Home educating in 2021 - what have I done?

At the start of 2021, things started taking a dramatic change. The routine we had in place wasn't working anymore, I had to change how we did things. This is something I have done many times over the past couple of years. Sometimes a routine will work for a few weeks and then other times a routine will work for a few months. This is one of the joys with Home Ed, you have the freedom to change it up to suit your children's current needs. You are all in control, you're not told how your child is going to learn even if it doesn't suit their needs. No child is the same, I have found all three of my children learn completely differently to the other. 

Not long into 2021 it became so clear that our children really hated workbooks, I had changed workbooks to a different brand to see if this made a difference, it did for a little while. To be honest I would hate having them put in front of me all the time too. We decided to take a step back and try 'Unschooling' our children, I found they picked up so many new skills but, I had so many people question me on how I was educating my children what they were learning, how many hours they were working. I have even had a comment that they should be sat at a desk for 6 hours a day! They were and are too young for that. Children deserve to learn through play and exploring for as long as possible. We did still do a couple of pages of a workbook a week but a lot less that we had been, only because of comments that were thrown my way. I was made to feel like I wasn't doing right by my children, and I was second guessing myself all the time, it wasn't a healthy stage in our home Ed Journey for either the children or myself. 

After a few months I had realised 'Unschooling' had stopped working for us. Our son decided that watching Minecraft on YouTube all day was enough and fought us at every turn, from any form of work including all the things he had previously enjoyed, to going out for a walk to get a break from screens, he didn't even want to go his bike or scooter. It was a stark contrast to the year before. This went on for months, I spent so much time forcing him to leave the house, but for the health my other two children and myself, I had to fight this battle. He enjoyed being out once we got out and he had calmed down. I ended up getting professional help which started at the end of 2021 to deal with his temper that flared up whenever he didn't want to do something. It helped a great deal. We found a new pace which suited us all, we do still to this day face some resistance to going out or even doing 'school' work, but things for us are now calm and home education is fun again.

I look back on 2021 and feel like I had failed my children, but I also look back and realise we all learnt so much about each other and how we all learn. Home Education isn't just about children learning, it's about the parents learning along with them. 

I questioned myself so many times in 2021 and I was close to putting them back into school, I knew this wasn't the right thing to do, I knew my son wouldn't react well to being back in a school setting. I am so glad we kept going. I put myself out there on our local HE Facebook page and we started meeting up with a few home ed families. It was the best thing for us all. We've all made some lovely friends. 

Home educating your children isn't always going to be smooth and fun. There will be times when resistance come in and what had work needs shaking up. The joy is you can do this, and you can take a break when you need to. We have taken so many days off when their peers would be sat in a classroom, because we can. We can enjoy the amazing weather when its around, we can enjoy the empty parks and playgrounds, we can stop and recharge when our batteries are running low.