Hiya,

One of the oddest things about home educating is how you can tell someone your children don’t go to school, just in an ordinary old conversation, and have that suddenly become a bit of a grilling.

And you’re thinking…hang on, I was just answering your question, why do I now feel like I have to convince you my life choices - the ones I’ve made for my family, not yours - are a good idea? 😅

There are all sorts of reasons for this. But I think a big part of the answer is that we think we’re having a conversation about our lives, while the other person is (at least partly) having a conversation about theirs.

Let me explain what I mean.

Imagine a parent who has spent years getting a reluctant child out the door to school every morning. They’ve had to deal with tears, homework battles, Sunday night blues, all that really hard stuff that often comes with getting a child to school every day when they really don’t want to go. And they’ve kept going, kept pushing through all that, because they believe it’s the right thing to do. That a big part of being a good parent means getting their child through the school gates rain, hail, or shine.

(Which is a belief you are very likely to bump into. Surveys in different parts of the world repeatedly show how strongly parents believe in the importance of school. Even as recently as last year, despite how much the world has changed, a New Zealand survey found that 93% of parents saw school as important for their child’s future, while a UK survey found that 96% thought children should attend every day.)

So for a parent who’s spent years getting their child through those tears, battles, and blues, there can be a lot invested in the belief that, well, at least it will all have been worth it.

And then you come along and start explaining that your child was reluctant to go to school every day, and there were tears and battles and blues, so you just…stopped sending them and did something else instead.

Or you say that you decided not to send your children to school at all because you found a better fit for them before they ever had to go through any of that.

Which can rock someone’s world. To a lot of people it can feel like you’ve dumped a bucket of ice cold water over their head. It can feel like you’re saying they could or should have made different decisions for their child. That their family maybe didn’t have to go through those really hard experiences after all.

Hearing that a child can grow up, develop, be well educated, and build a positive future for themselves without all that can feel confronting. Because they’ve probably made many of the decisions they have because they love their child and want what’s best for them. And you’re standing there saying that the information they were working with to make those decisions might well have been wrong. That they could have kept choosing school if they wanted or needed to, but also not if they didn’t.

This is a big reason why these conversations can suddenly feel so much more personal and heated and excited and urgent and defensive and confrontational than you would expect from talking about how your child will learn maths one day 😅

Which is where it starts getting a bit confusing from our side. Because our natural response is often to try and explain how WELL things are going, right? If they hear that our children are learning and doing well, that they’re making friends and being ‘socialised’, that they’re finding what they’re interested in and becoming capable people, well, the other person will be satisfied and everyone will be happy.

But sometimes, the more you explain how well things are going, the more uncomfortable the conversation gets.

You’re thinking…look, it’s okay, my children are doing really well!

And they’re thinking…hold on, this can’t be right, all those things I was told children need school for…your children are getting all that without it? If that’s true then it means we didn’t have to go through all that stuff!

There are variations to this response, too, but they all lead to the same kind of place.

Like when you’re unknowingly talking to someone who had an extremely rough time at school but believes that was an important part of becoming who they are.

I was picked on, and it made me stronger. I hated going, but it taught me to persevere. Nobody stepped in to make things easier for me, so I learned to look after myself.

That is, they believe that the difficult things they went through in childhood had a purpose. They got something out of them. It was unpleasant, sure, but it helped make them who they are.

Then along comes a family saying…we don’t think children need to go through those things to become strong, capable adults, and look here’s some evidence and proof.

Bam, another bucket of ice cold water.

Because if those experiences weren’t necessary, could things have been different for me? Could someone have stepped in and helped me? Could I have become a capable person without spending all those years feeling like that?

That’s a potentially very confronting, very painful thought.

Or you might be talking to someone who loved school. They made wonderful friends, had teachers who made a big impact on their life, played in sports teams, went on trips, and look back on those years as some of the happiest they’ve had.

So when you explain that your children don’t go, they immediately picture them missing out on everything they remember so fondly. You’re talking about the childhood your children are having, but they’re thinking about the one they had.

Not quite the same bucket of water, but they can still think it’s crazy.

Now, of course, we don’t get to look inside someone’s head and work out which of these (or some other variation) we’re speaking to. And someone questioning us might have a perfectly reasonable concern, comment, or experience we could get some value from listening to. Choosing this path doesn’t just make us right about everything by default. I’ve personally made many, MANY mistakes along the way. Even 10 years in, I still get things wrong.

But understanding why and how our choice makes people react so strongly is a really good way to stop ourselves from feeling too defensive in those sorts of conversations. To stop ourselves from walking away feeling personally attacked. To stop ourselves from processing them over and over in our minds later.

I know from doing this myself that we often put pressure on ourselves to find the right words in conversations like these. To pull the right bit of research, or the right example, or some more confidence, or whatever we think will help get the other person to understand us better.

And yeah, sometimes that will make a difference. Sometimes a person really does just want to hear how all this works, and they’ll go away with some interesting stuff to think about.

But sometimes what happens is that you’ll spend a few minutes innocently questioning, or even unravelling, a set of beliefs someone has probably built a fair bit of their life and identity around.

It helps me to remember that I’ve had years to think about all this. To read, to question things, to make mistakes and change my mind, and to watch my children grow. The person I’m talking to might be hearing some of these ideas for the first time, while also trying to work out what they mean for the people and experiences they care most about.

So I try to give them a bit of grace with that, even if it’s just in my own mind. I remember how strange some of these ideas once sounded to me, too.

And I try to give myself a bit of grace. Because it’s easy to walk away thinking, “Ugh, that conversation didn’t feel great, it must be because I didn’t explain that very well,” when actually you probably did just fine.

It may just have been a lot for someone to hear.

Talk soon,
Issy.

P.S. If you want to take this even further, I highly recommend listening to Why home education STILL bothers so many people to fully understand all the nuance here. If the evidence on home education has been clear for so long, why does the criticism still feel so relentless? It follows those objections from the family dinner table right up to the people making education policy, and gets underneath the myths and into the real reasons home education still triggers so much suspicion, defensiveness, and resistance.

Members can listen here. And if you want to talk any of this through, jump into my private community right here. I’d love to riff more on this 🤓

If you’d like to join us, you can start listening - and join the included community at the same time - over here.