7 yr old wants to go to school... Reassurance please!

[Psychomumma]

Apart from a term at nursery (which she can't remember), my eldest daughter, like her three younger siblings, has never been to school. However, she has friends, cousins, etc who do, whom she sees regularly, who talk to her about school - naturally! I have no problem with that. However, every now and then she brings up the idea of school, we talk about it a bit, I explain some of the reasons (that she is able to comprehend, at 7) why I don't want her to go ... and it ends with her saying that she would like to go to school .

Now, I do not believe at all that my 7 yr old is better qualified than me to judge whether school is the best place for her to be at this point in her life. I am 95% certain that HE is far better for my children. However, it still hurts that she doesn't want to be HE'd (despite having no idea what the alternative is like).

Has anyone had similar experiences? How did you feel about/deal with it? Did your dc change their minds eventually? (NB: I'm asking for advice from other HE'ers... having had plenty of advice from non-HE'ers to send my kids to school on previous occasions, ta v much...)

OP - I would weather this storm and have the courage of your convictions.

If you believe that your dd is not being deprived of anything she could get at school, then be confident in your explanations to her about why you believe home edding is best for her.

Can she explain exactly what it is she thinks school can give her that she's currently not experiencing? Could you provide/expand that specific thing in the home/groups setting you have?

Children can feel disappointed about all sorts of things they don't have. You have to decide how far wanting to go to school is impacting her emotionally, and then what to do about it. Perhaps it's a passing whim.

She might reconcile with home edding very quickly if you are firm that that is what her life entails - end of discussion.

Personally, I don't think you can cater to one child's desire to do something if that compromises the lifestyle of the whole family. Children have to fit into the community of people in which they find themselves.

From what you say, it sounds as though she has a wonderfully full life, and you should feel confident about that.

"I know that she only wanted HEers to reply because she wanted people to agree. "

You don't know that at all.

Op said "Has anyone had similar experiences? How did you feel about/deal with it? Did your dc change their minds eventually? "

She wanted advice from anyone who had been in a similar situation regardless of outcome.

I'm still not sure how 10-20y in the future is relevant to op situation now. As she says
"Now, I do not believe at all that my 7 yr old is better qualified than me to judge whether school is the best place for her to be at this point in her life."
Seems to indicate to me that she will be continually assessing the situation.

Op has her reasons for HE and I don't think she needs to post them here for people to judge her. The reasons are unlikely to persuade her 7yo who, if she is anything like mine was, only wants to go to school because she's under the impression that she can play with her friend all day.

And is there any need for "trot out her usual reasons " as if they are worthless. Surely the op will be looking for ways to help her dd understand op reasons for HE. Which as her dd gets older she may well come to understand.

I can't understand why people have found respecting the OP wishes so difficult? She asked for the perspective of those who HE themselves. Why is it that some people who don't understand HE still felt the need to post regardless, and then expect the OP to take their advice after they've dismissed her wishes?

What is the agenda? Because it clearly has nothing to do with genuinely enabling the OP to handle the situation, or you would have respected her wishes in the first place.

Well i gave my opinion as someone who has HE in the past and is fully understanding of HE - my experience was that my ds has returned to school and loved it - the OP has ignored my post - that tells me she only wants to listen to those who agree and therefore she is probably better posting on the yahoo HE groups.

you're right there ramac. Much better off...

I used to HE, which was a choice made by us and DS jointly, and he is now back at school, which is also a decision we made jointly. Disagreeing with the OP doesn't necessarily mean we don't understand HE.

"Has anyone had similar experiences?" Yes. DS was HE for 2 years. After that, given a choice, he decided to return to school rather than continue with HE.

"How did you feel about/deal with it?" I felt happy that we had found a school which fitted him, and we dealt with it by sending him to school.

"Did your dc change their minds eventually?" I didn't try to convince him that continuing with HE would be better, even though it would have been simpler for us as a family.

There are differences between me and the OP of course - DS was only HE for 2 years, it was a practical rather than a philosophical choice, and he is now 16 not 7.

But I'm not posting from a position anti-HE, or not understanding it.

My impression of this thread is that most of the posts have been thoughtful and intelligent, whether from people who HE or people who don't. It would seem a little narrowminded to dismiss the opinions of anyone who isn't home educating.

For example, all of my dses were given a big say in deciding which senior school to attend, when we lived in Essex. The two older ones both passed the 11+ but decided to go to different Grammar Schools - which we were happy to allow, as we could see that the two schools had different characteristics and strengths that would suit the different boys.

We did this knowing that having the two of them at two different schools would create extra hassle for us - two entirely separate lots of uniform with no 'handing down', two different lots of inset days, parents evenings, slightly differing holidays, and two boys going in two different directions to school - easy enough in good weather, but if they needed driving for some reason, it was a real juggling act.

Had we stayed in Essex, ds3 would have gone to a third school, as he hadn't done well enough in the 11+, and didn't want to go to either of the schools his brothers were at, but wanting to go to another school, where most of his friends were - thus adding a third layer of complications to life, that I would have accepted and coped with, had we stayed down south.

FWIW, though I haven't home educated myself, I have a close friend who has. She withdrew her dd1 from school, when she felt that the school was not addressing the girl's needs, and home educated her until she went to senior school, where she is now happy and doing well - thanks mainly to the work her mother did with her.

She's now HEing her dd2 who, having gone up to senior school last year, was not settling in at all well, and wanted to be home educated. Incidentally, it was her dd2 who asked to be home educated, and my friend decided to do this for her, partly because she didn't want her dd2 to resent the fact that her older sister had had the opportunity of home ed, and she hadn't.

Having home educated only one dd at a time, she's had to cope with the hassle of one child at school and one at home, and doesn't seem to have found it a problem.

as salaam wa alaykum

I am home educating my 7 yr old at the moment, and I tend to find that every now and again he might say he wants to go to school, but i honestly just think that its said in passing like when i have asked him to do something and he cant be bothered, I wouldnt be allowing my son to make that decision at this age and if she has a stronger desire when he is older then perhaps i will discuss it with him then but for now i will be making these decisions for him.

Another thing is that as a mother i will continue to make decisions on behalf of my children if i feel it is the best thing for them, at the end of the day they are the children i am the parent and i stand by this conviction. I think in society this concept is sorely lacking at present and kids are suffering because of it.

take care

puddinmama

Stayingsunny - what if one of your ds had chosen not to go to school?

Racmac - I'm not sure how you know that op has ignored your post. Or do you mean you didn't get a personal response? If so, neither did a lot of posters but I wouldn't assume that op took no notice of what was said.

And I still think that comments from people who 'have been there' would be considered valuable by the op, whether they agreed or disagreed with her. Of course, I could be wrong but she did seem to be asking for views from home-educators who had been in a similar situation.

Juuule - I did think about home education when my friend started it, not because any of my children were expressing an interest, but more on a 'could I do this...?' basis, and I decided that I wouldn't have been able to do it.

My academic qualifications are good, and I consider myself to be reasonably bright, but I know I lack the organisational skills necessary to home educate. I also suffer from depression, and this makes it very hard for me to do more than just the basics, on bad days - and even on good days, I struggle.

All this, to me, adds up to someone who wouldn't be any good at home educating, and thats what I would have had to say, had one of the dses wanted to HE.

That said, if things had been really bad for one of them at school, and HE had been the best option for them (even considering my drawbacks and defects as a teacher/home educator), then I would have given it serious consideration, and bottom line, I would have put the child first.

I am happy now that they are all at the same school (since we moved to Scotland) - it is a good and happy school, and they all seem to be doing well there. It's not perfect, and there are problems to overcome, but we still feel it is the right choice for our dses.

"Why is it that some people who don't understand HE still felt the need to post regardless, and then expect the OP to take their advice after they've dismissed her wishes?"

Why do a lot of people on HE threads assume that people who don't HE don't understand it? I find this attitude patronizing in the extreme.

Stayingsunny - You obviously put a lot of effort into doing the best for your children.
If you took into consideration what you could cope/not cope with when deciding that school was the best place for your children isn't it okay that the op has also considered the impact on herself/family of sending one child to school, particularly if she feels that the desire to do so is possibly on a 7yo's whim? And if she considers that the child isn't missing out on anything that school could offer? And believes the child would benefit more from HE.
What you say with regard to your dses current school
"It's not perfect, and there are problems to overcome, but we still feel it is the right choice for our dses."
could also be said for some HE situations.

Seeker you might not HE but have got experience of it first hand and so, imo, have something valuable to contribute. I think the remarks are aimed more at people who have no experience of it or second-hand experience (I know someone who...) so maybe aren't in the best position to advise.

I do think there are times when people who don't home-educate also have something valuable to contribute but I'm not convinced this thread was one of those times. Particularly as op stated
" (NB: I'm asking for advice from other HE'ers... "

Juuule - the could I/couldn't I cope question was important because I felt that my inability to cope would have resulted in my children getting a poorer education than I believed the school could give them - it was the impact on the children not myself that was important.

If the OP honestly believes that having one child attending school will negatively impact on the education and happiness of the other children, then she is entirely right to carry on home educating all of them. I'm not so sure that the extra hassle for herself should be the main reason not to allow the child to try school - in the same way that we didn't let the hassle of having three children at three different schools affect the dses choice of senior school.

I do also take your point about a 7-year-old's whim - only the OP can know her dd well enough to know if this is indeed a whim, based on the feeling that the grass is greener the other side, or whether she has really thought about the decision and is mature enough to make that choice.

I certainly remember believing with all my heart that I'd be happier at boarding school than at my junior or senior schools - the books I had read definitely gave the impression that the grass was greener there - but in hindsight, I know that would have been utterly wrong for me - at least when I was bullied at school, I could escape at home - which I couldn't have done at boarding school.

I honestly hope that the OP can find a way forward that works for her, her dd and her other dcs - and I think I had better stop writing now - I think I am rambling and making no sense at all.

I don't think you are rambling, stayingsunny and I think you are making sense

Having a child at school can impact on home-education sometimes. There are times when it's difficult to attend a group because you would have to cut the session short to dash back to pick up your child. So the he children would miss out. And while it might be possible to get someone else to collect your child it might not always be desirable. So unless op felt that her dd would be better off at school she might not feel inclined to put everyone else out to accommodate what she sees as an unecessary 'hassle'.

Thank-you juuule.

What you've said makes a lot of sense too, and I can see how school could impact on the other children in the family - and imo that's a perfectly good reason for not wanting to send a child to school, unless there was a hugely pressing reason to do so.

I was also wondering if this is a problem that the OP could put off for a while - perhaps until her child is senior school age, when the logistics are somewhat different, and the impact on the other children could be far less.

Well the op did say 'at this point in her life' so I felt that she was open to re-assessing the situation at a later date.

To satisfy the curiousity of some posters - the reasons I home-ed my children are:

a) to allow them to learn at their own pace; to be able to spend as much time explaining a new concept as they need; to leave something they are not ready to learn until they are ready - rather than having to follow the 'average' pupil's learning trajectory, regardless of whether it bears any resemblance to their own.

b) to give them one-to-one attention and interaction, whether through conversation or activity, which a teacher, with 24-30 other children in her charge is simply unable (not unwilling) to provide for more than a couple of minutes per day.

c) to allow them to spend their formative years in an atmosphere relatively free from peer-pressure, allowing them time to develop the maturity necessary to enable them to make their own decisions.

To Scattyspice and others, who '...suspect psychomumma wants people to agree with her rather than help her examine her beliefs' - if you had bothered to read my OP, you might have noticed that I was enquiring whether any other H-Edder's had had similar experiences, and what had eventually transpired. I was not asking anyone to tell me what I should do, nor whether I was right in my decision.

Racmac: There's your name-check. If you had bothered to read my second post, your suggestion of a school trial-period was directly addressed.

Piscesmoon: Your juggling of double standards is impressive. As juule pointed out, you are outraged when a parent home-eds as a consequence of their 'feelings, beliefs or convenience', yet you ridicule the suggestion that a parent whose child would prefer to be HE'd should put that child's 'feelings, beliefs or convenience' before their own. You said early on that you 'don't think that one DC should be sacrificed for the family good.' Again, a 1-way street. You have made it clear that you'd think it ridiculously unreasonable for a parent to give up income/career/status just because one of their children preferred to be HE'd. But it's perfectly OK for the desire of 1 child to go to school to over-ride all other concerns of the rest of the family.

Why? Because school is the norm. But the 'norm' carries no more moral weight than any other option. Do you really think that the fact that more people do one thing than another means that one is more right than the other? This is precisely the sort of blind acceptance of peer-led behaviour that I don't want to embed my children in at a young age. I do not want them to do 'what other people do' for no better reason than that it is 'what other people do'.

Neither do I believe that my actions as parent of a 7 yr old girl (Aug birthday) should be dictated by what her subsequent opinion of me will be. Her response, when I've asked why she would like to go to school, has been 'Just because'. I may very well try your idea of getting another trusted adult to have a casual conversation with her, in the hope that she may be able to aticulate her reasons more clearly to someone else; believe it or not, I am interested in her opinion. However, I think I would be doing her a big dis-service to allow her 7-yr old 'feelings' to override her parents' judgement. We know her better than anyone else, and love her far more than the best-intentioned teacher in the world.

Sorry this is so long. And can someone tell me how to highlight other posters' names properly, please

I don't think that anyone could argue with your reasons-they sound sensible and much better when you leave out the hassle of school etc.
I am do understand HE and I could make an excellent job of it (and it wouldn't be school at home).
I don't think that I have double standards. I think that most people have a baby assuming that it will go to nursery, childminders, school etc. (that is nothing to do with whether it is right or wrong). It is the norm.
A very small proportion start with the assumption that they will do it all themselves. HEers will do it for 2 reasons, either they are driven to it from the DCs negative experience of school or they will have always had the ideal of Education being the responsibility of the parent. If the DC wants to go to school then they are entitled to a free place and it is there if they want it.
For the over 90%, who use the school route (for reasons as well thought out as OP for HE-i.e. they want the best for their DC) they can't simply change their whole lifestyle and personality to give the DC the choice of being at home for 18yrs.
Of course I love my DCs more than the best intententioned teacher in the world. However I can't teach them physics better than a physics graduate, French better than a French graduate etc.

I am not saying that your DD would be better off at school. All I am saying is that you should listen to your DC. If not at 7yrs then you should listen later.

I know that my feelings are at an extreme end of the spectrum, and possibly I am the only person to feel it, but as an adult I would be resentful if my mother had kept me at home with my younger siblings. I would feel that she had stolen my childhood. I don't expect that your DD will feel like that-I expect I am odd! However I think you should be aware that it is possible to feel that way! Mumsnet is littered with people who don't see eye to eye with their parents-and I bet some of the parents are lovely people! I don't think you can go wrong if you keep an open mind and communication open.

Seeker we don't assume; we read their comments.

Shiney - are you saying that it is impossible to make an intelligent or understanding comment about home education if you haven't done it? Because that would be a pretty sweeping statement, imo.

Is it not possible for an intelligent person to read threads like this, articles in the paper etc, and discuss HE with people they know, and form a sensible opinion of it?

If you post on HE threads long enough, someone sooner or later says that you shouldn't be posting! It doesn't happen on other educational threads.

I don't think I've ever read a thread about HE that hasn't ultimately depressed me. With one or two noble exceptions, HE posters seem to think it's OK to dismiss the opinions or experience of anyone who doesn't HE as irrelevant. Also any questioning or suggesting that there might be any downsides seems to be completly forbidden. I think this is the only bit of mumsnet where this happens. It's a shame - there is the potential for interesting debate but it doesn't seem to be allowed. With, as I said, one or two exceptions.

I love the debate -but people on HE threads never understand it. I think it is a feeling of insecurity. I am very anti selective education and Xenia sticks out as someone who I disagree with on nearly every point, but I admire her no end. She gets a lot of stick but she is always polite. She is 100% sure that she is right for her DCs, and so she doesn't feel attacked. Private v state gets vey heated but people are allowed to have a different view.

' Lucky are the children whose parents can and will sacrifice to allow their children to HE.'

This is the sort of remark that I find depressing. I consider my DCs very lucky because they have had a good education, they have enjoyed it, they wouldn't have changed it and it has got all 3 the choice of career that was their first choice. They wouldn't have counted themselves lucky for me to make the 'sacrifice'-they didn't want me to make it!

One size never fits all, HE is wonderful for some DCs-school is wonderful for some DCs.

I am not being negative about OP - I think her reasons are excellent-I am only mentioning that her DD might not think so-on the other hand she might but I think you have to allow for the element of doubt. A MuminScotland seemed to have a very balanced view on it-and she filled the criteria asked for in the OP.

Stayingsunnygirl and Seeker: I don't believe that home-educators are unwilling to debate the pros and cons of HE at all. However, I think it is fair to say that we would prefer to debate with people who have actually lived it. Surely someone who has HE'd has a far better idea of both the up/down-sides than someone who has never done it, who has just read around the subject? And almost all HE'ers have also been to school, so have experience on both sides of the fence.

And it is not true that the same opinions are held about everything throughout the HE community, and that in asking questions here we only want one-word, affirmative answers; there is massive variation in motivation, methodology etc. The only thing HE'ers have in common is the basic fact that they HE. Everything else is up for debate.