Disability, Health and Diverse Learning Needs

April 17, 2023

Unschooling Neurodivergent Kids

Unschooling Neurodivergent Kids Carla Clark Our family consists of mum, dad and two boys now six and three. We are unschoolers with our oldest going into ‘grade 1’ this year. Because we live in Victoria, we are lucky to have the flexibility and freedom to educate our children in a relaxed way that meets their needs. My husband and I are both at home […]

January 29, 2023

Home Education and Mum’s Chronic Illness

Home Education and Mum’s Chronic Illness Kylie Anderson Let me introduce myself. I am a home educating mother of five. We have been home educating for 13 years and my children are now 17, 15, 9, 7 and 4. I first had symptoms of myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) in my late teens while doing VCE. I’d have periods of fatigue so severe […]

January 16, 2023

Autistic Families & Home Education Or why Home Educating is a good fit for Autistic families

By Heidi Ryan It has often been argued that traditional or mainstream schooling is beneficial to autistic children due to the consistency and routine offered for those who do well with predictable routines. In fact, even specialist schools focus on the positives of conformity, meeting neuro- normative targets and ‘doing what everyone else is doing’. Success in school is viewed as meeting predictable milestones, […]

March 14, 2022

Home ed done properly: what does that mean?

You might have had someone say to you that home education can be okay, as long as it’s done ‘properly’. But who defines what ‘properly’ means? Who gets to determine what a ‘proper’ education looks like for individual children? Why is one person’s ‘proper’ better than another, when children are unique? Home ed advocates will likely say that an ideal education is tailored […]

March 8, 2021

Home education for the child in crisis

Content warning: this article talks about children in severe states of mental distress and issues related to that. People choose home education for many different reasons. For some, home education is the only option when a child is in crisis, and where continuing in the school setting poses a grave risk to that child. If this applies to you, and your child is struggling […]

August 5, 2020

From Little Things

I’m a HEN volunteer, so I have the chance to speak to lots of new home educators, and see a variety of learning plans. So many parents doubt their abilities, worry that they will not ‘cover everything’, that they are ‘not doing enough’ or that they won’t pass a review. I’m a worrier too, so I know where they are coming from, but I’m […]

May 26, 2020

Leap of Faith

By Heather Haines Recently, when my son Samuel fulfilled a long term ambition by sky diving, it felt to me the culmination of our home education journey. All those years ago, I took a leap of faith in pulling him out of school, and here he is a capable young man confidently pursuing his interests. Sky diving seemed uncannily appropriate. Samuel started school […]

August 3, 2018

The Greatest Gift

By Pavlina McMaster We came to home education like many others, carrying scars from a school system that was eroding my child’s self-esteem, and our sanity. School, though short-lived, had been a time fraught with stress, anxiety, and the regression of everyone’s skills, not least of which were mine. As an autistic adult, I had come to learn so many things that many neurotypical […]

July 23, 2018

A Foot In Both Camps

Straddling Home Education and School By Cynthia McStephen The look on her face said it all,“OK you lot, just carry on having fun, why don’t you, while I go off and morph into a school mum for a while.” It was one of those great, local home-ed group get-togethers, where the children were off doing some complicated and creative multi-age activity they’d just invented, […]

August 16, 2017

Educating Claudia

By Kerstin Scheel Eighteen-year-old Claudia was in and out of school but the system never met her needs. We had several stints of home education which, although challenging, was the best option available for much of the time. Claudia has Down Syndrome and educating her has been a continual battle in terms of both appropriate provision and funding. During the prep transition process, we […]

June 18, 2017

Allergy Bullying led to Home Education

Anonymous What I love about home education is that there is room for each and every one of us, in all our glorious uniqueness. We have the freedom to work out what is the best educational fit for each individual and family, rather than trying to contort that individuality to fit into a normative system where one size is supposed to fit all. We […]

May 19, 2016

The Journey of My Two Free Spirits

By Marie Cosgrove I’ve always valued being different but now my girls say they just want to be ‘normal’… My home ed journey began long before I had children. I was ﬁrst introduced to the idea by my sister–in-law, who was home educating my two nieces. At the time I was teaching in a primary school and struggling with a system I felt didn’t […]

September 3, 2015

Educating Dyslexics

Dyslexia exists in the home educated population just as it exists in the school population. If your child doesn’t seem to be picking up reading, give some thought to whether this is a problem. Late reading is actually common in home education (see our Learning to Read section for details). If the child is learning in other ways, perhaps sit back and wait a […]

September 2, 2015

But What if my Child is Dyslexic?

For many home-educating families and prospective home-educators the fear of dyslexia is a significant problem. “It’s all very well to wait for spontaneous reading, but what if my children are dyslexic?” they might ask. “Won’t they be better off in school where they will get proper help?” Dyslexia is a type of specific learning difficulty in which the person has difficulties with language and […]

September 2, 2015

Home Educating Gifted and 2e Kids including Victorian resources

Starting home education can be quite daunting—doubly so if you are deciding to home educate children with diverse learning needs, whether they are gifted, disabled, or both (called twice exceptional or 2e). Neurodiverse kids tend not to fit in neat school boxes, and can be a challenge to parent and to home educate. Defining Giftedness Though giftedness can be hard to define, there […]

September 2, 2015

Seeing the Gift instead of the Problem

By Sue Wight Home educating is all very well, but what if your children are gifted? Won’t they need the special programs only available in school? How could a parent be qualified to educate them? Don’t gifted children have trouble socialising anyway, and won’t home education make that worse? School Provision Firstly, let’s look at those “special programs” in schools. In Australia there […]

September 2, 2015

Dyslexia and the Obsession with Literacy

By Roland Meighan, Educational Heretics Press A few years ago, I invited trainee teachers to visit home educating families to see what they might learn from such an experience. One young woman visited a family where all four children, two boys and two girls, were diagnosed by the unit at the University of Aston as dyslexic in varying degrees of severity. The trainee teacher […]

September 2, 2015

Help for Dyslexia

Dyslexic children are often auditory and kinesthetic learners. They learn best by hearing and by doing. Hands on, concrete activities are the best for reading spelling, writing and maths.Writing on buff or coloured paper is often better than white, because it reduces the glare and enables them to concentrate better. Play dough or modelling clay is great for little children to form letters, words […]

September 2, 2015

The Down Syndrome Family

By Barbara Frank We were your average homeschool family. We had been happily homeschooling our older two children for five years, and had an adorable little toddler who kept us busy and made sure we weren’t getting too set in our ways. In addition, we were expecting baby number four. Joshua was born shortly after midnight one rainy March night. He was a little […]

September 2, 2015

Riding the Rainbow

By Cleve Elaine Richey Long before my decision to pull my seven-year-old son, Alex, from public school, I was his teacher. But teaching him meant far more than “enrichment.” It meant reaching him. It meant his survival. As a baby, he’d never wanted to be held, never cooed or babbled. Unlike his sister, who took such pleasure when we played with her, Alex didn’t […]

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