You Might be a Home Educator If...

A light-hearted thread on the EO general discussion list generated this collection of ideas for completing the sentence -

"You know if you're a home-educating parent because …

• Your iron is used exclusively for art projects.
• You find yourself in an in-depth conversation about the benefits of opposable thumbs.
• You have to go and ask all the neighbours if they have an empty film cartridge to make a rocket with.
• Everyone in the house is getting really excited about the contents of an owl pellet.
• You find yourself having a serious discussion with a 13yo about what safety measures could possibly be taken that would make lighting hairspray a safe and educational project.
• You go to the pictures at the weekend and wonder what on earth all those people are doing there!
• You clipper everyone's hair into Mohicans and other weird shapes, dye it red and no one sends them home from school for expressing their individuality.
• You don't know what day of the week it is.
• You are surprised when it’s school holidays again.
• The word LEA makes you feel shifty.
• You can quote S7 of the 1996 Education Act verbatim.
• You've heard your kids say 'Oh no, not another learning opportunity!
• You answer questions as they are asked and don’t tell your child to ask the teacher.
• You realise that your children know more than you do (this happened today)!!!!
• At the breakfast table, your 5yo daughter asks, "why does toast get cold Mummy?" and before you have time to think up a suitable reply your 9yo daughter answers "Its called thermodynamics." Everyone returns to munching their toast whilst Mummy tries to remember what thermodynamics is!
• Your five year old child gives you a filthy look while correcting your spoken English!
• The household is still going strong at 11.55 pm, with no signs of bedtime ever!!! (Sigh!)
• You drive past a school and your three year old says 'Shame'.
• Your partner spends a few hundred pounds on a filing cabinet to get the clutter off the surfaces.
• Your children learn things/do things/make things that you intended to but didn't have the time.
• There is no such word as holidays in your vocabulary. (Unless you mean going away somewhere.)
• You can't dish up dinner because the table is covered with motorised sports socks having a disco!
• Absolutely no one can help load the dishwasher cos they all have lessons they suddenly want to do.
• Your car is painted purple with an alien on the bonnet.
• You have a smug look on your face from your bedroom window watching the neighbourhood parents battle through the winter freeze at eight o'clock in the morning doing the school run.
• You know home ed. is the right thing when you're at the pool, rinsing off in the showers with your two laughing daughters, when the school children lining up crocodile style to go into the pool look at them with surprise and envy.
• The fridge is full of soap (for an experiment) and someone's eaten all your chocolate.
• Your 12 yr old still has the conversations you had at 4:
  Son: "mum, why does [whatever]"
  Mum: "er because" [brief explanation]
  Son "but *why*?" [Mum starts to get irritated]
  Mum "er because *[even woollier explanation]
  Son "but WHY" [still trying to get to the bottom of quantum physics]
  Mum "oh . . just because"
  Son "come on mum, that's no answer; **WHY**"???"
  Mum "ok, go and look it up on the internet"
  . . . peace at last
• You know you're home edding when you redecorate the dining room and it looks lovely - for a day until the kids cover the walls in posters and pictures, and you can't even go to the loo in peace as they've put a poster of the kings and queens of England on the back of the door!
• When toothpaste on the carpet is an experimental experience, as is chewing gum in long hair and BluTack in the printer.
• When you lock yourself in the loo to have a 2 minute conversation with the bank manager and still get "five notes under the door, four cries of he hit me, three cries of but I hit him back, two cries of blood and at least one toddler dialling 999! " (as in 12 days of Xmas)
• You know you're home edding when you attend a large family gathering and Great Uncle drones on about ''the quality of education these days'' being so poor, finishing by saying that probably nobody in the room even knows what his name, Philip, means. And then your daughter, second youngest in room and only one Home Educated, silences the 70 or so adults (and Great Uncle Phil!) by saying ''Doesn't it mean 'lover of horses'?''
• Your daughter drags you across WH Smiths to announce she simply MUST have this poster. And you go, thinking it will be a cute kitten, puppy or perhaps a popstar, and it turns out to be ..... the Elements of the Periodic Table!
• Your children set their mobile phones to alarm, to wake them up, so they can see a moon eclipse; and only tell you about it in the morning.
• You know you are home edding when the local swimming pool staff know all your children’s names *and* your whole family history.
• You know you're home edding when your kids are the only ones in the playpark whizzing round on the spinning wheel squealing about the delights of centrifugal force.
• When you waste no time queuing at theme parks for rides because all the other punters are banged up in school. (Apart from the recent HE day at Alton Towers when 800 HE’ers got together!)
• You know you are a Home Educator, when your eyes are wide open, and you feel that somewhere, someone else with blinkers and power doesn't like that.
• You take duvets outside in November/ December with a flask of hot chocolate and freeze to death and beyond to watch the comets (and forget the ones in August)
• Your daughter asks if science is easy, and you launch into pros and cons of separate papers v combined, going off at tangents in what you think is lively discussion and after 10 minutes there’s a long suffering sigh and a muttered 'I only wanted to know if it was easy' from the back seat.
• The health visitor comes to do a check and asks your 3 year to make a bridge with 3 bricks and push the pencil through as if its a train. Child sits there and says they can't do it - HV about to write 'fail' when child says 'it’s impossible as a train needs tracks'.
• You know you're home edding when your once withdrawn son becomes a chatterbox.
• You never go anywhere in school half-terms and holidays unless you absolutely have to.
• You make the mistake of saying you'll teach a group a language and forget to take your dictionary, which you regret within 2 minutes.
• You give a huge sigh of relief when you read others lists and realise that yours are not the only ones running around at 11.55pm.
• You find yourself agreeing that sleeping in a reconstructed Viking hut, made using only authentic equipment, would be a REALLY good idea in the middle of November, in the snow!!
• Your wall still has crystals on it from growing them too far back on the mantelpiece.
• You get to sleep in EVERY morning.
• You don’t have to do the school run.
• They astound you and make you proud by coming up with things you never even knew they'd thought about.
• You know you’re home edding when your children know they can get out of any amount of trouble by saying:
  "it was an experiment, mum, honest . . ."

November 2004