by Jayne Grindell

Created on: January 14, 2007   Last Updated: October 31, 2008

The decision to take our 3 year old from school and educate him from home is one of the scariest I have ever made - and yet in some ways it was also one of the easiest. He had only been there a couple of months and had been so excited to start but it soon became clear that things just were not right with the situation. School became a list of injuries and naughty chairs. Every day when I picked him up there seemed to be some problem. He spent most of his time playing outside and struggled with the constraints of being in a class of thirty 3 year old children. It made me so sad that my imaginative, creative little boy was told to stop singing - he sings all the time and I love to hear his little voice. Of course I understand that 30 children can't all sing as they play - it would be bedlam - but at the same time I didn't want the creativity stamped out of this little person. Even when he was at home there was a marked difference in his behaviour. He seemed frustrated and there was an anger that we had not seen in him before.

It was after a bout of chicken pox that we finally made the decision. When I mentioned that he would be able to return to school soon as the scabs were healing the tears just fell down his face. Real tears, the kind that I hadn't seen for some months, maybe longer. This was not right for us and I could not force this young child into something that was making him so unhappy. And for what? He didn't seem to be learning anything. My husband and I talked it through but it didn't take much discussion to decide that our son was too precious to be forced to conform at the risk of taking the love of learning away from him. The exact opposite of what a school should offer.

We are now a couple of months into the home schooling world and have no regrets at all. We have our little boy back. The frustration he would show when he returned from school is gone. He is happy and singing again! In terms of learning, he is coming on in leaps and bounds! He is starting to read and write and showing a healthy interest in numbers too - things that he was never even given the opportunity to learn in the school nursery class.

I'm not saying it is easy having him back home everyday - it can certainly be hard work! The hardest thing I find is to find balance between spending time with him and getting the jobs done that I need to do. But all in all I am loving having him back home and I know this is the right decision for us. The reaction from other people has been varied; most just say we are brave but they couldn't do it. Some people have regarded us with horror; they couldn't wait for their children to go to school and can't imagine why we have done this. You would think we had taken some alien life form on 24/7 rather than our own son. Sometimes we come across people who do seem to understand and this can be in the most unlikely of places. We took a trip into out nearest city last week to return a pair of school trousers that had never even been taken off the hanger. As we asked the ladies at customer services if we could please return them she asked if they had not fitted. We explained that we would not be needing them as we had decided to home educate, 'Good for you' she smiled. Yes, I thought - Good For Us - and it is!

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