where the magic happens

For a large part of my life I was very concerned with what people thought of me. I wanted to be successful, but I didn't even know what that meant.

Up until the past couple of years, I spent a lot of my time doing what other people wanted me to do, never feeling brave enough to say what I wanted.

When I could see that school was, quite literally draining my children's joy, I realised that I had reached that magical, metaphorical fork in the road, where I had to choose whether to do what was expected of me (and keep them in school) or to completely shatter those expectations and take them out of school.

It wasn't an easy choice, although once it was made I laughed at myself for all the agonising I'd done. Contrary to popular belief, the children hadn't morphed into a wild beasts over night (that took much longer!) They were still my children. They were just here a lot more.

I am not a school hater, in fact I know plenty of families who thrive within the school environment, and all three of my big children have friends and cousins who are in school, who they see regularly. I also wouldn't rule out school if my children ever showed a hankering to return. (They haven't yet.)

I deregistered my daughter in October 2008, and the boys followed a short while afterwards.

The past couple of years have been a huge learning curve for me, as I battled with my need to "see" education, and their need to play and be children.

I knew in my bones that forcing them to sit around a table with worksheets was the most counter productive thing I could be doing, and yet for months I persisted with this, trying to keep to school hours, a timetable, a structure that was utterly wrong for us.

After one too many flips outs (from all sides,) I literally threw the maths textbook in the bin and took a deep breath.

I had gone against all the popular advice of deschooling them, and without pause, had launched into school at home with fierceness. I wanted to prove that they would learn as much at home as at school. I was reverting right back to being some one who cared too much what people thought.

I was competing with school.

School it thirty(ish) children in a room, a teacher and a teaching assistant. School is assemblies, play times, work books, little toilets, the smell of air drying clay.

Home is not these things.

Unless I was going to hire an additional twenty six kids from some where, I was never going to achieve the same atmosphere as school.

So I took some time to think about what atmosphere I did want to create.

It came down to one simple sentence:

A love for learning, life and each other.

If we were a business, that would probably be our tag line. It's a little bit cliched, but it rings very true for us.

Once I let go, and stopped trying to force education down my children's throats, life got better.

I spent a lot of time talking to my children, finding out what they loved, what they wanted to know, where they wanted to go, who they wanted to see and what they wanted to do.

I keep a sporadic written journal of our time, it serves as part calender, part resource and part reminder. In it I have random notes "Eb wants to know which dinosaur lived the longest". I also have wish lists and shopping lists (which always seem to have PVA glue and sellotape on them - I have yet to meet a HE family that doesn't keep both these things in abundance.)

I have bought lots of old library books for the sum of 10p a book, about all manner of subjects and shelved them at kid level. At least one child can be found most days beside this book case.

I have taken my children out into the community, on week days. We go to the library, the local coffee morning, litter picking, the local museums, the shopping centre, the park, the neighbours, the police station, the garden centre and the local pensioners home. We ride buses and talk to mums with babies, elderly people, occasionally slightly crazy people and we learn from them all.

We have scoured charity shops and car boot sales to build up a collection of boards games, puzzles, craft kits and clutter that enables us to find out more and play together.

I have read about Montessori, Steiner, Waldorf, Classical and many more styles of education, and we have picked out the bits that appeal to us, and ignored the bits that don't.

It has led us to a tailor made education, that is individual to each child as they grow.

It has led us to this very moment in time, where the magic happens.

Every. Single. Day.

I have linked this to the Soul of Sunday over at OLM.