Real Life – something the National Curriculum doesn’t cover

We are new to the adventure of home educating. I won’t bore you with too many details of yet another “How we got into Home Ed,” story, but I do feel that just a little background would give some flavour.

It happened to us eight months ago, two days into the January term, when my ten-year-old, visually disabled daughter lay in my lap sobbing and pleading with me never to send her back to school. The only thing that I could do to console her was to give her the promise she wanted. Six years in mainstream with little support had taken its toll. She is a bright intelligent child who could no longer cope with the social exclusion and bullying from her so-called peers.

A month later our twelve-year-old daughter had a run of ill health. It turned out she (a top set student) was suffering from stress and struggling with the madness of secondary school.

A month after this we attended our eight-year-old’s parents’ evening. Her teacher informed me that he thought it was likely that our youngest daughter was innumerate and he didn’t have the time to teach her in a way she would understand. He suggested we helped her at home. So we did. By April all three girls were deregistered and so much happier!

We are lucky, I am a rare beast inasmuch as I was already an “at home mum”, so no job to give up. We already had a “lady what does” to help me look after our three storey Edwardian madhouse, not because we are loaded but because I, too, am visually disabled and it takes me forever to do house work. Incidentally, my visual disability gives me a unique understanding of the challenges my ten-year-old faces on a daily basis.

During the first few months I read everything about home education that I could put my hands on and then some. We soon found there is no right way to home educate, just do it the way it suits your family. So, there we were, slightly shell-shocked, but with three happy children, all doing very well and enjoying what they are doing. My office (my place of peace and quiet where I could hide and do what I do) became the resource centre and now is bursting at the seams with books of every sort, two computers, videos, arts and crafts stuff and my sewing corner, not to mention a Braille writer, a talking book machine and the second TV, plus a big squashy sofa.
We had fairies running about for a week or so; they even went to the shops and library! We had our own weather watchers who would run out into the garden in all weathers to check the temperature. We even started to publish our own family newsletter, which runs into about eight pages, and has a print run of approaching thirty!

Then one evening in May, World War II broke out. We gathered the children in my husband’s office and listened to Neville Chamberlain’s radio broadcast declaring war on Germany. Later that same night (11.30 pm to be exact) we were woken from sleep by an air raid warning. Sirens ringing in our ears we woke the children and took three sleepy girls and our eighteen-year-old son (he was home on leave from the RAF ?) out to the air raid shelter. That’s where we stayed for almost an hour listening to bombs dropping all around us and people’s wartime experiences until we heard the “all clear”. For a week we lived as if in wartime Britain with rationed food and daily shopping trips. (I spent so much time in the kitchen doing real cooking!) No computers or TV - and yes, even when the children were in bed we grown-ups didn’t have the TV! All the board games had the dust blown off them and a great deal of reading was done. We had our fair share of air raids too! Then came VE day! What a relief, welcome back Pizza and frozen chips! But we enjoyed it and plan to do it again.

Then arrived the builders! Back in January we had got planning permission to build an annex on the back of our house. Yes – a granny flat! It wasn’t just a case of building onto the back; it involved the back being remodelled and would mean we would get a brand new kitchen/dinning room as well. We decided to drop a gear on the “education” front and let the girl’s coast. In reality we stopped, they didn’t!

Phase one was demolition. The girls delighted in watching as the outbuildings were pulled down brick by brick, and were fascinated to see the huge washhouse chimney left standing on its own while our builders carefully assessed the safest way to bring it down without dropping it onto our neighbour’s extension. There were cheers and squeals as the chimney first wobbled, then was pushed and finally gave in and fell gracefully into the, by now, huge pile of rubble below.

The girls helped stack the old bricks ready for re-use, then calculated how many there were in each stack. They watched as foundations were dug, cement was poured and walls built. They asked endless questions about everything! All praise to our builders who answered all of them with good heart.

They watched from outside, with their noses pressed up against the window, as two feet of earth was dug out of the back room floor. Then tried to calculate how many loads of concrete would be needed to fill it.

When it came to planning the kitchen the girls had their say too. They wanted a kitchen that firstly was safe for every one to use, but mostly it had to have a place where they could all work and learn what we in this house call “living skills”.

“Twelve weeks!” our builder said, and much to our amazement that is how long it took. The girls coped with all the mess, noise, dust and even a temporary kitchen in the garden for a day or two. They have talked the ears off the four men who became a real part of this mad family. I am sure I have the only ten-year-old who could tell you how it was all done and an eight year old who could lay bricks and even tile a bathroom. As for our twelve year old, well she watched from her bedroom window convinced that her parents were truly barking mad.

Chatting with another mum made me ask myself a question: what do we really think about home education? She was saying with relief how glad she would be when her little darlings returned to school. Then she looked at me with sympathy in her eyes and patted my hand, saying “But, you poor thing, you can’t say that, can you?” I smiled and thought to myself; no it’s you that is the poor thing. I’m not running about like a thing possessed, looking for the best deals on school uniforms. I won’t be having the morning trauma hour trying to get three reluctant children out of the door on time. I won’t be planning my day around the 3.15 scrum at the school gates and having to play skittles with the traffic. I won’t be running myself ragged helping confused children with homework that had to be in yesterday while trying to prevent a television war from breaking out in the living room. I will instead have watched, as my little darlings learn in their individual ways and be creative as only children can. I have the pleasure of a whole new relationship with my children and as a family we have grown. Our lives have changed dramatically and for the better.