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

Read to your child, read your own books/magazines around your child, write notes to your partner/shopping lists on the fridge. Consult maps/signposts/instructions in your child’s presence, hang letters posters in your home - the kid will v likely learn to read. One of mine needed a bit more than that (and is likely dyslexic), but monkey see, monkey do.

@Fullyhuman there is a reason why the phonics program has been shown to be the best way to teach children to read. Lots and lots and lots of research in different countries with different children.

Home Ed families usually have one working FT. I know of a single mum home Ed and she is unemployed but does teach piano lessons in the evenings but I think that’s more of pocket money / in exchange for favours rather than an actual paid job.

The job of a teacher would be so easy if putting up a few posters and reading stories was all it took.

The job of a teacher is an entirely different proposition. Children have a deep bond with their parents and, when young, emulate them.

I used to do on line home tutoring for an e-learning company. Self employed so could take as much or little work as I wanted and it could be done at any time as long as I assessed within 5 working days of receiving it. Meetings were twice yearly for a couple of hours. Maybe look at some e-learning providers and see how they recruit tutors? I often worked from 5am to lunchtime then had the rest of the day off, or worked 6pm until midnight. I wasn’t home schooling but can see it would work alongside that.

A lot of teachers, most have left schools and teach online,
pharmacist, baker, some work for companies like Usborne, Neals Yard etc. a few run their own businesses, and then there are the family where one parent works.

Most of the families in our home school groups have one stay at home parent. A few parents have a part time job.
-Online college professor
-uber or delivery drivers

• clean houses
• sell things at craft fairs

-tutor

• swim instructor
• school bus driver (their child is old enough to be home alone)

I do know two families where both parents work full time and their children do online school. The parent who wfh is there to supervise but they're not doing any of the teaching.

We both worked shifts which meant we could juggle schedules to be home for the kids, supplemented with patched in childcare.

I now run my own business two days a week and we have childcare for that while he still works shifts.

You may be interested in the psychologist Peter Gray's accounts of how unschooled children learn to read. It does work differently from school. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-to-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-to-read

For 20 years I have been well connected in the local and national HE community. Parents do discuss challenges, particularly around unschooling and around learning to read. I have yet to meet or even hear of an unschooled child who reached adulthood functionally illiterate, except those who have very profound learning disabilities. When choosing when to tackle reading, kids often learn to read later than they would be made to do it at school - sometimes at an age which the average person in the street who doesn't travel in HE circles would find shocking - but that doesn't harm their education as it would at school. (For the record, I do know of some grown-up unschoolers who never mastered quick and legible handwriting, whose parents thought perhaps they had missed a window of opportunity to encourage them to do that. But I don't know of any non-readers.)

And here are Peter Gray's theories about why the same technique of just reading to kids and letting them get on with it doesn't work in schools: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn/201311/the-reading-wars-why-natural-learning-fails-in-classrooms I don't know enough about school-based education to say whether he's onto something here. I do know from my own observations that there are ways in which schools positively hinder learning, so it may be that he is right about this. At any rate, it is interesting that children seem to take to reading better outside of school than in it.

I work part-time nightshifts in a supermarket and my husband is self-employed. I do the equivalent of 2 nights per week but mine are 4 together 10 off. I could easily swap to every Friday and Saturday night as they're the hardest shifts to fill.

The Work From Home Hub on FB now has a website. It's worth looking at that. I rarely see evening and weekends only, but they do on occasion.

One of my EHE friends is very creative with arts and crafts and she's partnered up with a tutor and they run various EHE activities. No idea on what income it generates, but the sessions are usually fully-booked.

You simply don’t know if home ed children are better readers than children who go to school. There is no research. You’re talking very anecdotally.

Some friends of mine home educate, one is a museum curator and the other works for St John’s Ambulance teaching first aide courses and attending sports events.

they are part of a community of home educators and once a week on of the parents will organise an outing somewhere and take all of the children giving more flexibility

This is great- thank you ☺️

I didn’t know any that didn’t have 1 parent at home. Home Ed is a lot of work - lots of prep/research, field trips/clubs etc. it’s a full time job

I'm an academic and I know a few people who are either academics or in university admin who mainly or partly work from home while their DCs are at home but they are mainly not schooling due to mental illness.
I have also heard of a couple who are a farmer/housewife and the secondary aged child goes out on the farm but that will be safer than a primary aged child with ADHD!
And finally I knew a family who were building their own house, one of the parents worked in an office while the other project managed. I don't think much learning got done at primary level TBH. And the DC went to school for secondary.

But I don't know anyone who either has a two career couple or both work out of the home AND home schooling rather than self directed learning or nothing much happening - it's always been one at least part time and maybe one at home doing a little, or a child who isn't currently able to do formal lessons.

You're right that there's no evidence that home ed children are better readers than children who go to school.

But your assertion that "literacy has to be taught" is demonstrably untrue. Anecdotal evidence disproves it. It is common for home educated children to teach themselves to read with no formal teaching. One of mine did, as did many of my children's friends.

OP, I know a couple who home ed. He is a teacher and she is a social worker and they both work part time around each other. They qualified and got to good salaries prior to children. They also don’t have expensive holidays and have a smaller house, it’s a sacrifice they are willing to do to make home ed work.
That said, their children are neurotypical and academic.
i don’t know about your child but my child, is not.
My ADHD/ query ASD child cannot learn by herself. Not even for twenty minutes. You’d be kidding yourself to think you’d be able to do any work around a child with limited concentration.
She is about two years behind even with an EHCP and specialist teaching.
I am educated to masters level but I can’t teach her effectively. I don’t have the skills or patience.
Plus there’s the social side. We went on a class trip with the parents the other week and she was off roaming the woods with 16 other kids who love her for who she is and who have chosen her as their friend.
I know a lot of SEN children through the SEN community who are home ed and none of them have that. Their parents were organise their social life, and it is so beneficial for autistic and ADHD kids to navigate friendships on their own. Frankly, other kids tell them that they talk too much, or are boring when they talk about their special interests for hours, or they invade their space too much, and our kids need that. They need to learn to cope and adapt, not the dreaded ‘masking’ but to learn how to be a friend.
We had hard times, she was bullied and refused school for a while, but I am so glad we persevered as she is thriving and happy. I see other children out and about who’s parents took them out of school and so many of them are lonely and isolated or unhappy.
And are you really going to put them into secondary school? Straight from home ed?
Honestly choose your path wisely.

Just another thing to consider. If you give up your career to home ed, and your relationship breaks down, you could potentially be looking at moving, getting a job and putting your child into school all at the same time. When my relationship broke down, my kids could stay in their house, they were already at school and I carried on working/ upped my hours. UC doesn’t take home education as a reason why you can’t work, they will expect you to look for work.

Also, if your ex wants the children to attend school a court will back him over you.

Hospitality (evenings and weekends)
cleaner (self employed)
care assistant (nights or weekends)
dog walker(self employed)
copy writer(self employed)

Its so funny how I was exploring what types of careers people who home educate have and the thread has turned into me being a single mum who's not entitled to universal credit when my husband divorces me 😂

This website is crazy! Thanks for sharing all of your experiences- I appreciate other peoples views

This is false. They will act in the best interests of the child. EHE parents often win court cases against the other parent but the courts prefer it when parents can sort it out amongst themselves.

From the HE families I know, the dad continues to work and the mum stops working to educate the child/ren. So, the man’s life and career prospects don’t change at all, while the woman’s most certainly do.

When I was home educating, I could make it work because I had passive income - before having kids I’d made a good salary as a lawyer and bought three buy to let flats, so the rent from those (minus the mortgages, insurance, repairs etc) kept me ticking over.

I don’t think buy to let is a good investment anymore honestly, but if you have any capital you could look at investing in stocks and shares, or in a small business?

But the vast majorly of home ed families that I knew were surviving on one salary.