Extraordinary Parenting: the essential guide to parenting and educating at home

Homeschooling — however long you do it for — provides a unique opportunity to build up your child’s knowledge of the world, knowledge which will give them the context for all future learning.

‘A Site of Mutual Fulfilment (SMF) is a place where both child and parent have a great time.

‘When children start school, a dramatic change takes place in the ways that we want them to learn. The informal “as and when” learning of life is replaced by curricula, timetables, set lessons, teaching aims, testing and monitoring, because these are deemed necessary for continued satisfactory learning.

If you have young children, create a visual chart of what needs to happen when.

they will be far more willing to then play or work alongside you if you’ve been able to give them some focused attention first.

The typical classroom, with other children ready to point out, correct, and even laugh at every mistake, and the teacher all too often (wittingly or unwittingly) helping and urging them to do this, is the worst possible place for a child to begin.’

Rhythm is not just for children. Having an evening each week to go to for a run or a date night with our partner each month (even if it’s a takeaway pizza on the sofa in front of the TV) can make a huge difference to our lives, as we can anticipate that enjoyment and feel we have a right to it.

Anchors are the points in your day that your rhythm hangs onto.

Far from being superficial, our home environments have the power to create calm or incite conflict, to promote deep play and study, or lead to cries of, ‘I don’t have any toys.’

If each day began with the question “Where is today’s SMF?” we’d get to the end of the day without feeling utterly ragged.