Eldest Son, Harry, who is nearly 7, and Second Son, William, who is 5, started back at school last week. Harry was ready for school and we felt that they would both settle more easily if they had each other at school. Happily, this is the case so far. William is struggling a little bit with me dropping him off and is having a few teary moments each day because he is missing me but they both come home with stories and friends and seem to be happy.
They have gone back to our local village school, the one we removed Harry from two years ago after problems with bullying and the head’s dealing with it. Harry is now quite old enough, big enough and confident enough to hold his own in the playground and it is wonderful to see. I am still reserving judgement on the head teacher but the school is good and the boys both know most of their class already because I have not, as many anti-homeschool types like to argue, hidden them away at home the last couple of years but have, of course, maintained friendships and made new ones as we came across like-minded people. So that is all good too.
I have been able to resume my position as a school-gate mother which I mourned a little when we first removed Harry from school. That is good too.
But I still feel William is a bit young for school. Lots of research has shown that children who start formal learning at 7 tend to do better and it is my feeling that 7 seems a good age to start school and that is borne out by William not being quite as confident or settled or ready to sit for long periods and learn as his older brother. And as this is Harry’s third go at school in two years I was worried that chopping and changing between school and homeschool was incredibly unsettling.
I miss homeschooling them a great deal. I miss my ‘job’ and I feel reduced to the cleaning, cooking, nappy-changing role I always did but around the important teaching stuff. I miss them. Homeschooling suited us all and worked well. The children enjoyed it and were learning well even with sometimes quite short hours of formal work.
However because we always wanted to leave the door open for the boys to go to school at any point we in some ways had the worst of the homeschooling life. This is what I wrote when we started
and it turned out that that was exactly the case. I didn’t have enough faith in unschooling methods, despite evidence that it works, to have confidence that it would give my children enough of an education. I couldn’t find any research which had been done to show that unschooling might sometimes not work and I didn’t feel I could take that risk without further information. Also if we wanted them to go back to school at some point I felt obliged to loosely follow the National Curriculum – which is dull, dull, dull whichever way you try to dress it up or make it interesting – so they would be able to fit back in and be at the same level as their peers. So I had to take those incredibly boring things and try to make them interesting rather than relying on the boys’ innate wish to learn things because they interest them.
I feel a bit gutted at the waste of all the hours and hours of research I have done to plan the work we did and were going to do, ways to make the subjects interesting, the waste of money in all the things I have bought, all the books I have purchased (even two of my presents for my birthday last month were homeschooling books – not really a present for me, but that’s how much I loved and valued homeschooling).
So there we are. The last two weeks have been a bit miserable for me but I am sure in time I will adjust and I will certainly have time to do more things with my two little fellas, like toddler playgroups and coffee mornings. I will learn to love these things.
Do I regret homeschooling? Not for a minute. Would I homeschool again? Absolutely yes. Will I get the chance to again? Probably not, which makes me sad.
Do I regret the children going to school? No, because they are happy. Because they are still getting a good education. And at the end of the day if those two boxes are ticked, it doesn’t really matter if they are at home or school. Because at the end of the day, this parenting thing is about what is right for my children. Homeschooling was right for all of us, but school is right for my children too and I’m cool with that.
I’ve been so worried about you Ella and I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through this but it is great that your two boys are enjoying school. I hope in time you find that you too settle into your new role.
SO glad your boys are settled and happy. Long may it last hon!
We had the weirdest mothers at our toddler group here. I braved it three times and then couldn’t bring myself to go another time. Eventually I found it easier to get together with mothers from the school who had younger babies too.
I have been a vocal supporter of homeschooling whenever I’ve commented here, but I wanted to let you know – My almost 7 year old is starting school next year also, on a trial basis. This is a mutual decision between the two of us. We were in a rut and we needed a change, so we decided a “year off” won’t do any harm.
Still, I totally understand all those feelings your expressing. I’m caught up in the thought of “Am I doing the right thing?” but I keep telling myself I can always go back to homeschooling if it doesn’t work out. At least I’ll know for sure if it’s the right thing for our family this way. All the best!
I freely confess to knowing nothing about homeschooling so have very rarely commented on it (here or anywhere else!). I do have a friend who homeschools though and I am guessing she goes more for the “unschooling” method you mention. Which possibly means I know even less than nothing. But it would seem to me that maybe it’s easier to make things fun in a big group?? Belle was showing us a website at the weekend which she uses a lot at school and she used it to write a poem. She really enjoyed it but she was describing how fun it had been to do the same task with 2 friends at school – more fun than she found it to do with Ned when she felt he was not at her level… but maybe it’s just because I *know* that I would not have the imagination to make things more fun whereas you obviously went to a huge effort to do so… I’m glad they’re happy though and who knows? maybe one day you’ll be using all those skills you’ve learnt and you love again for one of the others?
Hi Ella, sorry I’ve not been by in a while and I’m really sorry to hear about everything that’s been happening recently. I have always really admired how you seem to juggle all the things you do and still seem so composed about it so I’m really surprised to read that home educating wasn’t working. Hope all is well with you, never sure how much you don’t share here.