You'll be noticing the posts are beginning to tail off as the end of the school year fast approaches. We are so much needing our holidays! Both S and I are tired and concentration levels are sketchy at the best of times.
As the school year ends its always a good time to reflect on the year as a whole. My husband and I never intended home schooling to be something we would do forever and we both felt it was going to be important to review it term by term. So here's my honest review!
Are we still glad to be home educating S?
For S:
Absolutely! We now have a happy son! We no longer have a stressed out boy but a peaceful one. S's confidence in himself is growing day by day now. His conversation at home has been transformed. Often at the dinner table, for example, he is the life and soul of the family, full of chat and jokes. Through the home ed network S has made a brilliant friend which has also been such a joy. These two boys have such fun together and there is a freedom with both of them that I love to watch that is found in the home ed community. Neither of them have a pressure to conform. Neither of them have a nasty streak in their bodies! They are both quiet boys by nature and just love to play! It has been so special watching their friendship grow and to see S make a genuine friend of his own for the first time has been amazing!
Academically I think it's been good! This one's a tricky one to gauge as having had S out of the system for almost two years I am aware it's very much me to blame now and not the system!! I definitely see signs of progress. S's ability to cope with mistakes is improving. I suppose that might seem a little strange to approach academic progress by looking at mistakes but I think it is a crucial aspect of learning. For S a lot of learning is going to be about developing strategies to work life out. For him what is second nature to us will take quite an effort. For example, he has memory difficulties. So, to learn his times tables is a tricky thing. How is he to quickly work out prices in a shop if his memory is to let home down? On a social level, we learn as we grow, the natural way to interact with other people from a basic level of knowing how to greet someone or speak to them on the phone. This is not intuitive at all for S and so something I see very much as part of his education. These are the things that I feel we can tackle in home school. Living independently is something I really hope S can do in the long run. Not at all because I want shot of him but I want him to have the same opportunities as I had and the chance to develop into his own person. This might seem a strange point under academic progress but this past term we have worked on S being able to make his own lunch, make healthy choices, be responsible for clearing up and helping and then also encouraging personal hygiene. Again, having the flexibility of the day is great for all of this, when the other 3 children are away and the pressure is off. So in many ways, maybe unconventionally there has been progress. Next time hopefully I will be able to update on more conventional academic progress.
For me:
As a mum watching the difference in S makes it ultimately all worthwhile. Personally for many many reasons this has been one of the toughest years of my life and my husband and I are very aware of the contribution that home schooling makes to making things difficult. I constantly struggle in my head now with the fact that whilst I know home school is doing S good it quite possibly is having the opposite effect on me. The basic problem is the isolation involved. No matter how we structure things we are in quite a lot. After almost 2 years I still haven't managed to strike the correct balance between teaching S, keeping on top of the housework and keeping up socialising. If home school wasn't making such an obvious difference to S I think I would have to return him to school. To do so just now though would break my heart as he's quite simply too precious to put back into the lion's den! Are my motives wrong? I need to make sure I constantly assess what I am doing with him. I think it would be wrong to home school for my piece of mind and not for his welfare and I need to continually check whether that is what I am doing. S and I have very different personalities. I thrive on being with people and being busy. He thrives on quietness and being alone!
As a family we are in a big time of change and over the next few months we are about to see major changes in our family life. I think home school for next year will have to change too. Whether the time has come to now look perhaps at part time schooling or trying to formally involve other people into his routine to try to help me, I'm not yet sure but am keen to pursue options. The school holidays are a very welcome break for us both and I'm hoping a time to re-energise a very tired teaching mummy! And in the midst of all this I have one twin who I think is shaping up to long to be home schooled! Therein lies a whole new dilemma!! Can we as parents only offer this to one child and not the others? I honestly don't think I could do it with more than one and have huge respect from my fellow home school mums who teach all their children!
So that's review one. Any comments are very much appreciated! Take it as an appraisal opportunity. Maybe you think we should pull the plug or maybe you've got some solution to some of the dilemmas! Either way I'd love you to share your thoughts.
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