Monster was six a couple of weeks ago. He *should* have been in full time school for over a year now, he’d have completed reception and be in year one. We began our Home Ed journey in reaction to Monster’s terrible experiences at a private day care nursery when he was just 18 months old.
Writing about that time now I find it hard to believe I went through with something for so long which I felt so bad about, that I managed to ignore and overcome all my own instincts and emotions and those of my son just because I had people, particularly professionals telling me I was doing the right thing. The fact is Monster hated it. Really hated it. He cried every morning when I dropped him off there, he cried periodically during the time he was there, ran to me and clung to me like he could never bear to let me go again when I came to collect him and then started crying again the next time he was dropped off there. This continued for nine whole months, two days a week. And we went from a crying 18 month old child to a crying 27 month old who had words to tell me he didn’t want to be left, please Mummy. But still I did it, I listened to the nursery owners and workers who told me he was getting ‘better’ and sometimes even seemed happy there for a brief time. I listened to the Health Visitor who told me that often some children took a while to settle, but they always did eventually. I listened to other parents on forums and in real life who were keen to tell me of children they’d heard of or even parented themselves who had too hated this initial seperation but eventually gotten over it and I listened to society generally that told me that aged 5 he would be off to school anyway so would simply have to get used to it, get used to that environment, get used to being dropped off somewhere by me every day, get used to holding his own in a group of children, get used to being comforted by someone other than me when he fell and grazed his knee, get used to learning things according to the National Curriculum in tidily packaged one hour segments. Oh and of course the socialisation - musn’t forget that!
It was only in a highly emotional state, 24 hours after giving birth to my daughter that I finally realised the sheer lunacy of what I was doing. I drove to the nursery with my newborn, took my son home again and promised him that he would never have to go back there again. I sent my husband to the nursery with a letter to tell them Monster wouldn’t be coming back and that was that.
I found a lovely, gentle, grandmotherly lady who came to our home two mornings a week which both solved the childcare issue as I still needed childcare to continue my job at that time, and assisted with gently restoring my son’s confidence, personality and anxiety as he was able to see that I could still leave him for periods of time without it being the traumatic, wrenching experience he’d had previously when I walked out of a door.
I would state here that the nursery did nothing wrong. It was, as nurseries go, a very good nursery. Very highly rated by Ofsted, very clean and friendly with brightly painted walls, exhibitions of the childrens’ art work, freshly cooked meals, happy smiling staff who genuinely liked children. If you were going to put your offspring in an institution I can’t really think of a nicer one.
So we started to explore the options for preschool and school, knowing that adjusting to being left somewhere was not something that would come easily to our son and that he wouldn’t magically be ready for pre school in a years time and suddenly happily trot off holding a Thomas lunchbox. I felt it would be the final nail in his coffin. I had heard of Home Education but my experience of it was limited to remembering watching Wogan interviewing a girl and her father. He was teaching her at home and she was some sort of maths genuis who took her A level aged 8 or something. She was pale, quiet, very adult and serious and it seemed a very odd thing to do. But I belonged to a parenting forum where several mothers with older children than mine had offered me sensible, common sense advice on other parenting questions and both happened to be Home Educators. They directed me to Muddlepuddle, I joined Education Otherwise, I read and researched and debated with friends and family. We went from ‘thinking about Home Education’ to deciding it was what we would do very, very quickly.
Far from the great weight of responsibility or fretting about how it would work that people seemed to expect my overwhelming feeling was one of relief. I could honestly look my son in the eye and tell him he never had to go to preschool or school if he didn’t want to. He wasn’t going to end up bullied and defeated and scared, he could stay home with me until he was ready to spread his wings in his own time. I was reassured that there were just so many other people out there doing it, that there were curriculums and workbooks and the internet and the library to furnish me with all the educational resources I needed (this was back in the day before I had heard of and embraced autonomy. At this stage it was all about keeping Monster out of that building with SCHOOL written over the door). I had learnt that you didn’t ‘have’ to go to school, little children didn’t ‘have’ to don a uniform to drape their tiny bodies and ‘get used to’ being yanked away from their parents, parents don’t need to only learn about what information their offspring are being taught and how they are progressing by parents evenings and school reports or watching undercover ‘what really happens in the classroom’ type exposes on Channel four.
Of course there is no way of knowing who or what Monster would be like if we had continued down the usual path. If we’d persisted with nursery, ploughed on through preschool and battled into reception. Would he still be crying every morning in year one? I know that there are children who do and I think Monster could well have been one of them. But what I know for certain is what Home Education has done for him, what sort of child I have a result of that decision. He is confident, self assured and happy. He has an amazingly wide circle of friends - a classroom full of children came to his recent birthday party, but instead of being all the same age as him and living within a 3 mile radius they range from babies to 10 year olds and live scattered all over the country - not dissimilar to the ideal social circle for an adult really 
. He is popular in his various groups and friendship circles and feels secure, loved, wanted and valued. He has passions - some are enduring and have lasted years, some are flash in the pan but he has time, space and support to follow them. He is loud and full of energy - traits which in the main he is allowed to demonstrate and enjoy without fretting over whether it is the appropriate time of day to be being loud and if it will disrupt others. He has a curiosity about everything and constantly seeks knowledge and information, he has amazing coaching skills and is excellent with younger children - a skill honed from spending much time in the company of younger relatives and friends which would not have been an opportunity open to him if he had been in school five days a week. He learns about the water cycle by monitoring puddles, looking at the clouds and explaining it to Teeny, he learns the changing of the seasons by walking in the woods and noting the changing colours and textures of the trees around him and leaves under his feet, he learns to count, add and subtract by catching rabbits on his current favourite X box game, he learns to read by spotting letters in road signs, drain covers and car registration plates as we go out walking, he learns about building friendships by conducting them and seeking out potential friends in the park, at Home Ed gatherings, the children of friends and joining in, creating games and sharing ideas. Not by turn taking games, activities designed to raise self esteem, literacy and numeracy hours or indeed any one else’s idea of how he should fill his days, what to learn about or what is important other than his own.
and Teeny (5)
have never been to school or nursery. We began to think about Home Education about 5 years ago and have gradually combined education with our day to day life. For now we follow no structure, no curriculum and go wherever life - and our imagination - leads us.
This blog is an occassional record of where life has led us....
