“How will your children learn to cope in the Real World?” is a question that many home educators get asked at some point. “How will they learn to deal with problems, pressures or bullies?”

This is a problem for people with a school mindset and home educators need spend no more time trying to construct an explanation, than they need to spend dwelling on it. Schools are designed to produce mass educational copies.

You see, in the Real World, in real life situations people interact with others all the time and that is exactly what home education looks like. There is no seperation between daily life and learning, parenting and teaching. People have shared their knowledge since forever.

Attending to chores, work and home are a part of everyones day to day in the Real World as is being able to earn money and apply yourself. You don’t need to be an adult to learn how to help take care of and maintain a home, a family, your relationships and yourself. Adults generally want to help children learn how to do things and so they generally model these examples, values and morals.

Children like to play with other children. It’s good for them to interact with others of the same age because developmentally they tend to enjoy the same play. However, spending the majority of their time with children of similar ages, offers a lot less than you might think. Limited conversation, stimulation and learning opportunity for a start.

In the Real World, home educated children enjoy the same benefits as most adults. They have more freedom to choose who their friends are as they are not limited to a set group for most of the day. They get to choose when to spend time with special or favourite people of all ages, therefore maximising their learning potential. Rich conversations can happen anywhere.

In the Real World, home educated children accompany their grown ups to places of interest or necessity regularly. They learn how to navigate supermarkets, medical appointments, people from various walks of life. They see age first hand and how we as a race help to take care of each other during the journey. They witness news as it happens and history in the making. They see first hand what happens when a day deviates from a plan and how we deal with that. How we meet deadlines or keep appointments and promises. They watch how their parents resolve conflict with challenging people during the daytime when work is being done and face to face encounters or telephone conversations need to take place.

Their childhood is still sacred and protected by the adults who care for them but they see life happening alongside their guide – they have a greater understanding of family circumstances because they are privvy to them. Their “teachers”, able to explain in-the-moment instead of barely mentioning an event at the end of a long day.

Because home educated children do not spend huge portions of their day inside one building for a great deal of what is their childhood they may be fortunate enough to soak up more sun, more rain and witness more of natures daytime wonders than most. They spend more time with their families while they are young, while they need them – a fundemental, developemental need and necessity.

They lack the common socially accepted expectation of “hating parents” and have a respectful insight into life as a family unit and team where all can benefit yet, still thrive in their own endeavors. And when this happens, challenges are accomplished with healthy views of competition. Not pitted against each other but activly working alongside each other for a greater gain, where your individal attributes as a child and young adult are celebrated and no one is judging you based on a grade.

They are behind no one, simply where they are meant to be. No one tries to compare apples with oranges because they know a different way to be.

In the Real World, life, learning and living intertwine as they should. With good and bad experiences including a huge amount of organic feelings that we all learn to sit with and work through. There’s so much to see and oh, so many people to talk to!

In the Real World, home educated children are doing just fine.

© 2024 Juliette Proffitt ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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