please help me with my home edu 8 year old boy

[mollymoocody]

im single parent no family or close friends I also don't drive I live in preesall. I took my son out of school as he really doesn't enjoy it and its a constant battle to get him to go but im struggling to socialise him also what work should I be doing with him he does struggle a lot with his work but hes good at reading but memorys bad im on benefits to so need cheap ways of educating him as I really don't want him sent back to school he was soso unhappy any help is totally appricated also friendship is welcomed to thank you

[titabeth]

I can see this is a very difficult situation for you. But i think you need to ask the school for some help. This is a very complex and difficult world your son is growing up in. Perhaps you could try and find out why he doesn't like school? If he has problems with socialising is it because it's just you and him all the time or maybe he has a condition, like autism, which makes it hard for him to socialise. Your local education authority should be able to help advise you. Otherwise I can only suggest that you buy workbooks for him, work through them in the morning, have lunch and then do more physical things with him in the afternoon. find something he likes to do. Like art or making things, or growing things. Try and find other parents who are home educators in your area. I wanted to home ed my child, but as a single mother I realised it would be practically impossible.
One time she was being so badly bullied I took her out of school for two weeks, but the authorities were knocking on my door straight away. It stopped once she went up to secondary school, and the bully moved away. We had a few months of hell, but later on in life the fact that we didn't give in to the bullies stood her in good stead. Good luck, hope you find some help.

[Trollsworth]

Ok Molly, I'm going to make the point that everyone else will dance around - your English skills are not to the standard of my eight year old, and you should not be attempting to educate an eight year old on your own.

[fairgame]

Hi my friend home educates and is involved in this website

//www.educationalfreedom.org.uk.

Its got loads of useful info and links on it and idea for teaching etc.

[ommmward]

Get yourself onto the facebook home ed page. There's a map there of local home ed groups, which might help you begin to get in touch with other home educators in your area.

If you haven't already joined your local library, that needs to be top of your list, so that you can regularly go and get books out.

Start looking for the best deals on annual passes at interesting places near you - you probably can't afford more than one or two for a year, but it might well be worth doing just that one or two and then squeeze every ounce of value out of them, and then do something else next year.

You are really going to need some real life support. If you can find local home edders, that might help provide that support (although you might be a bit isolated geographically). If there really aren't many/any near you, then get ideas from here, facebook, blogs etc etc about the ways you can educate your son- there are all sorts of different flavours and you need to find what suits you both.

Keep up friendships with his school friends as much as you can, especially because there probably aren't many HEers in your area.

You'll need to think a bit longer term about what happens with your financial situation as he gets older (I think you lose benefits at some stage, don't you?). Think about the sort of work you can get that you can work around with child care (I know people who teach forest school, and their children go along too, that sort of thing).

And please bear in mind that, even if your own spelling and grammar and so on are not as splendid as the mumsnet posters might like (a) this is a great opportunity for YOU to learn about grammar and spelling side by side with your son and (b) Paula Rothermel's PhD at the university of Durham showed that the educational outcomes for HE children from poorly educated backgrounds were greatly enhanced by them being HE, over what they would have been had the children been left in school. You may well be doing your child the greatest educational favour of his life.

[mollymoocody]

thank you very much il go onto facebook and have a look iv been doing it for 4 months now hes alot happier and were in local libery and i love learning beside my son :) and i also have a son who has dysabilities he attends special school so at the moment i dont have to work i do want to work but my sons come first everytime my son has tryed dofferent schools and has hated it since started i just needed bit advice not to be judged thank you very much ommmward :)

[ommmward]

facebook group for mumsnet home edders :)

[Nigglenaggle]

This is normally a fairly nice, non judgemental mumsnet corner molly . Every so often ruder people show up, but there are enough of the friendlier types to outnumber em

[Trollsworth]

It's not intended to be pointlessly rude, it's intended to point out that the OP is not going to be able to educate her son because she isn't educated enough herself. I don't care how people post on the Internet, but to take this level of education and apply it to educating a child over four is asking for a disaster.

Home education for low income families in low income areas is, I'm sure, rather better than going to a sink school - if you are capable of correcting a child's poor spelling, punctuation and grammar. It's very self indulgent to decide "oh, I'll just learn along with him!" - what if he has a greater capacity for education than the OP? It's not unlikely, is it? Is he stuck with a low level of education because the person in charge of his education couldn't educate past level three?

[Thinking2014]

I don't think its fair to judge her based on her spellings here....I agree with ommmward
there's enough resources (free and otherwise) to help anyone with grammer and spelling for the OP and her child. For all you know maybe English isn't her first language.
Bottom line is HomeEd isn't for everyone, it is a big life changing decision and it must be thought through carefully, try not to get too excited at the thought of no school run and think past that. Finances and support are big issues. But you can ask away here and from my experience you will receive lots of help :) good luck

[Saracen]

The idea that a home educating parent needs to have a good standard of knowledge and skills in the areas their children will learn is a common misapprehension among people who have not experienced home education. This is based on the assumption that home educated children must learn in essentially the same way as children at school: by direct instruction from an expert. In such a model, the capabilities of the instructor can limit children's learning... which can cause problems at school, because many primary-aged children do know more than their teachers about at least some subjects! Direct instruction does form a part of some HE kids' education. But many families don't use this method at all.

Many families, like mine, expose their children to a range of resources and let the children learn directly. The parent is just one of many sources the child can use. Children can and do learn grammar and spelling without someone teaching it to them and correcting their efforts.

I have a friend who is very severely dyslexic, and who has a speech impairment. It's often quite difficult for people even to get the general gist of what she has said or written. She is a single parent who has home educated her daughter from an early age. Her daughter, now a teenager, does not write like her mother, nor does she sound like her mother. This is because she has not been shut up in a windowless room alone with her mum, without access to the rest of the world. She mixes with other people. She watches television. She uses the internet. She reads books. Her communications skills are now at least as good as those of my own daughter.

Her story may seem particularly striking, but she is not an unusual child. I know many HE children whose knowledge and skills far surpass their parents'. I cannot think of any young people whose learning appears to have been restricted by their parents' own standard of formal education.

Honestly, if you haven't seen how home education works, you are making a big mistake in imagining that you understand it. The home ed board is a particularly inappropriate place to engage in wild speculation masquerading as "common sense".

[Mumstheword21]

There is some irony in such comments made by the self titled trollsworth. Neither helpful, nor kind.

Molly, I had a quick google of Preesall and how lovely to be so close to the coast...once he feels happier and ready to go out, this is wonderful opportunity for such a variety of learning to take place!

Once you had done a bit of research on Facebook and also other sites, you will be able to decide which approach suits you best and go from there.

There are such helpful and knowledgable HE'rs on here, please don't be put off asking for advice in future.

In the meantime, enjoy spending precious time with your son

[morethanpotatoprints]

Hello OP.

I'm not sure if this will help at all, but hearing you come from sucha beautiful place, you could do similar to us.
We make our own terms as much as we can and use the good weather to learn things whilst out and about and then do the computer based project work when it is cooler/winter time.
You don't need to invest in a lot of expensivematerials and resources, in fact you can find whatyou need on websites for free.
If you want to follow the nc you can pick up books really cheaply from poundshops or The Works, which have loyalty cards now so even better
Please keep posting with your questions, there's lots of good advice on here.
Ignore anybody who says anything about not being a good enough teacher, it usually comes from those who know nothing about H.ed

[Nigglenaggle]

If you are struggling finding local home ed groups, you say you are members of the library. Most libraries run fun activities for children in the school holidays. This would at least be a start for socialisation in a fairly non threatening environment.

[Nigglenaggle]

This seems to have been bumped by someone trolling, but saw it and wondered if you are still around and how you are getting on molly