‘Deschooling Kiki was a bigger challenge than we bargained for’
The summer of 2013 was one of the worst summers of our lives. Kiki was hardly eating or sleeping. Her ability to remember anything was zero. Learning had given way to blind panic both for Kiki and us. We also found out that the teacher Kiki was scheduled to have in her next year was affectionately referred to as “tough”. We all had teachers we didn’t like, or teachers that didn’t like us (and Maddie had gone through her fair share), but given Kiki’s fragile state, this news was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We were beside ourselves. We felt utterly trapped. What were we going to do? The local state schools had everbigger classes and, given her shyness, we feared Kiki would have been eaten up and spat out. We couldn’t even consider looking for a different private school, as she was too far “behind” to be accepted. She was only seven and we already felt like there were no options open to us.
A couple of weeks before Kiki was due to go back to school, we bought her the most beautiful puppy. We had gone to town with the whole surprise element, driving more than 400 miles to Cumbria to collect a tiny black and white cockapoo. Back at home, we blindfolded Kiki and all the family gathered to watch the reveal. As we lifted her blindfold and Chi Chi was put into her arms, it was a truly beautiful moment: tears, disbelief, the works. Everyone thought it was the cutest thing. But I was feeling something different. I was more worried than ever. The way Kiki broke down just seemed too extreme. She cried with joy. But then the crying just didn’t stop. And within the same breath of having fallen in love with her puppy, she told me later she was worrying about going back to school. It was like all the fear, worry and anxiety she’d been hiding had poured out and on to her new puppy.
A week after Puppygate, we were both downstairs while Kiki was having a lesson upstairs with her tutor. After the lesson, her tutor asked, with a serious face, to talk with us. My heart dropped as I was so fearful she was going to tell us something terrible. We let Kiki go to her room, and her tutor went on to say, “I really do think Kiki will struggle this coming year –
I think it could possibly leave her very unhappy.” Then she asked the killer question: “Have you heard of homeschooling?”
I immediately said something like, “Homeschooling? What the hell is that?” I had a rush of excitement. Could we have an answer to our prayers? Joy was accompanied by dismay. Here was another confirmation that we had failed her. We didn’t want her to fail within the system, but were we about to set ourselves up for an even bigger failure by stepping outside of it?
Although I had huge fear, I had faith (albeit blind faith) that we could pull this off. Having gone through life with nothing more than one O-level, I felt there could be an alternative way through. Mark, I think it’s fair to say, had more skin in the game when it came to academic qualifications and how they directly helped him. As we sat on the cusp of taking one of our girls out of mainstream education, we were both on the same page, but we were using different pens. As soon as the tutor left, we searched online and discovered that all we had to do was deregister her, just like that. It was like the heavens had opened and all the angels were singing.
I will never forget the look on Kiki’s face when we told her she wouldn’t be going back to school. I thought I’d understood just how unhappy she had been. But when I saw her crumple up with relief, I realised that her feelings had run deeper than we’d feared. I knew in that moment that we were absolutely doing the right thing. I was elated. I could right all the wrongs I believed I’d done. I could assuage my guilt. Maybe, I could get back the happy child I had before she went to school.
The first time I met up with any homeschooling parents was at a homeschool park group. I’m not sure who was more nervous, Kiki or me. We certainly held each other’s hands very tightly. It was a bit like a mother and baby group for older children. It’s quite rare to ever “drop off” your kids in the homeschool world. Kiki was ecstatic as she realised I wasn’t handing her over to anyone; I would be in the vicinity the entire time. While she was relieved, by contrast I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb. I’m sure I must have looked to
them like the other privateschool parents had looked to me, back when I was failing miserably as a “perfect prep school parent”: neurotic, on edge, worried about getting everything right.
I remember thinking, would I ever find a mum tribe that I would feel comfortable with? Everyone I spoke to that day recommended exactly what we’d heard from countless other quarters: watch this Ted Talk by a man called Sir Ken Robinson on how schools kill creativity. Sir Ken [who died recently] was a maverick educational adviser to the Government, with a specialised focus on the arts, and a turn of phrase that captured both my and Mark’s imaginations. He immediately became our secret crush. It felt like he had got inside our heads and articulated exactly what we needed to hear, or maybe what in our heart of hearts we always knew to be true, but assumed was absolutely mad of us to think or entertain.
Next, we read John Holt’s book, Teach Your Own. A lot of it is a bit outdated now, but his basic philosophy got me excited as I felt I had something to pin what we were planning on to. Reading his book gave me confidence that, with trust and patience, we could “facilitate” Kiki’s learning in an exciting, gentle way. But first we were going to have to go through something pretty scary. Holt, and almost every homeschooler I’ve ever met, advocates a period of “deschooling” for any child moving from the school system to homeschooling. This basically means for every year a child has been at school, you give them a whole month of total freedom, where they choose exactly how they spend their day, with no formal learning at all. This works as an adjustment period for them to transition from formal learning to child-led learning, the belief being that for them to really get the benefits of homeschooling, they have to decompress and disconnect from the effects of “school ways” and find a new normal. Of course, the parent has to, too, and for Mark and me, that was a bigger challenge than we bargained for. We had to hold our nerve because, as the daughter of my parents’ friends said, it wasn’t only Kiki who was shell-shocked by what she had been through.
We had become institutionalised into thinking that every minute of our child’s life had to be taken up with being “busy”. It’s hard when you have spent so much time firefighting, pushing, cajoling and encouraging, to suddenly stand back, lift your hands up and say, “Take your time, find what makes your heart sing.” That is effectively what deschooling is all about. Kiki had no idea what made her heart sing, she didn’t know how to self-start anything, because she hadn’t been given the space to do so. Even weekends (a time you’d be forgiven for thinking was meant for family and playtime) had been spent doing extra homework and tutor sessions, with us desperately trying to push things into her brain – a brain that was eventually so befuddled it had zero desire to take anything in.
Sundays were usually a write-off, too, because her anxiety about Monday mornings and the return to school would be off the scale. Thank God for art galleries and cinema, as those little outings were the only real times of respite. Later, cinema and art became the centre of everything for Kiki. A happy ending was on the horizon.
A TOP TIP FOR ALL PARENTS
Stop, take a deep breath and stay calm. No amount of worrying or panicking is going to make the situation better. It will only make it worse, and your child will undoubtedly pick up on your stress. For the new homeschooling parent, it’s important to remind yourself that you have time and the law on your side. It’s absolutely fine to hunker down and allow yourself time to adjust to this “new normal”. Contrary to what the experts and educationalists have been saying in lockdown recently, taking time to recalibrate your child’s education is not going to condemn them to the slag heap of learning. That said, it is very hard to hold your nerve when all around you exams are being taken, SATs being assessed, and numeracy and literacy targets being hit.
Remember, if you’ve taken your child out of mainstream schooling out of necessity or choice, stay firm and ignore the naysayers and doubters. You are about to take more responsibility for your child’s learning, not less. It’s much more challenging to be microscopically responsible for every part of your child’s education rather than essentially handing all (or most) of the responsibility to a school. Remember, it isn’t written on a tablet of stone that learning has to happen only between the hours of 8.50am and 3.30pm (home time).
MAKE THEIR HEARTS SING
“Get to know what truly makes your child’s heart sing” is the single best piece of advice if you are deciding to change the course of your child’s learning. Every passion or hobby has the potential to become the origin story of a laterchosen course of study (or even a career). A love of films – film studies – working in film or television; a love of fashion – textiles and design; a love of big buildings or machines – engineering, architecture or surveying; a love of console games – coding; a love of complicated stories and politics – law, etc. So, our advice from the outset is: get to know your kids in whatever way possible. Become expert in their passions, immerse yourself in the things that excite them. Once you know their passions in more detail (in a 360-degree way), you’ll feel more equipped to then explore this passion in countless different ways through various other subjects and novel approaches. If done correctly, deschooling can be the first step in the right direction to getting to know your child on a much deeper, more meaningful level. This is an edited extract from Honey, I Homeschooled the Kids by Nadia Sawalha and Mark Adderley (Coronet, £14.99)
‘Maybe I could get back the happy child I had before she went to school’