The "Stark Raving Dad" podcast is a good introduction. https://www.starkravingdadblog.com/tag/podcast/

I would say that having one in school and one out is the worst of both worlds. You still have to do the school run, so any activities, groups or visiting places need to be fitted within the school hours. I have not been home educating through choice, but because school couldn't meet needs, so in a different situation. Having to work at the same time.is incredibly tough if you want avoid sticking them on screens.

@Millie2008 I find Naomi Fisher mostly great, but she does seem to have an assumption that people can just avoid work for years on end to home educate. Also, one of mine given free reign to explore their interests would never move from a screen. Not particularly healthy.

Thank you for the further comments and for the book suggestions which I will follow up.

The work thing could be tricky - my husband and I run a business together plus I do some other work. It means I can be quite flexible about how much and what I do but it wouldn’t be realistic (or desirable) for me to just totally step away from the business and leave it all to him. And the work I do for myself is stuff I really enjoy.

I just don’t know with my daughter - I’m aware I sound like a bad parent saying I wouldn’t want them both at home to start with but I just feel deep down it wouldn’t be how I’d want it be. But maybe the resentment of not taking them out at the same time would cause more problems than it’s worth!

Anyway my husband and I had a bit of a chat yesterday evening about it and have decided not to make any decisions yet but to see how the autumn term starts (he’ll get new children in his class which may make a difference) and use the time to think through all our options with the aim of making a decision around October half term.

So in the meantime I’m going to do my research and get to know a bit more about the local scene!

To answer your title question - i do think it’s and unrealistic plan, And I am not sure it’s good for either of your children.

It’s not realistic in a practical level - because I don't think you can do what it takes to do HE for 1 child, then pick up another child from school at 4 - and spend time with her that you’ll need to, to compensate for the fact that her brother is at home. And then still find 20hrs where you work; and, I presume, you’ll still have household running that you will need to take care of.

And, even more importantly - I think you are trying to solve an issue of your son not integrating well with peers by making it worse for him in the long term. Removing him now will only make it so much harder to integrate later, when they become teens. And - keeping him at home for even longer will mean that by the time he leaves school he’ll be unprepared for the grown up world at all.

And in parallel - this will affect your relationship with your daughter, and her relationship with her brother.

Why not spend the time now ok trying to figure out what his issues are - maybe there is undiagnosed SEN, or neurodivergence. Or, maybe he just needs some help with social skills. Or a different school?
This - rather than isolating him from peers - would be a much better way of setting him up for an independent life in the grown up world one day…

I agree with much of what you say. It sounds like a challenging setup.

But this is definitely not true:
Removing him now will only make it so much harder to integrate later, when they become teens. And - keeping him at home for even longer will mean that by the time he leaves school he’ll be unprepared for the grown up world at all.

You are assuming that kids don't develop social skills when they are out of school. I know a great many home educated kids who have gone on to school. The ones who are "school shaped", as they say, for whom school can be a good fit, have no trouble at all settling in. My eldest child started school for the first time at nine and had adjusted completely within two weeks. I know dozens of kids who were HE for primary and then started school in Y7. They found it no harder than other Y7s. In fact, in some ways they found it easier.

Then there are the kids like my younger child for whom school will always be a bad fit. They aren't going to breeze into secondary without problems. But that wouldn't have happened if they'd gone to primary either. At least after a spell out of school, in an environment which suits them, they tend to have higher self esteem and a sense of perspective on it all. Their talents have been recognised and they have spent time with people who like and accept them. So they know there's a whole world outside of school, that struggling with arithmetic doesn't mean they're stupid and having a stammer doesn't mean they deserve to be taunted. That helps carry them through the hard times at school.

This idea that school is a good preparation for adult life doesn't hold up under scrutiny. The school environment is not very similar to the wider world, the world in which home educated kids spend their time, where they will be as adults. Why would going to a special institution separated from the rest of society be a good preparation for living in society? It's only an ideal preparation for living in similar institutions such as prison, boarding school, or the military.

Depends where you are I suppose, if you are in a very rural area there may be fewer options - but locally to me there are lots of options for full day groups and childcare. Most parents work 15+ hours a week and an older primary age child can absolutely be independent at home for a couple of hours at a time - it's not like constantly supervising/entertaining a 4 year old.

Thanks for your thoughts. I do think my son could possibly fit a dyspraxia or inattentive ADHD diagnosis. He has poor physical condition and fine motor skills, very slow eater, very disorganised with possessions, untidy handwriting etc. His nursery raised it as a possible concern but teachers since have generally seemed to think he is within the range of normal. I suppose I could pursue it but I’m not sure it would change much and he isn’t at the level of EHCP so - having been a teacher - I don’t think a diagnosis would change much of his experience of school.

I don’t really think he has social issues other than as secondary to his lack of ability/ interest in football and physical games like tag which the ‘normal’ boys do at school. I talk to him a lot about how he interacts with other children and to talk about ideas of how to occupy himself better at playtime or find people to hang out with. And I’ve talked to the school about it. He did have a good friend when he started at the new school who he really liked and who really liked him (they were both more into Minecraft and Lego) but unfortunately he left at Easter and my son doesn’t seem to have found another kindred spirit. He generally just gets on better with slightly older children and adults - I was quite similar as a child and have lots of normal friendships! So I’m not sure how I would really ‘work on his socialisation’ apart from carrying on encouraging him and giving it time, which is the default. I don’t see him having problems making friends in life though.

The school he’s at is good too - it’s a fairly small village school, lots of art and outdoor learning, friendly teachers etc. His last school was excellent too. The only thing is that most of his classmates have been there since reception or nursery so the friendships seem rather long established - plus him not liking football and therefore not having a good way in. There is a very small independent school locally he could potentially go to which I have looked around. But I think the same objections about ‘it’s shielding him from reality’ or ‘this won’t teach him social skills’ probably pertain too!

But if - as it seems people are saying - I actually do in reality have to fully quit working in order to home educate - then the financial implications of independent school might even be less than quitting work.

But I wouldn’t then have the chance of having an extended period of time at home with him on our own learning journey, which I do still think would be really cool and ‘once in a lifetime’.

But maybe that’s an option I just need to keep as an idea for now and maybe it would be more feasible for year 6 or secondary school.

Anyway, I’m going to stick with my plan to do more research and give everything a bit more time….

This is really beautifully put and chimes with what I believe and feel about my son, thank you 🙏

@Saracen - I agree with what you are saying in general. If you know what issues with organised schooling you are trying to solve for a specific child - say they need more confidence; or more time/ 1-on-q to cover material - then of course, organising their learning to suite particular needs makes sense.
But in OP’s case - I am not sure they know what is up. Op’s son is slow to make friends in a new school, but it doesn’t seem there are academic or confidence issues? He doesn’t sound like he “loves” school, but his issues sound social, not academic/learning style.

Based on this - I am not sure removing him from peer interactions, without taking to understand what is making it challenging is going to help him in the long term. Clearly - its not his indifference to football and tag they is making it hard for him.

People are social creatures - it is not a controversial statement. And schools are not ‘prisons’ or ‘military’ - they do help kids develop and practice social skills among themselves and those skills will be useful in their adult lives. (Boarding schools, especially in the younger years - i agree are not great for that, as they are quite institutionalised)

If as per @legoplaybook - OP uses HE groups to create community for her son - I am not sure how that would help her son. She’ll simply replace the group of his school peers with ad-hoc and changing group of other peers he does not know - which will not make it any easier to help whatever issues are preventing him from making friends.

So - it all goes bak to getting a better understanding of OP’s son social challenges and figuring out a best way to support him to overcome them.

And, in the end of the day - he does not need to become the most introverted kid in his class. He just needs a good friend - even just one friend makes a difference for a kid.

Whatever you do, if you think DS possibly has ADHD or DCD I would pursue an assessment. The majority of support is based on needs but a diagnosis is importantly n understanding yourself, IMO, and if DS has ADHD and may want to try medication now or in the future he will need a diagnosis.

Children don’t need a diagnosis in order to be classed as having SEN. From what you have written, DS meets the legal definition of having SEN.

How sure are you DS won’t meet the criteria for an EHCP? I ask because some teachers don’t understand the legal threshold. Not a criticism of you in particular. A more general statement - see the numerous parents who are told by school their DC doesn’t need or won’t get an EHCP but the parents go on to successfully secure an EHCP themselves. I would think about this more whether you go ahead with EHE or not, especially if DS may re-enter school at a later date.

If your work can be flexible, you can definitely work alongside home ed - I've been doing 15-20 hrs since we started, but I can work in the evenings and at weekends around my kids' schedule. We also have lots of all-day and drop-off groups near us, so it would be possible to work around those of you have similar in your area.

If as per - OP uses HE groups to create community for her son - I am not sure how that would help her son. She’ll simply replace the group of his school peers with ad-hoc and changing group of other peers he does not know - which will not make it any easier to help whatever issues are preventing him from making friends.

This isn't my experience - most home edders I know have a core group of friends that they see regularly. I see my kids' friends more than my husband most weeks!!

@MMmomDD

There certainly are features of the school environment which inhibit social opportunities. School wasn't explicitly designed to promote socialising (were you never told "we are not here to socialise, young lady" when you tried to talk to your friends?). Ofsted doesn't particularly reward schools for providing good social opportunities. That shows.

When do kids at school have the chance to simply hang out and play and chat for several hours uninterrupted? That leisurely approach can be key for shifting from "acquaintance" to "friend". At eight, my older child rarely had playdates which lasted less than four hours. That's time enough to play a bit of football, discover you've had enough of football, flop on the sofa for some telly and see whether you might like some of the same programmes, blow up a load of balloons and bat them around like crazy, look at the comics your friend drew, and get around to showing your guest your Minecraft world even though they didn't think they liked Minecraft, and for them to realise that they actually do like Minecraft now they've been introduced to a different way of playing it.

It isn't just the lack of time that's an issue with school-based socialising. They don't have access to all the stuff they might want to play with and the environment in which to do it. In this case, maybe only football is possible. Minecraft is definitely not something kids can play together in most primary schools, so how would they bond over it?

Then there's the lack of privacy. Relationships are carried out in the spotlight. It's hard for kids to relax and be genuine if they know their peers are looking on and judging everything they do. Big kids don't bring their cuddly toys to school to play with. Even if they've somehow discovered a couple of others who also like to play with cuddly toys (unlikely: no one would admit to that), what will everyone else say?

What if you enjoy the company of people who are older or younger than you are? In some schools that is literally impossible. How can a Y6 child play with older kids when they don't even go to the same school? Even if you are physically in the same place with kids of a different age, you or the other kid probably don't dare to associate for fear of being teased for playing with babies.

Why the teasing? Well, if you're stuck in the same place exclusively with the same 30 people for 30 hours a week, you can't risk ostracism. You learn to conform. Maybe you even join in teasing other kids so you can gain social standing yourself, because this class is your entire social world. The price of being yourself is often too high. I bet a proportion of the "football-mad" kids in the OP's son's class do not actually love football, but they play it because it feels like their only option.

When my social butterfly tried school at the age of nine, I expected her to love the social side of it. She did, but only for one single day. Then she began to discover all of the above problems. She made the best of it and stuck it out for the full term we had agreed. Knowing there was another world outside of school to which she would soon return, able not to care too much what anyone thought, she played football with the boys (taboo at that school), refused to declare a best friend in the class ("but EVERYONE has to have a best friend!") and associated with kids in a younger year group (downright shocking, apparently). Then she left, preferring the better social opportunities on offer outside of school.