thinking of home education

[pingu]

Hi Everyone.

Over the holidays we have been thinking a fair bit about home education for kieran, as we dont believe he is going to recieve the help he needs at his current mainstream school. since 2004 he has been educated in a small group of no more than 10 children, which has worked well, but as he is now moving to a year 3 class (juniors) there is no "group" where he can be teached and will be entering a class of 30 kids with a maximun of 15 hours support a week. This support will be given for his mornings at school but in the afternoon he will be pretty much on his own. there are lots more issues, which i wont go into, but lets just say although generous i dont believe this new arangement will work.

 

Sooo. i was looking into home education for him or even "flexi schooling" where we do half and half. I have found out that a child by law must recieve an education but it is not gospel that they have to recieve this education at school.

 

I think the school which both he and his sister attends is poor in certain areas and i really would be grateful for your advice, even a starting point. Thankyou in advance.

 

Ps I dont have a statement for him as the school say they can "meet his needs" without a statement. We have disputed this but have got no-where. Im not prepared to risk his mentality over a system that doesnt understand.

shaz

[Canopus]

The ultimate question is, what does kieran want out of an education? Also, what would you like him to learn?

[summertime]

Its always a worry with a transition such as this but often the children suprise us with how well they cope in a new setting.

 

Home education is a big step to take and is the right step for some people but certainly not something to rush into.

 

have a look here if you havent already, there is some good advice that could help

[oracle]

The ultimate question is, what does kieran want out of an education? Also, what would you like him to learn?

 

I think that this is the question that really needs to be answered and was certainly one of the main questions that we asked before we took Matthew out of the system - which frankly saved my sanity as well as his.

 

The other big decider for me was the fact that I wanted my children, no matter what their dx, to remember their childhood as being happy. We are children for such a short time and I personally think that what happens in your childhood can have a huge impact and lasting effect on your life. The thought that Matthew and David would only remember their childhood with great pain was too much for me.

 

I also decided that I wanted my sons to understand themselves and what makes them tic and explode on occasion. I want them to know how to shop, wear to shop, and to be able to shop - because I want them to be as independant as possible. I wanted to develop their social skills and their communications skills because even with the best qualifications in the world, without those skills what hope have you of holding down a job? Maybe all of this would be possible within a school setting but not the schools that my two attended because for one they did not get the level of support that they required.

 

The link in the other post gives some good links to follow especially this one http://www.he-special.org.uk/

 

HE may be a big step but it can also be the right step not just for the child but the whoile family. At the risk of being shot down in flames I don't think that teaching is half as complicated as it is made out to be Matthew has an excellent in-depth knowledge base which is proved time and time again with his local school attending peers. Yes they all know who Guy Fawkes is come November 5th - but Matthew is the only kid on the block who knows that he was never the brains of the outfit

 

We live in a life long learning environment when we can return to learn at any time - for many of our children their childhood is not the right time because they have so many other things they need to learn.

 

I will shut up now.

 

Oracle

Edited September 2, 2006 by oracle

[pingu]

Thanks oracle. This is exactly my point, i want kieran to learn how to be independant whilst having a happy time learning, and all im seeing now is how stressed he is after a day at school. it got to the point before the holidays where he regressed so far back that we were unable to communicate with him. Yet over the 6 weeks holidays he has learnt so much, we know and realise that having him home for 6 weeks is nothing in comparrison to what HE would entail, but on the other hand it must be an easier option than sending him to the lions den each day.

 

I appriciate your help on this (all of you) and am definatly going to give the idea some more serious consideration.

 

Thank you

shaz

[oxgirl]

Hi Everyone.

Over the holidays we have been thinking a fair bit about home education for kieran, as we dont believe he is going to recieve the help he needs at his current mainstream school. since 2004 he has been educated in a small group of no more than 10 children, which has worked well, but as he is now moving to a year 3 class (juniors) there is no "group" where he can be teached and will be entering a class of 30 kids with a maximun of 15 hours support a week. This support will be given for his mornings at school but in the afternoon he will be pretty much on his own. there are lots more issues, which i wont go into, but lets just say although generous i dont believe this new arangement will work.

 

Sooo. i was looking into home education for him or even "flexi schooling" where we do half and half. I have found out that a child by law must recieve an education but it is not gospel that they have to recieve this education at school.

 

I think the school which both he and his sister attends is poor in certain areas and i really would be grateful for your advice, even a starting point. Thankyou in advance.

 

Ps I dont have a statement for him as the school say they can "meet his needs" without a statement. We have disputed this but have got no-where. Im not prepared to risk his mentality over a system that doesnt understand.

shaz

 

All I can say about it is that home education was certainly the right choice for us. It took us over a year to take the step and we only did it out of desperation really, but once we'd found our feet we ended up wishing we'd done it years ago. I sat back and watched my lad suffer unbelieveable stress at school, whilst making very little progress, in the two years he was home educated he learned far more and gained far more confidence than in all the years of schooling he'd had put together.

 

If you feel it is right for you and your son, I'd advise you to go for it, you may end up wishing you'd done it sooner rather than later and the benefits could really start to be seen straight away. I admit that I did find it hard to get into at first and there were times in the first months when I was worried it wasn't going to work. If you do go for it, I'd advise you to give yourself several months to get into the swing of it and to find the right methods the work for you, but once you have, it could end up being the best decision you've ever made for your son.

 

Very best of luck!

 

~ Mel ~

[pingu]

All I can say about it is that home education was certainly the right choice for us. It took us over a year to take the step and we only did it out of desperation really, but once we'd found our feet we ended up wishing we'd done it years ago. I sat back and watched my lad suffer unbelieveable stress at school, whilst making very little progress, in the two years he was home educated he learned far more and gained far more confidence than in all the years of schooling he'd had put together.

 

If you feel it is right for you and your son, I'd advise you to go for it, you may end up wishing you'd done it sooner rather than later and the benefits could really start to be seen straight away. I admit that I did find it hard to get into at first and there were times in the first months when I was worried it wasn't going to work. If you do go for it, I'd advise you to give yourself several months to get into the swing of it and to find the right methods the work for you, but once you have, it could end up being the best decision you've ever made for your son.

 

Very best of luck!

 

~ Mel ~

 

Thanks Mel. What sort of stucture do you work to? I mean do you have set hours and activities or do you just teach him things as they come along, i know that if we follow this route then things will fall into place eventually but i just wondered how you structure your days. Thanks

shaz

[barefoot wend]

One of the big deciding factors for us was that school had become a completely negative experience for our son - constantly faced with his disability, constantly unable to live up to school's expectations. We know our son is capable of a great deal and has huge postives to offer but these were being eroded more and more the longer he was at school.

 

Home educating means we can focus on the postives rather then the negatives and his self-esteem has improved enormously. Instead of being forced to face his diagnosis every day in a very negative way we have been virtually able to leave it behind.

 

Barefoot

[denise2]

We've been home educating for 18 months and it was the best decision we ever made. Our son's social skills have improved far greater than they could ever have done at school as he is constantly learning every day life at home. When we first started our son was totally school phobic with extremely high anxiety frequent meltdowns and difficult behaviour and incredibly low self esteem.

 

We started by giving him a few months of de-schooling ( just following his wishes). I was quite concerned as I didn't think he'd ever do any work. We are members of education-otherwise and many people believe de-schooling to be essential. After a few months we started to introduce a small amount of formal work, but never mentioning the word school!! Nine months after de-registering we had our first visit from the LEA and I was dreading it. The day she came he had been vomiting for 2 weeks every day( 3 months later we found out it was caused by the stress of Christmas approaching!!) I was exhausted, he was exhausted and I didn't put forward half of what I wanted. The up shot was that the LEA lady advised that children with special needs need to go slowly and at their own pace and we were doing the right thing by him. She asked him why he didn't like school, and he broke down in tears ( she'd said the school word). She said in her opinion too much damage had been done and she couldn't see him ever returning. She then left and sent a letter saying she would contact us in a years time as we were meeting his needs under the education act.

 

This year he has increased his learning some subjects he works at the correct age for him and others he works 3 years ahead of his age group. He has even chosen his own books for the new school year.

 

He is now more confident, is able to sit still for appointments and has far fewer meltdowns. His anxiety is reduced but willl still go up at certain times. At the moment he knows the new school year is starting ( his sister still attends). This was a period of high anxiety for him and he has regressed some. This only reinforces our decision never to send him back.

 

Good Luck with your decision

 

Denise 2

 

www.education-otherwise.org uk

[oracle]

We tend to begin with something that Matthew likes or is interested in and the see how it develops from there. It is actually quite amazing how far this can take you and in the background you always have the starting point which is an interest.

 

It has taken us 5 years before we have been able to give Matthew enough confidence to want to read. Even though he only did 18 months at school he was totally book phobic when we took him out. This was because they kept giving him words to learn that he could not picture He would hide underneath his bed rather than try to read. This has meant that everything we did was on the net or us reading to him. The parents on the HE-SEN group basically advised us not to panic and not to push, so although it's been difficult that is what we have done. Every time we see the LEA - we go to them because I don't want them in my home as this would really distress Matthew - I have been very honest about his literacy skills and to my surprise they have always been OK about it. However about 3 months ago Matthew decide he wanted to read and it's a bit like when he became verbal aged 4 it's just flooding in . I will see this as our biggest success to date and he's rather pleased about it to.

 

Oracle

[oxgirl]

Thanks Mel. What sort of stucture do you work to? I mean do you have set hours and activities or do you just teach him things as they come along, i know that if we follow this route then things will fall into place eventually but i just wondered how you structure your days. Thanks

shaz

 

 

My lad is actually in part-time secondary ed now, but I home educated for the last two years of his primary time.

 

He came out of school when he was 9 and he couldn't even write, so I really had to start from basics with him. We had a fairly structured routine I suppose, especially at first, I relaxed it a bit later as I got more confident. For us it worked well to do some sort of work in the morning, but only in short bursts, an hour or so at a time and then we'd do some other arty activities in the afternoon or go for a walk or something.

 

Because I was concentrating just on the basics with him really I started off just having him copy two sentences out of a favourite book each morning. Once he'd got used to the idea of sitting and writing each day I'd start to go with his interests. For example, he was interested in trucks, so we'd go out with our camera and take photos of trucks or draw them and then he'd write a couple of sentences about the truck and stick in the piccies. Or we'd do science experiements from books and then he'd draw a diagram and write a few sentences about it. For him, it was important to get him to do a bit of writing every day. Some days I'd just get him to write a nice letter to Grandma and that would be his 'work' for the day. So, yes, it was fairly structured in that we'd do a bit of writing each morning, but the content of what we were doing really came from him, especially once we'd gotten into the swing of things.

 

The progress he made during that time was amazing actually. Even now when he looks back at all his folders of work, he can't believe how far he came in that time. It was so rewarding as well to be able to make the work fit around him and what interested him, I could totally gear it to his particular needs and strengths.

 

Best of luck, and if I can be of any help, please ask away.

 

~ Mel ~