Nine years ago today, I launched The Do Try This at Home School, not knowing that almost a decade on I would still be home educating my children, and I would be a whole lot older and wiser, with aching joints and a few more wrinkles and grey hairs!

My grandad, a former headteacher and one of the biggest mentors in my life, was seriously ill with cancer at the time I had the idea for a new way of supporting my son, but still made time to chat with me about the whys and wherefores of the education system, and how it was not working for so many children. He would often say that school was “interrupting children’s education,” and he was right.

So, when I walked into his house at the end of June and said I was going to home educate my son, and create The Do Try This at Home School, where children would be encouraged to learn the things they love through play and experience he said, “Bloody good idea! Do it!” And that was it! I did it.

My grandad died soon after I created this space, so he didn’t get to see much of what we created, but all of his mentoring has stuck with me, and I hope that I have done him, and my Nan (also a teacher), proud.

I can’t say that home education has all been picnics and adventures, it hasn’t, some of it had been really, really tough. I’ve had “the wobbles,” I’ve struggled, I’ve worked to the point of exhaustion sometimes, but I don’t regret my choice to remove my children from the mainstream system, as and when they’ve needed a different approach to learning and life.

I have of course been learning non-stop alongside my children for all these years, and here are 9 things that I have loved and learned with them over the first 9 years of The Do Try This at Home School.

1. I really like my children, and I love spending time with them. They are extremely funny, talented, caring, multi skilled and interesting. In short, they are thoroughly nice people.

2. My knowledge of history, gardening, music, art and science have reached whole new depths, and I have had many experiences where I may have been slightly out of my comfort zone in the name of home education!

   

3. I doubt myself much less now. At the beginning of this experience, despite being a qualified teacher, I worried that I wasn’t doing enough, and sometimes I still worry, despite all my children clearly thriving and being blooming geniuses!

4. It’s ok for me to thrive alongside my children, in fact, it’s essential that I do. Home education has helped me to drop a lot of those self-limiting beliefs that I learned in the education system. Since I’ve been home educating, I have written and self-published 6 books, I’ve been published in newspapers and magazines and won writing competitions, I’ve created and run a charity which supported seriously ill children and their families, I’ve been on BBC radio, live from the studio on several occasions, AND I’ve created a very small holistic therapy business that works around my family’s needs.

5. I have more time to spend with my children. The average time a child spends in school each year is 1170 hours, not including breakfast clubs or after school clubs. The amount of time they get to spend in school developing skills in, and learning about, the things that they love is debatable. I get to spend time with my children, and they get to spend uninterrupted time learning about the things they are passionate about. We don’t have set learning times, they are just constantly learning, day and night, weekends and weekdays.

6. We have made some lovely friends: I must confess that for a while, home education was a bit lonely, partly because my children reused to go to groups, and partly because none of my friends home educated. But as time has gone by, and certainly in the last couple of years, we have made some really lovely home ed friends, and my children spend a lot of time with them each week. It’s nice to chat with people who are in the same position.

7. Our pace of life is slower, and childhood is encouraged: We are not rushing to get everyone out of the door at 8am in the morning, we cook meals from scratch (sometimes, not always!), we grow lots of our own food, which requires a huge amount of patience, you cannot rush a potato, and I encourage all of my children to play as much as possible and just be children.

   

8. I have found my voice, and I have even been known to get involved in a bit of politics when I’ve had to.

9. Lastly, I have re-evaluated what is important in life, and health and wellbeing are definitely at the top of that list, along with a big dose of joy, humour, curiosity and love.

Home education is not for everyone, I know, just like mainstream education is not for everyone. But I have to say, I’m very grateful to my children for showing me that there is another way to do life.