Had you met anyone in real life who home edded before taking the plunge yourself?

[milou2]

My first son's close friend at secondary had been home ed until starting yr 7 and I met his parents. 16 months later I wrote the dereg letter for ds2.

Apart from them I had never met anyone who even discussed it as an option, though I had heard of the term home education.

No we didn't know anyone!

I didn't know anything about home ed either, until I was searching the internet for alternatives.
As soon as I found the EO webpage, I knew I had found the answer. That was a Friday night in January, nearly eight years ago-and the dereg letter went in the following Monday morning.

Just knew we had got to get them out of the school situation quickly. Found the local home educating community after that and then from there found the national one-and have never looked back.

yes!

An old school friend was home educating her children when I had my first (She had 4 children at the time. It's either 5 or 6 now :-) )

One of the families in our antenatal class already knew that they would HE as the default option with school as the less-likely alternative (for philosophical reasons)

One of my closest friends when I became a mum was already "unschooling" her two boys, who were 1 and 3 at the time. they are still school free, but now of "school age".

And gradually, as children go into more and more hours of childcare as they get older, the local HE ones are the ones we see lots of during the day, just because they are available for adventures when we are!

I suppose it's partly because of our family outlook (Popperian/TCS/unschooling/unconditional parenting/ natural child project style...) that we've tended to get to know other families with similar values, and school tends to be an option rather than an assumption in such circles. :-)

A lady at my daughter's primary took her child out to home educate her because of bullying. I didn't think that much of it, although I was quite interested. Then when DD had some problems at school I went round to her house and asked her all about it. She was great, we had a coffee, she showed me all the kinds of things her daughter had done.
It was about another year before I summoned the courage to take the plunge, in response to other circumstances. But it definitely helped plant the idea in my mind.

yeah, we knew one person before and i spoke to her when dd1 was first having problems, and she gave me lots of support and helped me meet other HEing families

I had briefly met some people a few years ago, who I was told afterwards HEed their 2 children. I hate to admit it, but I immediately made the usual assumptions and thought it must be lonely for the children, why would they want to miss the social experience of school, etc.
Then when ds1 was 3 and clearly not a natural 'big group' person (although not shy in small groups), not keen to venture out into the world on his own, and therefore not AT ALL keen to go to pre-school, I began to look for alternatives. I re-discovered the idea of HE and it all suddenly made sense, on education grounds (as an ex-teacher) and on social ones.
But I wasn't sure I would dare to try it beyond 5 until I met some HEing families and realised it really is a possibility, and that all sorts of people do it. Just finding out that there were so many around made all the difference. Now I can't imagine wanting to send either ds to school...

Other families are the whole reason I became interested in HE in the first place - meeting them and their kids, seeing the relationships they had with each other, how they got on with people around them, all the kinds of things they were able to do etc etc.

I hadn't met anybody when I decided to go for it, but once I had I knew I'd made the right decision. I was so impressed by the kids I met and everyone was very friendly and welcoming.

I had not met anyone before but just knew I was making the right decision. Have not looked back. Since then have met other HE families and so glad we decided to take the plunge. My DS is on the golf course right now, couldnt do that if he was at school!

Life is much more exciting and the freedom we have is brilliant!