How Do I Convince My Parents To Let Me Try Alternatives To School?

This page is a collection of people's experiences in how they got their parents to let them leave school and try other alternatives.

liq3

I'll tell you my story then.

It all started in the last few weeks of 2006(I was in year 9). I waged the last two weeks of school since it wasn't compulsory. I didn't know it at the time but I was getting bored then. 2006 was also the year I did the most homework ever in one year. I guess doing all that homework made me want a break.

Anyway, sometime in December my grandpa was diagnosed with cancer. My and my family (mum and sister) ended up moving in with my grandparents...for 5 weeks. The holidays are 6 weeks. My grandpa died in early January. Sad times.

Anyway, we didn't move back home till about the last week of holidays. Now, this wouldn't normally be a problem, except my grandparents had and have no internet. Or even a PC. So i was bored shitless. I was more or less bored, 24/7, while I was awake. I ended up sleeping longer and going to bed early I was just that bored. The last week I was there I got given a free new PC (3 years old...). So I played this for a week before coming home. Didn't matter tho, my holidays had basically been ruined. I didn't get time to relax from last year.

When I got home, and had the internet again, I literally became obsessed with it. I don't know why, but I did. I started staying up till like 3 - 5am playing Diablo 2. Record for me.

Also, in 2005 I started heavily working on self growth. By 2007 I was quite...confident. I'd gotten to the point where I started to not care what other people think. See before 2005 I was obsessed with others opinions of me...I never took action on my thoughts if it'd mean pushing others out of the way. I was very quiet.

Now come the start of school 2007. I'd just had the worst holidays ever. I went, rather normal. Not much happened first week. Then I started sleeping in. I'm rather passive by nature, covert kinda. I was sleeping in till about 11am. This was enough to convince my mum to let me stay home. After about 2 weeks, I was skipping 2 days of school a week. Sometimes 3. I'd spend all day playing computer. My mum naively thought I'd eventually stop and go to school. I didn't.

After about 3 weeks I found this site. 2 weeks after finding this site I researched alternative schooling. I told my mum. By the last week of term one, I was no longer going to my previous school. I was attending a program called AYCE, which is organized homeschooling. Too bad the problem was the work, not the kids or staff or hours. AYCE fell through as well, and I managed to get them to give a "private tutor" for second semester. I did about 2000 words of work the whole second semester. :mwahaha:

Late 2007 I applied for a TAFE course. These are university courses and at the uni I was applying at, I didn't need a VCE entry score. I got in. So now I'm study Computer Science at uni, and due to the way things work, I'm more or less skipping 2 years of school :D

Anyway, now that you got my backstory, my 'technique' was more or less to passively force my mum to help me. She couldn't send me to school if I was asleep, and she isn't evil enough to send me to juvi or boot camp.

I also must point out that I didn't really do anything. It was a deep super strong desire from my subconscious to leave school. My subc basically decided for me enough was enough, and forced even me to leave. My body was keeping me awake at night, sleeping in late, and it just happened to be extremely convenient for me.