And another thing

That's a strange idea about kids educated from home: they're unlikely to take part in activities if the parental interest doesn't lie there.

Eh? That doesn't work, does it? Take sports.

The gym, I like. The kids think I'm crazy. But I'm not interested in ballet and Squirrel did three years of the torture. I have no particular interest in sailing either, but Shark loves it. And Tiger! Great snorty horse creatures are the stuff of my nightmares! Tiger, she loves them. In England, she regularly and happily sits on a horse, while I sit in the car and happily test the chocolaty bits of digestives.

I don't think I'm alone. I think there are thousands of educating parents out there - school-choosing or otherwise - who encourage their kids in one sport or another while themselves disguising active loathing.

Each week they probably suffer miserably by the sides of rugby pitches, or feel excluded and marginalised at dance classes, or desperately try to weasel out from any parental involvement of school sports days. We still turn out, cheer on, and face up to it all.

But what choice do the children have, especially if it's a school-bound sport?

Of the alternative educating parents I know, one common bond we have is our shared experience of horrible times with sports at school. It makes us all the more determined that our kids should choose for themselves what sports to do, and that their choice should be enjoyment and involvement.

When I was a kid I loved swimming. The swimming pool was one of the first places I went to independently; I can recall the thrill of catching a bus there alone for the first time; every week I imagined myself in training for a triumph great and glorious, even though I was a terrible swimmer and a competitive no-hoper. It didn't matter to me. I adored it all.

Then I attended a school where swimming was a compulsory part of the curriculum. Within a year I was terrified of it. As the hour approached, so did the panic attacks, sweating, shaking, stammering. It was nothing but fear and humiliation. With water. Everything that I'd loved about it, I hated. When it finished, I didn't go swimming again until I was aged 32. That's what school did for my passion.

School did that for all sports. Hockey nearly killed me. Athletics, I loathed. Netball, I dreaded. Tennis, it left largely unscathed, because the PE teacher told us we would never do much, so we may as well use it as an excuse to run about in the sunshine. I could probably pick up tennis again today.

But the worst of all was ice skating. I hated ice skating. With a hard hatred that could slice ice better than hot skates. The six ice skating lessons in 1974 were the only lessons at school from which I played truant. So catch me now, Mrs Watson.


The whole miserable experience has made me sure that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger shouldn't go through that route. But that they should choose their sports, follow their enjoyment, and engage to their comfort and ability levels. Today, we visit the ice rink. Shark wants lessons when we arrive home in England. Tiger and Squirrel already reached the level of their satisfaction.

I don't need to suffer. Ice skating is no pain to me. The kids can do any sport they want, regardless of whether I like it or not. Anyway, Starbucks does a decent coffee, and it's just round the corner from the ice rink.

I can ignore it for only so long

I give in. I must recognise this irritating stuff, although I have tried to ignore it.

Today, it is very annoying. It stops me going out and doing things. We have to stay at home. Here, I am forced to read Horse Pie. I take my revenge. I make everyone watch Simon Schama and the Reformation.


Here's a back lane in Smalltown. It is enough of a hazard normally, what with staggering down there avoiding the sewage and dead dogs and bypassing the knife fights. And I only want a bottle of beer from the Co op. But after a day at home with the little grits, Simon Schama and the Pie, make that two.


I mean, it was alright when it started, last week. At 6am, I knew something had happened because the road was deathly quiet. It was like Smalltown packed up the veneer of industry for the day. After breakfast, the roads filled up with the neighbours, pelting each other with snowballs. The Evangelical Christians and Fundamentalist Muslims were out there in happy alliance lobbing snowmen heads at each other. The Marxist co-operative was not involved of course. They were off up the park fashioning snow workers and making igloos.

But now look. After the cavorting about, the news has changed. Now the snow is not fun anymore. It is the apocalypse, for us all. And I will die in an avalanche if I attempt to buy beer.


And so it's Friday. Grimly Grit has had enough of crunching about all week with cold toes. She has had enough of children shedding gloves all over the floor asking is there another pair and have we got another carrot. She has had enough of listening to the end of the world on the BBC. And the music workshop at the library was cancelled, because today they closed down the ruddy library.

Bring on a plague of locusts and give us all some light relief.

Why home educate? (4) Sport

We get to watch. We get to watch when Shark steps with singular determination to the sailing dingy; when Squirrel twirls, and with that face she thinks a serious ballerina should have; we get to watch how Tiger's eyes light up when she clings to a horse, and we even get to bite our knuckles and pray they don't all fall in, fall over, or fall off.

Every week throughout their lives we see some new and wonderful physical ability. From standing up to chew on the table edge, to falling off the climbing frame in the playground and not dying, swimming for the first time, cycling without pink princess wheels, then archery, abseiling, skiing. This month alone I've watched gym, trampoline, tennis, ice skating, kayaking. And the best of it is I can be right there when it happens. I can seek out any type of lesson that's wanted, we can choose the places and times to go, the instructors we like; and I can look at my little faces delighted and excited as a sudden new skill is found and disbelieved and found again.

Today I watch Tiger at the ice rink. Months ago she clung to the sides, her legs taking off without her. Then I watched tentative toe work, stretching out to the first leg's distance; then the sudden forward movement, one foot in front of the other, and then shooting straight across the ice with that face, that mixture of pure delight, curiosity, strength, ambition, shock, like Where did this come from?

Today I watch while Tiger jumps, really, jumps from the ice, with thin metal blades strapped to the bottom of her feet, and she jumps, up in the air and there is a breath of a gap between the ice and her blades and then down she comes back onto that ice and she stays upright! She actually stays upright! And her face is amazed and inside I scream wildly and declare that is the most stupendous and amazing moment and it will stay in my heart forever. Because now there's no stopping her. And next she'll be twirling and gliding and spinning and doublebackflipping on that ice. And as that vision grips me along with a terrible fear that makes me want to strap her into a helmet and body armour, I am gaping in awe, and I feel privileged and honoured, and with that triumphant fraction of a gap between the ice and her blades, have watched her grow up with a huge bound in confidence and self.

And I am not saying that any parent of a schooled child feels none of these things. Oh no. What I am saying is that home ed gives us all here at the Pile the time in which Tiger and her sisters can experiment, explore, choose and pursue whatever sport they need. I am there not only to set it up for a Tuesday or Saturday morning and then complain about it, but to see it working through and watch those moments of glory when Tiger does not fall flat on her backside for the third time in a row.

If it were only this. Because the local school provides numeracy and literacy hours, but not the thrilling diversity of sailing hours or trampoline hours. And their lack would put me in a mother's role of making up the deficit, probably with emergencies like swimming in the event of a canal or a drunken student party, ten years from now. But I couldn't cram our ambitious range of sports into those leftover weekends and holidays without Tiger giving up on me at 10.30 on a Saturday morning and shouting Mother! Leave me alone! Enough exercise already! Jam doughnuts next!

But most importantly, if Shark, Squirrel and Tiger went daily to school, I simply wouldn't have the imperative that home ed provides. In the land of home ed, the buck stops here. I look to no-one else to come knocking to provide a sports education for Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. I look to theirs and mine own judgements and Dig's overdraft. The knowledge of this responsibility gives me a huge kick up the rear end; it impels me to go out and find these sports and activities, plead for rates or special treatment, and get them all organised, scheduled and done. And I wonder would I do this if my kids all went to school? Because there on a Monday, Shark might come down and shout Muuuum! Have you washed my gym kit? If I don't have it, Miss makes me sit out.

Or worse, she might follow it with, On second thoughts mum, can I miss gym today?

Doing OK

We are running through a good spell, educationally and domestic-wise.

On the domestic front, I have achieved this by not looking. Mostly at places like the sink, floor, all kitchen surfaces, toilets, bathrooms, stairs, bedrooms, places like that. I just walk around with my head held high. This is a strategy that enables life to get better and is therefore recommended for mental health.

Educationally I think we are doing alright too. Especially when, like today, we read about life in a swamp, then I hand over some cash* and the kids are taken off me while I shop for face cream. And while I did that, they did this.




That's right. Skiing lessons. Does this mean I am now eligible to introduce the triplets to the British monarchy at Klosters?

* And these lessons are certainly not full price. Home education is not always as expensive as you might think.