We’ve just been to the park. I tend to avoid parks generally to be honest, I don’t like them much but if I am to be seen in one it is almost always during school hours when it’s just us and the odd toddler. But today when we’d got back from the cinema and had some lunch I was itching to get back out and get some fresh air. I was trying to convince the children to go to Highdown Gardens or the beach but they were only really up for the park. This coincided with Lucy texting me so I asked if they wanted to meet us there and we headed off to the park. We arrived just after 3pm and had about 5 minutes there before the first schoolchildren started trickling in. It was pretty full within about ten minutes and Davies was particularly impressed with the leaping and clambering and zipwire tricks of some of the older boys who appeared. One of them followed us into the smaller park and was showing Davies some clever climbing. I heard Davies say ‘Oh I’m seven too’ and then realised from a distance that they’d moved on to school talk. The boy’s body language told it’s own story although we weren’t close enough to hear every word. Davies fell silent, Scarlett was being equally determined back in response to the boy’s aggression and eventually he stropped off as I walked over. He kept looking over from the sidelines though.
The conversation apparently went along the lines of him asking why Davies wasn’t wearing school uniform and Davies saying he was Home Educated. The boy claimed that ‘isn’t even a word!’ so they both explained to him that you don’t actually have to go to school and that they don’t. He started to get cross with them then and said that everyone over five HAS to go to school and that Davies must have been lying about being seven. That was when Davies fell silent and Scarlett carried on insisting that yes, he was seven and that she was nearly five and she didn’t go to school or nursery either. The boy tolerated this for a little while before telling her to ‘shut up’ and then aiming a kick at the climbing frame he stomped off, scowling as he went.
I actually felt quite sorry for him, chances are your average seven year old doesn’t know that there is such a thing as Home Education and has very likely been told that everyone over five does have to go to school so to be confronted with living proof that you’ve been lied to is probably quite hard to swallow. I’m sure even the happiest-at-school child sometimes questions why they have to go, I definitely remember asking why I had to when I was a child and chances are the usual answer is ‘because everyone has to go to school to learn’.
On the way home we talked about it a bit more and I explained that although we mix with lots of other home educators so it all feels very normal to us actually what we do *is* different to most people, and does attract lots of questions and will mark them out. I said that I get asked about it pretty much every time I meet someone new and the older they get the more they will be asked about it too. I told them that I am very proud of what we do and happy that we are different because it is something that I really believe in and am happy to talk to people about but that if at any point either of them feel unhappy about being so different then the choice is theirs to make. I’ve always been very aware that this is a big deal and a big part of Home Ed. There are times when I get fed up with answering questions and getting comments about it and I’m sure there will be times when they do too, but it is one of the downsides that I want them to be aware of and learn to deal with when it comes up.
I’ve always wondered if the kids on our street have ever made comments. There’s a good 6 or 7 other kids so I thought there was a good chance of some off comment. But Alex said that they’d never said anything about it at all. Must be hard the first time they have to deal with it though.
Comment by Kirsty — 11 October 2007 @ 8:35 am