Home Educator Series (part 3)
...the one where you learn to deal with negativity
Wouldn’t it be lovely, if in every aspect of life, when you did something “different”, other people (either those close to you or strangers) dealt with that by one of the following ways:
Recognising it’s not their life nor does it impact their life in any way, so mused on their opinions in private;
Asked you questions about it, so as to better understand the “difference”
Zipped their zippables
Now, home education is one of those differences in life that people cannot help but have an opinion on. I will be honest and tell you that the vast, vast majority of people I have mentioned the fact I home educate to, have had nothing but positive encouragement to say. I am more often than not met with enthusiasm and curious questions.
Perhaps it is because I am confident in my decision, perhaps it is because I talk about it with a sense of pride. Perhaps it is because most people are generally nice people.
However…
There will be a time during your home education journey that you will come across negativity. Perhaps it is directly to your face, perhaps it is muttered behind your back, or perhaps it is comments you find online. You will come across it, you will encounter it.
When people encounter something “different from the norm” they tend to be suspicious, but more often than not, their opinion comes from a lack of understanding. They may have heard the general consensus opinion on home education and will parrot it as if fact. After all, if the majority believe something, it must be true… right? They may also wish the option of home education didn’t exist, so they didn’t have to make a choice.
I have heard other people’s children tell my sons that home education is terrible, that school is the only place to learn, that their mother is a teacher so she’s the only one qualified to teach people, that you can’t socialise unless you go to school (I’m not even going to touch that battered old piece of trite that home educators hear time and time again). I think it’s very clear, that all of these opinions the child has, have come directly from their parents. People parrot what they don’t understand.
And my question would always be, to the “home uneducated” - why does it frighten you so much that I home educate? What are you scared of that means you need to pass your negative opinions off as facts? Why does the education of other people’s children bother you?
But the fact is, you (and I) will never know the answers to these questions. People stuck in a mindset spiral aren’t open to being educated about the topic, and you would be wasting your time & energy in desperately trying to.
So my advice to you would be, answer the engaged and interested questions, ignore the “collective norm mindset” accusations. Hold your head up with pride.
Your beliefs do not require anyone else’s approval or validation