ROFL!

And not a Daily Mail reader 

Hehe!  It's silly all the stereotyping that teenagers have to put up with, parents or not.  I think they get a really raw deal from our society, I mean most young people are perfectly decent, caring individuals.  But just cos the daily mail says that a group of teenage friends hanging around outside their local chippy must be murderous thugs just waiting to knife somebody, ppl believe it.  >:(

I wasn't a teen mum (nearly 21) but I looked very young for my age, so people usually assumed I was and treated me accordingly.  (Until I was about 24, I still got asked if I was still in school  :-[)  They were always surprised to hear that I was in a relationship with my son's father!  Everyone always assumed I was a single mum to start off with, so I made a point of mentioning OH.  However they would then ask if he was DS's dad!

I just thought I would ask my question in this thread, instead of making a new one, so hope no one minds!

I was wondering what happens if your home schooled child ends up wanting to do something like….become a doctor or lawyer for example? Doesn't making the decision to home ed them then take away some oportunities for them (as well as give them lots more)? Its something I've been thinking about a lot. I love the benefits of home schooling, but I feel that its not really my decision to make. IYKWIM. I think I'll take a bit more of a middle way approach and have the unschooling time when they come in from school and in hols and weekends and then they have the all the oportunities.

Just wondering what all the home ed'ers thought 

Uma x

Uma that is a really good question, it is the point I keep trying to make about unschooling, but I can never seem to put it the right way!   :-\

As far as I'm concerned, it was never my decision to be HE'd or unschooled, it was a choice made by my parents.  Although I can see the good points of HE, this is my ultimate problem with it.  Many people would say it doesn't matter, because you can train for a particular career later on, BUT adults have to pay for their education.  Plus what do you do in the interim years, when you could be embarking on a career that you love?  Don't want to bang on about my own situation too much, but I have ended up doing a variety of dull and low-paid jobs while I study for an Open Uni degree (which is costing me twice - both upfront in fees, and because I am not qualified to earn a decent wage until I have completed my studies.)

However, I have 2 sisters and a brother, also HE, who have been very successful academically and career-wise.  The difference between them and me tho, is my parents arranged for more formal schooling for them as soon as they reached teenage years.  One sister works in IT, the other works for a global engineering company, and my brother is at Uni studying Avionics.  So you can have it both ways, but you need to ensure that your kids get the right bits of paper, and more importantly, the right kind of study skills and confidence to pass A levels or equivalent, so they can get into uni (and succeed there.)  Basically there comes a time when you have to stop 'unschooling' them and start 'school at home'.  Otherwise, yes you are going to be limiting their path in life.  Personally I don't think parents have a right to do this; I don't want my son to be limited when it comes to future career and study choices.  (If he chooses to become a shelf stacker in Tesco's, well that will be his choice, and it will be a free choice IYSWIM. As long as he is happy!)

Uma, your approach of having 'unschooling' at home, as well as your kids going to school, is just what we are doing with DS and it works really well for us.

Well, I don;t really think the home ed we do is 'unschooling' as such, but for us, I can't see why it would be a problem if my kids wanted to be lawyers or doctors because as soon as they knew that, we'd look up what 'bits of paper' they needed and then work towards them in whatever way seemed appropriate at the time, whether that was college, correspondence, private tutor or independently. We'll be discussing ideas of possible careers as the kids get older so we'll keep in mind all their ideas and have an idea of the kind of direction they are leaning in. If they decide around the time that schooled kids do, they can do exactly as schooled kids do. If they decide later, then they'd have to do anything additional they needed later, exactly as a schooled child would ahve to if they changed mind about their direction in later years.
We're pretty much thinking anyway that we'd like the kids to do at least English and Maths GCSEs as they're required for most things, after that it all depends on them.
As for the decision to HE or school - I don;t see why it takes more responsibility to take the decision to HE than it does to take the decision to send them to school. You're still making a huge decision about their future that affects the rest of their lives, and I hope no parent does that lightly - though I know only too well that some take such enormous decision based on nothing more than 'this is what everyone does so we'll do that' (NOT suggesting that anyone here does that, but I'm sure we all know people that seem to do this!). But who else has the right, responsibility and authority to make decision about our children? I believe that only I have that for my children.
Yes, children can later say they didn;t decide to be home educated, but then many children also would say that about school, or about many other decisions their parents made  which affected them for good or ill - such as moving house, the jobs the parents do or don't do, how many siblings they have. Surely, as a parent you can only do what you think is best with the info you have at the time and review it regularly?

I agree with Liz, and would just like to add that if every (or even a majority) of schooled children came out knowing what they wanted to do and ended up doing a job they loved rather than dull, underpaid, undervalued work then this might be valid but they don't do they?

Some people know what they want to do from teenage years, others take longer.  I never knew so drifted.

B
xx