T-Bird Anni Rides Again

Merry posted up a lovely post about why she home educates and it got me thinking about a conversation yesterday with my neighbour, Sam.

She has 2 boys (ages 8 and 6) in school and a girl in pre-school.  When L first started pre-school she raised questions about his speech but was told that everyone understood him and besides all little boys are a bit unclear at that age.  2 years later a change of school brought a different opinion and he started speech therapy.  Same boy, same school, last year Sam started asking if L may have dyslexic traits - he struggles to read, has apauling short term memory, very short attention span, slightly shady co-ordination but incredibly creative and really good at anything non-literacy based.  Teacher said not to worry, he was a little slow with reading but that’s okay at his age, children develop differently etc.  This year, new teacher, new opinion… he could well be dyxie, she would casually assess him over the next term to see if she could put together a case for the SENCo to look at (but she’s off on maternity the end of the school year so he won’t have the continuity of her again next year as he would otherwise have done)  Meanwhile younger brother M is just a shade below average at literacy stuff but streaks ahead at maths.  Sam keeps asking if he can be given something a bit more challenging/interesting for maths and being told he’s on the hardest level "for his age group".  The daughter, M, is already doing puzzle books for kids a year ot two older than her to keep her occupied whilst the boys are at swimming lessons, is desperate to read but has been taught letter names not sounds at pre-school and so now it totally freeked by the idea that she should be calling them something else.  Sam’s parting comment was that she would love to take them out of school b ut she wouldn’t have the patience to "home school" them.  The irony being she is training as a classroom assistant yet  doesn’t have the patience?

I was left feeling terribly sad for the whole family.  And incredibly relieved  that a chance conversation with someone at a Clothie Coffee when Aprilia was still tiny had let me know that there was even such a thing as home educating your child.  Like Merry, my original reason for home ed may not be the reason I would give now, I wsa protecting a child who was totally non verbal until just before her 3rd birthday (but who made a liar out of me by chattering non stop at her first MP winter camp!) and a child who was terrified of seperating from me unless it was to a very, very small selection of people who she felt she could trust.  Sometimes I feel I could be doing more with her, "teaching" her more, structuring her day more, pushing her to read more but then, at the same time I feel us sliding more and more comfortably into an almost but not quite autonomous state where she learns so much just by being.  And then I look over the fence at children who are at the *best* state primary in our area, the one that parents will move house and lie to get their child in at and I see a whole family being failed by it and I wonder how it could all go so very wrong.