It has been a little over a year now since we began our home educating journey and wow what a wake up call. There have been so many moments of joy, doubt, regret and sheer exhaustion but we have enjoyed every moment…well mostly, sometimes, ok it’s been hard but I wouldn’t do it any other way.
I had grown up (including in my adult years) believing that home schooling was for hippies and the lazy. Since home educating I have met a wonderful array of people that are home educating for all different kinds of reasons. People who educate with different styles, a variety of amazing children who all have different sensory, neurological and academic needs. Some have neuro diversities and others are neurotypical. The spectacular thing with all of this is none of it matters. Everyone is accepted within the groups not regardless of their diversities but because of them.
We have spent a good amount of this past year trying to find our style, dipping in and out of different educational methods. Some worked well for a little time and some were disastrous from the start and triggered the kids’ trauma. Powerpoint I’m looking at you.
It has taken some time and many mistakes but what I have come to realise is we don’t have to have a defined style, we don’t have to fit in a neat little box, it’s one of the many reasons I pulled the kids from school in the first place.
I think the best way to describe our ‘style’ is, life learning.
We ‘teach’ the children in the same way that you ‘teach’ them as babies and toddlers. They learn through conversation and experiences. If there is a topic they want to learn about, we research it through google and books. We watch youtube and documentaries. We play lots of board games and use apps on their tablets (although due to their autism, sensory needs and an inability to self regulate, we do still have to restrict the usage of screens).
I am trying to give the children a love of learning again, whilst teaching them how to learn, as in school they were never taught, they were just given information to retain.
There have been many times in the last year when I have had a wobble. Did we make the right choice? Am I teaching them everything they are going to need? Should we be following the curriculum? Am I damaging them in some way I haven’t yet thought about? Am I ruining them for life by stepping outside of the norm?
Mostly I agree with our decisions made, although there are and will be still days I panic, as we are taught children should be in school, ‘it’s the best place for them’ but then I will see my children showing compassion to a young child, something they didn’t have the capacity to do when they were dealing with their own stress and trauma of school, I hear them laugh, which had become a rarity in the years they were at school and I watch them play with friends of all ages, that they know the names of, this never happened in the many years of attending school. I know in my heart we made the right and only choice. My biggest regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.
I understand that I haven’t listed anything academic there. There have been academic successes but in reality they just aren’t as important.
