Dixy

@spindles: My son is busy writing his equivalent to middle school exam and my daughter is in the middle school phase. At the moment my workload regarding their schoolwork is very little as they take responsibility of their own work. When the kids were smaller, we worked together a lot, but now we just look at the progress and discuss options.

As a number of people already pointed out, there is a lot of help available. We purchased the curriculum with tutor support, but I have not used it much.

I know my son goes to one or other chat room with all his science and maths queries. I believe there are teachers keen to help children with their work. The only thing he learned to do, is quickly explain that he is not English home tongue and that our link is very slow. They have lots of patience and really helps. Just following the chat as the teacher helps other children, also is beneficial.

For the parents, Yahoo has a number of home schooling groups. Some are very "religiousy" but a lot are just parents helping each other. I joined one for Afrikaans (my home tongue) and English speakers.

Apart from that, there are so many web sites built to help with school, I found just googling the question, directs me to them.

@MSD: Yes I have also met some messed up home school kids. But I dare say, they either have or would have failed just as spectacularly in any school system. Unfortunately often when the school cannot/will not help the child, the parents turn to home schooling for all the wrong reasons.