Just come across your blog today.

Thought you might find our experience interesting. We started homeschooling when we decided that we were leaving Glasgow, Scotland to return home to Australia- my daughter was just 5 and had been attending the Glasgow Steiner school.

We travelled abit more returned home, and found getting a homeschool network abit tricky, at that stage, due to various circumstances. So we decided to send her back to school to start gr 2- 2 weeks into her new school she was absolutely miserable – I’ve never seen her in such a state, despondent would describe it best. So we changed school- the teacher wasn’t happy we weren’t giving her or the school a chance.

My DD wanted to come back to homeschool but I said no at that stage as my son was just starting to come out of his shell without her around so much. So school no 2 was found- this lasted a term and a half- she was moderately happy, school work was ok but her behaviour was a nightmare. Because we’d been out of school for the previous year we could see it change, people whose children are always at school don’t realise the impact it has.

The weekend she finished at her school and we went back to homeschooling her and her brother played perfectly. I commented on it, and her response was I’m much happier not having to worry about school. It’s hard for an adult to switch persona’s from home to work when they’re unhappy and need to behave a certain way- but children just can’t do it. They end up being what they are at school.

So we are now expecting our next baby and taking it easy with school, and have no plans to go back to one unless it’s a full Steiner school- as we found there were many less behavioural issues then.