ARTICLE
Listen with mother
by Karen Luckhurst
Daily Telegraph, 19th November 2005, Page 10
Karen Luckhurst on the continuing struggle to educate her children at home.
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Whenever you tell someone you are home educating, their first objection is usually "but they won't mix with other children and will turn out weird".
This is a forgivable notion, but tedious when it is the umpteenth time you have heard it. It is also incorrect. In greater London, where I live, there are so many home-education activities that, if I chose to, I could be doing something different all day, every day.
That said, I don't want the children to mix exclusively with other home-education families. But at the moment it is a problem finding more mainstream activities. Sam, four, is at an age where he is too old for toddler groups and too young for Beaver Scouts.
Casting about for a solution, I hit upon storytime at the library. I arrive only 10 minutes late, stopping at the front desk to explain that my two-year-old daughter has managed to lose my library cards, again. She regularly goes through my purse, eating as many coins as she can and scattering cards and receipts around the house.
The librarian tells me to leave my details and pick up my cards after story time. Meanwhile, she points me towards a table covered in jigsaws and surrounded by small children and mothers.
I hang around holding the baby, who is in a terrible grump, hoping that someone will help settle the older children. No one does.
Minutes later, those in the know start dragging chairs into a semi-circle. Sam and Zena perch on the floor, while the space between them and me fills up with small bodies.
I have never been to story time before and assumed it would be told by an out-of-work actor: maybe someone who once had a bit part in The Archers. But the stories are read by a quietly spoken trainee librarian whose flat delivery and dull choice of books fail to grab the children's attention.
Before long they start menacing the storyteller who turns puce and starts to tremble. Then it's open revolt. My two start running around and pulling books from shelves.
There are a dozen children saving them from my immediate physical wrath (not to mention I am still holding grumpy baby), so I have to content myself with piercing glares and hissing.
The trainee draws storytime to a hasty close. The regulars re-organise chairs around the table, which is now covered in crayons and paper. I manage to corner Sam as he knocks over a display stand. I frogmarch him behind a bookshelf and whisper terrible threats into his ear until he is reduced to loud sobs.
Back at the drawing table, Competitive Mothers Inc have installed their children in prime position for the A4 and Crayolas and are busy showing them how to colour in the lines properly. Zena, who loves colouring, has not managed to get a seat.
As I pick up the display stand, I can see her face pucker. Soon, she is crying as well. I can tell by the look on his face that grumpy baby is thinking, "Oh well . . ." and then he's off, too.
I run for the exit as fast as a woman carrying a large wailing baby and pushing a double buggy with two screaming toddlers behind can. But I have to stop and collect my new library cards, a process which is now being speedily administered by several librarians.
Outside, Sam and Zena drape themselves on the busy pavement and wail with abandon. The baby screams. I make a vow never to go to storytime again.