Let’s play a game shall we? I will tell you a situation I have been in, and you can decide if my actions were acceptable or otherwise.
Or, how about another spin....I tell you what others actions have been to me, and then YOU decide whether their actions are acceptable or not.
It wouldn’t work very well, would it? One man’s treasure and all that. An ability to see different perspectives of the same situation is a part of what makes us human beings. Tolerance, acceptance, understanding; these are all gifts.
Why then is it, when a well meaning person tells me that I need to send my children to school or they will think that they can do what they want, I do not act on my first impulse to grab them by the throat and wring it soundly.?
It is because I accepted a long time ago, that if I am to tread this path of oddity and difference, I am to accept with it a certain amount of criticism, even critism from those who think I shouldn't sit there and take it...there is not a simple solution to this dilemma.
When I first embarked on home education, I had a little mental list of the Good and the Great who were home educated that I would spout at various intervals, I tried hard to make my darling daughter a Genius. I placed the burden upon her to outperform and dazzle those contemporaries who were traditionally schooled.
Over time I realised that it wouldn’t matter if the Pope, the Queen and the entire membership of MENSA were home educated, because not every one is open to reason. Not every one wants to think about alternatives.
School is school, home is home and never the twain shall meet.
Over time I realised that I actually didn’t really mind what people thought of me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I didn’t care, but I didn’t mind so much. I had spent a lot of my youth being dubbed as slightly eccentric, and this was from my friends. Then I got married, had children and went all sensible.
The birth of my first child, my darling Od, was at once terrifying and wonderful. I felt the burden of parenting bearing down on me from the moment I held her. (Not, interestingly, when I was pregnant....that first pregnancy I had great difficulty accepting that there was a person growing in me. I mean, a PERSON!?!? It just seemed so weird.) I wanted to be a good mother, and initially I thought that to be a good mother I had to follow the rules.
I read books, went to mother and baby groups, dutifully signed up for Tumble Time (not Tots, they didn’t have that where we were,) Then playschool, then nursery, and of course proper school. Whilst this was going on, I was busy popping out two more children at speed. They too, I assumed, would follow the natural, normal path.
I didn’t question it, because I didn’t think it could be questioned.
A chance conversation at the start of the Summer holidays with another parent, where I confided that my daughter didn’t seem to like school very much, led me to the path we are now on. That parent asked if I’d ever thought of home educating, as her friend did it.
“Is it legal?”
Yes, I can blush now, but I was one of those ignorant masses, and I thought that if I had to pay a penalty to take my daughter away during term time, then surely not going to school at all would be out of the question.
I was pregnant with Lb at this time. My hormones were raging, I was aware that there would be no more babies after this one, so I was trying to absorb every moment of being pregnant, trying to enjoy every little detail – even the not so great ones like heart burn that made me want to vomit every time I laid down. I spent time with my bump, appreciating it and getting to know it.
“Shouldn’t I be living every moment like this, with the children I already have?”
Whispered a voice inside my head.
Eventually, after popping out baby number four and enduring three months of school related misery, the whisper had become a loud scream in my brain...I took my daughter out of school.
It was almost three years ago.
What happened next, and how we ended up all at home, is a story for another post....
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