We've decided to homeschool

At the time of writing, we are both doctors working in the United Kingdom.

James works 80% of a full-time training program (80% of 48 being 38 hours a week), and Marie works 50%, which means working Mondays, Fridays and alternate Wednesdays.

Then there's maternity leave just to complicate things.

We have three children aged four, two and 8 months. We also have a two year old border collie, which was the loveliest and stupidest decision we’ve ever made.

We just want to do the right thing.

Like all parents our mission is to optimise our children’s education and development to the best of our abilities, and we’ve ended up making the somewhat controversial decision to try and do this through homeschooling, because we felt that our kids would benefit from teaching strategies, opportunities and resources that would be more easily achieved at home than in conventional schooling.

We also aim to both continue our own professional training at the same time, taking breaks or reducing our working hours as necessary to make it all fit together.

This was not a quick, flippant or easy decision, and we’re not oblivious to just how much work this will entail. We also absolutely do not go around telling everyone that they should do it too. Education, as with anything important in life, is an intensely personal affair, and how it should be conducted varies widely with people’s values, backgrounds and beliefs.

This is just our journey.

The reason for creating this website, and writing this blog, is twofold:

• Firstly, it provides personal motivation and encouragement for us as parents and educators.

By documenting our journey, thoughts and feelings, teaching styles, games and ideas, we will then get to see this (hopefully) wonderful portfolio of all of the effort we’ve invested grow over time. So much time is invested into developing a child’s mind, especially in the really early years, that it’s easy to forget where all those weeks and months went, so hopefully by having this to look back on we can reminisce with fond/haunting memories in years to come! Having this blog to write, for which every activity, lesson and temper tantrum provides fuel and content, also provides us with motivation to keep putting in the effort, especially in the more demanding times.

• Secondly we’d like to help others in a similar position.

From personal experience we can appreciate just how lonely and uncomfortable it is to push the boat out and go against the flow of conventional schooling. The concept of ‘going to school’ is so deeply ingrained into our society that it’s hard to avoid it, even in regular ‘non-school’ conversation, with people saying things like, “ah he’ll be starting school soon!” and “what year are they in? Which schools are you looking at?”.

It becomes increasingly tiring having to summon up the willpower to start defending your position when you start to reply, “well, actually…” So hopefully this website will be a safe, warm, comfortable place for other homeschooling parents to seek refuge from judgement and interrogation, where they can discover new ideas, share their own thoughts and advice, and ultimately help their own kids to learn more cool stuff, which is what really matters in the end.

Homeschooling as a doctor

We’ve never met any other doctors who made the decision to homeschool their own children, and this isn’t at all surprising.

Given the time and energy commitment of professional training and medical practice (which of course is not unique to medicine), the thought of adding a whole new layer of emotional, mental and physical demand into the mix is almost unfathomable, and this is why it has taken us a long time to come to the decision to homeschool our own children.

It goes without saying that the only way this will be even remotely feasible is by significantly reducing our working hours, and therefore extending the duration of our training. Marie for example, is currently looking at over sixteen years of post-qualification specialist training before becoming a consultant surgeon, compared to the usual eight, once maternity leave is taken into account.

It is difficult progressing through training at a slower pace than your colleagues, especially as you see them move on to acquiring greater responsibility and opportunity (and income!). However for us, the increased time this affords us to spend with our kids makes it without a doubt the right decision.

Even if we weren’t going to homeschool, we’d still choose to work less than full time for this reason.

I won’t go into the entire reasoning behind why we’re choosing to homeschool in this post, because that whole discussion can be found here

This is just the beginning

As you can tell by our kids’ ages, they’re not even due to start school for at least another year, but we figured this is going to be such an emotionally demanding and logistically challenging venture that we’d get the planning started early, and try and put together some sort of structure or vision now, so that we’re not left behind when they reach the right age.

Plus, when you’re a homeschooler, you’ve already started.

So please take your seats, class is in session.

M+J