The abuse of home educated children

Over the last week or so, I have been pointing out that abuse rates for home educated children are far higher than those for children at school. I have also been discussing one factor which causes this to be so; the high proportion of home educated children with learning difficulties and behavioral problems. Inevitably, this has caused offence to some, but since I find the abuse of children with special educational needs offensive, I don’t think I need worry unduly about any offence I might have caused by drawing attention to the scale of the problem.

One of those commenting here trotted out a few of the hoary old myths associated with home education and I propose today to tackle these and lay the ground for looking tomorrow at some actual figures about the abuse of home educated children. First though, let’s look at what was suggested yesterday. The first concerns the abuse of children with special educational needs, which is relevant for reasons at which I have already looked:

I would suggest that before the professionals turn their attention to a group where there is no evidence of abuse, they look at residential school settings where, sadly, there is such evidence, including one school where OFSTED gave it a glowing report, then rapidly downgraded it to 'unsatisfactory' when it realised that the safeguarding was so brilliant that a girl was excluded for being raped because it was against school policy to have sex.

those of us who are home educating because we removed our children from school situations that constituted neglect, physical abuse and emotional abuse need to hear.


This was by a mother who has children with special needs and is hinting that the abuse and neglect of such children is primarily a problem in schools and residential units. This ties in neatly with the mythology adopted by many home educators, that schools are dangerous and unsafe places for their children; rife with abuse and neglect. This is utterly untrue. I am using research mainly from America here, simply because that undertaken in this country has been patchy and small-scale. Looking at the question of abuse and neglect in general, who are the perpetrators? One study, (NCANDS, 2005) found that the figures were as follows;

79.4% parents
6.8% other relatives
3.8% unmarried partners of a parent

The rest were nearly all friends and neighbours of the family.  Abuse and neglect in schools and residential settings was completely insignificant. How insignificant? Another study looked at this, (USDHHS, 2007), and found that less than 1% of cases of abuse were by residential staff, teachers or other professionals. Yes, that’s right; less than 1%. What research there has been in this country tends to confirm these findings.

Neglect and abuse, whether sexual, physical or emotional, are domestic problems. They almost invariably take place in the home. The idea that removing a child from school will make him or her less likely to be abused is, generally speaking, nonsense. 

Another thing which the person commenting here yesterday said was this:

Would you not agree that even within those groups the overwhelming majority of children were not abused? 

If we are talking about children with special educational needs and disabilities, then this is tricky to answer. It depends what you mean by an overwhelming majority. In studies both here and the USA, some of them enormous, it was found time and time again that children with special needs were neglected and abused far more than children without such difficulties. How much more likely was they to be abused or neglected? Thinking now about those with learning difficulties and behavioral problems, one piece of research, (Sullivan & Knutson, 2009) found that:

The children at highest risk were those with behavioral disorders. Their risk is seven times higher for neglect, physical abuse and emotional abuse, and 5.5 times higher for sexual abuse than are children without disabilities.

Consider that statistic carefully;  a child with behavioral difficulties is seven times as likely to be neglected or physically abused. What is truly horrifying is that in the largest of such studies, of over 50,000 children in Nebraska, (Sullivan, 2000), it was found that overall, a third of children with special needs and disabilities had been neglected and/or abused. Returning then to the comment made yesterday, in which I was invited to agree that the overwhelming majority of children were not abused, then we must ask ourselves if we view 66% as an overwhelming majority? Around 33% of children with special educational needs are abused by their family and friends, while about 66% are not. I'm not sure that I would call 66%, an 'overwhelming majority'.

Here then is the implication for home education. If we assume, and I guess that most home educating parents will do so, that home educators  are no more likely to be wicked or abusive than other parents, then it is also fair to say that they are no more virtuous than other parents. That is to say that the levels of neglect and abuse inflicted by home educating parents are likely to be similar to those carried out by parents with children at school. What this means in plain terms is that a third of home educated children with behavioral difficulties are likely to be neglected or abused by their parents. 

Tomorrow, we will look at the implications of these percentages in practical terms when it comes to overall rates of abuse for home educated children. Because as we all know, a very large proportion of home educated children are on the autistic spectrum, have ADHD, or various types of behavioral difficulties. This means of course, that the proportion of home educated children being neglected and abused is likely to be far higher than in the school population as a whole.

A little light relief

Many of those who read and comment on this blog do tend, rather unfortunately, to be the sort of dreary and  humourless  types one would dread sharing a lift with or being stuck next to on a bus. I thought that we might all enjoy a gentle laugh at the following clip from youtube; which will resonate particularly with those concerned at the over-prescribing of drugs like Ritalin:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF_nfazQaek

Prominent British home educators

I suggested yesterday that the great majority of those prominent in the world of British home education have either learning difficulties or mental illnesses. Two questions spring immediately to mind. First, is this true? Secondly, if it is true; does it matter? I want this morning to talk about the first of these questions.


I have been involved in home education in one way or another for decades. One of the things which I have noticed in recent years is that those whose names crop up over and over again often hold very strange views and tend to be very aggressive in defending these against anybody who shows any doubt that they are right. Of course, many people hold unconventional views and opinions, but those of the more well known home educators seem a little more off the wall than most and they will go to the most extraordinary lengths to attack those who believe differently from them. It is this which sets home education apart from most other fringe interests; its leaders behave as though they are protecting the interests of a cult or religion, rather than simply debating an unusual mode of education.

Obviously, when I have been the subject of attacks and smear campaigns by such people, my curiosity has been aroused and I try to find out what can possibly motivate such hatred and venom. It is not every day that I am the victim of a conspiracy to have me arrested because I am a believer in orthodox educational theories! Obviously I want to know what is going on. This has led me to examine the backgrounds of some of these people in a little detail.

Here are a few random examples of the sort of people I am talking about. All these people will be familiar to anybody who belongs to the HE-UK or EO lists. No fewer than three mother-daughter combinations, where the mother suffers from an unknown neurological disorder which defies medical science to diagnose. Alarmingly, their daughters too begin to display similar symptoms at puberty; necessitating crank diets and quacks remedies which both mother and daughter undertake together. Many cases of self-diagnosed autistic spectrum disorder in parents who often claim that their own children are autistic too. In many cases, there has been no actual diagnosis of either parent or child. A similar picture for dyslexia and also ADHD. A well known mother, now sixty, who went to great lengths a couple of years ago to have herself medically diagnosed, at the age of fifty eight, with attention deficit disorder. Having found an obliging psychologist, she then declared that all her children must have suffered from the same syndrome.

Often, when I watch what is going on the British home education scene, I mentally tick off the disorders of those involved. There is a certain amount of head-butting currently taking place between the (dyslectic) founder of a major home education list and a (bipolar) former leader of Education Otherwise. I see this all the time; situations where every single person involved either has or claims to have a mental illness or learning difficulty.

Another feature of those home educators who draw frequent attention to themselves is very weird beliefs about other things, such as conspiracy theories. There is a good deal of overlap between this and those who also have mental illnesses and learning difficulties. The dyslectic founder of the home education list mentioned above subscribes to some really odd conspiracy theories. One of those regarded as a founding father of home education in this country is not only bipolar, but is also a fanatical believer in the idea of the New World Order.

I could go on further, giving more and more examples, but I think that readers are getting the idea. The majority of those in the public eye because of home education have either learning difficulties or mental illnesses. In many cases, these disorders are self-diagnosed; often, it is claimed that their children have the same thing. This frequently goes hand in hand with beliefs that most people would dismiss as being a bit loopy. There is a lot of overlap between the groups, so that a good number of these people have learning difficulties combined with an unconventional belief system.

In the next few days I shall be looking at whether any of this matters. In other words, should we care if those leading home educators in this country and setting the agenda for other parents have a high prevalence of problems of this sort?

Community leaders

One of the things which has amused me over the years is the way in which  individuals manage to portray themselves as the leaders of some community or other. It happens with Caribbeans, Muslims, Jews and various other minorities. All too often, these people are chancers who are really speaking only for themselves and a small group of like-minded friends. The same thing has happened with home education and the result is that the pushiest and most vociferous end up representing the majority of parents; at least in the eyes of the government, local authorities and so on. Why else would so many local authorities advise newly home educating parents to contact Education Otherwise?


In fact, a very small group of people make most of the noise about home education in this country. Talking to most ordinary parents, those who do not belong to so-called ‘support groups’, you will find, for example,  that almost all of them regard monitoring by their local authority in much the way that I did myself; that is to say as a necessary nuisance. If you ask any of those whom we might call the ‘community leaders’ though, you will find a very different view being put forward. This is the case with a number of other aspects of home education; a tiny group manages to make their own odd agenda appear to be the consensus view.

Now although there is only a small core of very militant home educators or former home educators involved in this business, they are very well organised and work constantly to ensure that their extreme views are accepted as being the norm. I have explained before how this is done and I do not want to go into it again now. It is enough to say that perhaps fifty or a hundred people at most manage to create the illusion that they speak on behalf of the tens of thousands of home educating parents in Britain. This is a very small and self-selected group and what I have noticed is that almost all of those whom I have learned anything about, share certain characteristics. I do not think that they are typical of home educators in general. One of the things which I have observed is that almost without exception, the high profile home educators have certain difficulties. I shall go into this in detail either tomorrow or the next day, but for now I will say that nearly all the people one sees representing themselves as speaking on behalf of home educators either have, or claim to have, some kind of learning difficulty or mental illness. These range from dyslexia and attention deficit disorder to being bipolar and autistic. In many cases, these problems have been self-diagnosed, but that in itself is interesting.

I shall not be naming names, but talking in general terms. Mind, the way that some of these people boast of their problems through the medium of blogs and so on, there is no real need for secrecy! I want to explore the possibility that much of what is being done by the leaders, or apparent leaders, of home education in this country is actually counter productive and causes more trouble than it is worth for ordinary parents. I also want to look at the extent to which their activities might be influenced by, or even a direct consequence of, their own disorders.

Early childhood experiences and their possible role in the creation of childhood disorders such as ADHD and so on

I wrote briefly yesterday about the hugely dysfunctional families with which I worked some years ago. The children of these families all had various problems and these were caused, or at the very least greatly exacerbated, by the way that they were raised. It was not until I had been thinking about the common factors in these families that I noticed an eerie similarity to the way that some home educators recommend that children be treated in childhood.

A lot of the things which afflict children, ranging from dyslexia to ADHD, are not random bolts from the blue. These syndromes are all too often associated with common factors in early childhood. Take ADHD, for example. The impulsiveness, sleep disturbances and other features of attention deficit are often noted in children who have no sort of consistent parental discipline in their lives. It is also connected with kids who do not have regular and age appropriate bedtimes. In other words, if a child’s wishes are never thwarted and he is allowed to do what he likes; he is far more likely to grow up displaying low levels of ability to control his behaviour and more liable to grow angry if his immediate wishes are frustrated. If his internal body clock has not been properly set by regular bedtimes, then he might end up being frantically active at midnight and very sleepy during school the next day. This is one example; there are many others. The way that parents raise their children has an impact upon the type of disorders with which they later present. A chaotic and disorganised lifestyle is often coupled with problems like ADHD.

Of course the trend these days is to pretend that children’s problems are like illnesses which have struck for no apparent reason; certainly nothing to do with parenting. Anybody who works with kids knows that this is nonsense. Now the sort of chaotic families with whom I worked would allow their children to stay up to all hours. This was part of their lifestyle. They would go visiting friends until one or two in the morning and took the kids with them. The result would be that the kids would not get enough sleep and their body rhythms would become screwed up. They would always be tired during the day, but wide awake at night. Even at home, the concept of ’bedtime’ was unknown. They would sit up with their parents until they fell asleep on the sofa and then be put to bed when the parents themselves went to bed, perhaps at two in the morning. Discipline was frequently non-existent. The child ate on demand, was very often allowed to do anything at all, as long as it did not irritate the parents.

It is not hard to see how this kind of lifestyle caused problems when the child began school. The kid would be unable to follow instructions and sit still for story time. Nobody had ever made him sit still quietly; of course he would have trouble starting now. He would fall asleep during lessons and be unable to obey simple requests. If he couldn’t get his way, he would scream and become aggressive. Many of these kids were diagnosed with ADHD as a consequence.

The treatment to which these children were subjected had no underlying ideological rationale. Their parents simply carried on their own lives and left the children to their own devices; expecting them to fit in with the parents’ lives. It is odd though how similar themes emerge in some home educated children. Some home educating parents refuse to enforce a bedtime. They allow their children to decide what they should do, when and what they should eat. There is minimal or wholly non-existent discipline and structure. One cannot help but wonder whether the high number of home educated children with special educational needs of the ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia type could be a by-product of certain kinds of parenting. In other words, do they end up being home educated because certain syndromes strike their children at random or are the disorders themselves precipitated by the style of upbringing? I shall explore this thesis further over the next few days.