The healing time before homeschooling.What we can do?

Question

I've read from many homeschooling books that when a child has been "schooled" for some years, and as a result of that he suffered: behavior and learning problems, emotional and attitudinal problems, etc., he/she may need months and even years to "heal".

The authors suggest we leave the kids alone, so they can re-discover the passion for learning and engaging in different activities.

My questions are:

* Have you had the experience with this "healing" process? How does it work? How much does it take?

* How do you know that is time for you to step in and take the lead: how do you know that the kid is in the "healing" process or just doing nothing and learning to be lazy and careless?

* What kind of activities/schedules do you suggest while this process takes place?

Thanks

Answer 1

I know someone whose child went through that. He'd been in school for 4 years and it took him a full 6 months to be ready to learn the stuff that felt stressful. He wasn't left completely alone--books were shared and read to him, field trips galore, weekly visits to the library to peruse things, activities set up that he would enjoy... Just no specific academic pressure. So I guess they didn't really follow the books' suggestions--they decided to offer whatever they could during that time and make no or minimal requirements.

Most people I know just take it easy the first while out of school--requirements, but not a lot--not full out deschooling. It works well if you stay responsive to your child's reactions. I almost wonder, too, if the type of deschooling recommended in what you've read is by those who lean towards unschooling. Some kids, after all that freedom and being left alone, might really resent an imposition of structure or requirements if you want something structured.

Answer 2

Yes, this is commonly known as "de-schooling," though I wouldn't think of it as a healing time so much as a transitional period.

***Have you had the experience with this "healing" process?

Yes, though I tried to avoid it. I had been a teacher and was horrified at the thought of no structure at first, but in the long run my pushing to play school at home just led to stress and burn-out for both my child and myself. I finally gave in and it was the best thing we could do.

***How does it work?

It works by giving the family time to get used to being home together again and give them time to consider the different directions they can take from here.

***How much does it take?

Depends on the person, but general rule of thumb is 1 month of deschooling for every year the child went to school. This seems long to people still wrapped up in school, but it's not really.

***How do you know that is time for you to step in and take the lead?

Judgement call-- but as the family gets used to being home together and doing things together more often, parents can begin feeling out more structured activities-- I wouldn't recommend going from nothing one day to jumping into a full-blown curriculum package the next. I'd say ease in-- it's not a race.

*** How do you know that the kid is in the "healing" process or just doing nothing and learning to be lazy and careless?

Just because they don't do structured school work every day, I wouldn't recommend allowing a child to get lazy and careless. Keep them active-- active with hobbies and activities, with the family, with the community. Don't let them disappear into their room and play video games for 4 or 5 months.

*** What kind of activities/schedules do you suggest while this process takes place?

Schedules are up to you, but I would suggest doing productive activites as well as relaxing. Watch TV shows together or read the same books and talk about them, go to shows, play Monopoly or Scrabble once in a while, give the child more chores and do things together, put on music and joke around while doing them. Take up a hobby together like scrapbooking or gardening or go-cart building-- whatever... allow the child some time for friends and some "doing nothing in particular" time during the day, sure, but like I said, don't allow them to take this time to disappear into their room forever with a Playstation. Encourage the child to take a class in something he's interested in at a community center or somewhere, or to join a sports team or something.  

For parents, it's a good time to read up on homeschooling and re-evaluate their educational philosophies.

Answer 3

Mine only took about a month, durring which my mom offered to get me back into fencing, guitar lessons, and piano lessons (as I kind of fell out of all of this while in school) That helped me get into a weekly routine. I was allowed to relax a bit... do things on the internet, read books for fun (something i rarely got to do while being schooled), go to the movies, the park, etc... Just enjoy myself for a little while... Well, the music got me practicing and studying theory, which got me interested in math again when I realized how much math goes into music. As I read or saw things in movies or TV I started to develop a curiosity about them. I'd read about a concept or idea, or even just come across a word I didn't understand, and I'd immediately want to research it or look it up or just talk and think about it. I read science fiction... Real quality science fiction, and I wanted to learn more about real science. I read fantasy, and historical fiction, and through that I became interested in history. I started writing my own stories, and then my own poetry. I wanted to illustrate my stories, and as I drew pictures I started to think about other things I could use drawing for. I started thinking about designing things like machines or buildings. I again returned to science and wanted to learn how all sorts of things worked, so maybe I could build something of my own. I got into computer programming and robotics, again fostering an interest in science and math. And witht he added time and freedom to socialize with ALL SORTS of people, and not just the people in my age group, I made a lot of new friends and gained a lot of social confidence and a feeling of belonging and self worth. I even have a boyfriend now. He and a number of others I've grown close to are very intellegent for their ages (or just older than me and with more experience) and have been able to grab my interest and get me asking questions about certain things and wanting to study new things, and they've been able to help give me pushes in the right direction in some areas that are tougher for me (like French). I've been in a home education routine ever since the end of that first month of being out of school (about three years) and it has been great. I'd say the healing process is over, but there are still times where I find myself having to stop for a moment and try to undo something that was programmed into me by the public school system. I am much better now socially and academically than I ever was, but I think with every day I spend outside of public high school I get even better... My mind broadens even more. This may not help much, but it was my experience. You just need to get your kid involved in things that will both make him happy and help him learn to love to learn.

Answer 4

We just took the summer off and then started school in September. However we started into it slowly.   We read a lot of books, took walks, did a lot of great science experiments.

I don't think the de-schooling time is for sitting around and being lazy, it's for discovery.   Discovering your child's imagination, discovering your child's likes and dislikes, figuring out their learning style, etc.    That way, when you start homeschooling you have a great start and you enjoy your child's company.

Answer 5

Depends on the family and the kid. The average is a month for every year that a child has been in public school. Deschooling is not just to get rid of problems, whether academic or behavioral. It has as much to do with resetting that willingness to learn, self direction (since they've been ordered around on their learning), and finding who THEY are.

My son had a bad experience in school. He was bullied. He was academically gifted, but not taught to potential (the teacher told him that the things he was wanting to learn were too hard, so he gave up). He was disorganized, and they put that on him, although no one was willing to teach him how to be organized (and face it, some kids don't just pick it up, it must be taught) It took him 18 months to deschool. It looked like goofing off. He played video games. He read websites and surfed the net. He hung out with friends. I'm sure people were horrified. But what I saw was him losing his opposition to learning. I saw him realize that learning can be fun, and if he was interested in something, it was okay to look it up.

It lead us to unschooling. The realization that you cannot make anyone learn is a strong one. As a parent I still don't take the lead. I let him lead, and I work in the wings, providing books and rides and positive supports to keep him looking at what he wants to learn. Kids don't WANT to be lazy. They are only careless because they are young and don't have experience. People by nature are learners, and left alone, they will follow their segues from one topic to another. If you are just going to jump into schooling at home, I don't know what the point of deschooling would be.

I'd suggest letting your son be, and figure out what his interests are. I'd suggest visiting places that are fun and not the slightest bit educational. I'd refrain from quizzing him at those places. Visit zoos and museums if that's what he likes. Go to sports events and take him rock climbing and laser tag if he likes that. Spend a while getting to know who he is as a person.  Stay at home and dig in the yard if he likes. Find your OWN interests and show him that adults also like to learn new things. I taught myself how to knit. My kids arent' the slightest bit interested in learning to knit. But they saw that everyone has the right to interests, and everyone has the ability to learn what they want.

Answer 6

Kids need a little time to adjust and switch gears. We did this. How long it takes depends on the child and the family as a whole. We took about a month to just wind down and then to find our pace. It took still more time to find my daughter's actual grade level, because she was in third grade, but woefully behind in a few subjects, while more advanced in others.

Answer 7

Wow, don't homeschoolers have a lot to say?!

Not first hand because my children never went to school, but i have seen it a lot with other children.  They tend to take a few months, but it's impossible to identify a definite time period.  Every child is different.  Also, it may be that because the adults involved with the child believe this is the case, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It doesn't always happen.  It partly depends on the child's experience of school and their parents' approach.  If the child has an academic tendency, they may feel that school has held them back and they are desperate to dive into what they see as proper study.  In that case, they may be frustrated by having a healing period.  It helps to know the child, and i'm sure you do.

If the child's learning style has combined with the approach of the school to lead to such things as a diagnosis of dyslexia or ADHD, a healing period is more beneficial.  In this case, their style is more different than how schools are able to satisfy their needs than an academically-oriented child is.  Such a child will probably have learned, erroneously, that they are less intelligent and needs to get over that.  I would say they need reassurance and a good understanding of the kind of learning from the parents or adults in contact with them.  They need a more physical approach, with a lot of exercise, such as nature walks, the depiction of molecular structures through dance or the same approach with planets.  A less physical child might be happier reading about the same in a book.

What they often need most of all is a non-judgemental social group with a wide range of children.  We have this of course, but you have to keep your eye on interpersonal dynamics between the adults, between the adults and children and between children.  What we have here is a number of social groups in community centres and playgrounds, outside activities like tree-climbing and skating, more structured activities in larger and smaller groups and very informal small scale gatherings such as sleepovers and what might be thought of as playdates in younger children.  Children who have recently come out of school frequently have preconceptions that they have to be told things to learn rather than finding out for themselves, and also have issues of self-esteem which are tied to academic achievement in quite a narrow sense.  They also sometimes have a self-image as the class clown or in some way disruptive, and tend to think of adults as a better source of information than is probably helpful to them.

There are some games which help.  You might want to try these:

http://www.woodcraft.org.uk/library/item...

I hope you can find people around you who are also home educating and you can get on well with.  There can be conflicts of value.

I hope that wasn't just a load of waffle.  I'm talking from a second hand perspective of course, but i have seen a lot of children of other parents who have come out of school and i can also remember my own childhood.  I tend to use my own childhood as a resource for relating to children, but this doesn't always work because everyone's different.  However, it might help for you to remember your own educational experiences as a child, reflect on those and decide from that what you think might help.  It helped me, but i also found that i was interpreting my experience in an inordinately negative way because i was so in favour of homeschooling, so that might be something to beware.

Another issue is that the parents/adults also need a healing period after their children's experience of school, because they've become accustomed to their child going to school, and this is often complicated by the adult not having worked through their own experiences at school.  Some of us are now second-generation home educators, and i think we can probably learn from them.  As i went to school, i can't help you there.

Answer 8

It took us about a year to de-school, or de-tox as I call it.

We began with reading  and field trips- you know, all those local places you've been curious about but never had the time to explore?

Well, make it a priority  and call it "community ed."or something like that.

From there, an interest in something will appear. Take that interest and GO with it! My child discovered an interest in Manatee. So, our homeschooling journey began there. Off we were to the library to find books and videos on manatee. Then we visited parks and wild life centers to see them up close and learn more. We attended the lectures given by the Park Rangers, whose enthusiasm was contageous. Further research led to a family " Field - trip vacation" where we swam with the Manatee.

Little by little all the old school stuff fell by the wayside as my child followed her curiosity . Learning became a pleasant experience again.

All you have to do is provide an environment that encourages your children to explore their interests, give them opportunities to learn more, and soon you'll be on your way to happy homeschooling!

Don't worry, the academics will happen along the way. (Kids don't stop learning just because their not sitting at their desk or table reading chapter 4 and completing the worksheet!)

Play is an important part of childhood! Kids work out lots of issues through play. This will transfer over into academic areas -you'll see!

Homeschooling is a wonderful opportunity to learn and grow when you remember that you are not teaching a  certaincurriculum, but rather, you are teaching your child. Allowing them to learn according to their interests is the best gift you can give them!