In the beginning.........

I tried long and hard to think of a good title for my homeschooling blog.  I thought of all kinds of names - some with the relevant word 'homeschool' in the title, some clever ones with a hint of Shakespeare and Chaucer and others that were just plain ridiculous.  You might think the title I've chosen is ridiculous but that is really how I felt when I realised I would need to homeschool our 14 year old daughter.  "Oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles."  To be fair, there's cleverness in there somewhere with the attempt at latin translation.


I'm not one of those parents who wanted to homeschool because of a philosophical or religious belief.  On the contrary, I used to beam and happily wave my daughter off at the school gates each morning, hurrying home to have some 'me' time.  And those few hours passed all too quickly.  All went well when Charlotte was at primary school.  The first two years at secondary school weren't too bad either but, come the third year, all hell was let loose.  She seemed to become a different person and we often got telephone calls from the Head to come and take her out of school because of her behaviour.  She got excluded and decided she wasn't going back to that school anyway.  We managed to get her transferred to another local school, but it wasn't long before Charlotte began to behave as she had at her old school.  

My husband and I were frantic.  We didn't know how to help.  The longer she was absent from school, the more disturbing my thoughts became.  We spoke to Charlotte..... or tried to speak to her...... she didn't seem able to open up to us.  We spoke to staff at school and came to the arrangement that I would escort Charlotte to school for certain lessons.  I thought this might be a good solution, but I could see the unhappiness and distress on her face the nearer we got to school.  Our once naturally outgoing happy daughter was now terribly unhappy and it seemed to be the school environment that was making her feel this way.  I decided then that she wouldn't have to go back to school.  I would teach her myself.  We began on the 27th June, almost a month ago..... so we're just at the beginning of our homeschooling journey.  Put on hold are the Open University courses I used to do, the knitting and the crochet and a list of other interests.  Oh well, like I said, that's the way the cookie crumbles!