Is home-edding for us??

[noodle6]

I have been considering home-ed for the past 2 or 3 years now, but I think I just don't have the confidence to do it.

At first I thought it would be good to make a decision based on what my daughter's feelings were towards school, but I've found that asking a 7 year old about school and getting answers out of them is hard. For instance, some days she'd tell me she hated school because none of her "friends" wanted to play with her and she got picked on and she didn't like the subject her teacher was doing (she likes writing, but she didn't like the topic her teacher wanted her to write about, which was about "polar regions", and unfortunately for the entire term their class was just focusing on "polar regions" so she didn't have much of a choice). Other days she tells me she loves school - seemed like it was because everything went well for her, she had nice playtimes and friends that day, and the teachers taught something she found interesting. Whenever I ask her would you miss school if I took you out of school and decided to educate you at home, she'd say "no" every single time. At her age I don't think her friendships in school are stable. From what she says, her friends come and go like the weather, and during school holidays if I ask her "do you miss school?" or "do you miss your friends" she'd always say no.

Saying that, she is a skinny, pale, bespectacled, shy, quiet child whose favourite pursuits are clearly writing, drawing and art. Without encouragement from anyone, she would happily get out her paper and pencils/crayons/pens and sit at the table after coming home from school or during holidays, and write and draw furtively for hours on end all by herself at the table. She is 7 but she has the reading level of a 10 or 11 year old and frequently uses the local library for books to borrow home. She loves the library. In short I'd say she would probably fit the stereotypical "nerd" or "weird arty type"... well, she does often complain to me that she gets teased by these 2 same boys in her class every other day or so. They also like to chase after her at PE and break times just so they can hit her on the head (and whoever happens to be her "friend" that day). Teasing her is routine. Basically it ranges from saying "her eyes are full of shit and that's why she wears spectacles", to saying "she farts and poos all day" to bordering on the racist "hahaha your mum isn't white.." type of "jokes", which my daughter finds quite annoying sometimes, but luckily she does have a sense of humour about the situation and laughs along with them most times.

She doesn't hate everything about school though. She seems to like the teachers but she doesn't think of her friends in school as people she couldn't live with.

My DH isn't very supportive of home-edding. Basically he's saying that he doesn't think my personality is suitable for it. I don't have a very calm, cool personality. I do get very passionate about things, especially in subjects that are important to me. He thinks school is the best thing. But I feel that on the principle level, there are so many things about school I just don't agree with - the one-size-fits-all approach to education and growing up I found it hard to fit in with school myself. I don't think school is necessary in order for one to get to Uni, because of personal experience. And I think since my daughter isn't very attached to her friends in school she really wouldn't miss much in terms of social life since she isn't the sort who likes having lots of friends anyway and already has friends of her own outside of school (granted its a really small bunch - 2 good girl friends outside of school). I'm at this point now where the more I hear my daughter tell me about her experience in school, the more frustrated I feel.

I'm not exactly a very confident parent. I am always doubting myself and whether what I want for my children is the right thing for them. I see other parents just make decisions for their children without needing to "consult" with them and their children seem to do whatever it is their parents decide for them, unlike me, I often feel the need to "consult" with my children and find out what they want/not want and then make my decisions from there... but granted they are young, sometimes I wonder if the approach I'm using is really useful.

Does anyone have any advice for me and whether home-edding is the right thing for me? I've tried googling for any advice on the Internet about how to decide if home-edding is the right thing for you as parent, but all I get is whether its the right thing for your child - and I'm pretty sure my daughter would take to it very well. Also I am a very shy person and don't have a big network of friends with children with whom I can provide my daughter with frequent opportunities to socialise, and we don't live near family so family support is out. There seems to be a good few parents home-edding in our community, and there are monthly meet-ups. However I've heard of one parent leaving the group because he has witnessed his young son being bullied by a gang of older home-edded boys at the meet-up.

My daughter is already attending ballet classes on Saturdays and she enjoys it. I'm not sure if that counts as a true socialising event since its not like they have play-time during the one hour class.
She tried joining one local Brownies group but sadly decided to stop going after 3 times as she failed to make a single friend or fit herself into the group and she found it extremely boring and awkward as a result. I have to admit I am sometimes worried for her that she will always have this problem of not being able to fit in/socialise. Come to think of it, I've always had the same problem, just not as severe as my daughter's as I have always managed to get by with a few friends no matter what setting... just that I'm just not a really social person by heart and don't really have the inclination to gain lots of friends... I'm happy with the few that I consider as "true friends". This is also another worry of mine that's making me hesitant about home-edding as I'm wondering if it would just make things worse for her on the social front.

Any advice ??

1. school is not effectively exercising any discipline on the bullies so what is the message dd is learning from this? The best discipline is self-discipline IMO and a good way to learn it I have found is by daily practice of an instrument. Another thing would be to learn to rule via learning to serve - some kind of position of responsibility with time in an organisation - guides, church, whatever is appropriate for your family. Duke of E? Maybe your dh would approve of that.

2. apparently top American universities are very open to HE. Does it honestly seem to him that the current school is the direct path to fame?

3. frankly I think you have left it rather late to approach the school and take her out of there. If not HE, why not at least now be actively looking for different schools. Is there any choice where you live?

4. I'm afraid what doesn't kill you has not made all kids stronger. If he really believes that for his little girl, tbh I don't know what to say to that

I'm not saying you absolutely have to HE if you are so unsure about it and he is so against it. Maybe it isn't right for you but at least you need to both be more vigilant with this school, demand more from them and speak up faster and in stronger terms. Maybe he should be doing that.

1. You can instil discipline if you want to, or you can read books about consensual living (Winning Parent Winning Child is a good one) and learn how to foster a sense of self-discipline in your child, which, I feel, is far more beneficial.

2. I'll find some, but off the top of my head, Mika and Natasha and Daniel Bedingfield were home educated. But also, who cares? Why do you need a famous HE'd person to make it a viable option?

3. Why don't you have a plan to see how the summer holidays go and if they go smoothly (with her co-operation) - visits to places, conversations with eachother, games played etc. - dereg her then.

4. Well, that can be true in some cases, but I don't think it's necessary. Far more important to build a stable base of trust in your parents and self-awareness.

Caitlin Moran was apparently home educated (Times columnist) and I think she's fab

1. There are all sorts of ways of learning discipline. My daughters do ballet, gym and horse riding - all of which have very clear rules and expectations. At home, we're much more laid back. They're well aware of what is appropriate where and how to organise themselves.

1. HE is becoming very popular in the US. As Zen says, many prestigious US universities (including University of California campuses which covers Berkeley, UCLA etc. are actively recruiting HE'ers.) Disneyland have a 'not back to school' week in September where HE'ers can learn management + leadership, art + animation, history and physics Disney-style in the park. It's really a big thing here and growing all the time.

1. I rushed into it after an appalling meeting with a teacher. The sense of relief is incredible and our whole family is happier and more relaxed.

1. Absolutely 100% disagree. I've caught up with some old friends recently from my old, very strict school and found two of them have had extensive stints in psychiatric institutions. Several more have struggled in adulthood and still blame the school. Yes a few people thrive, but it's not worth the risk. Your child is more likely to thrive in a happy, supportive environment where she can follow her interests.

Carmen - I forgot about other groups.

OP, my children do badgers; my oldest does street dancing classes and my second DD does ballet. They are 5 and 7 and neither has any issue at all with the discipline involved despite having very little in the say of structure at home.

surely your DH only needs to read all the headlines about unruly pupils, teachers getting threatened etc to realise that school isn't the only (and certainly not the best) place to be disciplined?!

after all your DD is getting bullied and the school is clearly doing sweet F.A. about it - hardly discipline is it?

IME seeing my stepkids go through school, it seems as though they are learning not to be disciplined IYSWIM. It's fine in that school, and many others, to bully other pupils and disrespect teachers, to forget their equipment and turn up late, to mess around in class and make no effort with schoolwork. this is actually one of the reasons we don't want to send our kids to school! (especially secondary)

sorry for waffling - but with all due respect, OP, your point (1) is utter rubbish

Hi, I'm moving my family to Acton, West London and have failed to get my 12 year old daughter (year7) into a decent state school. Our only other option is fee paying which I'm worried would cripple us. Also up until now she has been at a Welsh language school and although she is bilingual, English is her second language. I'm thinking that it would be a good idea to home school her for a year to boost her confidence in english and also to fill any gaps that there may be between the syllabus taught in Wales and the syllabus in England. However, she is a very sociable child and would very much miss the company of children her age. For this reason I would love to know if there are home schooling groups in West London that I could talk to in order to explore home schooling further. I'd love to get in touch with you if you are teaching your children at home, especially if you are part of a home schooling group with children around my daughters age.
All advice welcome!
Luned

Thanks for all your input so far. I was looking at ways I could convince DH that home ed could work. Those were some of the reservations he came up with even though they might seem ridiculous and flippant!

On the whole I get the feeling that DH does not seem ready for the idea of his children being HE-ed. I'm not sure if I can go ahead with it on my own without his support (even if its moral. after all its his own children too). I'm also in favour of more autonomous learning but he really wants the girls to sit national exams. I think he's just viewing it from his own life and work experiences, that generally speaking standard qualifications do matter quite a lot in addition to personal qualities in order to succeed in at least his workplace. Also there are days when DD comes home happy after having a good day at school and DH uses that as evidence to prove that school is not all that unbearably bad for DD and that she will learn to cope eventually.

There isn't actually another school near where we live that we like. There is another one yes, but my daughter had attended that one prior to this one and I withdrew her from that school for similar reasons as what she's encountering now. We can't move away now for financial reasons we're tied up to our current place.

I'm thinking flexi-schooling might be a consensus but I'm pretty sure the head at the current school won't support this. I could continue to let my daughter go to school or home ed at the risk of my husband not really agreeing to it and that might cause problems further on.

Noodle6 wrote:

I'm also in favour of more autonomous learning but he really wants the girls to sit national
exams.

Those are not mutually incompatible options. My DC have been autonomously educated since birth. The older one (18) is waiting for one result to confirm her conditional offer to University to study law. We have not done national exams (we have taken OU courses instead) but many EHEers do do GCSEs, etc. You can see results from over 100 people at the Home Ed exams website.

Also, your DD is only 7, so exams are not an issue for ages. Could you suggest trying EHE for a year and then review it? Or you could review it before deciding what to do for secondary years? Some families never make a permanent decision to home educate, LOL.

Thanks SDeuchars. I have mentioned to him before that we can always send them back to school again if we feel its better for them. DH thinks it would be awkward to send them back to the same school(s) that we've already taken them out of because we don't really like them. They might not even welcome us and not give us a place. Then we'll be stuck with no school to fall back on.

Then also he doubts whether the children will be motivated enough to sit national exams in future if they are autonomously-educated. He seems to think they will just become people who like to sit around at home all day doing nought. He just cannot get his head around the idea of autonomous learning.

I have a lot of faith in my children though and I think they will do alright... I just don't know how to reach a consensus with him on this. So frustrating!!!

Would your DH be a bit more willing if you compromised on the autonomous a little and did an agreed daily amount of 'work' and then were autonomous the rest of the time - eg a couple of hours in the morning concentrating on a couple of subjects then following their interests the rest of the time.

Well, reviewing at the start of secondary would mean you wouldn't be looking at the same schools.

Can you show him the HE exams website? Many of the results on there are from autonomously educated people (including the PhD).

Also, many families who take children out of school start of being more structured and move to less structure as they adjust to EHE (see Alan Thomas and Harriett Pattison's work).

The problem is that no-one can say what your DDs would do if they were EHE, so you are rather going with "better the devil you know"... Given that the decision can be reversed (most obviously at end Y6), it'd be worth trying now. From what I have heard, it is much harder to make the decision in secondary, unless there are huge problems, in which case they have probably been going on for ages.

@ Tinuviel : I'm willing to give that a try, but don't think I would be free to dedicate more than half an hour during the day for a 2-to-2 session with my 2 girls whilst DS is napping.

@ Tinuviel : sorry I meant 1-to-2 session

I know it's not a lot of help at the moment, but your DS is not going to stay like this for ever. Will he sit on your lap while you (or your DD) read aloud? Your DDs won't need much time on formal stuff at home - school is very inefficient. Can your 7yo do worksheets, writing or a project while you are feeding DS or on her own while you occupy the other two? You can do formal work in 15-20 minute sessions. As you don't need to be looking at a long time, you'd be surprised how people can fit it in.

The younger ones can get involved with practical things such as craft and baking.

Okay I think we will give it a go. Am now busy typing the deregistration letter... not sure if I need to elaborate the reasons... What do I do if the school decides to contact me for a meeting to discuss this, etc.?? Do I have to go along??

You do not have to go to any meetings - you just send in a letter saying that you are deregistering to home educate. It is then their job to notify LA. Whether your LA get in touch with you will depend on where you are!! Some LAs are great and others are not. We are lucky - ours are very helpful and are now trying to organise events for home edders.

You do not need to give reasons for deregistering unless you want to.

The law (section 7 of Education Act 1996) says that it is the responsibility of the parent to ensure the child's education. You can do that by regular attendance at school or otherwise. Now you have decided to go "otherwise", you merely need to inform the school that you are no longer using their services.

As there have been problems with the school and not knowing what your LA is like, you may wish to keep it as short as possible - what you don't say cannot be used against you.

Thanks for all your advice. I wrote a short simple letter based on the template I found on one of these HE support websites... and posted it off by special delivery. School did ring me today asking why DD wasn't in school and I told them she is to be dereg-ed as of today and to expect the letter in the post tomorrow. they had the cheek to ask me have I informed the LA? I had to put it to them simply "No that is not my job. Its yours." and there was a really awkward 5 second pause after that.

Today we started the first actual day of HE. We could immediately see that HE is for us... The kids absolutely loved it, and I really enjoyed having them to myself all day. It wasn't too hard to find something to do. I'd ask them what they wanted to do now, and then go from there. And then after 6 hours, we found we've done some Spanish, played tumbling marbles, practised on the piano, drew in the carpark with chalk for more than an hour because the girls kept coming up with more stuff to draw, played hopscotch, played hangman, apart from having an hour and a half long relaxing lunch...There wasn't any time for even 1-to-2 tuition today though, because DS would not nap! So we did everything together, all 3 of us. DS was so tired end of the day (which was a good thing) and he slept early.

When DH came home he decided to give DD a Maths lesson because he'd feel better if he thinks he did some "proper learning" with her today. But he did moan a little later about the fact that he doesn't like his relationship changing from "fun Dad" to "teacher Dad" as a result of home-edding.

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's meet-up with the local home-ed group. I did get some weird looks from my nosy retired neighbour when he saw us playing outside at 1 pm (which was normally school-time). His wife is an ex-school-teacher so I really don't know if they will judge us for deciding to home-ed. This is another thing I'm wondering about now.

I might have to start getting used to getting strange looks from people on the streets if I'm out and about with my 3 children during a school hours.
I'm not too worried about this.
What I am worried about is if I'd get hassled by the police or the truancy officers if they see me out on the streets with my school-age daughter?
What should I do then?
Do they automatically leave you alone once you tell them you HE?
Or would they make you give them details so they can check it out with the LA or even go as far as making you go down to the police station or something?

Glad that you had a good first day!

What I am worried about is if I'd get hassled by the police or the truancy officers if they
see me out on the streets with my school-age daughter? What should I do then? Do they
automatically leave you alone once you tell them you HE? Or would they make you give
them details so they can check it out with the LA or even go as far as making you go down to
the police station or something?

They should leave you alone. There is no point taking details and checking them with the LA - home educators do not have to register with the LA. You will probably not get much hassle (my DS at 13 was stopped in shops just before Christmas when he was on his own, but we've never been challenged apart from that).

The important thing is to keep calm. Tell them that your children are not truants because they are not registered at school. Yes, HE is legal. No, you do not have to register with the LA so they cannot check up on you.

If a police officer asks for your name and address, you should give it (an EWO from the LA has no right to it). However, you can ask for a copy of the report that is written there and then and make sure that the police officer knows you have checked the badge number and that you intend to complain (or offer training on home education, if you have not been upset by him or her).

noodle that sounds like a great first day!

WRT your DH worrying about being 'teacher dad' instead of 'fun dad' - the two aren't mutually exclusive! no reason why learning shouldn't be as fun as learning.

I'm sure there's lots of maths games he could play anyway.

Noodle - what a lovely post to read! So pleased you're happy with your decision.

"When DH came home he decided to give DD a Maths lesson because he'd feel better if he thinks he did some "proper learning" with her today. But he did moan a little later about the fact that he doesn't like his relationship changing from "fun Dad" to "teacher Dad" as a result of home-edding."

Maybe he shouldn't do any teaching then! If I teach my children it makes me and my children ratty and our relationship begins to break down. But I don't even need to. If they want to understand something, they ask me and I answer them and that's that. For maths, make use of computer games - there are loads out there - and then your DH can sit back and enjoy being a fun dad

If he wants to do maths things with his children, then play card games, or dice games with them. There is a really good book called Games For Math by Peggy Kaye which is full of fun things he can do with them.

Or he could come up with other activities that will need a bit of maths involvement - baking if you've got proper balance scales is great for doing maths. Lego good as well. Planning and planting a garden?

lol I just realised - the second 'learning' should be 'playing'

mind you all playing could count as learning I suppose!

Glad it went well, noodle!

The truancy officer is a really funny thing When I first took DD2 out of school I used to skulk around nervously in case anyone saw us and asked why. I was terrified of being stopped by truancy officers. I must have looked a bit weird, being so furtive!

One day I realised we were out and about and I was no longer worrying about it. Now, I'd postiviely love a truancy officer to dare challenge us but nobody ever does .

Even more weirdly, I've kind of forgotten other people go to school. One of my friends has a daughter who is friends with DD1 and I made the mistake the other week of asking her round during a school day. She's a bit touchy about the home ed thing and it didn't go down too well - I think she thought I was making a point. But I had genuinely forgotten other children attend school! School just disappears out of your consciousness, somehow.

You probably will worry at the start and it will feel weird being out and about, but it will soon pass. In 3 years we've never once been stopped by the police, even though if I see one we deliberately walk right past and grin .

Oh, and my DH never, ever teaches my girls. He thinks he's a university lecturer or something and they have to hang on to every word of his (very long winded) pearls of wisdom. It always ends in tears. I get him to take them to social stuff if he wants to be of use