not being able to blog for an hour or so 😉
Busy day today and finally, finally Davies was asleep before 8pm 🙂
Rachel came over this morning and it was a nice enough couple of hours. Elliot played pretty well with my two, he had some sort of tussle with Tarly – apparantly she walloped him and he was quite nasty back but thumping her little hand but other than that it was a remarkably calm visit from them. She is really enjoying having him off school and says he is noticeably happier for not having been there for two weeks. I just smiled serenly 😉 Amber was at that whingy 10 month old not mastered crawling and only wants Mummy stage (so not a baby person, me!) and wearing one of Tarly’s old dresses and not looking nearly so cute as Tarly did in it! But nice to catch up and have a bit of a chat, we’ve definitely lost our old closeness though, her life is all about chats and coffees with the school gate mums, the price of school trousers and parents evenings. Mine is, erm, very different.
They left and we had a mad half hour before Lucy arrived with Rebecca and Richard. I tried to persuade Davies to lead the girls in some sort of constructive game such as setting up a shop with the pretend food, till and money – it sort of worked although they ended up in the garden. Lucy is so much like I was 2 years or so ago, it’s uncanny. She is very interested in the whole idea of Home Ed and is no doubt asking all the same sort of questions of me than I asked of others when I was first debating it but some of her questions are just so frustrating – not with her personally, just how ingrained and narrow minded we are as a society with the concepts of parenting, education and what is actually important. We talked about nurseries because she is considering one for Rebecca and I explained why we had decided not to go down that route with Tarly although I can see *some* benefits I would worry that the negatives would outweigh any positives for us.
I talked to her about the various things I’m planning for Davies to try out come September and she then asked me if I could see me deciding in a couple of months that it was not working and ending up sending him to school instead. I really struggled to grasp quite what she was asking and also to articulate an answer to that. The short answer is ‘no’. Aside from anything else why on earth would I suddenly decide after two years being convinced that it was not working. I have never known any other way of parenting / educating them than the way we are doing it now and whilst I do anticipate school curiousity at some point and possible further questioning of what we are doing and reevaluating of it I don’t imagine it will coincide with school terms or happen at the first half term! In the end I told her I’d email her across the blog post I wrote earlier this week about where we are now and where we are going so she can better grasp how I am approaching HE. It’s so hard as it has taken me two years of living this to grasp what I am doing myself, I don’t think Ady even always totally gets what we are up to and my parents certainly don’t (an inferred concern about D’s reading or lack of reading was mentioned this week by my Dad – the problem there being that me and Frazer are the only children my parents ever really encountered, I was bright and reading at 3, Frazer was deemed ‘thick ‘ – he’s so not – by not following in my footsteps and any other children are judged on those standards too) so why should someone who only really met her first real life Home Educator a couple of months ago? I think the biggest problem is that she has some sort of hot housing tendancy going on (which indeed I had too at the beginning) and is desperate to keep on pushing her 2 year old to keep her ahead of the game at all times, she’s also pushing a lot of her own insecurities and working very hard to ensure Rebecca is not like her in any of her own self percieved downfalls… hmm.
They left and we had another tidying up session, then got out a make your own clock kit which Davies had got for Christmas and made that. Then while they were having tea my Mum arrived for an hour on her way home from work, which was nice.
Ady is still on his cocktail of pain relief and infection fighting medication but says he is feeling better every day so hopefully he is improving, tomorrow is The Big Meeting! We have plans with Ros in the afternoon and I am semi planning to do something faintly constructive with the kids in the morning.
Funny how people don’t ‘get’ it, isn’t it? my parents don’t either, despite being quite supportive!
When we were thinking about school a month ago, I would never have said I was deciding to do that because HE wasn’t working. It would have been because we felt school would have been better/best. Which I could never think, hence we didn’t – but there’s a distinction in there for me.
Do I know what The Big Meeting is or have i missed it in your blogging somehwere? Have a nice day, anyway 🙂
Good luck for Ady, will be thinking of him.
Glad you’re not planning on sending Davies to school in the near future, lol!
I guess it is a big leap of faith to think that without aids such as workbooks, timetables or lessons children will still get an education, but as we see evidence every day of how they do simply learn I don’t know why we find it hard – eg I never have either of mine walking or talking lessons but somehow they have acquired such skills 😉
Ady got a phonecall on Wed asking him to come in for a meeting with the MD today. No reason to be concerned, but of course you can’t help but be – will update on either nothing, good news or be in a heap somewhere later sobbing about him losing his job!
I’ve directed Lucy towards MP so hopefully you too can be helping to answer her questions sometime soon!