Psychological Reasons For Transferring To Homeschooling - Society

Most common: a child with "special needs." Some features of the development of the psyche that extremely complicate a person's stay in a rigidly structured, highly overloaded with stimuli, most often - an unsafe environment of a modern general education school: the autistic spectrum, mental illness, syndromes

Read also: Homeschooling: Pros and Cons

I would also include childhood and adolescent depression of any origin here. And if with organic violations the restrictions seem obvious, then with depression everything is not so simple.

When you're depressed, you're not just "in a bad mood." Most importantly, there is no strength for anything. Thoughts flow slowly, like through cotton wool, it is very difficult to concentrate on something. Children complain that they do not understand well, teachers note that the child cannot pull himself together, starts crying easily, moves less, and shuns peers

It is very difficult to get up in the morning, in the evening it seems to leave, but he does his homework for an extremely long time. Speaks little. In general, the impression is that even the simplest operations require incredible efforts. He does not want anything, refuses even those activities that used to bring joy.

All this together requires an immediate appeal to a child psychoneurologist (for medications) and a child psychologist (for therapy). But until the state of health improves, it would be good for the child to be homeschooled for at least three to four weeks, until visible changes. At the same time, stimulate and organize walks during the day, this is extremely important: depression is afraid of sunlight. That is, the normal regime for a person in depression - we skip school, meet with friends, walk, get positive emotions.

Gifted Children and Homeschooling

Another category of children who can benefit from homeschooling are gifted, enthusiastic, focused on one thing from early childhood. Musicians, artists, athletes. Those who are professionally engaged in something very important to them.

“My son only wanted to paint. Or learn to draw. Or read about fine art and then paint. This insanity began in the fifth grade, in the beginning he was the most ordinary boy, I don't know what got him so overwhelmed. We sent him to an art studio, but there was "not enough" for him. They took a teacher to come to the house. And then problems began at school: the mathematics teacher disliked him, she began to directly persecute him. He began to get sick, then he skipped, deceived us, but he did not last long, we have a very trusting and close relationship, he probably skipped three times and confessed.

We tried to improve his relationship with the mathematician, but there is some serious problem. There were no other schools nearby. And then he had whooping cough, this is three months of quarantine! And how happy he was! I drew all day, began to quickly do my homework (even mathematics!) - and quickly ran to the "machine".

So we decided that there was no point in torturing him, he was in the seventh grade at home (and six months at sea), then we found an online school. Now he is studying at an art school, do not tear him away."

As you can see, in this case several circumstances intertwined: some individual character traits of the child, not too friendly atmosphere at school (“the teacher is poisoning”), and sensitive parents who did not adjust their son to the conditions of the problem, but allowed him to realize his aspirations.

I talked with this family for quite a long time, so I can also say about what factors allowed this project to take place.

• The parents have a very good education, and it covers all the edges of the educational spectrum: dad (initially) an engineer, mom (initially) a journalist. That is, they did not have to hire teachers to go through the school curriculum with their son, they could explain everything themselves.
• Parents work from home, have the opportunity to control, and walk, and drive to various interesting places.
• The child has friends with the same interests: fellow students in the art studio, just friends in the yard, he is not isolated from his peers.
• The whole family is accustomed to working in an autonomous mode, a boy from an early age sees how his parents work, has an idea of the plan, routine, work schedule and the like. And he knows how to rest on his own.

What do we see as a result?

In high school, homeschooling will bring many benefits to calm, persevering, highly sensitive children who have fairly calm and collected parents and have adequate peer interaction.

It is a bad idea to lock up a 9-13-year-old person at home on the basis that “he has problems at school”, optimistically relying on his consciousness and independence.

Homeschooling is a complex and multidimensional project that must involve the whole family.