We were told to leave our children’s education to them. Don’t teach them to write their name, don’t teach them the ABC’s because you will do it wrong and then not only will we be teaching them how to do it properly, we will have to teach them how to unlearn what you as parents have taught them incorrectly. That is what we were told when we took our children to reception on those first induction days. On our parent meetings with the headmaster and our children’s new teachers in the school hall, the summer before our children started school. You are not good enough to teach your children, leave it to us. So not knowing any better we did, we left it to them. I mean we still parented, we still answered questions and taught them the ‘life’ stuff but we left the ‘education’ stuff to school, we didn’t want to get it wrong, mess up our kids’ entire life. Then 2020 happened, lockdown happened and we learnt exactly what our children knew. Then lockdown 2.0 happened (the one where the government insisted our children were educated by the school again) and we learnt exactly how our children were taught.
I am horrified and embarrassed (that I didn’t know better and do something about it, not that my kids have done wrong) that my children do not know how to correctly form their letters, dyslexia aside no wonder they struggle and despise writing so much. Samantha has reached 11 years old and managed to get by hiding the fact she doesn’t know her letter/word sounds (ee, ea, ai, etc) No wonder this poor child struggles so much with spelling.
They had both had little to no support in school as they weren’t ‘disruptive’ children, they just stayed quiet. Even with the diagnoses, paperwork and endless fights they still had very little help and support.
So for both children we have started short English sessions. Most days we are doing letter formation, spelling using sounds (ai, ee, igh) and then a fun activity like a word search or I spy. Up to now both children claim to be enjoying it and I am watching very closely for any signs of distress or anxiety but so far so good. We are trying to find ways to make it fun as both children instantly clam up at the mere mention of English due to the educational/school trauma suffered around this. I know this (school trauma) is a phrase that is thrown around a lot at the moment but it is relevant and any parent that is suffering from the effects of their child going through it knows all too well just how real it is and the damaging effects it can and does have on our very vulnerable children. Please don’t just dismiss it because it is something you potentially don’t understand (ok I will get off my soapbox now, thank you). Anyway back to topic, due to the school trauma the children instantly freeze around the word English and would never ‘choose’ this as a topic. So we have explained it to them as, when they are playing a board game that is missing half the pieces and they learn all the letter sounds and spelling formations (ea, ow, ee, etc), the game (life) will suddenly make a lot more sense and become a whole lot easier. Not sure how well it worked due to their autism and them struggling to understand concepts and figures of speech but we are working on it with them since most of the population use them.
They both excel at math (this comes from Rich, not me) as it makes sense and follows rules but they hate English with a passion, which after several conversations about how it is taught in schools I am not surprised. Safe to say I have had to make a solemn promise never to make them complete comprehension sheets.
Riley who would not read whilst attending school and was several year groups behind, now cannot be stopped. Taking off the pressure to read and allowing him to read books of interest (especially important for somebody with autism. In the case of Riley if he does not have an interest in a subject it basically doesn’t exist for him, so he would not engage with the books school provided and he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to read anything else) he is now reading everything from story books for 8-12 year olds to information books designed for adults and it is wonderful to see.
Although we are life learners, the children enjoy doing worksheets and puzzles so it would be wrong of me to take them out of our learning completely because of how I envisioned our education journey going. The children definitely need a certain amount of autonomy over their education after the trauma of school and having adults controlling every aspect of their learning, so for now I am going with it. The children have asked for a small amount of ‘table learning’ a day so I am giving it to them. Although they would both happily, actively avoid English for the rest of their lives, we think the important thing about life learning is learning all aspects of life and sometimes in life we have to learn or do things we don’t like for the greater good. We go to work to get paid, we pay our bills or we don’t get water and we learn letter sounds and spelling to make our day to day life easier but that’s not to say it has to be done in a boring, right/wrong kind of way.
We are using tuff spots in our almost everyday activities now. Although most people associate them with toddlers I think they are going to become one of my best buys for the kids and our home ed journey. We are playing in the woods, doing lots of crafts, visiting our library and playing lots of games.
We are almost having to in some ways start from scratch with the children’s education. In some places they astound me with their knowledge but in other ways it scares me that they have done 7 and 4 years in school and they know so little. So we have taken the summer, played lots of games and assessed through play where the children are at and now we will begin our true home education journey.
