What was high school like for you?

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I'm looking for some help from folks on the autistic spectrum. My son (has PDD-NOS) is a junior in high school and is severely depressed. He's been hospitalized 3 times in the last year. School is his major stressor. He wants to be part of the high school scene, but because he's different, he has been shunned. He's not overtly bullied, but it has caused the extremely severe depression. That - and the fact that, since he has no social life, school is all about work and homework. He is currently going to school for 2 classes and will add the third one he needs to complete high school in a week.

I'm being pressured by his doctors to have him go back full time. The school would like to see him back as well. My son does not want to do this. My husband and I now agree with him. It would help us a lot if you could share with us what high school was like for you. I can take your comments to school and to his doctors and show them that this is not a spoiled child manipulating us - that his stress is real. Will you help?

A jolly good time.

Actually, I left and followed my parents to the country 2/3rds through. I then found peace (for some time anyway, but that was events later on nothing to do with this).

Somethings; I was constantly [verbally] bullied by everyone; teachers, friends, and people I didn't know. The only reason it wasn't physical is because I was bigger than most (peers and teachers). No one did anything in regards to this, and I had no means to defend myself other than physical force, which led to me getting in trouble (since I have an ASD, I have trouble verbalizing things). The schooling wasn't tailored to me; it's was read from a textbook and take a test at the end of a term--I achieved far less than what I was capable of, as the teaching wasn't for the individual, it was for the group. I stayed home often, and I skipped classes even more often; the sensory bombardment of being in a classroom full of people was terrible for me at this time.

I excelled in primary school, even if the bullying was still there (just not as much or bad).

Homeschooling would have been the best, and my mother inquired, but since there was nothing wrong with me (school counselor didn't think anything was amiss with me), they didn't allow it.

Diagnosed with Autistic Disorder several years later, with some learning difficulties.

I went to a school with 400 kids and it shrunk down to 350 so I can remember some staff being laid off due to budget cuts. So I wasn't bullied but I was ejected and pushed away and told to be quiet. Kids also didn't like me asking questions in class and kids got annoyed with my pacing and I got accused of not caring and being selfish. But they always told me to mind my own business when I ask them what's wrong when I see them mad or crying so I learned I was not supposed to care and I was to pretend I didn't notice it. I also got extra help in school with schoolwork and I would get meltdowns and be sent back to the resource room.

I also had listening problems so I couldn't listen for long periods of the time and for some reason I wouldn't hear all the words the teacher would say. I also fell asleep in class because I get bored or too much talking got me tired so my head would feel heavy and I would close my eyes. Since I wasn't allowed to have my head down, I used to rest it in my hands and I held my head up using my hands. That why no one would bother me.

But then in my senior year the freshman accepted me and talked to me simply because they knew my brother and were friends with him. They seemed to be my peers and they were only 14 and I was only 18.

During lunch I used to go back to the resource room and get on the computer for internet and then my mom put a stop to it when I was 17 when she saw me do it. We had an IEP meeting and I came back to class and her exact words were" Do you come back here every lunch?" and then she asked the teachers if this is what I do and they said yes. Then she said she didn't want me in there and she wanted me out socializing with the other kids. I thought it be boring so I used to just listen to music in front of my locker or play video games. Then in my senior year I used to just sit and play my games in my locker. I never wanted to talk to anyone because I was too focused in my game. I also used to hang out in the library for a short fit looking through old Parenting magazines from the early 80's through one of those things where you can look at old articles from newspapers until I was told I wasn't allowed in there anymore. I forget the reason why.

My experience sounds similar to your son's. I wasn't bullied (not after the first year, anyway), but I was never really included either. I was just an outsider.

Fortunately for me, though, that's just how I liked it. I was just left alone to get on with life in my comfortable bubble of solitude.

The only time anyone talked to me was if they needed me to help fix their computer or something, and I'd often be able to charge for the privilege, so I was fine with that, too.

Of course, it all depends on attitude. If I was someone who wanted to be popular and be part of "the scene" then I'd have hated that situation. For me, though, it was pretty much perfect, since I have very little interest in making loads of friends and absolutely no interest in going to parties and all the other NT teenager BS.

School interrupted topic

I suffered a major bout of depression, and left after earning 16 credits. In early adulthood I returned, amongst adults, and without the depression and distraction from the teenage school life atmosphere, I did very well. I tried college, but could not practice what I had been taught, being too abstract and only absorbing desk knowledge. Survived anyway, lived to tell.

High school was a nightmare for me. I was teased and verbally and emotionally bullied by the kids in my regular classes. It got to the point that I pretended to be a hippie, so that some of my other bullies wouldn't recognize me. I kept a lot of secrets about myself, my later years of high school, with that psycedellic mask. A year after I've graduated, I went back to being a Mod.

I didn't think high school was half as bad as middle school, though I did get into some trouble from time to time. 9th grade was pretty bad I guess, but after that it got easier.

I didn't find high school to be too stressful, really, but I had no idea why I was so completely worn out all the time, sleepwalking from class to class and napping often. Well...now I know why. It was all the PEOPLE and all the NOISE

But I enjoyed being around friends, so I put up with it.

Last edited by SabbraCadabra on 24 Oct 2010, 11:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

Main bullying or negative interaction or whatever came 7th 8th grades. Was moved to a private school, it was better - no social lifer but by that time I was not wanting or expecting it. Junior year public school in another state - some bad stuff, but easier because I had no track record there. Senior year new public school in new state; but it was university town and the high school with a lot of faculty offspring, AND I got picked up and adopted into a group so I actually had scial contacts.

Personally, IF possible I would suggest home schooling [there is even a lot of on line schooling these days] or a non-public school. Smaller is better.

For me, high school is the worst memory of any prolonged event of my life. As an undiagnosed (at that time) aspie, every therapist and counselor made it a mandate that I had to "mainstream" back into public school or I'd be an outcast forever. Beating the drums for "peer interaction" and commanding me to muster skills that an Aspie lacks. It was hell on earth for me, and it failed miserably. Had I been allowed to finish school in the small private special ed situation to which I was accustomed, I can guarantee in hindsight that I would have avoided much hardship and pain. The simple fact is that I had my own interests, bizarre as they may have been, and I had nothing in common with any other kids my age. My friends were all older retired people, which was bizarre in itself. Today in 2010, I suppose it would raise a host of other concerns surrounding adolescent boys hanging out with World War II veterans. Happily for me in my youth of the 1970s & 80s, that was not the case.

Background: I was hospitalized for ten months at age 9, after a gross misdiagnosis or paranoid-schizophrenia. In a nut shell (no pun intended), I was presented to the psychiatrist as "hearing people say nasty things about me" and "saying that people were plotting to follow me home from school or beat me up", etc etc. That would indeed point to a paranoia, IF indeed it had been in my head, and not on the playground of my elementary school or the streets of Los Angeles.

Thankfully, I survived all of that somehow, and now at age 43, I'm very happily married to a former special ed teacher, and we run a successful business together despite the misguidance of my youth. Please don't mistake my emphasis on my misdiagnosis and misguided therapy for hostility toward my parents or my childhood therapists. They didn't know of Asperger's at that time, and I was not an easy or simple case.

Charles

Thanks for your help. I'd like to emphasize that Spencer's problem isn't bullying. I think it's more what some of you have said - that the noise and having to listen to someone talk, talk, talk is so stressful. What else, besides bullying made high school difficult (if that was your experience)? I know I don't have to prove anything. I can just have him go to school for the basics and leave it at that. I don't have to do what the doctor tells me. But I'd like them to understand what it's like for someone on the spectrum to spent 7 hours in a high school.

Spencer very much wants friends. He's not a very typical autistic person. He doesn't understand small talk and gives me "that teenage look" when I suggest that this web site could help.

Like others posting on this thread, my high school years improved slightly from my grade school years due to less bullying and verbal abuse. Quite simply, I was ignored by all but a few of us who were more interested in mathematics than social interaction.

However, this period, especially junior and senior years, was when my major depression formed. My depression continued into my college years and after a few traumatic events I ended up in intensive therapy and hospitalisations. While I made it through those years with great stress and emotional upheaval, I feel some attention to my condition could have gone a long way toward happier and more prosperous academic times.

For many people on the Autism Spectrum life in high school can be a time of living hell. I was fortunate that I played a musical instrument and could hide out in the band room. If I would have had to stay in the cafeteria with the other students I would very likely have been involuntarily committed to a psych hospital and/or jail for what I would have done during a total meltdown.

If the school administrators are persuading you to have you son back full time you may want to insist that they provide additional care. I am not sure where you are, but in the United States federal law mandates that schools provide testing and appropriate care for students with ASD or similar challenges. Unfortunately, reality is that the schools will fight you because of the increased cost. If you are persistent you will likely succeed in getting the school to provide some help. I encourage you to be persistent and don't be afraid to ask for the aid of lawyers and a government official or two.

One high school student's account at:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/undergro ... logue5.htm

I was bullied in my first and second year, by one big scary girl at lunchtimes/breaks, in the locker area where I would often go to read, and on the 25 minute bus-ride to and from school by a group pf girls, two from my class and two older ones. Their bullying was mainly mockery; the scary big girl was more physically threatening. The group bullying stopped after I completely lost it one day, exploded with rage, and rushed towards one of the girls "roaring" with my teeth bared and my finger nails extended. I almost never lost my temper, but when I did the results were often spectacular ( swiping a third of the tea-things of the table at tea-time one evening for example ).

The bullying did make me so miserable though that I asked my parents if I could not go to school. My dad was a fan of John Holt, Ivan Illich, and other critics of national public schooling ... but he was also a teacher himself, who hoped ( for a while until he realised, like Gatto, that the system itself makes this impossible ), to be able to change the system from the inside, and I also think he wasn't sure if my mother, at home all day, would be "up to it", and ... I now think it's possible that neither of them wanted me at home more than necessary, that they feared that what they called my defiance/contrariness, and my increasing resentment of them the older I got, etc would be unmanageable. Anyway they refused, on what grounds I no longer remember.

In my first and second year I was referred to by some as "Dictionary", and disliked by some because coming from a small country primary school with no homework I was fascinated by the concept in the first few weeks and made the mistake of reminding a teacher about homework on one occasion. Girls would tell me "dirty" jokes knowing that I wouldn't understand, and ask me, apparently innocently, what words like "virgin" meant, and I would reply that it referred to Mary, the mother of Jesus, ... etc.

I began to lose some of my unpopularity when I began clowning around, which started because I occasionally put teachers on the spot with entirely logical responses to questions/criticisms/reprimands; eg. headmistress stands watching girls walk out of morning assembly and stops me to tell me off for wearing non-regulation socks, pointing at my grey-blue socks, ( we had to wear blue or white ), to which I replied, in front of my whole form stuck in the corridor; "I thought that they were blue enough", which was completely true. She had no reply. Girls laughed around me, and I went back to my class in a crowd of girls gleefully proud of my response. It was an extraordinary sensation; I still remember how happy I felt, almost drunk with their approval.

After hanging out with a small group of other "outcasts" ( a Formula 1 loving tomboy, a stick thin weedy looking innocent, and a kind and gentle but overweight and acne scarred girl ), in the first year I made one real friend, who I am still in touch with. She was in the other form in my year, and equally excluded.

I didn't know how to wear my uniform so that it looked like my clothes. It always looked "wrong". I used to look with envy and despair and confusion at the girls who managed to make their uniform look either like it was the latest paris chic or like a rebellion ( skirts hitched up, socks down, ties viciously narrow or deliberately and almost offensively wide, and their shoes were always the right ones: mine were always flat, and I bounced whan I walked ).

I think most of the teachers, several of them probably on or near the spectrum I have since realised, old school "spinsters"/"blue-stockings" many of them, probably understood me and my differences; for instance one day I walked out of school in a daze, waited at the busstop rather puzzled not to see the usual herd of girls there too, got on the bus and went home, only to realise halfway between the bus-station and my house that I had left school halfway through the afternoon, and missed a double period of chemistry. ... But when I crept in the next morning and explained what had happened, sure that I would not be believed, that I would be punished for truanting, or even lying about it, my form-teacher believed me instantly.

My one friend and I got into the habit of skiving off PE/sport together, hiding in the music rooms, ( where she did her piano practice ), in the "attics" at the top of the school building, and the PE teachers never seemed to have reported it, probably because we were both so abysmally bad at sports. We also used to read books in classes, hidden under our class books, but one of the very few times that I was discovered doing that, by my history teacher, she found that the book I was reading under the class-text-book was a life of Oliver Cromwell, :lol :lol who I was fascinated by at that time. I used to draw, and write poetry, in chemistry lessons, and never did understand, ( before I was about 30 ), what all the letters represented, or what the electrons did.

I daydreamed my way through school. About the only thing which I learned was how to precis, ( :lol ), I was very good at it, and loved doing it so much that I applied the same principles to a history essay, ... which then got a "fail"/ a D or an F, ... and the teacher was very confused when I pointed out that all the facts that we had been required to cover were in my essay, just exceptionally concisely :lol ( what a lesson, for me, that was!! ! ) ... . I used to pass subjects by waffling; I could waffle very well, very convincingly, with my big vocabulary and my complex sentences, and my ability to refer impressively to many different books or ideas, however superficially.

Basically I went through grammar-school like a robot/sleep-walker, doing what I was supposed to do, ( just about ), without the slightest idea what it was all about, what purpose any of it had, and when I graduated from university, aged nearly 22, I had no idea at all what I was supposed to be doing.

I think that probably one of the very few things that I learned really well at grammar school was how very very much one's appearance counted. I poured most of my active "learning energy and attention" between the ages of 13-18 into working out how to dress, present myself, be socially acceptable. I regularly bought and religiously pored over several different girls/women's magazines, secretly collected a huge stash of make-up, stuck pictures of models in poses and clothes that I particularly liked all over my room, and by the time I was 18 I had just about begun to crack the mystery.

I also drew, wrote, and read during most of my teens, in the evenings after homework and before bed at 8pm-9pm, ( ie. not even a tenth as much as I wanted ), but my academic achievement consisted of learning how to waffle convincingly. School was, like university, an almost total waste of my time. ... And the first time I ever experienced depression ( aged 20-21 ) the awful, gutting, negative thought/belief which appeared to me was "I feel as if I am waiting for my life to begin".

PS. My 11 year old PDD/AS son is home-un-schooling, and has done most of his school-age-life.
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Sorry for overlooking commenting on the distraction part of the mainstream classroom, as that indeed was an important part of what you asked. I guess I was emphasizing what was, for me, the bigger school issue.

With that said, the classrooms at my elementary, jr. high, and public high schools were highly distractive for a number of reasons. Most distinctly, I was distracted by the thoughts of terror if I would be called up to answer a question in front of the class. That in itself would be enough to cancel any opportunity to listen and take in any of whatever the subject was. Beyond that, there was a steam heating system in the schools, which would unpredictably hiss and clink, and that would draw my attention, as well as older style mercury vapor light fixtures which would cause my vision to flicker. The noise and talking wasn't so much of a problem for me, mainly because the other distractions distracted me from it. Learning anything in school wasn't even an option unless I was by myself in a corner with a book; left to my own resources. My education came to me partly from my mother, who was a military school teacher for the US Air Force. She had me prepared with basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills prior to starting school. With some good years at a private special ed school in my early teens, and with a good drive to self-educate, and with God's blessing as a good learner (when left to study in suitable surroundings), and thankfully I did fine and never fell behind. But again, I cannot credit my high school experience with any part of my education. Sorry to insult the school system or any teachers, but I'm afraid that's the way it was.

Charles

PPS.

I have tended to think that this might represent some failing or already existing tendency in me to care about "appearances", but have just realised, rereading my screed above, that it may have been school which taught me to care about appearance/form over content.

The history teacher who failed one of my best most thorough and carefully written essays because it was "too short", as a result of my using my recently acquired skill at precis/summary/concision, ( a skill which I learned in English classes and was so enthusiastic about that I actually wanted to apply it to something ), despite my having included every single point that she wanted to see in it, and how much emphasis was put on neat handwriting, and how "waffle", with lots of big words etc, enabled me to not merely pass but to get good grades in subjects I barely understood, ( incl chemistry ), and how beautiful drawings of dissections for biology or maps and animals for geography would gain me top marks. Almost all that mattered was "form"/appearance.
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Awful, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemies.

My first advice is don't force him to join this website. It will likely make him feel like more of an outsider.

High school was ok for me, I didn't have a lot of friends, but I had enough. I had a lot of trouble with OCD and anxiety in my early years which I got over by the time I was 15.

The main problem for me was just how Dirty the place was.