Posted by Joyce
Well, here it is. I've been thinking of doing one of these for months, as we are already well into our third year of HE, and I find that time is slipping past, too busy living it to record it, and I'd like Hannah to have an access to these early days, if ever she wants it.
The reasons for choosing this path are lost in the mists of time, and came down to us finally deciding 48 hours before school started that "not being ready" was indeed a good enough reason not to send her to school. But now, its just how we live our lives.
After years of forcing separation at nursery, "because she needed to get used to it", we decided that school was not the place our five year old would thrive in, and on a summer holiday in Cornwall we raised the possibility of HE. Hannah grabbed it like a drowning man. We struggled with it some more, but in our hearts, felt we had little option. Hannah was relieved and delighted, and her dad and I wondered how two such conventional people could contemplate something so radical and alternative. Nursery, funnily enough, supported our choice - perhaps they too had experienced too many of the dreadful separations with Hannah. Our GP was horrified, the health visitor interested, friends took it in their stride in a "not for me" sort of way. Grandparents fretted and worried about socialisation, about her being tied to my apron strings. Everyone had an opinion.
Since then, I've made several attempts to journal this path - a task which, if it is to happen at all, will be left to me, as Bob would not willingly write a two line memo - a trait which Hannah seems to have inherited! But I have also found myself caught up with living HE, and have abandoned all attempts to chronicle it. Sometimes it has been because the steps have been so incrementally small that we don't see what to record, at other times so fast that it has stolen all the quiet time out of our own lives.
Sometime over the last couple of months though, we have drifted into the realisation that we are in fact "proper" HEers - no longer the newbies on the block. We realise it is all becoming more serious now - we can no longer pretend (to ourselves or anyone else), that this is just about a delayed school entry to let Hannah have a bit more maturity under her belt. It has become woven into the fabric of all our lives. We accept we might be in this for the long haul. Likewise, many who were supportive in the beginning are starting to look at us askance and gently suggest that we "have had our fun". Its time to hand her over.
So now seems a good point for reflection - to look at where we have come from, and plan, at least a little, where we are going. But only a little, as one of the things we are learning is to trust Hannah's own process, and gradually we are becoming not only an HE family, but an autonomous one.
When HE was first raised as a possibility, in June 2001, we played at it for a few months, joined support groups, both real and cyber, gathered information from Schoolhouse and E0. But on 20 August that year, we popped a note through the door of the still-closed school, telling them we no longer required the place they had reserved for Hannah when school started the next day. Hannah whooped, and I felt sick. The next day, we woke up and it was real. I watched in tears as all the other kids trooped past our door in their too big uniforms, and felt cheated. Like most other things in Hannah's short life: her birth, her health, things were not going to plan. I was panic stricken. What if I could teach her nothing? A planned visit to Arran had to be cancelled as the weather on the Clyde was terrible, we took the obligatory photos - in our case, sans schoolbag and school uniform, and set off for the Science Museum. It turned out that the schools in Glasgow were still on holiday, so we didn't stand out as much as I had feared.
To begin with, and against all advice from experienced HEers, I bought far too much - reading scheme, maths scheme, manipulatives, software, books, teachers resources. I could have done as well with all the stuff I already had, but I was in "professional knows best" mode. I forgot, or perhaps didn't truly understand, that she didn't need workbooks about money. She would learn it in the supermarket, with me. But in my ignorance, I rescued her from school, and then tried to re-create it at home.
The first year was very hard. My diary chronicles pages of workbooks done, pages read, rather than the fun we had, the cakes we made, the sand pies built. I lived waiting with dread to be tracked down by our LEA, and for the subsequent "inspection", when those who would know nothing about HE would measure us against a school and find us wanting. Hannah seemed to have difficulty concentrating, and in desperation, I took her to see an educational pyschologist. Hannah hated it, but we were reassured that although she had some dyslexic traits, as does her dad, but her development was fine. We talked to her about school. She was adament that this was better. I wondered, but struggled on.
The second year was hugely better. We made good HE relationships, Hannah became more sociable and less clingy, we went to HESFES and MuddlePuddle camps, and gradually we started to realise that all those incremental changes were adding up.
Since then the process of structure giving way to autonomy has accelerated, and we have a seven year old who is bright and interested, but distinctly unimpressed with the idea of school. The shy little girl firmly attached to my side, who forced our hand about the HE decision, is now bright, articulate and confident, ready to try anything new, and relaxed with children and adults. Better "socialised" indeed than she would have been, forced into separation before she was ready for it.
The journey sometimes though has been a rocky one - my own initial attempt to instigate school at home, Hannah's determination to do things her way, and the general confusion from family and friends. Grannies who can't boast about her latest achievements at school, and not always realising that these same achievements are happening before their eyes; having to face the question of "no school today then?" EVERY time you cross your own doorstep, and a society largely geared towards school being the glue of childhood. And for us, of course, no school gate support from others, no free child care, and never the chance to just "hand her over". But is it worth it? Yes, I think it is.
We don't learn by subject now, but as I write this journal, I do intend to look at different areas, and reflect on where we have got too, and the materials we have used, for our own record, and perhaps also as an interest to others.
