Navigating culture clash

I have told this to Squirrel. If you dump school, then please, for now, keep a written record. It will be treasure, your insights and observations about the way the world turns.

And I agree. Squirrel, you're like a feral child wandered into civilisation from the jungle. Finding that the jungle, with all its packs and tribes, now seems a lot more straightforward, sensible, ethically defensible, practical and sane than the four school walls you find yourself bounded by.

But it means that I cannot record all Squirrel's experiences - this blog would turn quickly into The Squirrel Show - mainly because those moments are hers and she owns them, but goodness, I wish I could. In her end-of-day round-ups she makes me laugh. She has an astute eye that pierces the weirdness of the place.

Last week she comes home bewildered (again), having received a letter to congratulate her on achieving 100% attendance. 'Why are they telling me this' she asks. 'I was there! Do they think I can forget where I am?' Today, some self-assessment form, which she drops to the table in contempt and says, 'This is pointless. They want me to write down just what they said to me. And that's not self-assessment.'

But one good thing is come of it at least: I know our home ed life created strong bonds. Days like today, with their endless and remote classrooms filled with pointless demands, these days send us all back home together, fleeing for evening comfort where we can eat as a family, jostle for space in the kitchen, complain about who sits where, then companionably watch television together of so-very-bad sitcoms. For so brief a time, all is as it should be, before our world is cracked open again by that insistent demand of an early alarm clock, and the beginning of another school day.