Why?

Once someone finds out you home educate, the question that they usually ask (after the ones about legality and socialisation) is "Why?" Why did you start home educating, how did you discover it?

We discovered home education 9 years ago - almost to the day. Our twin daughters were just over two weeks away from starting the village school. Neither of them were ready for this, and our attempts to get them prepared by sending them to the local playgroup/preschool, had back fired quite badly. Still, we had no choice, other than facing prison, so what could we do, it was something we all just had to get on with, wasn't it?

We had been making use of the BBC Dynamo website to help give them a headstart at school, and one day, whilst looking through the parents page, I came across a letter which mentioned home education. I researched like mad for the following two weeks, DH and I discussed it as a stop gap option - we were planning on moving and didn't really like the idea of them getting settled in one school only to be pulled out and have to start all over again in another area - and finally we asked the girls what they wanted to do. It wouldn't take a genius to work that out!

As the girls were expected to start school at the beginning of the term, even though they weren't yet compulsory school age, we thought we had better write a deregistration letter to the head teacher. It was posted through the office letter box the night before school started; talk about last minute, life changing decisions!