Home Education Groups.

There has been an explosion of home education groups on facebook over the past year or so, previously there where a small number of groups when I first fell into home education and started researching, I tagged along to some events with the kids even before they could walk, talking to other mums and finding out more about what home education was.

With the rise in groups I have felt more isolated due to the growing complexity of all the different groups that have formed, some for maths, some for art, some for Geography and Geology, the vast array just confuses me all the more. 

At one time all this information was available in one group with everyone sharing resources achievements and lesson suggestions and methods of teaching etc, and finding about different methods of home ed, sadly now you have to go hunting through reems of groups to find anything specific and the falling over a great post and an idea you would have never thought of seems to have all but disappeared.

There seems to be some kind of competition on who can get the biggest group, I have a group that was set up not by myself but someone else, and this was not by me wanting to have a group, but because I was forced into having the group to stay attached to my local area.

The local area group that was already set up for Manchester was handy for me but unfortunately despite many requests to join, it was ignored for some reason so I was an outcast and not allowed in the group, to this day I have no reason why, but when I was asked to take over this separate group that was newly set up I decided that seeing as I was not allowed into the already established group that I would, you can find the group I admin here  

*UPDATED* The group I did admin on I no longer admin on due to some crazy person deciding to have a go after being in the group for two days and a co-admin who also was a bit doolally crazy removed me from my own group... rotfl... the person in question who caused issues over something quite pathetic is now admin on the group.. lol, yes there are some strange people who actually do this kind of thing... anyway moving on I set up another group which you can find here.   It did end up being a blessing in disguise as the other group I spent a lot of time listing on lots of home ed directories, and there was all and sundry on there, and probably not very many that where home ed. I have kept this group off directories and it is only usually found by word of mouth or invite by a known home educator, so it has worked out and it has also got rid of the dregs I couldn't stand anyway, so hey ho onwards and upwards, I now only associate with those I actually like, the only admin is me and they days of spats and bitching are now gone, its a nice group with no bitching and if there ever is I can just remove at my own discretion without question with being the only admin.***

The groups being so fragmented are difficult for me to follow at the best of times so I only have a look in now and again to see if there is anything to catch up on and I am only a member of a couple of groups otherwise I would have thousands of notifications a day, quite often there isn't anything useful these days to catch up on.

I normally just take to google now, although if there is something we are interested in and we have a trip planned then I will put it on the group I admin and see if there is any interest for anyone tagging along, although this isn't very often, I arranged the trip to the Gruffalo which was a good meet, everyone seemed to enjoy the play.

The group I admin is also fragmented no one knows what is going on and where, things are not very organised, there is a yahoo group set up that people seem to post on frequently which I never use so I never know what is going on, the reems of emails that come through are astonishing and baffle my brain so I don't use it, otherwise I would spend all day trying to read through each email conversation. **UPDATE CONTINUED**** This is the reason why I was ousted from my own group, because I asked people to put events in the events tab instead of on multiple threads where everything gets lost, the new person who had been in there two days did not like being asked to do this and took offence and started causing shite over it, the other admin clearly thought she was right the rest is history, noobs....*****

So for now I am feeling a bit isolated from the home ed community of my own making really, and don't really have any clue what is going on in my area, it would be nice to meet with other home ed families regularly but it does not seem to happen for us, so my doubts about isolation and socialising are actually becoming a bit of a reality despite me strongly disputing socialisation is an issue in reality I think it is.

Home education can be quite isolating for me anyway, the kids don't seem to be phased by it but I would like to see them have a couple of regular mates they play with, they do get socialisation by going to dance and drama and regular trips to the park and library etc and there will be more groups they join but I would like to see them making friends, Louby particularly would thrive on it going to tea at a friends or having someone over to play.

I actually do feel a bit sad that they haven't got any regular little friends, so hopefully this will improve over time and something I will have to focus on for them, as they do need more than each other and me, so I do have to get out of this hermit mode and start to integrate with the home ed community a little more and start to make more of an effort in that direction, and find my own confidence in meeting new people which I have never been any good at.

 I generally find I have these huge walls up and keep people at a distance so I think this is time to change myself and start finding my own socialising feet and get more involved in the groups, and get rid of this silly feeling of being a pest and not wanted anywhere by anyone which has dogged me most of my life

The kids did have little friends when they where little but they seem to have drifted off and we never get invites to anything so rather than pestering people who don't want us around I have just left it, we never hear from anyone so we do need to find people that want us around without me pestering them and them feeling like they have to tolerate us out of politeness.

I really do have to find my socialising feet, which I know will be difficult for me, at the age of 41 you would have thought I would have mastered that art by now, but I have gone the other way and become a hermit finding friend forming a difficult task to do.

The big bang theory -The Friendship Algorithm, is an interesting theory!!!!...... enjoy..