by Alex O’Neill

I watch as my daughter runs around the garden, swinging on a swing, chasing our cat and running on all fours and jumping around over cushions and things (quadrobics it is called apparently).

She is 13. A teenager. Perhaps these things are not what you expect of a teenager, who by all accounts should be holed up in her room, worrying about boys or girls and the latest fashion trend and the homework that needs to be handed in tomorrow. To be fair, she is spending a lot more time in her room on her phone these days, although mostly to share her quadrobics videos with others.

I love the freedom she has with being whoever she wants to be. Home education has taken her out of the pressure cooker of friendship groups and fashion, keeping up with the styles and in jokes of those around you or risk being excluded or bullied. To be honest, she’s always been pretty confident in making her own choices, but in a large secondary school no one can escape the pressure from peers and the need to belong in a group somewhere, even if that means changing yourself or hiding yourself to fit in, keep safe. There’s no need for that pressure in home ed, because you can leave and join groups at will, you’re not forced into the same social circle every day. You can have multiple friendship groups depending on your mood and interests. You can have just one friend and no one is going to notice and call you a loner.

No matter what anyone says I will never subscribe to the notion that the pressure of school helps with resilience… it’s just a coded way for people to make themselves feel better about being forced into an unsafe environment.

It’s half past 9 on a Sunday night and I’m not at all worried about bedtime, or about getting up tomorrow for school. My daughter generally gets to go to sleep when she’s tired (normally around midnight, after she’s had her melatonin medication) and gets up when she’s had enough sleep (normally around 9 or 10). It doesn’t mean she starts the day badly or misses out on things. She just gets to listen to her own body clock.

What we get to do during the days is varied – some days we chill at home, she loves to experiment with different types of baking and she’s quite artistic so spends time drawing and making masks. Other days we head out to horse riding or drama classes, or days out to the pool or an educational day at a local museum. Some days, I have to work or go to appointments and Phoebe spends hours on her phone… not all home ed days are fun or productive!

The huge difference for us though is Phoebe gets to lead her own learning. We talked just this week about how we like to learn – I said I generally like a teacher and to be hands on with learning or use discussion and brainstorming. She prefers to just experiment, dive on in to things and try it out. She’s learned to draw and animate this way – she’s received practically no formal teaching on it, but can draw on paper and digitally way better than most other teenagers I know. That’s generally also how she cooks, learns science, creates stories, and plays music. The only formal instruction she really gets is horse riding, and that’s only because a riding school generally doesn’t like you just taking their horses out for playing around with!

Not every child will work this way, and that is exactly why home education is, in my opinion, such a wonderful and diverse option for our child’s learning experiences. You can offer basically no structure or lots of structure and everything in between. Some kids will love to learn in classes and from tutors, others will hate it and want to just be free to try out things and learn themselves. The most wonderful thing home education offers is choice. Every child deserves to have the choice in how they learn and live each day.

Home education might not work for every child, or every family. There are some kids who will love the structure of school, the chance to be with a large group of friends, and to win the accolades and achievements that school offers. But if your child is a bit like my Phoebe, a child who wants to be free to play and experiment and learn through their own eyes rather than the eyes of others, then you will never look back. I know we haven’t.