Rather a lot of today requires glossing over 🙄 In fact, in honour of myself on my next truly F- Mothering Day, all i shall say about it is that i didn’t lose my temper once, i didn’t wade into any of the fights and i calmly repeated things like “they way you are speaking to each other is upsetting me” or “the fact that you aren’t doing what i ask is upsetting me” on a regular and patient basis. I so hate hearing myself screaming “Don’t yell at each other!!!” so i’m really trying to model a more measured approach to family relations. For all Fran and Maddy never fight, the other combinations do (*cough* Amelie *cough*) Mummy Flower was chuckling in the background and occasionally saying things like “it’s so nice to hear someone saying outloud all the things that i feel like only i feel.” 😆 Glad to be of service 😉
New toy of the morning was a set of geomag decopanels that were marked down from £70 to £30 at Amazon (a whopping big set!) – Maddy and i have had a blast with them today and geomaged a pic of her face. Amelie carried on with the project she started yesterday, making a display of shapes with patterns of colour built into them. They really are lovely. Hopefully we’ll carry that on over the weekend. (And yes, i know £30 would have been lots for an ORDINARY set of geomags, but think what i SAVED!!!!! 😆 )
Fortunately for all concerned they then went off to play some game in the garden, which was good as by that time Fran and i had had a fight over a book, a patchwork square and whether or not a lung ache that only appears after being asked to do some work actually constitutes a real illness, Amelie and i had faced off over some tidying, bullying Maddy and something i can’t even remember, Josie and i had had a “are you actually allowed to spit in mummy’s face” battle and even Maddy and i had fallen out over her inability to follow even basic instruction, something which seems to have gone into a regression stage over the last week or 2. 🙄 (There you see, the sordid face of home education!)
I retired to my bed to read and dozed off instantly, mainly demonstrating that we all get on better if i don’t have a late night.
Book is about Isabella of France and Edward II and is fascinating me, although it is a hardish read in some ways, but i love all the detail and am glued to the illustration of the rise of the Yorks and Lancasters and descriptions of English territories in France. Gosh, we did such boring history at school in comparison.
I went out for a bike ride and when i came back i got bearded by two little boys from the street, of 7 or so. One shouted over “we’ve heard your kids don’t go to school” and the other immediately came over to ask me about it. The first immediately launched into a tirade (yes really) about how they wouldn’t be clever if they didn’t go to school, they must be bad children, i couldn’t teach them anything so they’d always be stupid and the second launched, almost without drawing breath, into a onesided conversation about how he was the best at karate, best a football, best at this that and the other – and just didn’t stop.
I’m not sure what i drew from this conversation, except that i found myself practically descending to their level at times and being a bit too dismissive, but lots of things about it bother me. My main reaction was kind of….
…..huh?……
Where did all that come from? Why? Who is saying what? Why do they need to talk about it, wonder about it, go on at me about it? The next was the fact that built into me somewhere was a politeness that didn’t say to them “school is crap and that’s why i don’t waste my childrens time with it!” (lol, no offense to anyone) and then a bit of me just felt DEEPLY tired, discouraged and bored by the whole prejudice, lack of insight, lack of thinking outside the box, ingrained “we do this and at 7 we already think we absolutely know best”.
Not expressed very well. But you know what? I spend loads of time with kids, HE’ed kids and i can TALK to them. I just couldn’t have a conversation with these two. Nice enough boys, curious, but just… well, institutionalised and presumably fed a load of “not going to school is WRONG” by parents who don’t want to be challenged by what someone else is doing. I just couldn’t converse with them. They were both full of being right, being best, telling me they were already famous footballers, telling me they were level 6 readers and my kids would never learn to read because i was teaching them. They talked over me, through me, didn’t listen but wanted to know and ARGH… i just felt tired by it.
And not wrong.
Nothing else; took Ams to doctor for infected lymph glands (or something) and she’s been referred to a paediatrician for allergies and ent stuff. Then went out shopping with her, got co-erced into stuff she wanted and bought some Aquabeads to try out to see if i want to sell them.
Done already.
You know a lot of the trouble with this school stuff mentioned above is that some parents will be doing the well intentioned thing of telling them that not going to school is bad.. which they regurg.. because obviously they are school goers and need to go, in order to receive their education .. seeing as they are not being schooled at home.. the other part of it is of course that they could just be annoying children who don’t listen… think they know it all and don’t. Who knows..? Not me.. 🙂
Something that annoys me? A woman that works for me, can’t take her children to see their Grandad in Scotland (who is dying.. soon) because if she takes them out of school they have threatened to get her fined. Fined? Fined!!
Fined for going to see their dying Grandad because this head teacher says that if he doesn’t fine her then how can he continue to fine other parents who take their children out of school on unscheduled school holidays for whatever reason, for example cheaper foreign holidays.
Yes .. exactly.. you see because Spain in May is just like going to see my dying relative.. Fab. This is where school bothers me.
Sounds a lot like some of my days, and I only have two kids (at least until the next one arrives in October). Amelie sounds like she has quite a bit in common with my 9yo; we clash all the time and it’s very wearying. Fortunately she is improving with age (and me with mummy experience, f-i-n-a-l-l-y *eye roll*).
Those boys sound like everything I dislike about schooled kids. They’re not all that bad, but give me HE’d kids any day of the week!
Following from Greer, that’s why people round here lie to the schools to say their kid is ill when they’re not. So we’re raising a generation of kids who think it’s ok to lie when you want/need a day off. All so the school’s Ofsted report looks good.
On Weds, the school kids were filing out to their waiting coach after their swimming lesson and saw our kids coming out of trampolining. One schooled boy wailed, “It’s not fair, they’ve got longer holidays than us. How come they’re still off and we had to go back?”. The teacher smiled at me and replied “some schools broke up the week after we did so they’ve still got a week left but they get 2 weeks just like you” I couldn’t help myself and I smiled sweetly back and said “some children don’t go to school at all.”
Well I always ask kids who annoy me ‘hey *I* can read and do math – can YOU – no? then shut up’.
I say it to Boss a lot…. hmmmm….
don’t know if the link will work. But aquabeads aren’t loved over here and the conclusion is Hama is better: http://www.badmothersclub.co.uk/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=302&id=82844&last=0
I wasn’t there, so I obviously have no idea what they boys actually meant, but have you considered the possibility that they might actually dislike school and they’re just justifying the fact that their parents tell them they have to go?
I mean, when I first heard of home education (I was twelve or so; the concept is non-existent in Greece) my first reaction was jealousy. Which of course soon turned into ‘well it can’t really be happening, can it?’ You just can’t stand to realise that you actually have the option not to do what you don’t like doing. It’s hard to believe that your life can actually be fun and interesting. Now I know schools in England are nowhere near as dull as Greek schools but even so…
Can I back up what Michelle said re Hama v Aquabeads, I buy loads of Hama from Merry for my Brownie Pack and no way would I buy the aquabeads because if they take an hour to dry one side and an hour to dry the other side I’d have to take the lot home and redistribute the following week – and I have quite enough stuff to lug back and forward to Brownies!
Don’t think I am alone in that so worth considering Merry?
“There you see, the sordid face of home education!”
Thank you Merry for an open and honest look at your day. I could feel myself nodding along in agreement to some of the things you were saying, not least the yelling about yelling! 😐
Its sometimes good to read a down to earth post about the lows of home ed as well as the good and fun things, makes me feel like less of a failure when things aren’t always wonderfully rosy and I have tantrums to deal with instead of everything just slotting into place with smiley-happy young people. 😉