Home ed forums

[Julysea]

There's a very active Home ed board on the forums of the Green Parent magazine: http://www.thegreenparent.co.uk/forums if you're looking for more electronic company. Other than that, I've found the various local and national yahoo lists to be more active.

We home ed our 7 and 5 year olds and they've never been to school or preschool and it's going well!

[velocidad]

thanks for the link, i'll have a look at that

[sortanormalish]

velocidad, we have the same problem with officials not understanding the law and putting their noses in. I was surprised when I read online about how little british law requires of homeschool parents. Don't want to muddy the waters, but your government keeps very close tabs on the people, it was strange to me that in this you have so much freedom.

[red]

they are trying to bring in new laws to lessen that freedom, but it all get chucked out cos we have an election on the way. no doubt it will raise its ugly head again after that.


in Uk, the law is that parents are responsible for educating their kids.. they can do it using school or otherwise. Case law has shown that the LEA cannot assume an education is not taking place - they have to have some sort of reason to think so, and we are (currently) not obliged to have visits or supply anything..but that would be foolhardy.
I allowed the visits and haven't regretted it.. our bloke from the LEA was lovely, and really helpful. but its not always so - or so i am told. I imagine that alternative lifestyles can be misunderstood by people who don't live their lives like that themselves. for example, we raise and kill our own animals for meat. I sometimes have half a pigs head simmering on the stove, and the house is in a state of renovation and has been for years. Fortunately, my LEA bloke thinks its great that we grow and raise our own food, and more interested in my son's progress than the 1950s wallpaper hanging off the walls. He also spends all day visiting with children that have been excluded etc, so i think he likes his visits here, where we are enthusiastic etc. and we share a mutual interest in local walks and historical buildings.

He was asking about the sheep once, and I told him the old saying that a sheep spends it's whole life trying to think of new and interesting ways to die. Apparently he has been repeating this to everyone... "there's a lady I know who keeps sheep and she says...."

so perhaps we educated him

[sortanormalish]

red, I am so glad everything is going well for you. Our house has been under renovation for years too. My husband says he is teaching them practical skills, I say they are learning practical geometry (building walls) and chemistry (builder's adhesive).

Most people here homeshool because of religious reasons or because their families live an alternative lifestyle. We homeschool because the system wasn't serving our children well, but two of ours never went to school. Can I be nosy and ask why you homeschool? It doesn't matter, but I am always curious, it's like a strange obsession

[red]

as a generalisation, in the UK there are three reasons to home educate, religion is one of them, but I imagine much less so than in USA. The second reason is alternative lifestyle... in this group you get a range from people just wanting to offer their kids more experience, are able to think outside the norm etc, all the way to those living in old buses and have a deep suspicion of 'the establishment'

and the third reason is if your child has a disability and or learning difficulties. There are a lot of home educating parents with children with special needs.

My reason is because my son has learning difficulties and is on the autistic spectrum. He went to primary school, with a one to one assistant, and it largely worked, but less so as he got older. he was very much being taught aside from the class rather than within it, by the end. When we came to look at secondary schools, I put HE in as an option and explored it as much as the local schools. The local school were going to put in a package that was ok. But, frankly, I felt i could do a better job myself. Sounds conceited, but the intensity of working one to one, with work made just for him, without interruption etc, means I could offer him more.
I'm also a bit alternative too I guess. and live in a hippy sort of area, where it is not unusual and there are lots of others doing the same.

My OH, my son's father and my parents all thought it was not the right thing to do, but saw no reason not to give it a go. They all saw immediately the change in my son, his confidence and abilities and have all said it was the right move. that helps!

tbh i didn't know HE was a legal option before. if i had more kids who were not disabled, i would HE them too, now I know how great it can be.
The main aim of my home ed plan is to give him the skills to lead an independent life. Maths is concentrated on things like running his own bank account. etc etc.

[sortanormalish]

red, thank you so much for opening up. I know that sometimes it can be hard, even though I also live in an area where HS is very common too. The reasons you listed for the UK are exactly the same here. Well, except fear of 'the establishment,' people in the US don't necessarily homeschool for that, they get guns.

I don't think it is at all arrogant for you to think you can teach your son better than someone else. No one knows him the way his own parents do.

I spent several years working in research, then switched careers to education so that I could spend more time with my own children. I taught secondary, and I could always tell immediately which kids had been homeschooled, they don't know how to stand in a queue!

One of my children was in the 'gifted' program. His gift was we had books instead of a TV when he was small. The other is dyslexic and even though I begged for help with an alternative reading program and offered to pay for it myself for the special education reading teacher to use, got nothing. He basically went to a sitter for 7 hours a day, then came home and did school with me, it was exhausting. The last year they were in school his teacher smiled everyday and told me everything was fine. Then at the end of the year they wanted to put him into all remedial classes (even though she had given him A's on his report cards) because he hadn't turned in an assignment for the last three months. I had suspected that and had already decided to homeschool anyway. I didn't even bother sending the younger kids to school.

Does your son have Asberger's or does he have one of the more extreme types of Autism? I am trying to ask that as politely as I know how, please excuse any blunders. I ask because my best friend's little boy has Asberger's and she has no local support to help her with some issues they are having; they homeschool too because the school district couldn't meet his needs. The system said he was too smart for special ed, but he sat in a corner and didn't move if he was surrounded by a classroom of kids. He is only 8, do you have any advice about teaching him to read and write that I can pass along? He can read a little, and retains almost everything that is read to him, kind of creepy really, but he can't seem to get the hang of it himself.

[red]

Does your son have Asberger's or does he have one of the more extreme types of Autism? I am trying to ask that as politely as I know how, please excuse any blunders. I ask because my best friend's little boy has Asberger's and she has no local support to help her with some issues they are having; they homeschool too because the school district couldn't meet his needs. The system said he was too smart for special ed, but he sat in a corner and didn't move if he was surrounded by a classroom of kids. He is only 8, do you have any advice about teaching him to read and write that I can pass along? He can read a little, and retains almost everything that is read to him, kind of creepy really, but he can't seem to get the hang of it himself.

he is officially described as 'having some aspects of aspergers' - so he is definitely on the spectrum. He's always loved reading, and we are all booky people in this family, so he jsut progressed, albeit slowly. he really struggles with maths. My lad was spending wayy too much of his energy coping with being in a classroom, with others. once I removed him from that situation, he was able to put all his energy into actual learning.

He had a fear of numbers.. due to struggling so much, so we went back to where he was comfortable and picked it up from there. having spent years and year s being the kid who didn't get the answers right, i set about making it so he could always get the right answers.. if he couldn't - I had set the questions too high.. if you see what i mean. I imagine it would work the same with reading? we jsut made small steps as his confidence grew. then occasionally he would have a breakthrough.

what i have noticed with reading, is all of that stuff about breaking words down to phonetics, or bit and saying each bit, then putting it together, to work out the word.. just didn't work.. at all!

but he has learned to read by simply memorising 1000s of words. now he reads paperbacks, and I think he works out the words that are new to him by context. Even spelling - the breaking it down thing, just doesn't work. maybe that would help your friend? to approach the reading thing from a totally different way to perhaps you and I were taught.

[Rosendula]

I'm finally going to jump in here after reading the posts over the last few days but not being able to spend the time sitting and typing an answer.

I have three children - none of them have special educational needs. The two older children went through the school system. My son has now left school, and my eldest daughter is in the final year. I also have Katie, who will be 4 years old tomorrow. Based on my own experience of school, and then seeing the effects of it on my older children [insert numerous real-life horror stories here], we have decided to home educate her from the start.

what i have noticed with reading, is all of that stuff about breaking words down to phonetics, or bit and saying each bit, then putting it together, to work out the word.. just didn't work.. at all!

but he has learned to read by simply memorising 1000s of words. now he reads paperbacks, and I think he works out the words that are new to him by context. Even spelling - the breaking it down thing, just doesn't work

I taught both my eldest to read at home before they started school by teaching them the letters, then syllables phonetically. It worked really well for them. However, when I have tried that with Katie, she has shown absolutely no interest, yet she will memorize full words. I find it a bit strange, as I learned to read phonetically, but I've heard it works well so I'm willing to give it a go. I'm getting the impression that learning to read this way takes a little longer, and requires more patience on my part than learning the other way - perhaps that's just us, I don't know. What I'm trying to say is that one of the wonderful things about home ed is, in my opinion, that you can tailor the learning style to suit your own child, instead of the child having to fit in with the teacher's teaching style.

I have just registered with Education Otherwise today. I've been umm-ing and ah-ing over it for a long time now (as you can see), but have decided I won't know until I try it. I've also decided we are going to start meeting up with other local home edders - there are meeting places and times in the home ed pack I copied at the library. I don't know if we'll get along but Katie has started saying she wants to go to school. I'm happy to discuss that with her at a later date, but at the moment her idea is that school is like on kids programmes - small classes full of friendly little bears that are nauseatingly nice to one another, and a teacher that isn't restricted by curriculums, targets and the rest and who actually cares about the kids. So we're going to meet up with other children like her who don't go to school so that she can see she's not alone. The reason I haven't done that so far is that the nearest meetings are on a Monday afternoon at the same time as ballet class. Now she's a bit fed up of ballet (doing the same thing over and over), we're thinking of giving it a break for a few months, after which she'll be old enough to join the next class up. The other HE meetings are in a morning when I don't have the car, and are 2 bus rides away. Now Katie has got over her toilet phobia and I don't have to time outings between potties, that doesn't sound quite as daunting. We've just got a few really busy weeks ahead of us (you know, like the 16 year old daughter being due to give birth yesterday - just the normal sort of stuff ) but I'm pretty confident we'll be getting out there a bit more this summer.

[sortanormalish]

rosendula, did I get that correctly, your 16 year old child is about to give birth? If my 16 year old was about to be a father I would be a sobbing mess., of course I would be a mess if he were 36. You sound soooooo calm. I want whatever drug you are on, I am already a neurotic mess, if I was about to have a grandbaby.....

red, as a former professional mathematics educator, that sounds so arrogant I get a naughty thrill typing it, your method for dealing with a child accustomed to failure is absolutely perfect. When I taught the um..legally detained children, that was the only method that worked. The poor things were so used to failure that they would literally commit crimes (theft, assault) to distract their parents and other teachers from the fact that they didn't have a clue about the subject. I asked one why after I got to know him and he was getting his life back on track and he said, "I guess I would rather you not like me because I'm a little a--hole, than that you know I'm a dumb---."

Several parents with autistic children have told me that the whole word method works very well, and their children learn to read very well. Think of it, potentially memorizing over 50,000 words. And that's just English. I have real concerns about treating children within the autistic spectrum like there is something wrong. Their is something different, but if it isn't a danger to them or others, it isn't wrong. What I'm trying to say is that their brains work in a fascinating way.

All four of my children could read words before they were 4, but they weren't using phonics, it was whole word, two could even read simple books. After they got to a certain age though, maybe there were just too any words of similiar shape, we had to add phonics. For my dyslexic shild, we always used a combination approach. He never fully switched over to phonics. Tailor to fit.

[velocidad]

all the best with the home ed-ing adventure rosendula. i wish we'd done it from the start really, but at least we're doing it now and having a great time

[Rosendula]

rosendula, did I get that correctly, your 16 year old child is about to give birth? If my 16 year old was about to be a father I would be a sobbing mess., of course I would be a mess if he were 36. You sound soooooo calm. I want whatever drug you are on, I am already a neurotic mess, if I was about to have a grandbaby.....

Calm? CALM?? I've never been further from calm in my life I couldn't begin to list the emotions I have been through over the last few months, I felt like I'd been put in a bag and shaken vigorously. I blamed Chrissie, I blamed the bloke who did it (they're no longer together), I blamed myself, her Dad, her grandparents and all the rest of the family. I blamed her so-called friends, teachers, absolutely everyone. Then I came to the conclusion that it's just down to the way society operates at the moment. OK, not all teenagers get pregnant, but a lot do and we have to ask ourselves why? So I did a lot of that as well whilst pacing back and forth at a rate of knots. I came up with it being down to peer pressure and lack of confidence. Peer pressure, as we know, is largely a school thing. The lack of confidence, well I could and should have recognized it and done more to address it, but it was caused, I believe, mostly by school - kids and teachers. Well, we had already decided to home educate our youngest, and this realization made us all the more determined.

I can't turn the clock back, and I'm not sure if I would. Chrissie's now going to the local school girl mums' unit and has, for the first time since she reached school-age, started to enjoy education. In fact, she's gone into school today at 4 days overdue! She wants to stay on in the 6th form, and has said she can see the difference between schooling and education. This is a massive change in attitude. I was expecting her to leave school with a maximum of 2 GCSEs and a couldn't-care-less attitude. Now I'm expecting a string of GCSEs, BTech and a can-change-the-world attitude. The school girl mum's unit has done wonders for her. If all schools were like that, I wouldn't be home-educating Katie.

So now I'm at the stage where there's no point in being angry or upset or disappointed any more. We have a new and exciting future ahead of us (although it may be difficult at times), we will give Chrissie all the help and support we can and we will welcome the little chappy with all the love he deserves.

[red]

how cool your daughter has such support behind her.

[sortanormalish]

Rosendula, keep her going! When I was a teacher I was always amazed at how a baby could light a fire under a girl or boy's backside.

We want pictures of the little mystery man you know.

I have a theory about what is wrong with society, at least from an education perspective:
At the birth of man kind a system of children learning in a circle free of cruelty and rejection (speaking in generalities of course) was also born, thus children gained self confidence as the learned. Now we toss hormonally challenged children into large brick structures and expect them to come out adults, without being properly socialized by adults to that end. Is it any wonder that every society throughout recorded history has fallen prey to institutionalized education just a few generations before their demise? Hmm, I wonder about the relationship.

[Rosendula]

Thanks friends. Pictures will be posted when he decides to pop out, though I think he's quite comfortable in there.