Back in my own bed last night, but Small must be feeling a lot better, as he pretty much stayed in his cot, only headbutting me once. So a reasonable night’s sleep, although I didn’t think of it that way when the alarm went off at 8am. I’ve never been a morning person – seems grossly unfair that my children are.
Anyway, had prearranged with Tim that I would leave Small here this morning – it’s quite literally freezing and I didn’t want to drag him and his cold out in it. We were still late – I’d forgotten that the car hadn’t been cleared off snow yesterday, so even with the heated windscreen (I was taking Tim’s) it still took 5 minutes to clear. Grr…
Big did wonderfully again today. One of the other mothers sat down with me and chatted, which was actually rather pleasant (at ballet I find it horrendous, but it seems to be a very different crowd at swimming) so I missed why Big was swimming on her own backwards and forwards, I can only assume she was being shown off again. At least the others didn’t have to get out and stand in the cold this time.
While chatting, we got the “how old is she? Gosh she’s tall” bit, then “so what school does she go to?” I felt myself kind of pause, but I smiled and said “she doesn’t, she’s home educated” and the response was “by yourself or your partner? Oh that’s nice then.” Which kind of floored me for a bit. Turned out she’d worked with a home educated adult, and her experience was that this person had done GCSEs, A levels and university a little early, and reached management grade at whatever at age 21, and was very normal – not a hippy at all.
Hohum. Makes me think that we should all be being just a little more matter of factly out there – I’ve considered doing little leaflets to carry with me, would that be too freaky? But atm, what with the Children Act just sailing through without so much as a whimper in the media (what is that about? *Why* is no one talking about it?????) I feel that anything we can do to raise our profile positively has got to be of benefit. Sarah has done her bit, Katy is doing hers, Merry just is 😉 – what can I do?
Comments
24 responses to “Swimming – and one of *those* conversations”
I haven’t done anything really – I think you do a great ‘bit’ by just being you, working from home and somehow managing to juggle everything, being thoughtful about the way in which you do everything, helping loads of us out with our technical hitches … you don’t need to do anything more than just be yourself!
Glad swimming was good though – I’ve had some of those ‘oh that’s nice’ conversations too – usually followed by ‘I could never do that’, but there are plenty of people around who do recognise the value of it for the children, at least!
I think you (and the rest of us) are doing a great job just by being part of a supportive community on the blogs on on lists by being available to answer questions, giving an insight into our life and just showing the world that normal people can do it.
I typed Jolly Phonics (or somethinglike that could have been something entirely different) into google yesterday and on the 2nd page it brought up Merry and Layla’s blogs 🙂
I can’t get the blogs to come up on any obvious search, although that Muddlepuddle site keeps cropping up…
Just be.
Given you give web power to most of this blog ring, something i happen to think probably does more for HE than MP itself, i should think you could consider yourself to be already playing to your strengths.
oh AND LOL ABOUT mp – I TYPED SOMETHING RANDOM INTO GOOGLE THE OTHER DAY AND GOT A PAGE ON MP I HAD FORGOTTEN I HAD DONE AS THE TOP RESULT!
ooops….
Still doesn’t beat getting Sarah for “hama” and “woolworths” though!!
LOL – off to go play with google. No, no – I’m supposed to be doing useful stuff… hama and woolworths, does it really?…
Ps – Jax don’t you dare. You do MORE than enough already.
hmmm, mustn’t have been that. But anyhow, fact still remains that I think the blogs are incredibly useful and helpful to bith new and established HE’ers. And I second Barbara, don’t you dare take anything else on. ;o)
Oh dear. Well, if the blogs are promoting HE to the world, then I’d better be compulsarily hibernated forthwith 😉
Well, having just perused my webstats for live otherwise, I’m not quite sure *what* we’re promoting…mind boggles on some of the search strings. Joyce, you do not get off so lightly. You are that couple of years ahead of several of us that we like to know what might be coming up next (so we can have the children adopted out or whatever lol).
Oh NO! Joyce! That is the whole point – i think the plus of the blogs is the honesty – no point pretending its all hearts and flowers because its not – and i would hate to be making people think “they do it like this and its perfect 100% of the time” – blogs need warts!
Well it must just be me who thinks raising our profile is a *bad* thing :-(, for our future and the future of HE.
I suspect though that the “keep you head down and hope no one ever bothers us” days are rather gone though don’t you?
Well, for once, this is one subject where I am open to persuasion. Mainly ‘cos of not really knowing enough of what is actually happening ‘out there’.
My comment stems from the fact that when I talk to people about HE, the more I talk about it and the current ‘regulations’ the *less* ‘impressed’ they are. Anecdotal I know.
So I suppose, what I think (without too much deep thinking) is that we are probably in a no-win position. I think the more people who know about HE, the more likely there will be public pressure to regulate etc, currently the battle is against the authorities alone, so to speak. It might be an un-winnable battle.
You could argue *that* is the point of publicity, to inform the public so that they support HE. The problem is *most* people are, I am afraid to say, stupid. Secondly, to accept some of the underlying principles of HE would be seen as undermining the default position, most parents who send their kids would probably (imo) not appreciate the notion that there is a choice between school and not, school as the default suits the society we live in. Dual income blah blah blah….people get very defensive if you ask if they have ever considered education other than in school.
Maybe I am just too cynical. I suppose I am being selfish, but as of today we can sit here with our heads down and I (selfishly) want that to last as long as possible, 15 years would be great 😉
I’m just putting together a post on this…
I look forward to it….’tis something I have been mulling over recently. My view is not a criticism of people who do publicise HE for all the right reasons, and I would love to be proved wrong. It’s just I can’t get past my over-riding feeling that we are swimming against a very strong-tide going in the opposite direction and that treading water for as long as possible is a better use of energy that trying to swim against it. What a daft analogy!!!
Well, i think you might be right, in that i don’t think the majority WILL want to accept it, because then they might have to consider doing it. And most people see my choice as a criticism of their choice, which is odd really, given i don’t give a flying fuck what they do with their kids so long as its legal and doesn’t involve me. And yes, i get bored, and i’ve only been in it 3 years, by having to deal with peoples misconceptions and prejudices, nevermind their defensiveness.
But i’m already “known” and i’ve already had to deal with prejudice that while wrong, had the ability to drag me through a needless procedure so they could tick their boxes. I’d like to have a well informed, interested, helpful EWO, if i have to have one at all. And i can’t help thinking that given that the ideal state of the govt saying “you are all absolutely right, we’ll sod off and leave you to it” is more Neverland than anything else, my best bet is to try and do something about making HE in all its amazing and positive forms be accessible to people who might just possibly be better for it. Personally if i have to have my EWO in my life, i’d like him to have found the blogring and read my blog and carolines and alisons and everyone elses inbetween and thought “oh yes, all this works. maybe these people CAN do “what’s best” without an action plan made up by a committee.”
You are quite right that its funny how the lack of regulation is the thing that terrifies people. I suspect that its vagaries are the root of a lot of our problems – trouble is we are way past putting its informality on a formal basis – no one would let us away with what we have again if it went back through parliament and yet we are regularly scuppered by the very thing that effectively also protects us. I don’t want to be regulated, i don’t want to have to deal with other peoples “interpretations” of it either but most of all, i don’t really want to be bothered by people who think that i need some statute to give me high standards to live up to. If my standards were lower, they’d be in bloody school.
bloody hell, that sounded virtually intelligent for me….
I think I am already “matter of factly out there” – not sure how else I could live really? It’s not the same as publicising HE though, is it?
The risk Merry (and I think it a big risk) is that what we see as positive is seen as just the opposite by others, e.g. an EWO. You read the ring and see it as positive thing…I would suggest that an EWO (already less than enthusiastic about HE) could read it and have it reinforce their negative view which then informs their work with all their clients. We believe in HE, there are many many who will never, even faced with evidence of its success, accept it as appropriate.
Ho hum…
For once, Chris, I agree with you.
What do you mean ‘for once’ Clarkey? 😉
Have been pondering this all night and still can’t decide where I stand really. On the one hand I am proud of the fact that we HE, I will happily talk to anyone and everyone about it and will resolutely not hide (although I wouldn’t ‘flag myself up’ particularly either. Our HV knows and has recorded that we aim to HE (when she asked about school for Davies at his 4 y dev check I told her the truth), but I have not sent the forms back at all asking which school he needs a place at either although it does ask for them returned and marked as ‘will be educated at home’.
I don’t feel I know anywhere near enough (ie nothing!) to comment on anyone else, or the past of HE or the future. I would hope that regulated or not we (as in me and my children) would escape any sort of adverse reaction as the way I plan to HE them is not nearly so radical or alternative as many others (which is no criticism of others, simply the best way for us to do it), and as I spoke to one HEer recently who said she loved having a home visit as it supported her and gave her the ‘approval’ she was actually craving I could see for me that a visit and a well done would make me feel good.
However, I would hate to think that anyone with any power was to read my blog and make decisions based on us that way. I often come across as hysterical, child hating and completely unselfconfident about what we are doing – which is a snapshot of a moment, but one I would certainly choose to hide from 99.9% of people. If it were ever to be used as ‘evidence in court’ I’m sure it would damn me completely.
There are some pretty damning teachers blogs out there too though Nic!
You may well be right, Chris.
I’ve had the at least reasonable experience of lifting most of my educational report from my blog and having it accepted as “acceptable evidence of appropriate education” which i suppose is a good thing in terms of it being worthwhile for me to do.
There is another side to this of course which is that i am less interested in getting “it out there” to LEAs as i am in interested in doing so to parents of children like i was. Honestly, if one or two kids being bullied and miserable at school get pulled out because of something i have said which makes a parent think “i could be doing that” then i have done a good job. To be honest, i’d live with “checks” to know that it never failed to be an option and became a better known option to families with unhappy children. My parents wouldn’t have done it for me, i don’t think, but there must be parents going through what we went through who would.