My Biggest Hurdle Whilst HomeEducating - @homeedders Question Of The Week!
Depending where you live, homeschooling can come up against huge scrutiny. I am lucky, in that where I live there are quite a few home schooling families and many young people who have been homeschooled and have become successful since leaving home and going out into the world.
It is, however illegal to homeschool where I am, but there is a loop hole. Because my girls are not Spanish and because I have not registered them here, they are seen as travellers and therefore you can home school your children, if it is legal in your country of Origin. Luckily it is in Ireland, for now anyhow.
Until I found out about this loop hole, I was very nervous about bringing my girls any where near the town during the week. They has been a few cases of parents being brought to court, because their children were seen in town during school hours. Those parents have registered their family in Spain though. Knowing the law is really important, but really researching it is even more so and keep researching as Laws are changing all the time.
Even though that was very stressful, the biggest hurdle I have faced has been myself. I always knew I wanted to home educate my kids, but once you begin it is only natural that you start to doubt yourself, to doubt your abilities to be able to provide your children with all that they need. When my homeschooling journey began, I though that I would be teaching them.
I really questioned whether I had the knowledge and confidence to 'teach' them. But when I saw how my first daughter interacted with the world and how confidently she navigated her way around it when left undeterred and uninterrupted, I realized that she was in fact teaching me.
There is no handbook available when you become a parent, and most of the time you are just trying to figure out how to be a good parent. There were voices within me that made me doubt myself. I have had to unschool myself and my way of thinking.
I went through mainstream education and I found it hard, to let go of that urge to teach them everything. It was engrained in me that children can only learn from their elders. On the surface I didn't believe it, but inside those engrained doubts would gnaw away at me.
All of these what if's, the many questions that I had confidently answered for others, still made me feel uneasy for a while. It didn't help that their dad's family had no faith in homeschooling and were constantly putting their fears and lack of knowledge onto us. But I grew more and confident in my girls abilities.
As it stands now their Dad is doing that exact same thing to me now. Since we separated he has decided that the girls should now go to school, because he is not seeing the results he expected. He has also been putting pressure on the girls, by telling them what they should be doing by now.
My eldest confided in me recently that she has been really worried about her brain, because she does not know some of the things that her Dad expects her to know. I have spend the last few weeks exploring all the things she can do and the skills she has learned. I have worked hard to help her get her confidence back.
The one thing I didn't want my girls to experience was the pressure of learning. Now that my eldest has, she gets very frustrated when she can not pick something up and usually storms away. I will continue to praise her where needed and be there when she needs me, but the words of her dad, have really affected her.
I am confident that she will get through this and I will be there for her whenever she needs me. They are with me 24/7 so he really has no say in how they should be educated.
Home education is a huge journey that we undertake we our children, but one that is so empowering.
This is my response to the latest @HomeEdders question of the Week
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I can totally relate with so much of this post! Whether dealing with the pressures from family members, or in both of our cases a parent who isn't supportive (not worth discussing, but I can relate!), or the pressures of the local society around us, it's really frustrating to see just how dependent people are on expecting education to be dealt with by outside powers rather than within the family, and how unsupportive people can be of each other. Dealing with a customized learning system rather than a standardized one can also create challenges in meeting the imaginary goals that those who aren't into homeschooling like to measure your children against! I would like to point out that in my experiences, everyone who is actually an educator is pretty impressed with what my kids comprehend ~ so the situation of the dad not thinking they are meeting his expectations is maybe just his trip, unless he is an educator with an actual logical argument. So, maybe that helps a bit ~ in my world the nay-sayers are the ones who don't really like me anyways, or don't know me or my children!
Thanks for sharing. Please know you are definitely not alone in your struggle!
thank you, yes it is definitely his trip,he is not an educator I can see how amazing my girls are and I think he feels like he wants more control over their up bringing because he is not around, but that is not how it works. xx
Makes me sad every time I hear about another split couple where one is loosing grip on what a family is supposed to be: a unit of its kind. In Germany it is a mayor problem when one spouse then involves authorities. So I hope you as parants find a mutual understanding without reaching to strangers.
I'm chiming in here with @freemotherearth because you definitely are not alone. Quite the opposite! I found great support with Sue Petersson and unschoolingmom2mom especially in the question of directly addressing the worries someone connects to unschooling even though those worries still go with schooling or probably even worse. So, often times, when people speak their worries everyone may join in to say: Yes, that's exactly what I am worried about as well! And then it's only one step away from realizing that these worries are one more reason to unschool or homeschool instead of complianceschool.
On all accounts: I wish you the very best, @trucklife-family
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thanks so much @ocdb for your wonderful feedback and support, I love how we are learning so much from what everyone shares on here. xxx
Twitter gives me a hard time every time I try to register. Anyway. I love the idea of spreading both, Steem philosophy AND unschooling. !invest_vote
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Those are some formidable obstacles you've had to scale. They create a lot of fear and many wouldn't have the confidence to take the risk in the face of them. Kudos to you that you have.
thank you @homeedders I am doing this for my girls xxx
Oh yes, you are so right, both of you! And it makes me think how we do all of these things WITH these youngsters - and WITH friends who know what we are doing either from their own experiecne or from simply being open to it.
One time I visited with friends who have been a great support in foreign affairs, and I remember this szene every time and time again. We had been sitting together at their mid-size table in their kitchen and this friend said to me: "Wow, he (your son) is doing so well, (regardless of all special efforts)", addressing the fact that we have unschooled from the beginning. She gave me a great deal of confidence just by acknowledging his strengths, without giving in to all those expectations conformed curricula whould have addressed at the particular age.
One popular example, without neccesserily giving indinidual context: Some beginn reading with 4 or even 3 years age, so why not add 3 or even 4 and 5 years to the standard of 6, when it comes to beginning to read?! And I want to add two more things to this: Many many people have not even learned to read when they grow very very old, even though they know all the letters, words and grammar. And whoever wants to make sure another human being don't misses to learn to read, may consider helping one of these grown old instead of tamper with the young and week.
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Big respect for going the home school route! I wouldn't be able to cope, energy-wise.
I do think that it is a great way to go though for parents who have the time and energy. I was certainly messed up by school, and the old argument about 'it being essential for socialization' is completely wrong, to my mind. I'm sure it is essential for some personalities, but others it's not necessarily essential.
I think it does depend on the child, as with your eldest's worries about her knowledge base etc. The journeyof life, eh 😄
yes such a journey it is. My girls are doing so well, but it is not easy when you have had your confidence knocked xxxx
Sorry if it sounds like I want to oppose here, @raj808, but I hear this argument very often, that it might be "essential for some personalities". I do not think so anymore. To my perspective it has nothing to do with personality but functionality. So yes, you i.e. need this for soldiers. Please tell me of one excample, only one, where it might be essential for personality. And I don't mean that it may not have helped. But I mean that it was school that actualy helped and not mentors she or he met. So yes, it is about sozialization. And we addressed this with a QOTW not long ago with @homeedders. Take care! !invest_vote
I'm not sure if you've misunderstood what I was saying in my comment @andrepol?
I was saying that the idea that a traditional school environment isn't essential for all personality types. Some it may suit them, but others not.
If you did in fact understand me, and you're saying that everyone needs to go to a traditional school and homeschooling is completely wrong for everyone... then Ok, you're entitled to your own opinion... but I'm gonna tell you straight up that you are wrong.
Cheers
Thanks for coming back to this. For what I understood you said "I'm sure [school being essential for socialization] is essential for some personalities", for leaving it open for everyone do decide for themselves, even though you'd say this in not true for you (and for me either!).
And I wanted to put this argument to an end and state: There's NO personality left that thrives due to schooling, until someone prooves the oposite to me. Steem on! !invest_vote
Fair enough. Maybe I misunderstood your comment, I thought you were saying the opposite lol
This is why it's always good to ask 😉
There's no argument here, just something got lost in translation. I agree that school bares a burden on even the most competitive child.
Thanks for clarifying your position, I don't think we're far off from each other in our opinions on this one 👍
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Sorry that you are getting pressure from the 'baby daddy' It's very hard when they are telling the kids there is something wrong with them, when that is the furthest thing from the truth. There is a lot to be said of both sides. Overall, I know where I am the school district is sub par and the schools don't do what they should to have a safe environment. When safety becomes a such an issue that it distracts from education, then you know something is broken in the system.
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I think regardless of which methods of schooling we choose, as parents we are going to worry and struggle with our choices from time to time. I wanted to home school and felt such guilt sending my son to a school with kids that weren't very nice and to a room that didn't support his creative spirit - we did our best to mitigate this at home but really he would have been much happier home schooled because he was one of the kids that didn't want to conform. Some settle right into school and love it. Others don't.
That said, I know kids that were home schooled and only attended the final year of school for a diploma, others that took less conventional schooling like Montessori and others that followed the standard education and they've all turned out to be wonderful and capable people because their parents cared and put in the time to nurture an enrich their education at home.
I had worries for a while where our son was in French immersion and his reading was not at all at the level that I expected him to be at - and I considered pulling him out of the French program but when I stepped back I realized how much he was learning in other areas I realized that my expectations were based on my own experiences and not his. eventually his reading caught up and even more amazing was the fact that he was able to read in two languages. Children are capable of so much and it seems so absurd that we've accepted systems that measure and grade children as though they are all the same.
You are doing an amazing job, never lose sight of that.