We don't do it. But it's looming.

Term time.

It shouldn't make a difference.

It doesn't make a difference.

Except that it does. Because the whole mad English world is geared up to that structure of 6 weeks on, one week off. 6 weeks of ferrying small people around like Kentucky Fried on skates, and then one week when you breathe ready to do it all over again.

It is a choice.

Of course it is a choice.

When I first started home educating I signed up for any HE activity or workshop on offer. Being at home with small (very small) inconveniently-boisterous children was like sensory deprivation torture. Or sensory overload. Either way, torture.

[Note: Just because I home educate doesn't mean I have to *like* children. I am not a I love nurturing little people type of  mum. No. I am a please, someone, tell me they can go to bed now because the day needed to end four hours ago and it still hasn't yet mum.]

Then as the kids got bigger and I actually really wanted to see the kitchen occasionally instead of living on jam sandwiches and hula hoops in parks and play centres, I chose to opt out of the many many and increasingly available activities.

I still try to keep the whole out-the-house-doing-stuff thing to a manageable load. I do.

But the age gap is widening. A teen and an eight-year-old are worlds apart.  One is just starting to learn to read; the other interacts with adults as, well, an adult. This demands that they are driven a billion miles in different directions at the same time on the same day to meet their particular social needs.

Ok, exaggeration. But seeing as my children have just learnt the word hyperbole, I feel permitted to demonstrate the point. Truth is, once term time comes, there will be few days when we are not supposed to be somewhere at some time. Regular commitment. It's like being married to home ed, without the bonus of a free toaster and a set of crystal champagne flutes and videoing your best mate do her drunk-at-wedding dance.

So. Catch me mid-term. Go on then.

Ask me whether my home ed children socialise with others.

I am likely to poke you in the eyeballs with index and middle finger.

Socialisation? Pah