Outed in public!

Just been to our new venue for HE group. I spent a while on the phone last week trying to find a suitable venue which was cost feasible, ok for transport links for those of us without cars, okay for those who do have cars to park and find easily, suited the time we wanted and available weekly ongoing. I spent a while talking to the woman at this venue – 3 seperate phonecalls infact. I was fairly specific about what we were ; A Home Educating Families Group – I explained we are a group of local families – about 10 or so, with a further 20 odd children who meet weekly for socialising, bit of arts and craft, other structured activities and so on. I likened it to a toddler group but with much older children. I thought I had been clear. I also thought I had booked it to start today.

So we arrived slightly before the specified time, as did another attendee and her two children. We went into the reception and battled our way through a crowd of about 20 elderly people – none of whom thought to hold the door open for two women, four small children and a big bag of stuff each and none of whom made any attempt to move out of the way for us to walk through them. I waited by the reception area and found another of our number with her three children who was new and had been asking if we were there yet. The reception woman – Margeret – said the room was not empty from the last people yet but if we waited in the tea room area with the (slight sneer) children then she would be through in a moment. Nearly 15 minutes later – during which time my two had gotten bored of sitting in a tea room and being told not to touch anything, Jenny and Ellen had arrived with a further 8 children between them we were shown through to the room. Which was horribly small even with our depleted number of just five families in it. Jenny started setting out tables, the children (15 of them!) started to do what any group of children in an empty room do and ran around. The woman looked totally horrified and asked ‘you were not hoping to stay today were you?’ ‘well yes’ said I starting to quake. ‘Oh no, you need to fill in forms and things and pay in advance for a month before you can stay.’ See now I thought I’d booked it, she thought I’d booked to come and view it. Hmmmm. I sent her away while we had a quick debate about what to do and we concluded it was too small anyway. In the meantime Scarlett had escaped through the door, chased after by Davies. I went to gather them back together and found them in the kitchen with a ‘strictly no children’ notice on the door. They were sitting down talking to two kindly old ladies in there who I apologised profusely to and was told it was fine, they were lovely!

I went back into the room to find Margeret giving one of the mums a right ear bashing about children running about and it couldn’t go on etc. She was surveying the scene of children in total horror, judging us and making all sorts of awful conclusions. She asked me again what the group was about and I explained again that it was Home Educated children ‘but why are these children not at school???’ sigh. I managed to use my poshest voice and longest words and spinniest speech and explained that we would normally be working on structured activities which of course needed to be set up, of course we appreciated that it was totally unacceptable for children to be running about outside of the room we were in, it would appear that the room was too small for our needs anyway, I was very sorry for the misunderstanding about it being booked for today and it was probably not suitable as even within a structured environment which we would be providing 20 children would come with a certain level of noise which may be disruptive which we would not want to be’. With great sighs of relief all round we left (via a fire exit!) and decamped to a nearby park.

I hate, hate, hated it. On my own I am quite capable of pulling the children into more than acceptable behaviour and pride myself on portraying a positive and socially acceptable anywhere face of Home Ed. People might not agree with what I am doing but they would not be able to say the kids are running wild, are disruptive or simply not able to conduct themselves in public. Today I felt like a key member with the worst behaved children of a group totally outside of society. Worse still I could see us through her eyes and I can kind of understand what she was sneering about. Now I don’t doubt that if you put any 15 kids in that room they would have done the same. I have been part of a group of school children running wild myself and witnessed countless more groups doing so but somehow they would not have been judged so harshly.

So the venue search starts yet again and I have had my first and I very much doubt my last experience of being disapproved of in public. Please let tomorrow not be a repeat performance or I will be forced to drag my kids back home again straight away!