How we got here.

I knew we were in trouble when the preschool teacher informed my twins they needed to exercise their minds as well as their bodies. By primary school they were beyond redemption, cooly informing their poor teacher they didn't come to school to learn; they came to socialize & play sport. I am not going to comment. I'm university educated; you can just imagine what I thought!

By the time Cass, who was a late baby, came along I was working the remedial literacy program at the school & had lost all faith in the education system. I was seeing far too many bright kiddies who not only couldn't read but did not have the basic tools to help themselves. I had three dyslexics myself so I knew how frustrating it was to understand & still be failing in the system.

Cass, who spoke her first full sentance at just 5 months & was walking by 8 was obviously a bright & demanding little spark. She was very like her oldest brother who got tagged g&t very early & then left to drop like a stone through the gaps in the system, ending up a bored, frustrated & very angry young man. I can't blame him. I remembered all too clearly how stressful trying to get anything done was & dealing with a school that just didn't want to be shaken out of its complacency for any reason, no matter how many children got damaged in the process. I felt too old, too vunerable, too exhausted to go through all that again.

My dearly beloved had refused to even consider home schooling; that old bogey 'socialisation' terrified him. I considered my options. The local school was going downhill fast. I spent enough time up there to know discipline was getting more difficult every year & I came close to pulling Liddy out when the jealous bevvy of grade 6/7 girls began bullying her simply because my sports minded daughter had worked & trained hard enough to start making state teams & spend weeks out of school at different meets. The thought of Cass, without any older sibling around to protect her, in that environment horrified me.

I decided a little deception was called for. I decided not to send Cass to preschool. Hubby raised no objections. It was my job to do the school thing & I just said we had enough pre~school stuff from the older kids (who all started at home) for us to be going on with. What I didn't tell him was that I was concentrating very much on Cass' pre~reading skills. Reading is the key to everything & given how distractable Cass is & was I just knew she would have trouble in a regular classromm where so many much more interesting things were happening.

Cass' weakness is chocolate. I purchased several LARGE packets of choc bits, made an alphabet of lower case letters that would fit easily into a child's hand & proceeded to bribe the child to read with chocolate. I must say she was highly motivated. I wasn't in the least sure that my ruse would work but I figured if a remedial program worked for the less able academically a bright child should do very well on it. Cass did. She began reading very quickly ~ & it didn't cost me very much in chocolate after all.

I then went to my dearest & told him we had a problem; what was our reading daughter suppossed to do in school for the first 6 months while the rest of her class caught up? Thankfully he saw we had a real problem & while nowhere near convinced agreed a year's homeschooling was in order. One year became two, then three. Cass was testing consistently high & I made sure she socialised.

I was madly insecure & Liddy was chaffing to come home to school too. Cass was reading The Lion, The Witch & the Wardrobe at the beginning of grade two. Without wanting a debate on Harry Potter she began wading through those books, well above her age level, & followed with all the rest of the Narnia books. The school thing was still very much my bunny but then the shock came. Dearest began discussing how we could bring Liddy home to school. He began talking about what a difference the homeschooling had made spiritually & how much easier discipline was when we weren't constantly battling a school's input. I was shocked out of my little cotton socks! Liddy came home to school for her last 4 years of high school.

Do I have days when I want to drop my daughter off at the nearest school that will have her? Yep & for sure! Do I ever wonder if I'm doing the right thing? Often. Would I put her in school? Not for any reason I can presently envision! You see we have kept tenuous links with the school for sport & music & it was Cass, not I, who decided choir was no longer for her. Why? Because a change of teacher resulted in an overlarge, disorganized, badly behaved class where very little learning took place any more. Apart from the headaches the noise gave her it made her very bad tempered. 'They're just noisy & bad,' Cass snarled, cross at giving up an activity she had previously enjyed very much. Out of the mouths of babes!