Ablaze

6 years ago, while parenting a sweet, anxious, sensitive 5-year-old, and two very different 4-year-olds, we hit a crunch point.

I had been assured that life would get easier once they were all in school.

But it just kept getting harder.

Every morning, inconsolable children were peeled off me at the school gate.

Every day there were meltdowns and tantrums and refusals to eat or get dressed, and spiralling neurodivergent behaviours.

Every evening there were night terrors, and long tearful bedtimes.

And I spent those hours between 9am and 3pm feeling wracked with guilt about sending them off to a (perfectly nice!) school where they were clearly not thriving.

Enter Alanis Morrisette – who provided an angst-ridden soundtrack to my adolescence, and was there again in my 40’s. Her song ‘Ablaze’ – written about her 3 kids, helped put words to the little voice of knowing inside me that said that we could do better for our kids.

That we owed it to them to do better.

That our job was not to prepare them for the ‘real world’, or some future employment.

That our aim was not to ‘toughen them up’ or make sure they ‘keep up’ with some arbitrary standards.

As parents, our mission was simple: ‘to keep the light in their eyes ablaze’.

(here’s a link to the song if you want to listen to it! )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn6IO78BmRM

And so, we embarked on the adventure of Home Educating.

And it has been a wonderful adventure – full of highs and lows and everything in between.

We have relished the freedom to explore empty beaches on unexpected sunny days, and enjoy playgrounds, museums and parks without the crowds.

We have pushed ourselves far out of our comfort zones with road trips and spontaneous daytrips, and gone abroad when it is less expensive and less busy.

We have cherished slow morning starts, un-hurried bedtimes, and experiencing things together. We have made up our own daily rhythms and curriculums, switched them up when they stopped working, side-stepped the pressure for smartphones and devices.

I have watched my children get bored and get creative, spend endless hours outdoors unhampered by the limits of a school timetable, become each other’s best friends, and discover a passion for reading – fuelled by hours at home with time to lose themselves in great fiction.

We have revelled in the companionship of other wonderful home ed families, and spent our days with adults and children of all ages.

We have given our children time to grow up slowly, and figure out who they are before anyone else told them who they are not.

We have spent a lot of time together, at home, sharing the work (and the fun!) of cooking and cleaning and gardening, and decorating and DIY projects.

And also (if I’m being totally honest) it’s been bloody hard work! I have struggled with inadequacy and comparison, doubted my ability to give our kids ‘enough’, run out of energy and enthusiasm for it at times, made a lot of mistakes, and on the difficult days, questioned the wisdom of our decision to home educate!

But after 5 years of Home Educating, and with secondary school on the horizon, the season felt right for a change.

And so this year they all started school.

This decision was totally led by them and their own curiosity and willingness to take on a new challenge.

It was inspired by their growing confidence, their embracing of their differences, their increased ability to advocate for themselves, and a robust sense of security in who they are.

Looking at them now, and seeing how far they have come since that crisis point in 2019, I absolutely know that home educating was the right choice for us in this season of our lives.

And I’m open to the possibility that they might just do school for a couple of years and then come back to Home Educating – that door is always open. For us, Home Ed will always feel like a positive option rather than a last resort.

We spent a lot of time preparing the kids for starting school…..but what I forgot to do was prepare myself for how bereft I’d feel without them! And for the grieving process I’d have to go through as we reached the end of this chapter of our lives as a family.

I miss having them around all day – but I’m so very grateful for all the precious extra time that home educating gave us to experience their childhoods together. I recognise that as a privilege that not everyone has access to.

I’m so very proud of these three incredible little humans and their courage and enthusiasm for taking this next step along their journey of learning and growing. They have fully embraced school, made friends, tried new things, enjoyed the learning opportunities, (and shown a healthy scepticism about some of the more ridiculous aspects of school culture and ‘behaviour management’!)

And now we see their eyes ablaze with all the possibilities of their burgeoning independence (…..and we’re buckling up for the ride!)

 (Note: Photos are rom 2020 as they're not so keen on me posting pictures of them these days!!)