You did ask

When that question comes, Why do you home educate? I usually look at them, and size them up.

Are you a person I'd like to make uncomfortable? Who would you be if I broke through your politeness? Should I inflict on you the full-steam-ahead two hour lecture?

But I'm usually feeling kind. I wave it away, and give a flippant response. I can lie in bed until 10am.

Maybe I kept my mouth shut one too many times this week. I'm feeling a discharge coming on.

I've seen the inside of a classroom.
Enough. I have too many urgencies.

I wanted the aspirations of my children to come first.
Enter any institution and a child's needs, wants and relationships must be a lower priority than the workings of the organisation.

Sure, the administrators say the child is being listened to, and that everything is happening in the child's best interests, but in the end, the situation is only ever progressing one way - one that suits the institution. The child has merely to be manipulated to reach a stage of agreement and compliance with the paperwork.

It sort of pissed me off, watching the techniques for how this happened. And I wanted to be straight when I dealt with my kids.

I wanted my kids to be individuals.
I hated to think of my children sucked into a mass conveyor belt system. One likes fish, one likes horses, and one I haven't yet figured out. They're different, dammit.

And I didn't want them feeling powerless, or being coerced to fit in to a system from the age of five - one that had sanctions, humiliations and punishments for not fitting in.

I want to have fun.
Okay, I know I am a grown woman, but I want to enjoy being alive. I want to get out of bed at 4am to hunt nightingales; I want to dig holes in the soil; I want to sit at a firepit toasting bread; I want to stand in a field after dark listening to an astronomer enthuse about Orion. Kids are a great excuse to release your inner 12-year old.

Open and closed arguments.
When a classroom teacher gives an answer, it often reduces to 'That is how it is'. I have given answers like that myself. Really, the answer should be, 'It depends.'

A teacher in a classroom has moments to respond to any issue arising, and they feel the pressure to provide an answer that closes the debate down, and moves the lesson forward. That leads to superficial answers and pat conclusions. If they want to open the debate, class time has to be scheduled. That's artificial; the moment of interest has passed; the debate is limited by the bell; and then you find the kid who originally asked the question is off sick.

I wanted a situation where, when a child asks a question, I can answer it honestly, with 'It depends.' Then we can spend two hours talking.

The language of teachers.
I'm told research shows how kids constantly ask questions at home ... but when they arrive at school, the child stops asking questions, and the adults ask questions instead. But get this - the adults ask questions to which they already know the answers. So what's the point of asking the question? Eventually kids learn to play this game.

But I wanted a real dialogue with kids, not a pretend one. I wanted a discussion where I didn't know all the answers, and where our dialogue was a genuine construction of shared ideas.

The language of kids.
Yes, I want to protect my brood. I want to shield them from other kids who stream out of school effing and blinding. I don't want mine to feel coerced into ways of speaking, acting, and dressing that I feel are inappropriate to the values and ideas that I want to promote in our tribe.

And sod off with any accusations of middle class over-protectiveness. I believe some aspects of language, behaviours, modesties and courtesies transcend class.

Social horizons.
I wanted my children to have a wide social experience. I wanted them to see and meet different people living many different types of life. I simply couldn't see how school could offer a wide social experience.

Contact with adults.
As much as possible, because kids aren't kids forever. I wanted my three to be brought up surrounded by the models, behaviours and norms of adults leading the way. I wanted my children to learn how to interact with adults who were not in authority over them, but who were grown up people with their own interesting histories, opinions, ideas and conversations.

Attention span.
Who honestly believes that kids have little attention span? In my experience, they can concentrate for hours on something they like. I wanted to give them the time and space to attend to whatever interested them. So long as it wasn't torturing the neighbour's Mr Tibbles, what could go wrong?

Acquiring skills, ideas, and ways of seeing.
People are amazing, right? There's a woodworker, electrician, linguist, product developer, designer, writer, dreamer, all living down someone's street. I have a belief that everyone can be a teacher to a child. Yes, that includes the eccentric and the idler. All have a view to impart. Why shut my child away from these people and supply them only with one teacher who has a narrower range of life experience?

The curriculum & the testing of the curriculum.
Some knowledge is to be acquired first? Other knowledge delivered later? Then a child can be tested according to their understanding of the knowledge delivered? Pah.

The freedom of reading.
The process of learning to read? Scared me witless. I messed up a lot. I only narrowly avoided a breakdown. But hey, they cracked it, aged between eight and nine. Now they can spend as long as they want reading whatever they choose from the library (if it still exists.)

Play.
I wanted my children to have the time to play with each other, or with friends; to sit in mud and sand with unicorns, climb trees to escape goblins, run across fields chasing rabbits, and dash through woods looking for treasure. I wanted my kids to move, not sit still. Which child would seriously choose a day sat indoors by preference when the sun is shining and the air sharp?

Creativity.
I watched art, music, dance, history - all the subjects that mattered to me - be sidelined in the race for literacy and numeracy targets. I wanted music by experience, art covered in paint, and dance round the kitchen table. I wanted my history with wet feet and pinked cold cheeks on a battlefield, and I wanted geography to mean crossing a river and falling off the stepping stones. Practical, active, experiential.

Uniform.
Our local primary school has a uniform from age five. I burn it with my laser eyes. I had to be physically stopped from spraying graffiti on the local school outfitting shop. Who doesn't want to enjoy the sight of their five-year old taking pleasure in dressing up?

Food.
I don't understand how parents can bring these contradictions together. On the one hand they are beaten up about feeding their offspring, on the other instructed to turn them over to the junk-food mongers of the school premises. It doesn't make sense to me.

I want the kids to eat well. I feed them myself. We eat together, at a table, food that I damn well thought about and cooked. And if they don't like it, there's grass outside.

I don't like imposing a model of childhood on kids.
Schools look at children as if they are already adults. They instruct them in sex, but keep them away from politics. Isn't that perverse?

Me, I do it the other way round. I watch the kids play; I see them in conflict for control and I see them face issues of power in their relationships. So I teach them politics. I don't teach them about sex, because they don't play sex. On sex, I wait till I'm asked 'What does that mean?' then I answer.

In a crisis, I want my kids to come to me.
I don't want to be separated from my children by any institution that tells them how difficult it is to talk to parents. No, matey, a child should feel they can go to their parent, that they are a trusted person to talk over issues. I want to be that person, thanks. I don't trust a message like that given by a school.

I am a bolshy mare.
So I have to ASK PERMISSION to take my kid to the excellent Iron Age museum in Andover? From a headteacher who wears his trousers too long?

I DON'T THINK SO. The relationship would have lasted days, blown up into confrontation, and ended, bitterly, when I keyed his Volvo.

I like power with my responsibility.
I want to encourage the values, attitudes, behaviours and ways of approaching life that I believe are positive. If I am my child's main adult contact, I can discuss those values that I hold dear, without being undermined.

You can say that I'm brainwashing if you like. I call it passing on my culture to my kids.

In some countries, that process isn't liked much either. When people are really determined to prevent the passing on of values, there's one solution used. Cut out the tongue of the mother.

I could go on. And on. You've probably suffered enough.

I can lie in bed until 10am.