The holidays were, well, they were holidays; and therein was my mistake.

This morning, instead of a gentle lead in to term as I’d thought – I found myself with so much cleaning up, sorting out and putting away today that we didn’t even get around to family prayer. Arrgh! One of the mysteries of life is -does Lego actually breed?

It was a bit stressful. Nevertheless we did it all -mostly-and so there wont be so much to do tomorrow. Now all we have to do is keep on top of  it and hopefully term work will go fine.

THESE GOALS from the Overflowing Cup are really just right for us too. I have admit I like THESE RESOLUTIONS from her blog too. I am one of those more unusual home educators in that most of our home ed does actually take place here at home. Partly this is because everyone comes to us-our house is the Hub; but partly it is because going anywhere takes so much planning. If it’s local that isn’t so bad, especially now I have batteries for ye olde crip scooter and so it works. But fancier trips cost money so they have to be saved for (yep there is a jar). On top of that it means I have to be well enough to drive, will need someone to shove me and heft the wheelchair and someone to shove Heleyna in the buggy. It takes some organisation to make sure enough big people are around for the crip and the little ones. So, the end result is we tend to stay local more often than not. I still think we probably get out and about more often than the average school kid, but it does seem less than the average home ed kid.

Wishing you all a good 2010 and hoping you all were better organised in starting the year than yours truly here!

Iona has reached the grand old age of 16 yesterday. Feels like a bit of a milestone in life. We gave her a 100 Year Diary. I have been saying to her for ages she should write an autobiography and call it “Oh My Life!” because I am sure things happen to her that don’t tend to happen to the average teen girl, not just because she is home educated and has small siblings-although those two things are unusual for a 15/16 yr old around these parts-but just some of the daft things that happen to her.

This 100 year diary is a chance to keep a bit of a record of it all.

Alistair had the day off especially for her birthday and returned to work today. Alex arrived home today with his beloved and her dad and sister,  so with Josh finally putting in appearance with his beloved we had everyone here for the take away Iona had requested.

It was a nice family evening.

To my surprise there was a huge box, nicely wrapped, sitting in the hall on Christmas day. I knew I hadn’t wrapped it so I wondered where it came from-and it turned out it was for ME!

It’s a very posh Kenwood Bread Machine. OooH I just love it. I’ve been wanting to get a new machine ever since our old one died a couple of years or more ago.

More recently I had decided the only thing left I could think to do to help Avila’s bowel problems and her general tiredness that goes with it, is to take the gluten out of her diet again. I tried it some time ago and she improved, but when her blood test for celiacs and wheat allergy came back negative we didn’t bother any more. However she needs something done, so I planned the gluten free diet again and needed a bread machine to make low gluten and gluten free bread that isn’t horrible. Apparently, I have read, blood tests for celiacs can be very unreliable and give plenty of false negatives-and as Celiac disease has a genetic link with type 1 diabetes I think it’s worth cutting down gluten-and just see.

So this this a brilliant pressie.

And there’s a story to go with it.

My crip scooter ran out of battery power last year. It was harder to get it to go anywhere and in the end we gave up. I looked at getting new batteries or replacing the scooter but it all cost too much and so I had to rely on the ’shove it’ wheelchair. This meant essentially that I couldn’t get out and about very easily.

I started a jar. Well, you just have to don’t you.

But then one of the home ed mums decided she would try and raise the money for a replacement scooter or new batteries and without me knowing anything, she and Iona and Alex plotted to get me mobile again.

Well they were scuppered when Al found a place near where he works that sold batteries at a sensible price and I got new ones for my birthday from him. Whey hey I was mobile again and believe me it makes a huge difference.

So J asked Iona whether she should just give me the money she had already raised and Iona said no way I would just spend it on the kids curriculum or something. She had a better idea…

And so on Christmas day I got the Bread Machine!

I have been blessed with so9me amazingly kind and thoughtful friends. Another friend sends money just to help us out. We never have to ask; he just seems to know and sends something; and of course there is the lady at church and a very special aunt who also makes sure we keep swimming. I never take this for granted and am so grateful.

Most often we spend the money on things that can be shared with others or passed on. I hope we can give back something of what we have been given in some way.

Thank you.

Some things are eternal.

Once you come into existance, you will always exist. Each person from the moment of conception is eternal however long they last in this life. Then there are roles that once begun can never end; the priesthood-once ordianed a priest is a priest forever; and parenthood, once a parent, always a parent. I will always be my children’s mother for ever, no matter what. That includes being mother to the children I conceived but never got to hold.

You can never give up being a mother or a father. From the first moment of conception there is a mother and father and they will remain that child’s mother or father from that moment and through eternity. Marriage is temporary, it ends at death-but not parenthood.  If a child dies, whether before or after birth, they remain your child, even when they are with God. So when your mother (or father) dies she is still your mother and in her new place can pray for her children.

But being a parent isn’t simply something you are, it’s something you do. Presuming the child you conceive lives long enough to get born, then you begin the doing side of parenting.

How you fulfil your role will change as the years pass, but there will always need to be plenty of love to hand around. Donna and I talked about children growing up and learning to make their own decisions about life. We talked about the early years where we set the boundaries and gave them space to learn and to understand right and wrong and how we can only hope that as they make their own decisions as they get older, that the foundations are strong enough. We teach them how to fly away, but always keep the nest warm I guess.  We wondered about how we support them as mums and how to help them forgive us when we don’t get it right. There are choices to be made as a mum or dad and those choices are essentially about how good a parent you are prepared to be.

You may remember I wrote some time ago that Donna had been criticised by some friends of hers for laying down some ground rules for her older daughter in her relationship with Alex, and she was teased for going out with them sometimes. She had a good laugh with both Alex and her daughter and sometimes we all went out together.

I told her that a mother was irresplacable in many ways and being a mum is very different from being a dad I think. Certainly those of us who don’t have mothers who are here for us can find someone else, as I did with Sr Kath, but it is rare for a child to find someone else who can be a real ‘mum’ to them. Sr Kath has been amazing as my ‘mum’ and has seen me through all the business of growing up as she has been there since I was 15/16 years old, but I never lived with her as children do with their mother.

We had talked a few times about how best to support Alex and MC as they built their relationship with one another, and we would joke about how to be mother-in-laws together; badly behaved ones. All I can say is BE THERE for your children mothers, because you never know when they might truly need you. You might think that once they have reached the age of 13, 16, 18 or whatever the magic “I-can-leave-’em-to-it” age you might have in your head, but you never know when they will need someone’s shoulder to cry on. Believe me, if you don’t have a strong relationship when a crisis hits I can’t see how they will ever turn to you and how they will get support.

All that stuff Jesus says about the final Judgement where God will essentially see whether you fed the hungry, clothed the naked, took care of the sick, visited those in prison, gave a cuppa to the thirsty; sounds like being a mum to me. Let’s face it, if we can’t do that for our own children we wont get far with anyone else’s will we?  And just in case you are thinking, God forbid I ever have to visit my kids in prison; remember there is more than one kind of prison. A couple of the mums are members of the NCT and come across plenty of young mothers who get stuck at home with no support. In fact we have a plan afoot to try and get a support from started near here. while in the past daughters could rely on their mother or aunts to be there for them when they had a baby, that simply isn’t the case for so many mothers these days.  There are lots of girls entering motherhood without their mother these days either because she has died or is too ill, or sadly, far too commonly, because she is too busy doing her own thing to care.

But then I think being a parent means being open to new members of the family. We will be there for Donna’s girls-but I am more than a little aware that I can never be mother to them, because I am not their mum; Donna is still their mother and always will be; but I will do my best to at least mitigate some of their loss. Pray for us trying to do this.

Sorry this is a bit rambly-but I think I’ll post it like this anyway.

On the feast of Holy Innocents we remember all those children who have died. I tend to remember my own little miscarried ones and all mothers who have lost babies whether through miscarriage or the violence of abortion.

Todays feast remembers all the children slaughtered by Herod’s men,  just following orders, in Bethlehem. I have heard some criticism of the story on the grounds that the only known recording of the event is in Matthew’s Gospel.  The argument seems to be that if the event isn’t written about elsewhere, as far as we know, then Matthew was making it up. I have to say I would need a lot more evidence that Matthew lied, than the fact that 2000 years later surviving documents from the time don’t record it.  Surely a more sensible view is that Matthew heard the story from those it most effected, Jesus Mother for example.

It seems a sad fact that many ancient powers and civilisations were busy killing children in some way. And none of them are left. There is a god who promises wealth and all sorts of comforts if only parents will give him their children; Molech, Saturn, Crom Cruach, the serpent god of the Aztecs and so the list of names goes on. Even the Romans were found to have turned to child sacrifice at times. It seems one of the few major civilisations not to sacrifice children was ancient Egypt, which although there was some human sacrifice, didn’t target children as such. How odd it is that we so admire their wonderful buildings and don’t wonder why they are all empty.

Today we have the massive abortion industry, making vast amounts of money out of killing off unborn children. It doesn’t get much of a mention in the news over here, although it does get a little more in America. While there are those who would prefer that Matthew hadn’t mentioned Herod’s murderous rage aimed at toddlers and babies-and I dare say some mothers died trying to protect their little ones; no one seems that bothered at the lives shattered through abortion. There is an odd silence over killing off children because they happen to have a disability.

I once heard an argument that abortion would reduce child abuse! How anyone could think that making children disposable objects would do anything other than increase abuse is beyond me.

We look with disgust at Molech and Saturn eating his children. On the whole we have forgotten the Irish Crom Cruach-too close to home perhaps; but one day we will look back at our own so called civilisation and wonder why. Why?

Robert Hugh Benson’s book Lord of the World talks of a future where there will be euthanasia, killing off the sick and elderly, he saw marriage as less important and families not truly caring for one another, and yet even he couldn’t envisage elderly relatives in “homes” or the slaughter of the unborn.

But it does end when God calls His Son out of Egypt-out of the place of slavery and He comes to bring Life and Light.

I missed Mass yesterday for St Stephen’s day, which was a shame, but it was lovely to go this morning for the Feast of the Holy Family. The Church still looks really lovely with the tree and candles and the light streaming in through the windows.

I managed to take a couple of photos before too many people were already in Church.

Father talked about how his parents had a picture of the Holy Family up at home but sometimes with himself and his siblings around things weren’t as holy as they might be. LOL.

The readings for the day were aimed at both children, instructing them in respect and honour as well as care of elderly parents; and also just as importantly at parents- telling husbands to love their wives and reminding parents to be good to their children.

I have an unfinished blog entry to work on, where I was thinking about the role of being a mother. It was after conversations with Donna -but when she died I never finished writing it. I think I need to go back to it soon and think it through.

I noticed when I got home and had a look at the computer that Ed Balls has suddenly changed his mind and after 12 years of actively undermining marriage and family has scratched his head and muttered that marriage might be okay after all, and not just because those of us who are trying to bring our children up to be happy and mentally healthy are paying something like 40% extra tax either. Sometimes I am left wondering what on earth Balls and his mates actually THINK about.

Father reminded us that the Holy Family had a difficult time of it, not just because Jesus ended up being born in a stable, but the flight into Egypt because Herod was out to kill him and then having to try and re-make their lives back in Nazareth when it was all over. He talked about the terrible problems in family life these days with divorce and family break down, but pointed out there was nothing new under the sun and families have always faced horrors of some kind. Having to run away from the authorities because they were out to get you being just one.

After Mass Heleyna sat by the crib and waved at the baby Jesus. The pictures the children made are there in the photo and Heleyna’s is behind her.

A kind lady, one of the mothers of the church, handed me some money to help us out with the costs of Christmas. There are some very thoughtful, kind people around. She isn’t the only person who has been kind at this time. I really hope when I’m older we can do the same for young families in our parish, remembering how our struggles to make ends meet were helped by others.

And on that note I have to say I have received a really lovely Christmas present, which I will tell you all about later. Must run now.

Happy Christmas to you all.

It was great fun heading off for Mass last night with lights on my crip-scooter and crunching (and sliding!) through the snow. It’s not exactly a white Christmas this morning here, but we had fun last night.

The Church looked beautiful. Lots of people make a huge effort to make the place extra special. After Mass the children all received some chocolates and sweets from under the tree and Father asked that everyone help push each other out! LOL! He meant because the car park was a bit slippy, but it didn’t quite come out that way at first.

The children went up to the crib before we left and gave Jesus their presents for Him.

The big lads didn’t come with us for the Children’s Mass, but went up at Midnight instead.

Amazingly the little ones did’t wake up until half six this morning!

Enjoy. 

Finally, I have finished reading the Select Committee Report on Badman’s bad review. I spent a bit of time thinking about the Conclusions and Recommendations as this is after all a cross party view,  isn’t it?

I really think that the negative aspects of the whole business is based on the assumption that going to school is “normal” and learning in some other place than school is abnormal. There is also an underlying assumption that “professionals” such as those of the LAs are more knowledgeable about the educational needs of children, even those they have never met, than the parents.

We have to be registered because they want to know who we all are. That seems to be the primary if not only reason for registration. We have to be registered to work with the LA staff because of course being merely parents we can’t possibly really know the best education we can offer our children.

Local authorities should publicise the benefits of registration, including the resources that will be available to registered families. The success of a system of voluntary registration (combined with improved information sharing) should be reviewed after two years.

Including what resources exactly? How about each school aged child receiving the money they would have had sent to school which is between £1,000 to £2,500 a year depending (not on need) on where you live. For us that would mean receiving £3,000 a year if we got the cheapest rate. With that I could not only provide a brilliant quality education for my three school aged children, but have money left over to donate to the Church for resources to help school kids who lack resources at home. It would be marvellous.

And what constitutes a successful voluntary registration? Successful to home ed families might mean lots of resources and respectful inter working with LA staff for those who need it or want it, while those who don’t can get on with their family life as they see fit. Successful to the LAs and Government might mean we are all registered and have a visit from some stranger who neither knows us, nor understands how HE works- you know, much like it can be now.

All the stuff about trying to sort out the problems parents have that make them withdraw children from school could be a good thing, apart from the underlying feeling that really they think our children should all be in school, so they can have a “normal” education and be “normal” just like everyone else.

There is even this:

We note that in the case of school education the quality of teaching is thought to be the key factor in pupils’ learning and attainment. In which case, the same must apply to the parents and others who are responsible for the education of home educated children. Yet, little is known about the home educating community as a whole within the research evidence. (Paragraph 121)

I really don’t see how the way teachers are in school has anything to do with how families educate their children at home. It’s so different that qualified teachers who home educate often have to ditch their ’school thinking’ to make it work. To say “the same must apply” to parents and others is a strong statement based on abject ignorance of how children learn at home! The differences are so vast it would take a book to explain them. Maybe I need to write one! I have an Advanced Diploma in Special Needs Education and a Masters in Education (RE and Catechesis to be precise). I have worked in schools and FE college and even taught in a University; all of that experience is useless in my role as a mum with children learning at home, and around the community. It’s just completely different.

While the conclusions go on and on about what we home ed families should provide the LAs in way of registration (that is applying for a license), to assist them in research, provide a philosophy of education, to jump through the hoops and in return…well it looks like there is no money left to offer anything in return. No promise of access to resources, money to buy curriculum, free access to exams, no, nothing promised there at all.

The only outcome of this whole charade is that there is no trust left and we simply will not co-operate. Sad really isn’t it?

Meanwhile friends in the USA are amazed that so many British parents are looking the other way while this happens. So am I.

Maire and her husband have had to put together THIS DETAILED RESPONSE over refusals to reply to Freedom of Information Requests- to nutshell, it says the DCSF should have published ALL the information in the first place and then the FOI problem would never have existed!

Carlotta posts on the rising numnber of stories from HE families on abuse of power from LA staff. I could add a couple of stories of my own; one an Educational Social Worker who tried to get illegal access to the home of a family, and another story of an LA visitor who had wrong information about the children she was visiting and had no information from the letter the mother had already sent!

The internet is a powerful tool for making sure miscarriages of justice are well known. No secrets here. It is undountedly why Obama over in the USA and our own Govt here are trying to curb the freedoms it allows. Like many blogs and websites, mine is blocked by China- ah the Socialist dream.

I’m reading through the Select Committee Response to the Badman Review and a few things are bugging me.

There seems to be a view that home educating families need to be registered. They recommend a voluntary register and suggest that those who do register should have access to some kind of support and there is even the shadowy possibility of real resources. No mention of what those resources might entail though. But then after two years of voluntary registration there would be a compulsory registration if home edders didn’t volunteer.

But there doesn’t appear to be any real reason behind this register other than the view that LAs and the Government simply want to know who has made the choice to educate their children otherwise than school.

So, they want to know the outcomes of home education – I think. It isn’t that easy to tell. But let’s say they do want to know what the outcomes might be or already are. I suppose it could be argued that is fair enough, and anyway if they were an honest lot (ahem) then they might even be willing to learn a thing or two about how a ’suitable’ education might work.

But if it was me, I would start with what I already had. I would look at the research departments of Univsersities and get them to look at the populations in prison, YOIs, children coming through CAMHS, and young people claiming benefit and see how many of those have been home educated. How many ASBOs are handed out to EHE children?

If I found a problem, a significant blip in the numbers then maybe I would argue for registration to keep an eye on outcomes. If there is no evidence of problems then the money spent on EHE could be better spent on areas where it is truly needed – you would think.

I would expect that somewhere like the USA with such a large number of homeschoolers and where homeschooling has been so long established would have some interesting stats to do a literature review on. But the USA’s homeschoolers were completely ignored by the Review and considered too varied even by the Select Committee.

The other question that bugs me a lot is the whole “What constitutes a suitable education?” question. It’s one of those how long is a piece of string questions and I can’t see how it could ever be usefully answered to suit all children of all ages and needs and interests.

Isn’t the very fact that Mrs Thatcher thought all children should receive a one size fits all national curriculum which was then shrunk in the Labour wash the reason so many children find school learning so pointless?

Approaches to education vary hugely among home educators, even within the same family as each child learns differently and has different interests. How on earth can people who have shown very clearly they know little about home education and have actually shown a remarkable unwillingness in many cases to even try and understand, start deciding on ’suitable education’?

Even the Select Committee comments on the fears of those of us who are Christian (and of other religious faiths) being refused a ‘license’ by LAs who can’t accept the freedom of families to practice their faith.

In particular I have noted anti-Christian comments even among fellow home educators (some of whom seem to think their own rights should be protected, but not those of Christian home educators).

There were also comments made to the Select Committee that remarkably went unchallenged, that some people might use religion as a reason to home educate!

So in the Select Committee report we find:

102. Fears that local authorities could abuse the power were particularly strong among home educators of religious faith. For example:

As Christians, we are concerned that even our Christian beliefs and attitudes could lead to condemnation in the eyes of some, despite the difference of opinion being a valid one. The law should be careful to define the boundaries of local authority personnel and not grant blanket authority in the hope it will not be misapplied.[120]

The vast number of reasons to refuse parents right to educate  our children are then mentioned. One of those mentioned is “alcohol abuse”-but it doesn’t say in what context. I am aware of home ed families where a parent is working hard on the Twelve Steps and this has had no impact on the children’s education at all other than to improve the family dynamics. Then there’s this: [para 103 to 104) My emphasis:

And in addition: anything else which may affect [the parent's/carer's] ability to provide a suitable and efficient education” (recommendation 23). One group of home educators took the view that the final clause of this recommendation was “particularly insidious as it leaves home educating families vulnerable to the prejudices and misconceptions about home education, and culturally different households”.[121]104. Another group of home educators felt justified in commenting that: “[the recommendations are] massively open to abuse, allowing a local authority officer to…even flat out fabricate ‘reasons’ to revoke the licence to home educate”.[122] However, as with the other remarks outlined here, this comment appears to be based on the assumption that officers would not need to support robustly their decision to refuse or revoke registration. It is the case that the Badman Report does not discuss requirements in this respect, though the Department’s intention to provide guidance should provide some reassurance.

In para  104 there is a sort of undercurent of criticism of Badman which I think should have been less ambiguous to be honest. Many of us feel justifiably vulnerable to the obvious wide open door to abuse from LAs. Apart from being one of those shocking Christians I am also disabled. Does that “effect [my] ability to provide a suitable adn efficient education”? I don’t think so, but the LA officer might feel differently.

I would like to see much stronger reasurrance that spurious reasons such as my use of a wheelchair, or someone’s membership of AA or even a prescription for Prozac  wasn’t used to force children into school. Some of us have managed very well thank you to continue to home educate through some very diffictult times; hospital admissions, new babies, sick children and more hospital admissions, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and God knows what else. We take care of one another, life and education goes on.

We sang O Come O Come Emmanuel today at Mass. I love it. Real Advent hymn.

Usually I have the children make O Antiphon decorations for the Jesse Tree, but I haven’t got around to it this year. Perhaps we’ll get chance to do something tomorrow. The children also need a bit of time to make their birthday pressies for Jesus which we take up to Mass on Christmas Eve and they leave them at the crib when it’s over.

Mass was especially lovely today. The huge tree is up with some of the decorations the children at the Sat night Mass have made. Alex stayed after Mass with some of the other Altar servers to finish getting the tree ready and to put up the crib.

We had a lot of baptisms in Mass today, two parents and their children and another baby.  Adult baptisms are more unusual but we are getting a steady stream of converts still.

I had a word with Father after Mass about a few bits and pieces to do with Donna’s funeral. He told me about letters and messages he had recieved saying what an impact the funeral had had on people. I had also received similar messages.  Death is a terrible thing in some ways and Donna’s worse than many, but even here something good can come of it. I am glad.

O Clavis David: O Key of David, is today’s O Antiphon. The Key that opens and no one can shut, that shuts and no one can open. It is the key that opens the jail of darkness so we can be led out into the Light.