Heidi Skudder On Learning Through Play

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2:24Heidi Skudder: Hello and welcome to Made by Mamas, the podcast. I'm Zoe Hardman. And I'm Georgia Dayton. And this is your parenting safe space where no conversation is off limits. With five kids between G and I, we have seen a lot. We really have. Each week, we'll be joined by some famous faces and experts, and we'll chat about the brands and products that have saved us along the way. In short, we're the parenting podcast for you. Before we get started, hit subscribe or follow so you're the first to know when each episode lands. And they're on Tuesdays and Fridays. And it really helps if you leave a rating and a review.

2:57Heidi Skudder: You can also find us on Instagram. We're on at Made by Mummers. But for now, George, should we get into it? Hello and welcome to today's episode of the podcast. a really brilliant chat coming your way today because we have got a parenting coach in the house in the house uh who knows uh i mean do we do any of us actually really know what we're doing but i think this is the thing if somebody does claim to but i'm also shouting at my children so we're all on the same page that's fine she's had so many years experience um helping parents navigate this period in our lives and today we're going to sit down with her and chat to her all things parenting uh it's Heidi Scudder we've been trying to get this chat in I know I'm really happy to be here so yeah it's great so obviously we've we've caught up before in person and had lots of different chats but I remember when I saw on Instagram you saying that you were going to start homeschooling I started following the account like okay I need to see how this is all palling out oh gosh do you want to tell us a little bit about three children so I've got three year old seven year old and eight year old and we've been doing it for a year so we're just going into our second year of home educating you're supposed to call it in the UK homeschooling is more of an American thing um and yeah it's it's a lot and it's intense but I think it's probably one of the best decisions I've made for my children genuinely um the change in my middle who we kind of did it more for than my eldest has been massive like his happiness his social skills it's it's amazing so I can't wait to dive into this I mean I'm just going to set the scene for you last night Luna and Kit were saying to me I do not want to go to school tomorrow you know it was going to be a Monday morning and they were like I don't want to go can we be home educated did they say that and I went absolutely not the thought of it just I yeah I think that's most parents reactions it's like I could never do that now we have to remember I was a nanny I've literally looked after children since I was 14 um I've been a sleep consultant for 17 years I'm now a parenting coach so I am children like I get children however what I would say is that I went down a rabbit hole about a year and a half ago and I remember in the May time I just started like looking at it on Instagram and suddenly I was like this is so doable because I think a lot of people see it as what it was in COVID which is like six hours at a desk yeah on a screen online lessons yeah um pulling your hair out because you're trying to juggle work and schooling my kids sit at my kitchen table for less than an hour a day and they are still testing the exact sorry they're still measuring within sort of 65 to 85 percent of the their year group in terms of what they should be achieving wow and they do less than an hour a day at the table sorry because essentially learning happens out of the classroom and all over the home i mean like this episode is sponsored by I'm a listener and Doug so obviously we can talk about some of that but I do you look around now and look at the things that are already in your home like the you know the different play sets and sticker books and all of that kind of stuff and realize just how much they're getting exactly it's play it's play school is learning not just but a lot of like fact learning and learning like these are the things now there's so much more to it and what I don't want to do is say like oh school is not appropriate because it is great for so many children I think it's really important to mention that but I feel like the play element is huge you know like if you take that six hours there's a great blog somewhere and if you condense it out of you know take the assemblies the walking to the classroom the settling into the classroom the bags bottles whatever that they do the actual hands-on learning time and then they have to put their hand up because the teacher has to come around whereas at home obviously it's me or my nanny with the two boys then the condensed time is so much shorter so then there's like five hours where they just play like I know for a fact now they're in the park I did their times tables with them this morning and their maths and now they've gone to the park um so I think the expectation is I could not do that and there are some people who cannot 100 % um but a lot of people could do it they just don't know what it looks like yeah what was really interesting when I started when I knew that we were going to be sitting down with you today and I sort of started reading into and looking around my house and seeing what I had there that I could use not just in a really fun way but also in an educational way there was so much more than I had realized and that actually this whole kind of two times two is four four times four is that is four times four and that's one of the points there we go right and actually even just things like saying to kit like we were doing we were talking about today that today's episode is sponsored by Melissa and Doug they've got these sticker wow things I was saying to her I'm obsessed with those right and we were I said to him I was like just give me a guesstimate how many stickers do you think are in this pot that comes with it and he was like okay and we were suddenly doing guesstimates together and that is learning that is learning that is learning and also the conversation that comes when you're sitting down doing things like that we love the watercoloring books and like it's just calming you know and you can have conversations and talk about things as you're doing an activity like that and you get that one-to-one time with them and they're learning so much just by listening to you as well so much conversation and that's the thing I think a lot of the time in the classroom they're obviously sat they get to put their hand up right and answer questions and it took me about six months for them not to put their hand up if they needed a toilet when we were sat at the kitchen table I was like guys this is not school this is mummy you don't have to put your hand up if you need to go to the toilet so there's a little bit of sort of deconditioning is that the right word for me as well because I was still very much like okay I've got to follow the curriculum because just in case they go back in school and it's a disaster and you really do have to get out of that mindset of it's kind of the establishment thing like we are here and this is what we do and these are the rules and you sort of pave your own way and yeah it's it's quite incredible talk us through what a week looks like for you and how you plan in advance I think firstly I should definitely say I could not do it without our nanny who I have two days a week because I want to still work a lot of parents will give up work to home educate I decided I didn't want to do that so we've got an amazing nanny and she does two full days with the boys doing their learning so they don't miss out and I also don't miss out my career um there's a big thing around finances I think also people just naturally think that you have to have like money to home educate yes but actually that is not necessarily the case you have to have flexibility in your work and choice but there are loads of people who do like night jobs or choose to cut back on their work to make a sacrifice and there are lots of sacrifices that go with it um but yeah like honestly I don't really plan until the morning really I'm not like I'm not like a teacher he's like okay I mean I've got this blackboard and it says this term we're doing speed emotions and poems and we've done like none of that yet it's only been a week though kind of more what comes up so we went to um limery just the other day we literally stopped off on our way back from Devon went to the fossil beach was like we'll do fossils this week so then I go onto a website that you can print out worksheets print out worksheets on rock formations I can't even remember the words because clearly I'm not you know their level on rocks and stuff but print out the worksheets and then that's what they do that day so but you don't have to do worksheets you could do you know like actual play they do lego for hours a week they do the park they're learning through play like that is how children learn and I think this is the thing about school now is that they've cut back so much on the play time and that's actually the most powerful form of learning for children is play so yeah I really want to dive into that were you gonna yeah no I was going to ask about how you flip between mum and teacher but by the sounds of it it all kind of yeah to begin with they were like oh mum teacher they were a bit confused I was a bit confused but honestly now it's just when you have done this then we get to go and do whatever else you want to do so they know now they do their hour and then we get to go and do other stuff so I wouldn't yeah some days you get pushback but that's the great thing like if I wake up and I'm super hormonal and I'm like ragey and like trying to get the math thing done and they're not going to do it I just we just don't because you go with your body and equally for them as well like you know when they have kind of oh they don't want to go to school days yeah um outside of for example like neurodiversity which would be much more common and you would really struggle to get them into school but if it's just one of those days we're like I just want a sofa day we just have it because we're listening to our bodies and that's the whole thing isn't it like school you've got to be there on time you can't be late because you get punished and it's all very sort of in a way like fear-based and it doesn't I don't think teach children necessarily to listen to what's actually going on internally whereas when you have them at home you can do that and you can go do you know what two of you are feeling a bit coldy you know we just won't do the work and we'll just kind of do whatever we want to do today.

11:43Heidi Skudder: Asking maybe a potentially kind of slightly challenging question here just focusing on what you said there if they feel like having a sofa day then we just take it does it set up children for real life in terms of you know there are days where I wake up and I just want to pull the duvet back over my head but I'm like I can't have a sofa day today because I need to go and make money to pay for my mortgage do you do we think it gives children the right messaging that actually if we feel a bit off then yeah I can see where you come to that I think it's the opposite I think school teaches them not to listen to themselves so you know things like going to the toilet that you know the amount of times my boys would say I wasn't allowed to be like what do you mean you weren't allowed to go to the toilet like that blows my mind that and this is the kind of how I fell into it was the more I got into parenting and I was doing the sleep stuff for years and years and I did more um kind of research and training on like the neuroscience and child development the more I looked at it and the nervous system stuff the more I was like this just doesn't fit with school at all like it doesn't make any sense they're being asked to you know like if you have a child who my middle is potentially neurodiverse and he's sort of struggling to get into school I remember one day like he had him under my arm and I was sort of like dragging him down the road because I was so scared about being late and I look back and I'm hell was I doing like that was me ignoring his needs and him trying to ignore his own needs just for the sake of like a tick box literally on a register and that that was at the point where I was like this is not child-led at all and I need to kind of really think about this more I love that I love it but it's also so controversial like I have a parenting account on Instagram at Parenting with Heidi and if I talk about home ed I lose followers so I've actually not talked about it and I keep thinking I should set up a separate account because there are so many people who are like genuinely backing it and they're so excited and they're like that's amazing yeah but there are a lot of people who get triggered by it oh what and this is the thing I have I you it's not for everyone no and of course there are some jobs where you know like if you're both doctors in a hospital you're not going to be able to just be like oh we'll just do nights so that we can home med um but i do think this is part of just me who i am generally is that people need to be more curious and think outside the box and actually challenge themselves a bit and if you still decide no it's not for me cool like absolutely fine i don't mind at all but it's that like knowing there's another way that makes a lot of sense for a lot of children yeah so i think that not like one size doesn't fit all in life in general and like that we talked about you know education isn't one way education is in the home education is in play education is out and about you know education is in the park it doesn't it doesn't fit for everybody to be in one like in one place like I mean I I don't you know maybe for my youngest she would like to be home educated my eldest I don't think it would suit he likes structure and he likes rules and he likes to put his hand up to go to the toilet and all of those sorts of things they re-suit him but I'm not against it in any way I'm curious about it I want to learn about it I think when people are triggered it's their own stuff right that's the thing but I think it's just yeah I don't want to alienate so that's why I feel like I do sometimes talk about it but I I feel quite passionate about it but I'm just don't really put it out there as much as maybe I should I I think you you you speak about it so eloquently and you've obviously done loads of research behind it and who the hell is anybody else to sit there and judge you for your choices you're not saying this is what all children should be you know exposed to you're like this is what I'm choosing come along if you want to take what you will from it I mean there's definitely elements of my schooling lots of it I loved but even outside of the classroom when it came to take the lunch hall for example when I was forced to eat every single thing on my plate to the point where they would keep me behind for hours I had to put horrible overcooked liver in my blazer pocket because they wouldn't let me go and I swear to god that's why I had an eating disorder later on in life that contributed to it let's call it out here it's fear-based in some respects I was at a party yesterday my three-year-old and I was having conversation with this dad and he said oh where do you all go to school and I thought in my head I was like oh no here we go because every time I say it the vast majority will be like oh it's like you're still kind of a bit weird or alternative if you do in the UK whereas for example in America it's much more commonplace we'll get on to that so I said oh actually I home educate them and he went oh my god that's amazing and I was like oh right and like his reaction I said oh where'd yours go and he was like well I'm headmaster of one of the most prestigious schools in southwest London I won't say which one but he was like I'm headmaster there and I was like oh right and he was like I think that's the best thing you could have done and I was like wow that's really telling that someone who is that you know successful in the education systems like you go girl yeah yeah exactly um can we talk about the different elements of play and how they can be educational because i think that's really important you know imaginary play you know play using yeah building rocks or crafts and stuff like that can we just dive into that a little bit and the benefits of children players learning right so and i keep coming back to this thing where in scandinavian countries they don't go to school until seven because it's all purely play base and I wish I'd known what I know now for my then four-year-old when they both started school I totally would have kept them out for at least reception if not longer knowing what I know now um it's so important it's it's their emotional development it's resilience building it's problem solving it's it's social development like it's everything and actually on the way here I was just reading some stats because I thought I'd throw this one in there we play outside you remember playing outside like at the front of your house yeah we play outside about a roughly 60 % less than we did in the 70s and 80s so the average child now gets rather than uh something like 70 outside it's 20 so it's gone from 30 hours to five hours a week of outdoor play no and that is like that stat in itself 30 to 5 hours I just think is huge obviously you've got school obviously you've got screens you've got clubs classes and I could talk about all of these things for so many hours but I think um the main thing is to know that like play is super important and unfortunately not in every school but in a lot of schools from year one it's sort of yeah they have kind of out of the curriculum I have like I've two different children with two very different interests so like for instance my daughter loves play she's sad when the weekend's over and she says I didn't have enough time to play you know she's the one who's playing shops you know we've got those wooden ice cream sets where she can play being the ice cream guy and that is like she goes into that world and she is in that she's in flow right she's in flow which is what you do here like this is the work yeah all of that kind of stuff it absolutely suits her and i look and i just sometimes i feel so sad that i have to go no actually you've got to go to school and do the big right that she dreads every week the big right yes this thing the big right yeah and if they don't finish it they miss break time but she's so creative and she's so amazing because when i watch her doing this stuff you know playing with the beauty salon she is in like in the real world from what I watch her when she's doing her imaginary play she's amazing yet she just can't put it down on paper that's it and that's fine like some all of us are different right and that's the thing is it kind of only at the moment there are obviously schools that are very good but like the vast majority just catering for one type of child he can learn sit remember I mean don't get me start on the like sitting boy thing oh god you know just yeah the final straw for me was when my five-year-old got a phone call from school at half three on a Friday afternoon from his class teacher just before I pulled the ripcord I sent the email and um she was like oh he's been involved in vandalism and I was like I was in the middle of a course and I was like sorry hang on thinking what the hell um and she said yeah yeah he drew a circle on the table and I'm sorry can I just anyway I called a meeting went into school and um I said can I have your behavior policy just to check like what we're talking about here um and he was bored at the end of the lesson he'd run out of paper so he drew a drew a semicircle or something like ridiculous and I said can I just clarify that you're putting this as vandalism in the same section as sexual assault on your school policy and they're like yeah yeah because of where it can lead and I was just like oh my gosh that's This is so inappropriate.

20:03He's five and he ran out of paper. And I really struggled to go back from that point afterwards. Yeah. Did they back down on that or have any understanding? They said, I said, you know, this is what I do. This is what I know. This is my feedback. And they said, we'll take it into account. But I mean. Can you remember? We had a call. I was here and Axel would glued his desk with a Pritz stick to like the fold up desk with just with a Pritz stick. It's not going to stick, is it? It's probably an experiment. Yeah. And they said that they had to get three members of staff to try and prise it open.

20:34And it was very inappropriate. And I was like, what glue are we using? Like, that, what? It's a pretty good print stick because generally they don't stick, right? It's a gorilla glue, is it?

20:43Heidi Skudder: Also, if you checked every single chair or table at my prep school, it would have said Zoe was here. That's where they were going. They're like, it'll turn into this on the back of a toilet door and whatever else. It'd be graffitiing a train. I was like, honestly, like, I just can't even. I just, I couldn't believe it. And he had to also see his teacher in mist break and also see the head teacher in the middle of lunch. And can you imagine how embarrassing that is for a five-year-old boy to be called out at the lunch hall just to see the head teacher because he drew a circle on the table? Yeah, it's ridiculous.

21:13It's absolutely extreme, isn't it? So, yeah, lots of those sorts of things. You touched on America before. Yes. You've got some big news. Yeah, we are off to California, actually. On a holiday? No, we're moving there. um and yeah it's very exciting I'm most excited it's actually not really exciting right now it's blooming stressful because we're trying to empty our house which is just you can imagine family homes and moving just um but home ed out there home school they actually do call it home schooling out there is massive in California there's so much more you're not like the weird one you're actually there's lots of people that do it and it's great so I'm really excited and is it forcing you to look around and look at the toys and stuff that you really want to take yeah yeah exactly so much stuff everywhere yeah actually they don't need it and actually what we haven't really talked about with play is we there's so much stuff like think about what we had as kids and what they have now there is so much stuff and actually what they often just need is like a few little things and

22:12Heidi Skudder: then their brains to get creative and also there's really quality products and the quality toys that will last that's why we're loving working with melissa and doug at the moment because of the fact that they look aesthetically beautiful they last and they're not the plastic tap that you think why have I bought this they're not the one yeah it's not the ones that the child can keep playing with and keep coming back to and revisiting and that's that's why it's really important to to us to have those products in our home have you found have you found sorts of I love yeah yeah I love all of their stuff like the ice cream thing yes when your daughter plays I want to get involved we forget that play is really important for adults as well and I think lots of adults think that they find it really hard to play with their kids but it doesn't have to be like okay let's make a train track it can be it could be an ice cream shop it could be sitting and doing a sticker book yeah there's so many different kinds of play and um yeah like all I would say to anyone listening is I just try and say yes more to play for yourself and also with your child because I don't want to get emotional about this but like you're not you're never going to look back and go I wish I hadn't played as much as I had it's the exact opposite but we're just so busy we're like on our phones we're cooking dinner we're uh yeah and it's just that sticking point I do this a lot of my coaching like what would it look like to just slow down a little bit and just give them 10 minutes actually get goosebumps saying that I don't know why um because it makes such a big difference like I have so many parents come to me with my child's aggressive he's rude my six-year-old keeps saying this to me and all we often do is go okay let's give them 10 minutes a day of your time and it literally changes everything we often say that on the podcast actually it's like you be the cat yeah i'll be the bloody owner and just let's get on with it let's role play george yeah i mean we often say like it was exhausting those times were exhausting but how much more do you get back how much do you want to and as adults we forget how to play we do yeah play can be dancing it can be just stick some songs on and have a kitchen disc scale i don't know many people that genuinely don't like jumping around to random songs that they really enjoy and when the kids see you as like their faces change because they see you lighting up because most of the time you're like do this get this get your shoes on get out the door and then we have to get home and then we've got to go swimming and and actually yeah it's that's it's just that space to be free and that's what we all need I think I feel like the more we do these podcasts the more poignant and emotional they get and is it because our kids are getting a bit older I know don't and we want to go back you know what you've got to do it you know what I saw a great yesterday and it's just it was up in lights literally in the Sadie's kitchen it said these are the good old days and I just put it on my Instagram this morning with a picture of my kids at the breakfast table I was like oh my god like literally now now is what we will look back on and go I wish I'd been more present I'd played more whatever and obviously life is life and work is work and whatnot but just I think challenge yourself to think what can I do today that gives me five ten minutes extra with my miss bath time whatever have a bath with them jump in like do something crazy like make yourself laugh it's I think it's so important I was going to ask you for the piece of advice but I think that's it yeah I think it has to be it right just really try and fit it in where you can I don't want to add what I don't want to do is add pressure yeah because that's really important we are so at capacity as parents right now we like so much to do but yeah where can you do a bit less and therefore play a bit more I think oh I love that I think that's a perfect way to end the podcast um Heidi thank you so much for coming on I'm sure if you've got any parenting dilemmas or you need any help or advice Heidi's dms are always open they are indeed and so are ours thank you so much for joining us uh for this podcast sponsored by Melissa and Doug today

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