This is exactly what I need to think about right now. Thankyou so much for the discussion.
My big kids do not want to homeschool at this stage which I am still divided on. I don't like it really but I feel bad to keep them home if they are so into school.
My husband and I are very close on deciding to keep our youngest 2 at home no matter what. I have no desire to enrol them. It is hard because Av says he wants to go to "real school" I think seeing his older bro and sis attend school makes him interested.
But I must do what is right (for our family, that is).

that's all any of us can do

This thread is of interest to me. With the alcohol thing, we're going through that with DD15 (16 in May). I'd prefer she didn't drink it at all. She was starting to talk about alcohol a lot. She took a beer from the fridge and drank it at night in secret. She took my glass of wine at a BBQ and drank it and replaced it with lemonade (it was white wine). I was pissed off that she was taking our stuff without asking. We're over 18, we can buy alcohol legally, we owned it, and she took it. So we went on holidays and had a BBQ and dh let her have a (light) beer. She had three. We spent the next day at the waterslides - running up and down a hill and sliding and swimming all day long in the Cairns heat. She hasn't mentioned alcohol since. :p I always thought we'd be so, so 'together' with how to handle these teenage issues, but I suck as much as my parents did, or maybe even more. Sigh. Anyway, we're still at the stage of "you can't legally buy alcohol, so your consumption of it, if at all, is entirely controlled by us". It feels sucky to use the law like that, but it's easier than the dramatics...

With the school thing... Two years ago DD1 asked to go to school. She was to go into Yr 9 (Qld) and would have been 14 that year. Any high school teacher will tell you that Yr 9 is just awful. It's total hormone hell and socially a nightmare, and academically therefore a waste of time (generally, not all kids of course). So I just upped the social life, offered her more options academically, helped her get a laptop and she worked toward getting a casual job... That blew over. Phew. Two years later (so recently), she asked to go to school for Yr 11 (first year of 2 senior yrs in Qld - age 16). We thought about it. We discussed it together - her father, myself and DD. She had kinda gone off the idea by the time we had the 'meeting' and so we planned 2010 together and she was fine. Six weeks later she said again that she wanted to go to school. She had just upped her casual hours at work, had not completed her Yr 10 Maths, had just enrolled in a TAFE course, has various other work, study, theatre and travel plans for 2010. But she wanted school "just to try it" and "just to be normal".

I was in agony over this. I wanted to let her go, but I knew it was a dumb idea. She has a pretty good balance of study/social/work/arts in her life. She has a few schooled friends and a great bunch of home ed friends. Basically DH said her reasons weren't good enough, "just because" was a waste of the school's time, her time, our time and money and NO.

She was barely even mad. I think she just wants to tell the schooled kids at work "My parents won't let me, that's why I don't go to school." She wants us to say NO sometimes so she can use us as an excuse. This was a huge realisation to me. I was putting a lot of pressure on her to make her own choices. Some she wasn't ready to make. She wants to be like other kids a LOT (even though she's totally not, in many ways). She wants to say "I am not allowed. I am grounded. I can't talk right now. I have to go to bed. I have to call home." She was craving direction and "rules".

So we're still dealing with a lot of this, and I think I'm finding it hardest of all. DH finds the authoritarian role fairly easy - he figures she had a go at the 'other' way, so he'll just call it and it'll end. DD seems to just roll with it (even though she's totally a rebel, so I'm shocked). And I'm here analysing our parenting and educating and wondering if this is the right way to go.

Thank goodness DD2 still says she will NEVER go to school. And DD3 as well... Let's hope we get a break from all the teen angst for a little while. I really thought it'd be different.

wow, bella, thanks so much for adding in your experience.

Thank you from me too - my dd1 is 10 in a week and I need to keep that "needs to have her parents say NO at times" in mind.

I want to add my feelings about school atm. DS is 5 and and I often feel that I am not doing enough to help him learn (even though I am happy and love natural learning and he is fine and learning heaps, I guess that is the need to prove myself to others or to fit into others ideas about what is a good education, etc).

I guess I hear an expectation (from people I know IRL) that I can only decide to home ed once I go and see all the schools in the area and prove that there is something deficient about them to be able to make an informed choice that HE is the best or a good choice for DS. Maybe that's right? Maybe I should just to prove to myself that he is better off with us at home. Maybe he isn't. Sorry for the confusion...

And Hi Kris, you know this is Anna right?

Hallo Anna So good to "see" you xxx

Love that old "try them all and use home ed as a last resort" chestnut. If you like, tell them you know someone who taught in the all local schools (DH did) and he found them deficient and chose to home school his kids

How do they know which car is the best? Have they bought and tried them all? What about houses, fridges, foods...

Fark, the reasons people come up with for having an opinion about what you're doing with your kids...

Ask them, "So, how long did you try home educating before you decided it wasn't the best choice? None at all? But how can you KNOW it's not as good as school if you haven't done it?"

it so irks me when people say "oh, but you should try *my* kids' school, it's so wonderful! Then you wouldn't have to homeschool"

gumtree; give it time. these feelings will pass heck, at 5yo, they're not doing any "teaching" in school either.

Yeah I just get wrong too often but I have to just do my best.

Wow that is very interesting Bella. It seems my kids want me to say no so they don't have to at times too.
Its all about balance isn't it?

I was at a 1st birthday party the other day and met a woman who has just enrolled her child at the same school my daughter used to go to. She was positively gobsmacked that I had something negative to say about it. But she didn't tell me, she told the woman whose party we were at, who in turn informed me My daughter went to school from kindie until nearly the end of year 5. It was all fine until we struck Mrs. Psychotic - the year 5 teacher, the same year that all manner of dreadful things we happening in our lives. BUUUUT now we're home schoolers I would never, in a pink fir consider sending her back there!?!?! It's so much better! And with the space that de-schooling has filled I now see a whole lot of negative things about institutionalised learning that I didn't see when we were enmeshed in it. But ... the point of this extensive rant is simply to say that everyone loves THEIR kids school, and thinks it's the best ... otherwise they wouldn't send them there (we hope). I know, coz I was the same!

Periodically my daughter brings up the topic of school again, and I have told her that I'm happy with that option once she hits yr 10. Then she can do yr 10 and quit without us having to go through the pain staking process of registering a high school student - registering one in yr 5 was irritating enough

My daughter (who is just off 12) also likes to hear me say no so that she can tell people how oppressed she is .... when she never wanted to do whatever it is anyway I first noticed that about three years ago, and I've seen it a few times since then. I am always relieved when she accepts the "no" because it saves me from arguing with her

Anyways .... I need to cut myself short here! I'm probably making some of your eyes water with boredom

If my son asked me to send him to school I would say no. Not until he is old enough to comprehend what that means and the impact it will have on his life. Possibly yr 10 for him too!

Now I feel better, at least I am up to the school standard

Kris, I do know 2 people who work in the system, my aunts both do teachers aide work, and the I hear confirms my worries. Not to mention all the teachers I meet who are either considering home ed for their kids or lamenting the negatives in general.

And along the same lines as your irkish quote MF, I haaaaaate it when I ask people how the find their child's school and they just say 'good.'...I have guessed that it is the same as asking someone how they are, they don't think you are really interested in what they have to say, or that you want any detail. Or people say when you show signs of not being sure about home ed that 'you should check out such and such a school, apparently it is really good', 'how do you mean good?', 'er, i dunno just someone told me'.

I hope youre right MF and these feelings will pass.

OMG, no! it's the exact same thing their kids say when they ask: how was school today? - good.

Your self depreciating sense of humour just tickled my fancy

Shouldnt that be "how do you find your kids school?" - "i dunno"
OR "what is your kid doing at school" - " oh, i dunno, nuthin'"

Please don't let my nonsense stop the intense debate

hey, I love nonsense!

Any discussion about schooling should be full of nonsense I reckon

Seriously .. the first year of school is about learning to sit down and shut up, pee on command, and colour in letters of the alphabet. If you ask a child in any particular year of school what they learnt on any given day the answer will most assuredly be "I dunno" or "nothing", whereas my unschooled child is constantly telling me interesting things she's discovered (pigeons feed their young MILK! ).

It sounds like you could benefit from some de-schooling gumtree So that next time someone says something to you that they've never actually THOUGHT about, you can hit them with a heap of facts on how natural learning works.

I think it's interesting that you can complain about the education system, the bullying, the "lack of discipline", the lack of learning etc etc, but if you dare step outside the square, a whole lot of people (who encouraged your whinging prior to this) are really debased by it! To say that our education system teaches children to think for themselves is such nonsense when you see how indoctrinated we are with the bollocks! I FEEL A BLOG COMING ON!

actually, one of dd's best friends spent a few days in school (her mostly-absent dad had her for a week, and put her in school behind the mum's back ), and when she came back to her mum, her mum asked what she did in school. the answer was "we drew some pictures, we sat around a lot doing nothing and we did 1/2 hour of reading every day". the mum was amazed - the teacher managed to read with you for 1/2 hour? "no, we all just sat at our desks reading our own books" - but were you really reading or just looking at the pictures? "I was just looking at the pictures, I can't really read yet, but we weren't allowed to talk or anything, so we all just sat there."
yep. learning.

MM I am a work in progress! I answered myself with all the things youse did about the illogical nature of the argument (have to try school before knowing home ed is good/best) but just couldnt shake the nagging doubt that maybe I SHOULD check out the local schools (they've got a veggie patch you know! Well actually so do we ) and I did state that I dont feel the need to check out every available option to know Ds is having a *good education*

I was trying to check out the Tas curriculum to reassure myself that it is not necessarily what we need, but it was so huge and with convoluted categories of levels, stages and so on that I couldnt be bothered, now I will have a *nice* National one to reassure me that we are doing fine (I cant resist)

MF colouring-in also seems to be prevelent in PS and I did alot in high school too! Nothun the matter with it but is that what people expect their kids to be doing in Gr7 Social Science (like we did)?

MM I dont really get the first sentense of the last para in your post. Can you help me out.

I didn't mean you personally, I meant you as in general people Does that make sense?

Oh they have a VEGGIE GARDEN???? Why is your child not enrolled My daughter's last school had a veggie garden too. it was about a square foot of dirt with bok choy and carrots in it, and when it was ready to harvest the yr 6 kids got a carrot each or a few leaves of bok choy. What an AMAZING LEARNING OPPORTUNITY!!!