Survey: do you consider yourself autonomous, structured or somewhere in between?

[Fillyjonk]

And how old are your kids?

And did you HE from the start?

Am trying to get an idea of what % of HErs do what, for nowt but my own interests really.

[musicposy]

Well, we're somewhere in between. DD2, age 9, (HE for a year) does an hour or two of structured work in the mornings and then whatever she wants the rest of the day. She's always free by 11am latest, often 10am. It works well for her.
DD1, age 12, has only been HE for 3 weeks and we are much more structured. Having said that, we're still finding our feet. It started with a timetable and after me sitting in tears last week because she wouldn't do half of it, and it seemed to drag on for ever, we've abandoned that. I've given her a rough idea of what she needs to cover and she's working through it at her own pace over the course of the week. We'll see how it goes. She wanted to keep level with her school age peers in terms of what she is covering, but I reckon we will relax it over time.

I get massive guilt trips from time to time as I wonder if my children would do better to be completely autonomous, and I've read a lot of books where autonomous makes sense. But DD2 likes a structured life and I am still not quite brave enough. I'm also an ex-teacher and I can't quite get it out of my system!

[sadminster]

I have an 8 yo & a 2yo, neither have been to nursery or school etc. Because we HE'd from birth it was always autonomous & very unstructured, but the older dd has become (and after she learnt to read) the more structure she craves. So I guess we buck the trend starting out autonomous and becoming ever more structured.

Typically we have a couple of hours of 'work' daily (spelling, maths, English, verbal & non verbal reasoning, handwriting & reading) then follow what ever interests we have the rest of the time. I'm doing lots of practical skills at the moment - cooking, sewing etc - and we do an awful lot of history but a couple of months ago Latin was her obsession. DD is incredibly sociable so we're out pretty much every day (groan) doing something or other.

I have found it a relief to escape form the tyranny that HE must be daily traipsing through mud, wearing brightly coloured trousers & woolly hats while 'discovering' things and if you aren't doing that ... well .... you may as well strap your child to a chair & beat them regularly. Helps to stay away from HE internet forums

[SugarBird]

Hi. My boys are 18 and 14. 18yo has been in school all the way through and loved it (he has AS, loves school routine and loathed the idea of home ed!) 14yo has been home educated since he was nine and we've mostly been autonomous. I'd say it's 'structured autonomy' in that we've steered him a bit but generally we've gone with the flow.

Over the past few years, though, he's asked to do GCSEs/iGCSEs and enjoys checking out the syllabus, following the courses (and doing the exams ) He didn't have any problem going from very unstructured to structured - I think he was just ready to have a go at working in a different way.

Anything else he does is very unstructured and we still don't have a timetable. We also leave it to him to tell us when he feels ready to enter for an exam. So I guess it's still autonomous in its way .

[SugarBird]

Should also say DS2 does LOADS of sport so that also give a bit of structure to the day.

[FILLYJONKhasayarnshopASBO]

thanks for all the replies

am going to go through thread soon and get stats

[sorkycake]

'ello!
we are the same as runnerbean .
we started off rather structured, abandoned all hope over the last few months due to being very sick with pg no.4 and have returned to a sort of semi-structured approach which is mostly child led, if that makes sense.

[majorstress]

"I have found it a relief to escape form the tyranny that HE must be daily traipsing through mud, wearing brightly coloured trousers & woolly hats while 'discovering' things and if you aren't doing that ... well .... you may as well strap your child to a chair & beat them regularly."

bit late but wanted to say, thanks sadminster you have cheered my up in my HE-newbie funk.

Our stats: very early days. dds are 8 and 5. We just started HE in Sept after 4 and 1 year of state school, respectively. WE moved to a new LA so it was a natural transition point. I started very determined to do structure, I had some maths and English workbooks already and lots of ideas. Quickly panicked esp when dd1 baulked and I was spending all my time racking head and internet for ideas, and I ordered a "box" (we intend to go back to state school in a year or so). After 3 weeks it still isn't here due to supply issues for a textbook-so much for help in a hurry!

Meanwhile I've got more relaxed sort of, because I basically had to do some other stuff besides HE 24/7 (life goes on), and I started counting all the other things we do-just because we always DID lots of "educational" things in addition to school, doesn't mean they don't count now! They do spend a lot of time reading and some watching dvds, a bit of nature walks and cycles, plus we have several external activities, but DH is quite dissatisfied with it all, especially when I refused an LA inspection with a rather rude letter copied from an anti-inspection HE website. (I had barely started and after only 7 days at HE was not willing to account for and nail down all my plans before I'd even tried them out).

I observe so far that the more "obvious" HE community seems to tend to be much more autonomous and to have never gone to school, but there's a feeling that the structured ones may be the silent majority. And the fact is, it's very time consuming doing the structure and you are going to be sitting inside doing it, so the structured group are not going to BE out in the mud as much, or at the local HE activities as much. Structure spreads and dictates everything else-but it still has it's place I believe.

But we still wear some pretty bright trousers.