What are the down sides of HE?

[ButterPie]

Can HE'ers please tell me what the downsides are and what they would have done differently? I'm a bit bothered by only being able to find positive stories (apart from the "urgh, HE is weird, your kids will be freaks" opinion, which isn't really helpful)

We are moving nearer and nearer to choosing HE, but it is putting us off that both sides of the debate are seeming to be so black and white about it.

ButterPie - happy to have a pm conversation if you think that would help you. Feel free to ignore!

seeker - I would love that. How do we do it?

'Sorry Seeker - have to apologise. I think I'm mixing you up with piscesmoon maybe? '

I don't mind being mixed up with seeker! Apart from a couple of exceptions, I am in full agreement with all her posts which are full of common sense. I find she gives a balanced view of HE because she has experience of both sides, she gets into trouble because people won't accept there are downsides to HE or upsides to school.
Contrary to a lot of people's perceptions I have nothing against HE, I think it should be just another option. I am only against the view that everyone can do it wonderfully and that all schools are dreadful. My other anti thing is the post that says 'my DC loves school but I want to HE what should I do?'-I think you leave the child where they are happy.
I think that the downsides are that you need a car and to travel, unless you live in an area with a lot of HE families in walking distance. You don't have daily contact with friends, especially if your parent doesn't know the other parent or your parent doesn't particularly want to encourage the friendship. It may be difficult to expose the DC to a wide variety of views-unless the parent makes a conscious effort to do so.

"I think that the downsides are that you need a car and to travel, unless you live in an area with a lot of HE families in walking distance."

Oh. Better get my dc into school pronto, then, since we have no car, and neither friends nor HE groups are walkable.

I mean no offence, Pisces, but that's exactly the sort of thing that was mentioned upthread. You don't HE yourself, but you make this sweeping and fictitious statement about what equipment and lifestyle a HE family has to have for the whole thing to be viable.

"You don't have daily contact with friends, especially if your parent doesn't know the other parent or your parent doesn't particularly want to encourage the friendship."

Yes, this is a down side if you are a child wanting daily contact with friends whose parents are unwilling/unable to facilitate it.

Is daily contact with friends really so desirable? Of course, you're assuming that the child-to-be-deregistered actually has friends at school rather than having been a victim of bullying. But even so, it doesn't have to be routine and every day to be intensive and lasting.

I was thinking earlier, as I looked at my family bumbling around each other interacting and not interacting and generally doing their thing that this is the crucial thing - that the people most important for my children to learn to get along with and value and respect are each other. Because when I'm 80 and senile, little lizzy with whom Elsie had such a close friendship in year 3 is looooong gone, baby. My children are going to need each other, family friends, cousins for their life long support network. I'm proud to be investing time and energy in providing them with such long term support.

"It may be difficult to expose the DC to a wide variety of views-unless the parent makes a conscious effort to do so. "

Do you think we live in bubbles? I promise you, the demographic at our local HE group is massively more diverse than what you find at any of the local ghetto schools (and I mean ghetto as in posh-ghetto/white-working-class ghetto/asian-ghetto etc etc).

There are downsides to any lifestyle. You are more likely to get an accurate assessment of them from someone with personal experience of that lifestyle. I could imagine the downsides to schooling life but, honestly, it'd mostly be based on prejudice plus the horror stories I hear from people I meet (if I was asked for the upsides of school, it'd be based on prejudice plus the positive stories I hear from people I meet...)

I see you are back into pulling my comments apart piece by piece!
I was going by what has been on these threads. I have replied to several people who find it hard going-they either can't get into a group or they have no transport or they have found them cliquey. I'm not going to look for links but they have been there. My friend HEs in a very rural area-any getting together with other HEers needs a car. She didn't need a car when they were at school.
Daily contact with bullies isn't desirable! Daily contact with friends might well be-my best friend from school was never liked by my mother and I'm sure she would have felt that once a week at Guides was fine. We had the daily contact and are still friends decades later (despite now living 300 miles apart)-once a week wouldn't have been enough to get to that footing. When I am 80 and senile I know that this friend will still be there for me (if not senile too!) So will my brothers and cousins etc (if not senile too!) It is one of the downsides that have been mentioned by others on these threads.
I wonder if those who HE because of Christian principles are going to expose their DCs to atheist views. Maybe they will make a great effort to show other sides.

I thought that my comments were very fair.I will amend them-some people may find them downsides. I know from these threads that they do-they have said so-(to 1 and 2 anyway. I don't think they have mentioned 3).

Thinking about it my mother is over 80 and her greatest support is an old school friend. It is just as well that her mother didn't take the condescending view that little Lizzie in class 3 would have been long gone, because little Lizzie is the only one left! My mother was the youngest and is now the only one left out of her siblings.Childhood friends can remain important. They can make close bonds at an early age.

sorry, pisces. I was being far too harsh. Should not take my bad mood (for totally unrelated reasons) out on you.

So much of all this is what works for an individual family, yk?

If x, y and z conditions prevail, then you either need a, b and c, or else you're going to be experiencing massive downsides for whatever your chosen lifestyle is.

If my child was a really serious 13 year old ballerina, then the downside of home ed might well be that it wasn't the royal ballet school, yk? But for most of us, that's not a consideration.

If we lived in the middle of nowhere without a car and without any neighbours within walking/cycling distance and there was no public transport then yes, of course, isolation would be a big issue. Mind you, it would be a challenge under those circs, school or no school.

I think the upsides and downsides of any lifestyle are always going to be unique to an individual family.

oh - i wasn't very clear about senility. It's not a question of who senile old lady's support network is, it's a question of who senile old lady's children's support network is, and having good relationships with your siblings and cousins is a really good idea when your mum loses her marbles

"I wonder if those who HE because of Christian principles are going to expose their DCs to atheist views. Maybe they will make a great effort to show other sides."

Pisces - as someone for whom their Christian principles are one of a long list of reasons they HE, let me assure you that my children are 'exposed', as you put it, to atheistic/other beliefs every time we go to a HE group - currently three different ones each week.

If they were at my local, middle-class Catholic primary school, would you be asking me what great efforts I was making to 'show other sides'? Believe me, there is greater racial/social/etc diversity in our HE groups than in the primary school they would otherwise be attending.

To be fair to you, piscesmoon, I do think some of your comments are quite fair. I don't think everyone could make a wonderful job of HE, because not everyone would want to. And my eldest adored her infant school, so I would never suggest that school isn't great for lots of people. My youngest, on the other hand, was a very poor fit for school all through until we withdrew her at 8 - as even some of my friends who were quite antiHE have since commented - so I'd say horses for courses.

"I wonder if those who HE because of Christian principles are going to expose their DCs to atheist views. Maybe they will make a great effort to show other sides."

I can only go by what I have experienced. We are definitely a Christian household; we pray together, go to church, etc. But lots of our home ed friends have quite different views. We have some Jewish people, some atheists, and many who have a definitely pagan bent. I have Christian friends who pray for me and home ed friends who send me bright blessings. We've been to winter and summer solstice gatherings, a passover meal, and had a long and informative discussion on Imbolc recently, to name a few. I'm very open to my children being exposed to all this and the other home edders I know feel the same. I think that the more knowlegde the girls have, the more they can come to their own informed choices as adults, whatever those may be. I think it might be a different story in America, but I'd say in this country, you'd have a hard job NOT showing your child lots of different sides, unless you weren't going to meet any other home educators at all.

One thing it's easy to think is that at school you don't have the control over your children's friends, but as a home educator you do. I'm not sure that's entirely true. Home ed groups are a huge diverse mix of people (certainly in our area) of all types. Not all my children's best friends are those I might have chosen! But they make their own decisions among the groups of people they meet, just as they would at school.

And mine do have just about daily contact with friends, not always the same group of friends, but I'm hard pushed to think of a day when they haven't met with friends for something or other. There's an unbelievable amount of stuff going on out there - you should see my facebook home ed group events page - we could be out every minute of every day! I'll agree that it does take some effort on the part of the parent, though.

I think that people are misunderstanding my comments. I am not attacking HE, I was genuinely giving OP what are my views on the downside of HE. If she had asked for my views on the downside of school I could have given her a fair few! I doubt whether everyone would have agreed with them.
To me, seeing the same friends everyday is important. I noticed on the news after the snow, every DC interviewed said they were looking forward to getting back to school to see their friends. It is important to many. My mother isn't losing her marbles, but she is getting frail and I have my support network of siblings and my cousin is fantastic and her main support, as she lives nearby. This doesn't preclude friends being in my support network and my very old school friend is the best because she works with the elderly and is full of suggestions. I wouldn't want to say-I have my family I don't need you! I have a friend who goes right back to infant class -children can make life long bonds early on. I accept that HEers have lots of friends-the social side would never worry me and I didn't put it as a downside. They just don't see them 5 days a week for 39 weeks of the year and this is a real downside for me.
No one has been very successful in giving the lonely HEer solutions, I have looked back but the threads have gone from the archive. They only ever get 4 or 5 replies. Some areas have thriving groups and some do not.
My friend who HEs has to have a car-she goes to some great things, but they can be up to 20 miles away.
I still think that my downsides were fair-they may not apply to you- my downsides to school wouldn't apply to everyone either.

'I think the upsides and downsides of any lifestyle are always going to be unique to an individual family.'

I agree, up to a point. The trouble is that on threads like this it always seems to be "All school based education is like this" - often actually based on the posters own experience of school 20 years ago"

And I don't think I think of school as a lifestyle. It certainly isn't for us. It's part of our lives, but our life style is someting different.

I'm following all the posts with interest as I'm considering HE. However being a single parents with no family network means I would have zero childfree time.

Has anyone in a similar position HE successfully?

Some are just facts-if you live in a rural area with no public transport you can't meet other HEing families unless they are within a couple of miles. You can generally walk to the school or if you are more than 3 miles there will be a free bus.
If I do anything new, e.g. at the moment I am thinking of moving house, I get a piece of paper and rule a line down the middle and put pros on one side and cons on the other. There are obviously pros or I wouldn't be thinking of it in the first place! However absolutely everything has cons.
Butterpie is wanting to HE and she has the usual black and white polorised positions and she wants to get away from that.

'We are moving nearer and nearer to choosing HE, but it is putting us off that both sides of the debate are seeming to be so black and white about it. '

This is what she asked. She said she had on the negative 'kids weird' and she had lots of positive stories and she wanted the downsides and to know what people would do differently.
In HE you are not allowed to mention a downside! If you do it will be picked apart, bit by bit, as if admitting that something isn't wonderful is a personal admission of failure and negates everything you do. I have been very happy with my DCs schooling, I think they were good schools but I could still give a list of downsides-they don't negate the overall experience.

I constantly evaluate my parenting and wonder if I got it right-could I have done things differently? What could I do to handle situations differently? I find it very complacent to say 'I am wonderful, everything is fine, I don't need to learn anything or listen to other experiences or advice'. I have a lot of self doubt. If my DCs were to rule a page and put pros and cons of me as a mother I would expect things on both sides!

Even if you don't think that my downsides apply to you I would have thought that there would have been an awareness that they could apply to some people and they may apply to Butterpie who asked the question.

I know that people who have asked for help to socialise on these threads have had very little help, because I have answered only to bump it up for them. There are people who HE who are not very sociable themselves and want their DC to be more sociable and they don't find it easy to integrate into a group where everyone knows each other. This is a downside for the shy parent.

If I were to want to do it I have several downsides that would put me off. (Before anyone picks them apart and tells me how selfish I am-I will emphasise that they are my downsides and probably don't apply to you. However they might apply to Butterpie-or they might not)

I like part of the day with the house completely to myself and absolute silence.
I like to do boring shopping on my own without children arguing about who pushes the trolley (from the days when one pushed it up, one pushed it down and they did alternate cross ways!)
I don't want to just have fun without wondering if I could make it educational.
I had a wide age gap and one lot would have had to mark time for the other. E.g a 12 yr old doesn't want to feed the ducks for the morning.
I like other adults to have access to my DCs and watch how my DCs blossom with different personalities. I can't be all things to my DCs and other people can open new horizons to them.

My other real downside is that I would get bored (very selfish!)Even if I was fresh at the start, my DCs will be at school for 22 yrs in total-just too long!! I want to do things for myself.

' A smaller community to socialise in so its harder to escape the knobs. '

I know I am coming into this late, but I haven't been able to get onto MN much of late.

I don't see why if you HE you have to stick to the HE community. We certainly don't.

I HE my son, and actually, we have not had all that much contact with other HE families. We used to go to a few groups, but I found that we didn't fit in with most of the other HE families in our area (all very green, mostly autonomous and a lot of them were very dismissive and quite rude about the way we live and HE ds) and it was all a bit much for me, and ds.

The groups local to us were very disorganized and there was a lot of quite nasty behavior from the children while the parents would do nothing to stop it. We still go to one HE group, but the people there are a lot more like minded to us so its ok, and it is very organized and structured.

My point is, in my two years of doing HE, I have found that the perception is that when you HE, you mostly only know/hang out with other HE families. There is such an emphasis on meeting other HE families. Just because someone else has gone down the HE route, it does not mean that ds or I will get along with them. Home education does not define us, as I have found some people like it to define them, its just something we do and its not a massive part of our life, ds is just taught at home and not at school.

We are very lucky in the fact that ds is into performing arts, and there is an after school/weekend theater school not far from us where he goes 4/5 evenings a week, and he has met some lovely friends from there, sees the same kids there most days.

We have made a few home educating friends but they seem to be the same as us, have loads of friends who go to school and are a bit weary of getting to into a 'community'. I have met other HE families that want to stay very much in the HE community and I can't so that. I have also met families who say they would prefer their dc not to mix with schooled children, or never give them the opportunity to, which I think is madness.

hats of to home eders, I wouldn't have the energy, if I didn't get a break from dd.

'off'

Oh and Picesmoon, you said "I don't want to just have fun without wondering if I could make it educational"

Me neither, which is why in the beginning I found it very hard to find my place with other HE ers. SOME of them I have met can't go to a museum, gallery, castle, Zoo etc without finding out ways to make it educational and it used to really wind me up. Sometimes things are just fun, and sometimes children don't take everything in, either because they are too busy mucking around, ot they are not interested, or they just can't be bothered and that is okay.

I take ds traveling, and I always get told what a learning experience it must be - yeah, he mostly learns how fast a Nintendo ds or an ipod runs out of battery when you are stuck on an overnight train in India! Of course he has learned stuff along the way, and if he is interested, then of course we will find out more etc, but on the most part we just have fun.

(We are very structured in the way we home ed btw, which has also not made us very popular with other HE families where we live).

Fascinating posts, lolapoppins and refreshing to get an entirely different perspective. You have hit the nail on the head with what I meant by educational experiences.
I thought that my friend was an exception because she lives in a very rural area. She has virtually given up on the HE community, and just kept the ones she gets on with. She has been ostracised by some because her DCs have always mixed with all DCs, whether they go to school or not and their best friends, the ones they go on holiday with, have always gone to school. They also are heavily involved in a theatre group, tennis club etc where all the other DCs go to school.
It is all very worthy-for example any camps she has been on are all vegetarian and her DCs have found it hard going. The eat a lot of vegetarian food, but they do like the occasional sausage, icecream etc.
The thing that I think you need above all else in HE is a sense of humour and not to take yourself so seriously!

I think that part of my friend's problem is that she lives in the part of the country where people go to 'live the alternate lifestyle'- I dare say that HE families in my area are entirely different.

Um, Picesmoon - am I your friend? Seriously, she sounds a lot like me! Lots of people move here to keep chickens and build yurts in their back gardens, we live in a very alternative area, and I do feel like the odd one out a lot of the time. Especially since we started HE.

We live in a very rural area as well, so I do have to drive a lot, but that's okay. FWIW, if I didn't drive, I wouldn't have moved to such a rural place, I knew what I was letting myself in for, even though ds was at school when we first moved here.

Yurts are very popular!
One woman held an HE camp on her land and DCs were not allowed to go if they had been vaccinated.
They can be very rigid in their thinking. I hasten to add that lots aren't-it just takes all sorts, as does the rest of society and some people you get on with and some you don't. HE has a huge range and they are all so different-you can't hope to bond or have things in common with them all.

"you can't hope to bond or have things in common with them all"

Exactly. And that is the same as I felt about other parents at the school gate, or at toddler groups when ds was little. Just because you are in the same situation as another person does not mean you will have anything else in common with them. If you do, then that is a wonderful bonus.

I have found though, in the groups I have been to anyway, that there is such a great expectation that everyone will get on because they HE. I have found that people are so busy putting on that pretense, that things like bullying and violent behavior (a reason we left one group) are not dealt with, no one wants to start a ruckus by bringing it up with the parents of the child/children responsible.

Nobody I know H.es around here apart from us.

We are the weirdys .

Downsides for me is having to do structured work every day.
Having to accomodate ds in every part of the day-for example sometimes we go out for lunch and there are certain places that wont allow children.
Any errands I run have to involve something to interest ds.
Sometimes ds will say can he have a day off? and it is very tempting but I remain strong .
The additional expense of crafts etc and books.
But I made my bed and ......im lying in it.

Ds has lots of friends and lots of things to do we occasionally walk past schools where the children are enjoying playtime or p.e and ill ask him would he like to give it a go? the answer is usually a resounding NO!

I think the fact that lots of his friends ask to come to 'my' school makes him proud lol.

Anything that veers from the 'norm' is hard.

PeaceFlower

I'm not in the same situation as you because I do have a lot of family support and DDs dad is involved with DD and home ed for her.

But I do HE a reception age child and work (self-employed/flexible work) as a single parent.

We have a part time nanny share with another family. If I had less family support I would use more hours of childcare; right now its mostly like paid for playdates, but there have been times when I've had a course to go on or week long out of the house job when I've used more hours. But its flexible and that's only ever a temporary situation (like holiday care for school children I suppose). The nanny is happy to take DD to home ed groups and any other activities she does if they're on when she has DD.

I suppose that some people might say the cost of childcare would be a downside - but because my work isn't regular hours, and is often outside of school hours and on weekends I would need childcare even if DD was at school if I wanted to carry on working so I don't count it as one for me. And its something I've been used to factoring in since DD was younger so there was no sudden change. And tax credit help doesn't change because the child reaches school age so I get the same help with it as I would if I was paying for before/after school care I just use it differently.