Why community is the quiet revolution in home education
“The most revolutionary thing one can do is to introduce people to one another.” — Howard Zinn
Home education is often seen as an act of quiet rebellion — a decision to step away from systems that no longer serve our children, and to build something smaller, slower, more human. But if Oscar Wilde reminds us that disobedience can...
Creating learning that fits your child, not the system
People sometimes assume home education is about escape, or ‘running away from the system’. As though we turned away from school out of fear, avoidance, or rebellion. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Home education is not an act of retreat. It is an act of creation — a deliberate choice to build something new,...
Home educated children are not “ invisible ”: why being out of school is not being at risk.
In recent years, a troubling phrase has crept into media headlines and government discussions about elective home education: “invisible children”. It’s used to describe children who are not in school, as though being outside the school system means they are unseen, unknown, or at risk. The implication...
There’s been a popular photo being shared on Facebook about how ADHD isn’t really a disorder - it’s a different kind of wiring. A set of traits that once helped humans survive, especially in fast-paced, unpredictable environments. And for many home-educating families like ours, this idea makes a lot of sense.
It’s backed by research too. A study in Nature Genetics found that ADHD traits are...
When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower – Alexander Den Heijer
So often, families come to home education after watching their child struggle to thrive in school. They’re told their child is behind, too distracted, too sensitive, too slow, too much. But what if the problem isn’t the child?
Oscar Wilde wrote, “Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.”
Many of us come to home education through a quiet act of disobedience. We’ve said no to a system that doesn’t serve our children. We’ve stepped off the expected path - not out of...
Learning doesn’t follow a straight line What I used to think learning should look like: Workbooks. Steady progress. Timetabled ‘learning’. Educational apps. A clear beginning, middle, and end. What does it actually look like? Messy bursts of curiosity. Half-finished projects. Sudden leaps after long lulls. Ideas that spark, fade, and sometimes return months later - or not at all.
When I first began working with home-educating families, I was struck by how many parents described the decision as both daunting and deeply necessary. For those raising neurodiverse children, the choice often stems from a desire to prioritise wellbeing—after witnessing their child struggle with anxiety, overwhelm, or a lack of understanding in school settings.
Do you worry about socialisation? Home educated children thrive through hands-on experiences and mixed-age friendships - learning together, not just side by side.
But how do they socialise?
It’s one of the most common questions we get - and one of the most frustrating myths about home education: that our children must be lonely or isolated. It usually comes from a kind place (...
