There is no 'behind', there is only learning at their own pace
The best thing about home education is that our children can learn at their own pace. Well, it’s one of them, there’s many more but let’s focus on this one today!
I see that it is our job as educating parents to keep offering a range of different activities that more or less cover learning across their developmental needs.
Some children respond to challenges presented to them whereas other children respond to being able to practice in private before suddenly demonstrating new skills or knowledge.
We’re lucky that we can tailor our children's learning opportunities to match their personalities and individual learning styles and preferences.
There is no hurry to cover the school curriculum. Our children don't need to keep pace with the other kids in the class, falling ‘behind’ the class isn't really an issue for us. There is no ‘behind’, there is only learning at their own pace!
Keeping up with their peers isn’t something we should worry about either. Our kids will conquer those milestones in their own way and time. All they need is our support, not endless expectation, judgement and testing.
We simply need to remind them - and ourselves - that home educating allows us to cover more of less the same material but in a different way and at different times than school does. We’re free to develop our educational programs in ways that work for our children.
And that freedom really has to be the best thing about home education: that ability to access a huge variety of different resources and activities to learn whatever needs to be learned.
We don’t have to get the lesson done by the bell or by the end of the week or even this year.
We don’t even have to use the materials in front of us.
If they aren't working for our children we can find something else that might. And keep looking for whatever it is that will until we find it. Schools don't have that ability. Most schools are funding, resource and time poor and their methodologies (and results) reflect that.
Most of us start out home educating our children using the same methods and resources used by schools because that's all we know. And that’s okay, though for some of us we’ll spend too much money and buy materials and programs our kids won’t end up using.
Eventually, as our children help us learn about how they learn best (and that’s usually a frustrating process!), and we meet up with other home educating families, we realise that there are very many ways for our children to learn the basics.
Reading, writing and maths can be learned through playing games, building things, creating and making, getting involved in the community and around the house, exploring, investigating, experimenting, having fun or becoming intensely interested (obsessed even) in something...
It all works. It's all learning. It all builds towards a comprehensive complete curriculum.
