When You Realise School Isn’t Working for Your Child

There is often a quiet moment when something shifts.

Not because a parent is looking for something radical or different, but because what they are seeing in front of them simply does not feel right for their child. A child who is anxious, overwhelmed, withdrawing, or slowly losing their spark. A feeling that no longer passes, even when you try to reassure yourself that this is “just how school is.”

In this first episode of The SY-ED Way, we share our own journey of realising that school was not the right fit for our child, and how that realisation changed everything.

We talk openly about the early signs we noticed, the doubts and fears that followed, and the emotional weight of questioning a system so deeply embedded in society. We explore the internal conflict many parents experience, knowing something is wrong while being told to trust the process, wait it out, or push through.

This conversation is not about blaming schools or suggesting there is one right path for every family. It is about recognising that children are individuals, that learning and development are not linear, and that sometimes the bravest step is simply listening to what your child is showing you.

Throughout the episode, we reflect on:

• The moment we realised school was no longer supporting our child’s wellbeing
• How parental intuition often shows up long before clarity does
• The fear and uncertainty that comes with stepping away from what is familiar
• Why questioning school does not mean you are failing as a parent
• How slowing down created space for connection, healing, and learning

This episode is for parents who are quietly questioning, feeling uneasy, or wondering whether there might be another way forward. It is for those who are not seeking perfection or certainty, but honesty, reassurance, and permission to trust themselves.

The SY-ED Way is about learning beyond the classroom, at a pace that respects children, families, and real life. Through calm, thoughtful conversations, we explore what education can look like when it is centred around trust, wellbeing, and meaningful connection.

If this episode resonates with you, you are not alone.

🔗 Helpful Links & Resources

📘 Download our free home education PDF guide
 👉 https://www.thesyedway.co.uk/acalmstarttohomeeducation 

🧠 Grab the Project Based Learning guide that changed everything in our home.
 👉 https://www.thesyedway.co.uk/projectbasedlearning

Transcript

Introduction: Realising School Isn't Working

Speaker 0:08

So, what happens when you realize that school isn't working for your child, but everyone keeps telling you to just wait a little while and see how it goes. For lots of parents, that realization doesn't come suddenly. It builds slowly through meetings,

Meet the Hosts: Allya and Taz

Speaker 0:23

emails, concerns, and they just don't go away.

Navigating Home Education

Speaker 0:27

And a feeling that just something isn't right. My name is Allya

Speaker 1 0:33

My name is Taz

Speaker 0:34

And we are from the Sy-Ed Way. And what we're trying to do is help parents navigate home education together and share honest conversations about education, learning, SEND, and what happens when the traditional system doesn't fit your child. And it's really important, I think, to have these conversations in this kind of environment so that we can really see where the educational system is failing our children. And I think it's really important to also bring on people who are a little bit more experienced as some professionals to see exactly what is going wrong and why there are more and more parents home educating every single day.

Speaker 1 1:15

There's a tremendous amount of distortion when it comes to home education, where a lot of people within your own immediate circle, such as family and friends, will cast doubt upon your decision or your decision-making process when it comes to home education by making you believe that the only way to educate your child is by sending them to school. One thing we've learned on our home education journey is that there are so many different ways your child can learn and grow and become educated. And it's really important that we understand these different options and resources that are available for us to do that. So the whole point of this podcast and everything we're building around it is so that people like you, parents like you, can

Challenges and Decisions in Home Education

Speaker 1 1:57

really understand your decision of whether or not it is viable and good for you to pull your child out of mainstream education and helm educate them. So when we look back on our family journey so far, we look at the earlier signs that were presenting themselves with our son. And one of the signs that we saw was that his learning just wasn't on par with what we were being told by the school. So whenever we would ask him questions or sit with him to understand what he's learnt at school, he was very reluctant to share it with us and almost to the point where we felt he felt embarrassed.

Speaker 2:30

Yeah, and we kept telling ourselves that it was going to sort itself out, we're going to be okay, and there's no way we actually even considered that we were going to start home educating as soon as this. We always knew that we would home educate in secondary school just because of all the horror stories that we've heard. Such a daunting moment for us when we realized that we're going to be home educating at primary age because we weren't ready for it. We were working, we had loads of other things that we were doing on a daily basis in terms of work. So it was really daunting for us. How are we going to make this work? What are we going to do? How are we going to educate him on top of everything else that we do? And this is something I think that so many parents feel so many parents question the capability of home educating, just like we did.

Speaker 1 3:19

The questions we asked ourselves was how are we going to educate ourselves?

Speaker 3:23

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because obviously, as he gets older, it's going to become more difficult. So it's a really daunting feeling. So we ignored like the feeling for a little while in terms of when we saw all the warning signs crop up. But it came to a point where we just thought school's never going to sort itself out. The management is never going to sort itself out. Our son is never going to get ahead. They're always going to see him as that child that's going to be left behind, like many other children in the classroom were. But that's where we had to make that change. So we literally decided that we're going to home educate.

Speaker 1 4:02

We came from the perspective of no one's going to advocate for our child more than we will as his parents.

Speaker 4:07

Exactly. And so if that was a difficult decision for us, if it was going to be difficult, then so be it. It is difficult. Parenting is

Reflecting on Personal Education Experiences

Speaker 4:15

difficult. Everything about parenting is difficult. But we are who is going to advocate for our child best.

Speaker 1 4:22

Exactly.

Speaker 4:23

So let's talk about our own experiences of education. So what school gave us, what it didn't, higher education not being the answer we were promised. And for me, even though it wasn't like the most amazing experience, I still thought that school was okay and it was quite decent. And I think back then teachers and the management were different, where the school actually meant something. Not saying that teachers now, I'm I mean, I completely respect teachers and what they do, but I just think that the amount of pressure that they're under at the moment is completely different to what it used to be.

Speaker 1 5:00

School for me, it was a place of fun. I enjoyed going to school, especially in primary school, and I've got many fond memories of being in school. When I went to secondary school, I made a lot of friends there and enjoyed some of the subjects that I was being taught. But what I realize now in my older age, looking at the school I went to and the schools the way they are, they're very corporatized, they're very much run like businesses now, where there's certain targets and metrics and KPIs and whatever else in between. And I think that is what is impacting a child's learning. My teachers actually, most of my teachers anyway, they actually cared about my learning, they actually cared about my development. And I just don't get that right now for my son in terms of when I look at his teachers, they do their best that they can, but the decision making which comes from the management of the school, that's lacking. And I also had the benefit of studying abroad as well for three years, from the age of 10 till about 12, 13 actually. And it was the same situation there as well. So this is not just a UK school issue that we're trying to address. It's a system that is global, but we're not here to fight the world or anything. We're just here to talk about the UK education system.

Speaker 6:10

I think even when I went to university, it was good and everything, but it's something that I never wanted to do. But back in the day, obviously, you got that kind of pressure that you have to go to university. And what we have to realize as parents, especially coming along with the times, is that you don't have to go to university. You don't have to have a degree to make something of yourself. Because I believe that if you follow your passion and you follow your child, what they want to do, you will get them to where they need to be. And I feel like there's a lot of pressure in this day and age that you have to get a degree still. And I just think that the narrative now needs to change.

Speaker 1 6:46

I totally agree with that because I ended up going to university. I dropped out of university at the beginning of my third year of studying law, and then I ended up in a career in finance, and from the finance side of things, I ended up running my own marketing business. So I never followed a linear path in terms of education. Now, I understand education and universities are important if you're studying subjects like medicine or something very specific, which will definitely lead on to a career in this field that you studied. But for me, when someone says to me, I'm going to go to university and study business management, I personally think this is just my own opinion. It's a complete waste of time.

Speaker 7:23

You're saying that because I studied business management.

Speaker 1 7:26

And how much of it have you used actually running that business?

Speaker 7:28

I haven't. I'll be honest with you. When I first started up my business, I used nothing from my degree to start it up. My passion was just in running a business. And I always knew that I wanted to run a business. And I did, I started a few little businesses which didn't succeed. But I think for every failure, there is some success in something else. So that's my belief. No, I didn't learn anything from my degree. In fact, I found university such a drag that I just did it to get the two one that I got because I just wanted to prove something to my family.

Speaker 1 8:00

Yeah, for me, when I was in secondary school, I think back and I look back now and I'm asking myself, why did I waste all that time studying cligonometry and Pythagoras' theorem and things like that, which I get are relevant and useful and very important if you're becoming a physicist or a mathematical professional or something like that. But for most people, regular people, it's not something

The Role of AI in Modern Education

Speaker 1 8:22

that was needed. I could have spent that time, or the school could have spent that time looking back, teaching me something else, something more relevant, something more real world. And one of the things that really surprises me is with where we are right now in our day and age with AI and everything else as well. There's so many private educators out there, courses, mentors, gurus, call them what you want, who are teaching this stuff, which is a lot more relevant. And I'm surprised that when you look at the curriculum and the syllabus, which you know all these kind of schools hold up as very holy, there's no mention of this kind of stuff in there until the child gets to the point where they have to decide for themselves. These things are becoming non-negotiables now. AI is here, it's not gonna go anywhere, it's not gonna disappear, it's not a fad, it's just gonna carry on evolving and growing and integrating into every aspect of our lives. The way we search, where we used to Google it, now we chat GPT it. So there's a lot of things that need to be addressed, and we can do that by going down this whole education route with our son.

Speaker 9:17

And we shouldn't go against tools like AI, we should use them to our advantage. I'm always using Chat GPT and AI to my advantage in terms of my work, but also with our son's education now. I'm always prompting it to give me more kind of ways to build in mathematics, English, and so on within his project-based learning. So that's really important. You can use, for example, chat GPT to help with the report writing when it comes to the LA, and we'll talk more about that in later episodes. But it's definitely something that we should be using to our advantage and not saying, oh, there's AI

Emotional Aspects of Choosing Home Education

Speaker 9:54

out there and let's go against it, because you can't go against it. It's there now, it's like that's said, it's here to stay exactly. So I want to swiftly move on to the emotional side of choosing differently. So when we first started home educating, it was it was a difficult decision to start with, but also it was really difficult to actually break it to our family. So obviously, we had spoken about it at home, we had spoken to it about with our son, and that's really important as well, actually, before we go on to the family side of things, to actually speak to your own child or children about it, because you need to know where they stand, and especially if they've got friends within school, it's really important for you to open up that conversation and let them know that they are still going to be meeting their friends if you do start home educating. And maybe that child is already wanting to be home educated, but they just think that school is the norm, which is something that our child thought. He thought school is the norm, so there is no such thing as home education, and we had to explain that. And when we put that idea to him, he was really chuffed, like he absolutely loved it, didn't he?

Speaker 1 11:03

Yeah, one of the things that you know, when we sat down and spoke to him about when we were having a conversation with him, it became clear and evident to us that school weren't fulfilling their basic obligations. And we, as his parents, decided to put him out of school and home educate him. And one of the things we went through was this fear of judgment, basically, from other people, families, friends, thinking of are we doing the right thing by our son and is it is he going to benefit from this? And we also had this fear within ourselves, we judged it on ourselves. We put ourselves in that position of as an outsider looking in, and we decided, yeah, there is a bit of a fear element there, but also I'm looking at in a very black and white way how the school is actually what it's doing for our son. So one of the things that that was my concern when I first when we first started discussing home education was the social element side of things. That was just one thing that everyone was concerned of when we spoke to our families, like how is he going to develop social skills, what about his friends, things like that. And that was also one of my main concerns, too. I'm not gonna lie. And when we realized, you know what, there's other ways to educate, and just going back to the point Alia made where we believe, not just our son, but we also believe the only way to get educated to actually learn is to attend school and follow that school system, that school environment. But what we've realized now is that

Socialisation in Home Education

Speaker 1 12:23

you don't have to go to a school to learn certain things. There's so many different ways and techniques and organizations and different methods of learning. It's it's it's learning doesn't have to be confined to a classroom with 30 kids and with one teacher telling you, you know, what to do, how to do it, when to do it.

Speaker 12:40

Exactly. And you find yourself in a space where once you get used to your own local area and the home ed groups around your area, you'll find that your schedule becomes full very quickly, and all you become is like a chauffeur for your child. But it's really good because you see them making new friendships in different groups. So, for example, on Monday there'll be like a different group that he'll see. On Tuesday, there'll be another group that he'll see, and then on Thursday and Friday there'll be other groups, which is so fantastic because you don't come into contact with that many people and that many different age groups. Let's be honest, the school setting is 30 kids in a class and the same old teachers that you see every day. So we understand when people say the social aspect, but honestly, I'd like to reverse that onto the school side of things because I feel like actually school is what limits your social aspect.

Speaker 1 13:37

Definitely. Our son, he talks to people of all ages, from grown-ups when we're out shopping down to kids when he attends all these groups that he's in, and it's brilliant. When we decided to go down this route, our family's reactions were quite positive actually. Yeah, and they were really they're a bit surprised. There's no beating around the bush, they were surprised with our decision. But again, I don't blame them because they grew up thinking school is the only way to get educated, and they're not. Our parents, especially, of a are of a generation where education, going to university, again, that degree was the end all and be all. But overall, their reactions were really positive, really supportive. And in fact, they had quite a few questions themselves around how it works, and we got so much so to where some family members have said, if we can home educate our children, we would as well. But obviously, they've got their own situation, their own limitations and whatnot, which makes it not doable for them. But if they could, they would. And that was really that cleared a lot of my kind of self-doubts that we had, and we we had a lot of self-doubts, didn't we?

Speaker 14:32

Yeah, and also so many, because we started a TikTok channel and we started getting messages from our cousins, friends, and strangers. Yeah, strangers. And it really reaffirmed like what we were doing for our child because all these people are interested in the home education journey. They're probably thinking about it in some way, shape, or form. Because let's face it, education is not what it used to be anymore. It is just going into a classroom, learning your maths, your English for primary year ages, anyway. This is, and there's a lot of other issues around that. There's the fact that there's more sen kids these days, which means more pressure on the teacher. There's other aspects like bullying, safeguarding, and so on. And that hits hard for a lot of parents and a lot of kids. And I actually feel really sorry for the kids that have to go through anything like that because it can really destroy your personality and it can really destroy everything about you for a little while until you come back out of that. And that's one of the points which you know completely break my heart.

Speaker 1 15:40

A lot of people think by having our son home educated, I'll be wrapping him up in cotton wool quite a bit, keeping him away from the real world. And I disagree with that because, as mentioned earlier, he attends a lot of groups and organizations where he's meeting other kids and making friends, but he's doing it in a very kind of open, relaxed, non-structured environment. And as much as structure is important to our daily lives and everything, early primary school kids, in my view, in my opinion, and from what I've seen, they need flexibility because they're still exploring, they're still trying to figure out what they like, what they want to do, how they want to learn. And that's really

The Flexibility and Freedom of Home Education

Speaker 1 16:15

important, rather than stick them in a classroom and applying a one-size-fits-all approach to education, which nowadays just does not work.

Speaker 16:23

Yeah, I think through this whole process, our minds have opened up so much to home education, what we can actually achieve, what we can get out of our son from it, what our son can get out from it, but also just overall the freedom that it gives us as a whole family. We're really looking forward to traveling quite a bit this year. We're going to be traveling to destinations where we can teach him a bit of history, where he can learn about different cultures, he can learn about currencies. So you can bring so many different subjects into just that one particular thing. That's we're really looking forward to that, I think that next stage of our home education journey, because we're still quite early ourselves, aren't we, when you think about it.

Speaker 1 17:06

The plane journey in itself is a physics and a geography and a science lesson in itself. So I'm really looking forward to making him understand aerodynamics and things like that. And one of the things I've noticed is that his passion for learning, his curiosity, has returned so like with a force. He asks so many more questions, he's so much more willing to learn. And just simple things like when he sneezed the other day, he put his hand on his mouth and I said to him, Why did you do that? Just to see what you would say. And he goes, I don't want viruses affecting you as and getting and you getting ill. And I thought, this boy knows about viruses and how it works.

Speaker 17:42

Yeah, it's really nice actually. So let's move on to why this is an anti-teacher or anti-learning, and we're not anti-teacher or anti-learning at all, are we?

Speaker 1 17:53

No, absolutely not. We have a tremendous amount of respect for teachers, especially now in terms of not just their job, but what they have to do, all the extra things they have to do, and it's not something that I'm gonna trivialise or ignore. Teachers have nothing but my anunalia's absolute respect.

Speaker 18:11

But I think that we really need to address that there are learning methods in different ways. It doesn't have to be in a school setting, it doesn't have to be with the same 30 kids day in, day out for the next six years. It doesn't have to be within that strict kind of classroom environment where you're behind a desk. Learning happens absolutely everywhere. It happens with anything that you do, even a shopping trip to the local Sainsbury's is learning.

Speaker 1 18:41

Yeah. One thing that we've realized from this is that we're not anti-learning. Learning is not just, like I said, in a classroom looking at a board or being told what to do. It's about doing, touching, seeing, smelling. All this leads to your learning, leads to your child's learning. And the main kind of issue we have with schools at the moment is the way they're run. Not the teachers itself, not the learning itself, but the way schools are being run. And like I said earlier, they're very much being run like businesses.

Speaker 19:14

Yeah. And wanting something more suitable for our child. So we wanted something more suitable for our child so that he learns in a way that he enjoys, but not just enjoys, but in a way that he understands as well. We want him to long-term understand what he's learning, to put it into practice, and to be passionate about what he's learning. And there might be some subjects which he's not passionate about, maths being one of them, but we found a learning style that works for him and he has now become passionate about it.

Speaker 1 19:46

Yeah, where we were looking at maybe introducing a private tutor or something like that for his maths. We're now applying a whole different way of him learning mathematics, and like Alia said, he's he really enjoys it. And the core thing is, his tutor that he has, she has built such a really good relationship with him that he looks forward to doing the lesson. And she's made the lesson in such a way where it's not just sit down, what's one plus one equals two, none of that. There's dancing involved, there's playing games involved, and that is how he's learning.

Speaker 20:19

So let's go on to talk about what home education actually looks like for us. And I want to keep this really light and real. So learning in our home isn't actually fully structured. So we do not follow the curriculum, we do not follow the way things should be done, should be done. We actually follow our own learning style, one that works for our child, one that works for us, one that works for our whole family. And what we find is even if we go to advanced learning, say, for example, if we're learning about the water cycle or photosynthesis, he learns that best with the way, for example, Taz teaches him. So it's really important to find a sweet spot when your child is learning something, because it's important to see how they are going to learn. Is it going to be through imagery? So we use like a lot of visuals, we use a lot of imagery where he can get to colour, but he also understands it. And days later, weeks later, even, when you ask him the questions, how does XYZ work? he'll be able to tell us because that's how he's learned. He's visualized it and he's learned that way.

Speaker 1 21:26

Yeah, so one thing we realized that he loves arts and crafts. So we thought, why not use the arts and crafts that he enjoys and make them part of his learning for pretty much everything? And like I just said, when he learnt about the water cycle and photosynthesis, I made him draw out the whole water cycle, what happens with condensation, collection, evaporation, things like that. He learned it himself by drawing it. And that was three weeks ago, just before the Christmas holidays. And I asked him just recently, can you describe the water cycle to me? And he did it in It really well. And that's what really surprised me is the way he retains information through his visual learning.

Speaker 22:07

Yeah, exactly. And also the fact that we can learn through conversations. And what we realize as well is that he really learns through conversations, through family conversations, through conversations that we have with him, conversations he has outside within his groups. The other day he asked me what a tsunami was. And I was quite surprised that he asked me what a tsunami was. And we explained it to him, and now he understands. And he asks us so many different questions now, where he literally never used to ask us many questions, to be honest. Now, since he's being home educated, he actually asks us quite a bit. And it's really good because we get to answer them questions. Sometimes we don't know the answers ourselves, to be honest, and we have to Google it or chat GPT. It's nice because at least he's getting our minds going as well. He's he's just he's really come out of his shell since being home educated. And that's the experience that we're actually talking to a lot of people about at the moment, where they're saying that their child, they've seen a massive difference in their child. It's hard work, but there is a massive difference.

Speaker 1 23:13

Yeah, it's one of those things where, you know, yes, it is hard work. Galia said it's very, especially when you're trying to work at the same time and make a living, it's really difficult to juggle it all around. Everyone's situation is different, our situation is completely different to other people's, and there are some people out there who have been much further along the home education journey than we have. But one thing we've learned is to structure ourselves in a slightly better way and really just make sure that the learning is led by our son rather than what we think is best for him. So it's led by him. We take his questions on board, and you he asked me the other day, for example, what is what does space look like? What is in space and how does it feel to be in space? You asked me so many questions, like three questions of that subject, and it's such a huge thing in itself that we're going to be creating a perhaps a two-week long project for him around space in itself. So he can answer, have these questions answered.

Speaker 24:08

And that will include going to maybe like a science museum to the planetarium, so that he opens his mind up and we're actually creating a whole project around it, which doesn't mean just sitting in front of worksheets. It means actually seeing things in action, actually watching certain, for example, like Storybots. Storybots is so good, there's a whole space space episode, which is so fantastic, and your child can learn so much from just episodes, like educational episodes, but also documentaries. Just going off topic here, where we were watching a documentary with him called Animal Kingdom, and that documentary really sparked his interest in animals and why certain animals do certain things, and we were explaining it to him as we were going along.

Speaker 1 24:57

Yeah, one of the things he did off the back of that was we've got a cat, and he looked at her, drew like her picture, and decided to label the body parts like her stomach, her liver, things like that. And obviously I helped him along with it, but the fact he knows where the body parts

Why We Created This Podcast

Speaker 1 25:13

go, what the body parts do, he never knew that as such. And he's learning by himself with guidance from us at the same time.

Speaker 25:21

So I want to now move on to why we created this podcast. The reason we've created this podcast is because we feel like it's such an important sort of voice to have in this kind of home education area because we feel like there's too much noise online, where there's too many opinions, there's too much going on. And I think that it's really important to condense all that and to bring it into a podcast for listeners to listen to. It's not just for home educators who are at the beginning of their journey or who are thinking about it, but it's also for home educators who are much further along the line because we all have bad days. We all have moments where we question ourselves again, we all have moments where we feel like we failed or we feel like we're not doing enough. And that's why it's really important to have this podcast. I think there's too much fear as well. So, in terms of people being afraid to home educate, we want to show you that it's not that scary. Once you get a routine going and once you see your child thrive, you there's going to be no looking back. You're not even going to question whether I should send my child to school again, because it you get to a point with it all where you see your child coming so far.

Speaker 1 26:41

Yeah. One of the things I came to realise, I attended an event just recently, and one of the speakers there they run an online virtual school, and according to their stats that they've researched they've carried out, 40 to 50% of parents in the country are now home educating or leaning towards home education, and that number has gone up year on year, and there's a reason for that. You know, there's a whole kind of emphasis around home education and why it's becoming more of a viable option. But there's again what Lakelia said, there's too many conflicting views, too much fear, too much noise. So what we want to do is condense everything down and make this a place or a space where people can get guidance, share ideas, and do what you know they need to do for the betterment of their child or children.

Speaker 27:28

Yeah, I think we definitely need a space like this for parents to feel less lonely as well, because I think home education, it is a kind of lonely place until you find your kind of home education groups. But even then, when you're at home and you're teaching your child, or if you're in the library teaching your child, it is quite a lonely place because you think, am I the only one that's doing this? I don't see any home education people around, and it does become quite lonely from that point of view.

Speaker 1 27:55

Do you get funny looks when you're out and about with him during the school day from people?

Speaker 27:59

No, not really, actually.

Speaker 1 28:00

Oh, have you?

Speaker 28:01

Oh my gosh, yeah. I think you would though, isn't it? Because the norm is that they have to be in school, so it'll be like, oh, is he not feeling well? Or they're probably coming to their own assumptions, but that's where it's important to not really care what people think.

Speaker 1 28:14

Yeah, and educate them in things we need.

Speaker 28:16

Yeah, I think that's where we as humans can go wrong, where we care too much about what other people think.

Speaker 1 28:21

Yeah.

Speaker 28:22

So if you're questioning school right now, you don't need to have all the answers. The answers will come slowly to you. When you start your journey, you will start answering your own questions. You'll get answers from other parents, you'll get answers from professionals in this field. You're allowed to slow down. And we really advise slowing down, especially like when you've deregistered your child from school, you need to have a couple of months where you completely de-school.

Speaker 1 28:53

Yeah, and that is, I think, the most important aspect of if you're thinking about home educating your child and you're thinking of pulling them out, don't send that email off to school saying you're going to deregister them and then the next day throw a whole heap of learning on them and yourselves. Don't do that. It's really important that you and your child or children de-school. It could be a few weeks, it could be a couple of months. You judge it as best as you can, but let your child and let yourself just decompress a little bit and get back into the swing of things because what we've realized with our son is that his passion for learning virtually evaporated by going to school, and then we wanted him to come back to a point himself within himself where he was curious about the world and he was curious about wanting to learn again. And when we started seeing that kind of that spark come back again in him, that's when we decided to then start building back his education, and that took a few weeks. It didn't happen straight away or overnight. So if you are thinking about homeschooling or home educating, and after you send that email to the school or the letter to the school, make sure you take that time to step away and just be with your child and your children.

Speaker 30:03

So over the next few weeks, few months, we're going to be having conversations with other parents, professionals, and advocates, people with lived experiences and expertise to explore this from a range of angles. And we have got some really exciting guests coming on to our podcast to help parents see it from different angles. So, for example, from a legal perspective, from a perspective of a teacher leaving the school system to home educate her own child, and so on. So these are really important perspectives I think that we need to understand as parents to better home educate our children, but also to understand how the system is actually failing and why parents are pulling their kids out at such a rapid rate in this day and age.

Speaker 1 30:48

Yeah, some of these guests, we've spoken to them already, and so they've they really helped us along in our first sort of few days and first couple of weeks of

Encouragement and Resources for Home Educators

Speaker 1 30:56

our home education journey, and it'd be really good for them to share their experience, their expertise and their knowledge with not just with ourselves, but with you guys. So if you are thinking about home education and taking that responsibility on what you need to know is that you're not alone. There are loads of people out there in a professional capacity that can really help you.

Speaker 31:15

We've shared some resources which we're going to be linking below, and these resources are going to be helping parents all the way from if you're thinking about home education for parents who are already home educating. So do check out the links below. But we're also really excited to be putting to you that we're actually building a community for parents where they feel heard, where they feel safe, where they feel that they can get resources, get additional kind of information, and we're creating this in the background. So we're really excited to be launching this. It's something that I think that a lot of parents would love to be part of because it's just it helps bring us all together, it helps ideas go back and forth, and it's going to be a really calm community space.

Speaker 1 32:00

I think the biggest value of this community is going to be about the sharing of ideas between parents. Like I said, we don't know everything about home education, and loads of parents are out there who know a lot more than us, and there are some who are probably who have run out of ideas, who have been along in the education journey, the home education journey for a long time. So I think the sharing of ideas, the collaboration, that

Conclusion: You Don't Need All the Answers Today

Speaker 1 32:21

camaraderie, as you know you want to call it, I think that's what's really gonna be the most valuable thing of joining this community.

Speaker 32:28

So at the beginning of this episode, we asked, what happens when school stops working for your child, but you're not sure what the alternative even looks like? If you're listening to this and you're in that place right now, feeling uncertain, overwhelmed, or second guessing yourself, we want to say this clearly. You don't need to have all the answers today. You don't need to rush into decisions, and you're not failing by asking questions. Questioning doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. Often it means you're paying attention. So we're going to be sharing more conversations like this here on the podcast with other guests and over on our page for parents who want to keep exploring these ideas more generally. So thank you for listening, and we're really looking forward to bringing the next podcast to you and just really excited to be able to give you more information and different perspectives.