Starting out Home Ed with two working parents

[mand1982]

Hello!

We have a 2 year old and 4 year old and just about to start out on the Home Ed scene. My feeling is that our 4 year old just needs same as we have done this year, groups and classes and ad hoc maths and english as things arise at home!!

However, I am hoping to increase my work hours (self-employed tutor) and wondered how others balance home ed and work? My husband is also self-employed so we are hoping to both work part time and both take kids to classes etc. How do others balance this?

Many thanks!

Such a sad post to read @UninterestedBeing12. I have two teenagers in school and although I can’t say it’s all been plain sailing, they learn every day from being around others who are different from them, from doing things way outside of their comfort zone and from pushing themselves in several subjects that I certainly couldn’t help them with. I am so sorry you had a bad experience and I would be interested to hear from other adults who were home schooled to see whether they now think it was a good idea.

I'm sorry to read you had such a negative experience. I have a couple of friends who were home educated as children and loved it and have chosen to home ed their own children.

The home ed scene has changed drastically in the last few years and far more families are choosing it, making it a much less isolating experience with loads of opportunities for socialisation.

But if you're home schooling, just to dump your children on a childminder, why not just send them to school. What exactly is the point.

Socialisation, isn't the problem?It's the lack of qualifications.It leaves you with. Don't fool yourself there's no difference.

I was home schooled for about 6 years and also home schooled my DS for a short time after he was recovering from surgery. You can get a lot of learning done in a short space of time so it would be quite easy to do around tutoring. Doing it around a 2yr old might be harder.

You have to have a good reason to do it though. It is very tough going from long term home schooling back into school. Some private schools will do staggered transitions but I think it would be harder in the state sector. At some point, your children will definitely question why you home schooled.

I think it can be brilliant for children with some types of SEND or mental health issues but otherwise I would pick a fairly crappy school over homeschooling even though both my parents were qualified teachers and in many ways I had a wonderful childhood. Children can learn and experience a huge amount from their parents after school, at the weekends and during the school holidays. School helps you learn to deal with the rest of the world.

My daughter is doing her first GCSE next academic year, at 11. It doesn't automatically mean a lack of qualifications; parents have to work at it but it isn't impossible.

I don’t think your homeEd plan is feasible for you , H and especially the kids.

@UninterestedBeing12 I am really saddened that your childhood wasn't what it could have been, and that you've struggled as a result in your adult life. Presumably your parents never gave you the choice of going to school. IME that is vanishingly rare in this country. Of the hundreds of home ed families I know, hardly any would deny an older child the opportunity to go to school if that was what they wanted.

In fact, my first child did go to school for part of Y5 just to see what it was like. There were things they liked about school and other things they disliked about it. On balance, they preferred home ed and returned to that. One of the main reasons was the better social life they enjoyed outside of school.

While being home educated, my child went to friends' houses and home ed groups constantly, and not just for brief playdates of a few hours at a time. When they were at school, the teacher seemed to have some other agenda for them besides socialising 😂(I well remember the phrase from my own school days "Young lady, we are not here to socialise!") Being crowded in with 30 kids was loud, chaotic, and distracting compared with just seeing a few friends at a time; as an adult I left my job in a busy big office in favour of a small company for the same reason. School restricted their ability to hang out with older or younger kids, and the pressure to conform was disturbing: "You can't have a BOY as your best friend", "What are you DOING hanging out with a Year Three at break? They're babies!", "Only boys play football", "You can't be friends with her if you're going to be friends with us". I had expected my child to love being in the midst of dozens of other kids all day, but I was wrong.

My younger child, also home educated, has a solid gang of half a dozen teenaged friends who are together several times a week, plus various other pals. She never tried school.

I'm glad you posted. It may help @mand1982 to be aware of potential problems when she home educates, so her kids don't have the same regrets you do. In particular, I would urge her to offer them the choice of going to school when they are old enough to make that decision, unless there is some strong reason not to.

The only friends I know who home educate are teachers who never went back to work after having children. I don’t think you can work and home educate. Just wouldn’t work, they spend all their time travelling all across the county attending classes. It costs a bomb. They travel 20 miles to go to a Spanish lesson, 10 miles in the other direction to a pixie trail, meet in a park to meet a bigger home Ed group from across the city. It’s a full time job and both families rely solely on the DH’s earning. They are both skint.