Best books/articles/research to help convince DP that home ed is a viable alternative.

[Callisto]

Hi all,

After lots of consideration I'm convinced that home education is right for my 3.7 yo daughter and myself. I'm in the process of joining up with local HE groups (we are near Cirencester/Swindon if anyone on here is local) and building up a network of HE families.

But DP, while he can see the appeal, thinks that school is essential for socialisation and that HEing is a bit 'lentil-weaverish' iyswim. I really need to convince him that HE is the right thing for DD who is quite timid and doesn't like large groups of children, especially if they're all the same age as her. She has never been to nursery or a childminder, I look after her full-time as I can fit my work around her.

So, can anyone recommend a book or any research that shows that HE will be good for DD and not do her any harm socially?

Many thanks.

The problem is that I was home educated, and I think it did do me harm socially - (it gave me lots of good things too, though) - so I'm probably not a good person to talk to about it! I'm sure someone else will be along in a minute.

I was home educated until I reached high school, my choice to go, and socially we were more confident and independent during that time! Everyone is different, take her to clubs etc and she will grow in confidence...imo anyway

Hi
Tell your dp he is right- some of us are lentil weavers but if you come along and meet us, you'll find a whole cross section of people who home educate. Approx a quarter of all home educators are teachers it seems! Personally I know HE parents who are, nurses, policemen, IT consultants, lecturers, publishers, dry cleaners, mechanics, structural engineer, farmers, chefs, and even a couple of barristers, to name but a few I can think of, off the top of my head. You name an occupation and I guess I'll probably know a home ed parent who does that!

I organised a home ed Christams party on Friday. About 50 youngsters in attendance with Santa visiting. Families bought food to share and there was a cross section of meat/vegetarian/vegan-so I don't think you can put us all in the same box there either.

Home Educators are fond of saying that to get us all moving in one direction or agreeing on anything is like herding cats!
The only thing we have in common is that our children don't go to school.

Education Otherwise has a link to HE research which might be useful.
It mentions research by Rothermel, Fortune-Wood and Thomas, which your dp might like to follow through and read.

I'd also suggest having a look at the latest book on research on HE in the UK. Alan Thomas looked at autonomously home educating families in his latest book How Children Learn at Home

There is a thread here about books on home education , which I'll bump for you now.

Hopefully you will have come across North Wilts HE group by now. I know some of the members of that group personally and know they area very sociable bunch! They travel a lot too and have experience as world class level Lego Roboteirs!(?sp) The teams even competed well in the World Championship in Tokyo. My DD wishes we lived closer so she could join in!

My children have had a social life that is the envy of their schooled cousins and peers, since they were deregistered eight years ago.
Not all children (or adults) are comfortable in big crowds though and something that is often mentioned by the newly deregistered is that school can be the loneliest place on earth if your child doesn't fit in.
In our home ed group youngsters mix in on their own terms, there is no pressure to join in. My own son was very shy to begin when we first deregged as he had had such bad experiences in school. Slowly at his own rate he joined in and you would not have recognised my description of a shy lad after that!

HE-UK Articles page is well worth a read.There are a range of HE related articles-the ones near the bottom of the page are articles from the Home Education Journallast year.

Then lastly I was rather impressed by the research published last year by the schooling improves academic performance and reduces impact of socio-economic factors Fraser Institute about home education in Canada.

Does she have any friends her own age at the moment or is it just the two of you?

Thanks so much Julie - lots to read through there. (I'm a bit of a lentil weaver myself btw). I am now a member of North Wilts HE but the group meets about 45 mins from me so I won't be going until after Christmas.

Pices - yes, she does have several friends of her own age that she gets on really well with, but in a group - even a small group of just 4-5, she can't seem to cope and gets very clingy and even teary. We stopped going to toddler group because she disliked it so much. And yet she has 6 cousins (aged 5 to 18) who we see regularly and she loves playing with all of them and getting rowdy. I would also say that her communication skills are very good and she is confident and happy to talk with adults, even strangers if she see's that I am happy talking with them.

Hi-I just asked because it wasn't very clear-I thought it might be a bit intense with just the two of you. It is very common at that age because they are at the stage of playing together but separately. You have got plenty of time because she is young-I would suggest getting together with the HE group. Your DP is more likely to be convinced if he sees the social side working. It also gives you time to decide whether it suits you and your DD.

hi I'm joining in this conversation a bit late...

... but I have recently realised I've done most of the thinking around this without involving dp. I thought he'd agreed to ds1 being deregistered but he's now more than a little scared, and specifically told me he didn't want ds1 to grow up a hippy with no qualifications!

I can understand his concern. If anyone had talked to me about home-schooling a couple of months ago I would still have assumed that only resolutely unconventional families did it. And it would definitely lead to a somewhat wierd child who didn't really click with anyone else their age. Since then I've had the time to meet up with home schoolers, join discussion lists, read the websites and work my way through books. So I know the whole range of approaches that homeschooling covers, and was in fact surprised by how conventional the homeschooling families were near me. (I do have rather strong lentil weaving tendencies which probably added to dp's concerns .)

But all dp has seen of this process is a few mentions here and there and suddenly an end result of me announcing I want to deregister ds1 as soon as possible. Not a great example to our kids of working things out together [fhmmm].

Anyway we've agreed to sit down and talk about it properly over Xmas. I'm going to direct him to the HEUK site and also give him my draft 'educational philosophy' to get him up to speed. I think the One-to-One book might be more accessible than other homeschooling books as it's of use to parents with kids at school as well as homeschooled kids, and is broken into recognisable subject areas. And if he can find the time to read even a little bit of a John Holt I hope he will, as I find him very inspiring.

I'll report back as to how dp takes all this! And hopefully you'll do the same, Callisto?

hi
my dh was a bit worried at first but 9 months on he knows its the best thing and has no intention of wanting the younger two to go to school

mt3 x

I don't think there is a person who HE's that hasn't had a worry about social interaction,I did but now my son(14) who's been HE from age 3 has a large group of friends both m and f.In fact we get sick of the usual knock on the door every 5 when he's out at rels etc asking for him.He didn't like large groups of people his own age when in nursery but as he's gotten older his confidence has increased.My dd is 8 and makes friends whereever she goes.In fact I can honestly say that they are better at socialising than I or their father who were both school ed.
The info on EO is def some of the best.There research helped us loads as there is a lack of HE families where we live.

I think the best thing to do is to meet some other families who do it already. I know that my husband was really impressed with the children we met recently (our DS is only 2, but i felt i needed to work on DH!!) because they were able to interact with confidence with everyone in the group, from a young baby to adults. The more i read about it, the more i am convinced that it is a brilliant opportunity to raise a child who can follow his own interests and not waste time conforming to artificial rules in school, and to avoid developing a mindset that they can only be friends wiht children the same age as them, and that adults are 'other' and should be treated differently. Sorry - waffled a bit - go out and meet some kids!!

Thanks all for these 'extra' replies.

Mummypig - I am planning to talk to my DP over the Christmas hols too and will definitely report back. One thing I have found is some research by Paula Rothermel of Durham University. The summary is here: www.dur.ac.uk/p.j.rothermel/Research/Researchpaper/BERAworkingpaper.htm. It is just the sort of thing that should reassure DP that HE won't turn DD into a wild-haired, crochet-wearing lentil weaver.

Pooter - one of my priorities after Christmas is to meet up with some other HEers and to get DP involved to show him how normal it is. In fact now I've made my mind up that HE is the best thing for DD, it is school that strikes me as being a weird way of teaching children.

hello everyone

well my dh dropped a bombshell on me last night after me thinking i had his support his words were "why do i want to take him away from all the children at school he needs that" so now im feeling a lil annoyed , guilty he sounded really genuine and now am doubting myself, just as i was getting over my panic stage,

he still says he doesnt mind me doing it if its what i want but then he says that he'll come home one day to find that i've killed the kids he was joking he doesnt thing i have the patients lol and yet all my friends say im the most easy going mum they have met i admit to getting the odd day where the kids are driving me mad but i never loose it with them its usually me who would feel tired.

sorry for hujacking ur thread but i was gonna start my own but then saw this which is more or less what i got up thinking this morning

take care
bridget

There's an Institute of Education report, it came out in August this year I think, which argues that HE is "surprisingly effective".

www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/aug/19/schools.education

If you wanted to convince someone who was a bit sceptical about the values of HE, I'd be more convinced than that, as it was carried out by fairly neutral researchers, than I would be by the sort of things you read on the Education Otherwise website (some of that is utterly unconvincing, IMO).

I was HE, and have never had any social problems. I have always had friends, and now have a large group of friends who I see regularly. I took part in lots of activities and groups as a child, and the only thing I hated was having to do small talk and so on.

I'm now a working professional actor, so having to be social in many different situations all the time.

Hi Fennel
Did you know the EO website has been completely updated recently? Much more factual now IMO

Guardian piece looks interesting-thanks for the link.

Oh I'll have a look, thanks.