Home Ed Parents- what do you do for work?

[SparklyNavyHare]

Hi Everyone,

I am considering home education for my little one but I currently work 5 days a week in a pressurised job that if I do choose to home educate I would have to leave.

What careers do home ed parents have that fits around their child?
I’m not interested in MLM/join my team/ buy my course social media stuff- I don’t like taking photos of myself never mind posting videos.

Im happy to learn new skills, employed or self employed but want something realistic and where I can make a reasonable living- thank you

I don’t know anyone who does home Ed and works full time. You won’t be able to work a normal 9-5, Monday to Friday. So your options are: work weekends, work evenings or freelance but not expect the same income.

If you don’t want those options, then I would go with trying to get your child proper support in the school system. Or work on increasing your earning potential and pay someone to home educate or look into private that may work better for them.

Shamelessly placemaking - I’m considering home ed too op. For what it’s worth, I’m currently a nurse and I personally wouldn’t be able to make home-ed fit (unless it’s bank shifts, but even then it’s not so easy, and there are downsides to it too).
I hope you find a way to make it work for you.

I understand that- if i was working for myself- then i wouldn’t have an employer to answer to and would work hours that suited my family and circumstances dependant on what the business was?

all I want is examples of what other people do to earn a living and how they make it work- I am not asking for an autopsy of my circumstances or career advice.

Its like people don’t want to share the positives of this lifestyle and just want to rip you apart!

If I need to come out of work fully to care for my son and home educate him- i will be doing- I would just like a little something for my own sanity because I am a very driven person and I was looking to other mums who may be in a similar situation for what they do.

Home ed is a hugely demanding thing. We're only doing it for a short time, but actually planning for progress and keeping learning behaviours positive AND keeping a tidy house, planning nutritious meals and all that is a time consuming and exhausting business. Don't underestimate the toll and the financial cost of all those clubs and activities, home ed days and resources that you need to make it work.

I don't think it's that people aren't willing to share the positives of this lifestyle - I think it's more likely that what you're looking for doesn't really exist. People do find ways to juggle it, and have suggested these to you, although I do see that these solutions aren't quite what you're looking for. You speak of being self-employed so that you can set your own hours around little one - realistically you need a robust business idea for this to work, do you have one?

I know a number of home edder’s. One works an evening shift stacking shelves. One works remotely selling holidays and shares the home ed with her husband who is self employed and chooses his own hours. The others are unemployed.

In our home school group we have quite a few people in tech, a few online language teachers, a cello teacher who goes to people's homes in the evening, a stock broker, a chef for a local pub who works evenings, a graphic designer who lives in fear of AI, a couple who sell jewelry at markets, a plumber who is self employed, a clown (yes really!) and other varied admin/wfh jobs. Also, lots of couples who sacrifice nights out, and a fancy car to live off one income, and make it work.

we haven’t been able to work and both claim CA as the children have SEN and other issues. Home ed wasn’t really a choice more of a necessity as they weren’t ok at school so it’s been hard.

I worked in a shop on Saturdays. My partner worked full time.
Friends are academics, I know a teacher and a doula. But mainly one parent stays at home. Those who really make it work had planned or do it pretty early on so set themselves up to have the ability to live on one income.

I do know a nurse but she has lots of grandparents help.

I work full time and my daughter does live on line schooling, but she is 15. Wouldn’t be possible for a primary aged child but I wouldn’t have considered homeschooling at that age ( I only change due to her mental health and school avoidance)

Well I don’t have a business plan at present as I am just thinking about what the future would look like but I have specific, in demand expertise and experience where I could look at setting up my own consultancy, but as you say would need more research and planning.

I've known a few home edding families, and they've either been families where one parent earns very well, allowing the other parent to not have to work, or families who have a sufficiently low income that they get topped up by UC/disability benefits etc in order to support one parent staying at home. Mostly the latter tbh.

Fully flexible jobs that allow you to pick your own hours, pay well, allow you to be caring for/educating children at the same time and are mentally stimulating/interesting don't really exist unless you are self employed or are a very valued existing employee that has negotiated a deal. Pretty much all employed WfH posts will strictly foribid you being responsible for a child during working hours and will expect your working hours to be broadly in line with normal working hours with perhaps a little flexibility.

I hope you find some inspo and thanks for the perspective of a a practicing RN

The few people I know who homeschooled did not work or did so at home very part time. I think it’s very hard thing to do (home school), I certainly would not have the patience but if it was a case of crippling anxiety or whatever I would do it. But that plus a full time job I just can’t see it.

I knew a home ed family where the parents were business writers. They earned good money writing business reports and annual reviews for major companies. Nearly all work done from home except a few meetings in the office (which these days would probably be on Zoom anyway.) They had tight deadlines but not office hours, so they could work in the evening when DC were asleep or watching TV, or work while DC were settled into writing a story or an essay.

Is that the sort of thing you mean? It's a pretty specialised field - and probably way less lucrative now with the onset of AI writers.

I have noticed there are always dozens of jobs on Indeed for Chatbot writers (basically training AI how to respond to customer service queries.) Many are work from home and a few say no experience necessary, training given. Probably v low pay to start but you could move on from the basic ones after a few months' experience, and it wouldn't be as onerous as trying to teach DC all day after a night shift in a care home or supermarket.

I'd have a look on Indeed for WFH positions and see what is out there that fits your skillset.

We sent our two to a Steiner/Waldorf School for the AuDHD reasons and they thrived, both absolutely loved school. It wasn't cheap but far less expensive than one of us giving up work. (I'm AuDHD and hated school, DH is ADHD, went to a Waldorf school in another country and has great memories of his schooldays.)

DS and DD aren't formally diagnosed as there's never been any need--both have always thrived and continue to do so as adults, now in their 30's.

I’m absolutely not saying there aren’t positives to home educating children who need that and work best in that environment- but the only instances I know of where it really works is where one parent doesn’t work and is solely focused on home ed.

I have a friend who tried to find a way to make employment work while home educating but when you factor in that:

• You are not able to do most remote working jobs which have set shifts or are day time hours when you will be in sole care of child so you can’t work until after 4:30
• Building a business yourself takes huge time, effort & sometimes cost that you just don’t have to dedicate
• Home educating well also takes a lot of time, effort & planning
• You can’t really work night shifts because then you’d be working through the night & looking after child/home ed through the day as partner at work, long term that doesn’t really work
• You could work afternoons/evenings, but it does then mean very little family time/down time/rest, and very long days when your work shift could start at 5:30pm and finish at 1am for example.

It’s incredibly difficult to try and work alongside home educating, even if you already had an established business set up you’d struggle to meet client demands when balancing childcare/education/typical home life.

I think it's best if you don't assume he's going to have problems and just treat him as his own person. I'm not somebody who's going to end up the way you did.

I'm not sure it's an entirely great option to keep a ND child out of school unless their difficulties are so severe they struggle to function.

At some point, they have to be a part of the world. What about university, then what about work. If you deprive them of the experience of learning to interact with people day to day in an educational setting, then how are they going to learn for the future. Unless they never work and just stay at home all the time.

You've said he's not unhappy at school. I wouldn't anticipate there's going to be a problem.

Similar in my experience. There are lots of things you can do. I was a self-employed computer programmer. The most lucrative ones will capitalise on your area of expertise - do you want to say what it is that you currently do, OP? Perhaps you could branch out from that?

Unfortunately in an "open forum" such as Mumsnet, you will get lots of people wandering through who have little or no experience of home education, and whose input is unhelpful. Most home educators are on Facebook groups which you can only join if you are already home educating or seriously considering it. That cuts down on the "noise" from people who don't know what they are talking about. Or carry on the conversation here and try to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Among my HE acquaintances are almost none where both parents work FT, but in most families, both parents do work. Would you and/or your partner be able to continue in your current jobs and cut your working hours?

Paid childcare is an option. Though I worked from home with flexible hours, I used childminders so I could get a decent amount of work done without being shortchanged on sleep. The CMs also home educated, so there were other older kids on hand for my child to play with, and the CMs took my kid along to home ed groups, museum visits etc. Some people like the idea of au pairs, especially if the parent is WFH anyway and could be available in case there are issues. I do know people who have tried au pairs, but nobody for whom it has worked well. I guess it's hard to find someone who's the right fit and who will stay for any length of time.

I would not be impressed with a child minder who was also home educating their own child at the same time.

The education side of things takes FAR less time than most people imagine. With one-to-one attention and an education which is focused exactly at the child's level and capitalises on their interests, home education is much more efficient than school. You won't have to set aside huge chunks of time to work with your child. In fact, you don't have to do formal "work" at all; you can let your child learn entirely by playing and doing whatever he is interested in.

It follows that the real challenge faced by working home educating parents is childcare. You'll need to find a way to keep your child safe and happy while you work, just as you now do in the school holidays. Some young children are happy pottering around at home for hours while their parents WFH. Most aren't. My eldest wasn't, which was why I used childminders.

You may be able to grab a productive hour here and there while your child is playing. At the home education groups I go to, there are usually a few parents who have a brief chat and then retreat to a corner and whip out their laptops to get a bit of work done. Some kids with autism need more support at these groups, and their parents need to be more engaged with them. Anyway, this probably won't add up to very many hours of work you can squeeze in.

Home education doesn't necessarily involve sitting and doing bookwork. Some HE childminders are very popular with parents who like their children to have the opportunity to play with big kids, go to museums, do art projects, and go on nature walks. This is not very different from what non-HE childminders do, except that there are big kids on hand rather than just toddlers. Small children often like to be involved with big children. Both of mine always did.

Thank you to everyone who has provided examples of how they have made it work and signposted me to different resources

In fact, you don't have to do formal "work" at all; you can let your child learn entirely by playing and doing whatever he is interested in.

How does this work?

How are these home educated children who haven't followed the curriculum able to suddenly pass French GCSEs or know trigonometry or know the structure of an atom? Because these things are not intuitive and so they must be learnt through study. Whether you use them in adult life is neither here nor there, they are integral for passing GCSE's in those subjects.

i think those with very young children who have just started their home Ed journey are a bit naive about how much going to the shops with mum, watching a bit of the Octonaughts or playing ten minutes duolingo is educational. It's not enough to pass formal qualifications.