Parenting James: Learning Again, Living With Trauma, and What the Diagnosis Really Means

James has been with his new tutor for three weeks. We didn’t know how it would go. He spent the weekend before the first session begging me to cancel it. His anxiety was through the roof. He didn’t want to go back to anything that looked or sounded like school.

We didn’t cancel. We adjusted. We started at 10am instead of 9.30am so he had space to breathe. That shift made the difference. He met G. They talked. They found a rhythm and lesson interests. She explained that learning didn’t have to be at a table, actively involving worksheets, or be the rigid routine that broke him. They could go out, explore, and learn in the world. Whatever sparked his interest. Lessons, resources, and routines all built around him. 

Studying Theology: Earning My Graduate Diploma

My blog started in 2010 as a place to reflect on my growth as a new Christian. That stayed the focus for several years, until James was born and Will started home education. I joined the blogger community and became a family, home education, single parent, and disability blogger. I found my stride and unique voice. When the Chritian posts no longer fit the identity of the blog, I returned the posts to drafts. I was not ashamed of them. My writing, voice, and life had changed.

End of Home Ed: A New Adventure

When William entered mainstream education (Year R) he started at the top of his class but by the end of the academic year he was bottom.

Behaviourally Will went from being enthusiastic, engaging and carefree to upset, anxious and emotional. He would have massive emotional outbursts heading to school and subsequently needed dragging in.

Within the schooled environment his behaviour become worse. There were incidents between him and other children and his responses were labelled "abnormally aggressive".

As a teacher (and also working with Ofsted) I knew the school's practices and policies that should have been in place to safeguard and support him. However they became defensive and hostile in response to having their flaws highlighted.

William's mum decided that Home Schooling would be the best option.

A Childs Worth

How do you justify a child’s worth?

This shouldn’t be a question but it’s one that is made every day by professionals up and down the country.

We’ve been trying to get Will an EHCP (Educational Health Care plan) for the last 6 months.

We’ve wanted to place him back into school and leave Home Ed behind.

Will has discussed the want to go into school which is a massive deal considering he was a school refuser for 5 years.

Home Education: Williams Progress

I’m really proud of Will and how well he is doing in his schooling. 

Looking back it hasn’t always been easy to educate him at home. 

6 years ago we took Will out of school and started our Home Ed journey. 

A Positive Start

Back to school has pretty much happened for everyone now.

I’ve seen everyone have very mixed feelings about the kids going back.

Me? 

I’m not that bothered. 

Timing, Routine and Free Learning for Home Learning

With the school closures happening as we predicted the thought of teaching the children at home has hit many hard.

For those who have read my previous post I hope that it’s useful and filled you with some encouragement.
However, I’m aware that it wasn’t as clear cut as I initially thought. Some parents have raised a few questions that I need to address.

Teaching through the Coronavirus

The world has gone a little crazy at the moment with the outbreak of Coronavirus.

I can understand why everyone is worried and panicking a little; this is a new virus and the rate that it is spreading is incredible.

At the moment of writing this the current status from the government is to “stay calm", to self isolate if you have symptoms of a new and persistent cough or if you have a fever at 38° or above. They have advised that all mass gatherings be cancelled so there isn’t a grouped spread of the virus and that adults above 70 and people who are medically vulnerable should isolate from now on (up to 12 weeks)

I’m sure at some point over the next 2 weeks schools will close. This will probably happen when the country or the most severe areas are approaching the peak affected number.

This then would leave a lot of parents “stuck" in a difficult position.

As an ex-teacher and a Home Ed parent I still think children should carry on with some education even if they are at home.

Our Week in Home Ed

Some of you may have noticed that there wasn't a home ed post last week. 

To be honest Home Ed went out the window the last 2 weeks because Will has been unwell. 

He was super tired the first week and looked pale so ended up sleeping a lot. Then this week he ended up with a stomach bug that put him out of action for a few days.

However, we have managed to do a fair bit to catch up. So here's what we managed to do:

Our Week in Home Ed

Home Ed this week has been quite enjoyable. 

We started this week with Hannah's parents here. Although Hannah and her dad went out, Will and I stayed at home with Hannah's mum and did our home ed. It was quite nice to show a little snapshot of what it's like. Even if it was a little difficult at times. 

It was, however, a good excuse to throw ourselves into it first thing Monday.

10 Minute Lessons

We’ve had to change how we teach William.

William is no different to a lot of children I’ve taught over the years.

They get to a certain age and they become defiant with different aspects of schooling.

The most common areas are Literacy and Numeracy.
With Literacy it is usually a combination of writing and reading. By Year 5 and 6 they have hit the point where they’re no longer reading to progress. They’ve passed the Biff and Chip book phase, they’re on to free reading and the books are generally bigger.

A lot of the time it is a combination of finding it tedious and slightly overwhelming. They have to read throughout every lesson in one form or another. They can cope with that. Yet, you give them a book and is suddenly a big ask.

Our Week in Home Ed

Home Ed this week has been really busy. It's also been a bit of a slog at the beginning of the week straight after half term but I often find that the busier we are the easier it is to get over the initial slog. 

This week has also been one of those "less adventurous" weeks where our lessons seem to be in the middle and they're a tad dull compared to other weeks. That said, I still feel like we've achieved a lot.

Our Week in Home Ed

Home Ed this week has been really busy. 

We've had a week were we have had to fit life in around our lessons but we have, in some ways, managed to fit it in.

Our Week in Home Ed

Home Ed is great at the moment. We seem to be covering lots of different topics and importantly Will seems do be learning lots and progressing really well.

Although I usually post photos across social media I know I don't share even half of what we do. Equally, I used to feature any main topic highlights on here but, again, it still didn't show what a week in Home Ed was like for us.

So, I thought I would do a new weekly feature where we show exactly what we've been doing.

Home School - Breaking Down Fat

One aspect of Home Education that I love is the free learning that can come from everyday life.

Recently, the boys and I were cleaning and I was doing the washing up. Whilst doing it William asked with I had to use the washing up liquid and didn’t just rinse the plate under warm water and scrubbed as hard as I could.

For a moment I had to think. I knew the science behind it; Washing up liquid contains detergent molecules. These molecules have a very specific structure with a polar head group and a long hydrophobic (water-hating) tail. When you dissolve the detergent in water, it assembles automatically to form a “supermolecule”. The hydrophobic tails interact with one another and want to hide from the polar water molecules. The charged head group, in contrast, wants to interact with the polar water molecules.

However, I realised that this would totally confuse the boys and wouldn’t explain what happens.

Instead I explained that the liquid helps separate the fat and oil from the water. Once done it bonds between the two; one creating a “fat and oil” layer and the other water.

Although the boys understood this I felt that we needed to cover it within a science lesson!

With that in mind I remember a simple but effective science experiment!

Reading when Ready with Reading Eggs

As a class teacher I would have sworn by our education system; it was clearly allowing children to progress and achieve at whatever cost.

As a Primary school teacher and having responsibilities over KS1 I was often found in learning material and termly tracking charts for not only my own class but for others too. In essence, although quite demanding, the tracking of pupil’s in subjects like Literacy showed not only the child’s ability but also the teacher’s strengths and highlighted key lesson components that were either successful or failing. In the latter scenario you could see that the whole class were struggling with understanding and you could find other plans, techniques and activities to bridge that gap. I always found this great and allowed me as a teacher and overseer of other classes to push children to their maximum capability.

The Summer Space Project - Lava Lamps

Following on with our Summer Space project we have been learning about the Moon and also about our neighbour planet Venus.

It was really interesting learning about our neighbour planet that we wanted to explore the other planets in our solar system too.

On looking a little closer at some planets we found that a few have volcanoes on them and it was something that really interested the children.

I always find volcanoes a really alien part of our planet anyway. They are volatile, explosive and because of the different levels of structure they can be quite alien compared to the rest of the life and structure of planet earth.

Despite this there is a certain element of “they belong on earth” when actually any planet that has or had a molten core would of course have volcanoes too.

Volcanism has played a major part in shaping not only planet Earth, but other places in our universe. Though other planets show signs of volcanic eruptions, most seemed to have erupted in the distant past and are inactive now. Both Mars and Venus have volcanoes much larger than any on Earth, and they have erupted huge amounts of lava onto their surfaces in the past.

The planet Venus has a surface that is 90% basalt, indicating that volcanism played a major role in shaping its surface. The planet may have had a major global resurfacing event about 500 million years ago, from what scientists can tell from the density of impact craters on the surface. Lava flows are widespread and forms of volcanism not present on Earth occur as well. Changes in the planet's atmosphere and observations of lightning have been attributed to ongoing volcanic eruptions, although there is no confirmation of whether or not Venus is still volcanically active.

This is the cool part for children I think. The idea that lava, a hot unstable feature that is known to happen here can happen on other planets is rather cool.

We did create our own papier mache volcanoes (like any part with primary aged children should do) but the lava part was still intriguing. It was because of this that I remembered a science activity on how to make your own lava lamps and thought we could combine the two parts; volcanoes and lava and a cool activity!

The Summer Space Project - Marble Planets

Following on with our Summer Space project  we have been learning about the Moon and also about our neighbour planet Venus.

It was really interesting learning about our neighbour planet that we wanted to explore the other planets in our solar system. We would, of course, have wanted to cover each planet individually but that would have been quite time consuming; instead I decided that we would create our solar system and cover a few different facts about each planet.

Each planet is quite easy to recognise according to the colour. In some cases there are some subtle differences but colour is key. I originally wanted to paint directly to circular discs  but where is the fun in that?

I decided then to make a marble effect using foam and paint to hopefully cover the glossy image that planets have!

The Summer Space Project - Venus and Creating Co2

Following on with our Summer Space project  and learning about the Moon we also wanted to look at our neighbour planet Venus.

Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition.

However, it is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars), consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide.

The Summer Space Project - The Moon

We have been busy investigating our Summer Space project and it occurred to me that despite me telling you that it was our topic that I haven't posted all of the fun that we have had!

 

We started with the moon.

 

William had been asking lots of questions about the moon, why it is so large and yet smaller than the earth and why it changes shape.

 

After searching on YouTube I found this great video which discusses the phases or the moon.