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| Could you keep your child(ren) at home ? |
| Yes |
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24% |
[ 6 ] |
| Yes, if reorganised a bit |
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8% |
[ 2 ] |
| yes, if reduced our income |
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4% |
[ 1 ] |
| Yes, if made huge sacrifices/changes |
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4% |
[ 1 ] |
| No, not possible |
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28% |
[ 7 ] |
| Perhaps, hadn't really thought about it |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| Don't know/other |
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4% |
[ 1 ] |
| Already do |
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28% |
[ 7 ] |
| Have tried it for a significant time period, but was no better/worse |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
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| Total Votes : 25 |
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DW_a_mom
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Posts: 645
Location: Northern California
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 Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 6:38 pm Post subject: |
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I don't agree that this is an NT v. Aspie parent issue. What it is, more likely, is a belief that the school experience can be improved, v. a belief that it cannot be improved. Yes, some children are miserable in school. That happens with NT's just as it does with Aspies. Are you under the false impression that NT's never suffer through a poor school experience? That would be woefully incorrect. Not all Aspies suffer horribly in school. Many do, yes, but not all.
My question would be what is causing the negative experience? Most often it is related to the culture of a particular school, and NOT to institution itself. And if the problem is related to the culture of the school, it is entirely possible to either have influence on changing it, or to switch to a different school and enjoy a very opposite experience. Some Aspie children cannot thrive in ANY school, because of the crowds and the stimulation and the expectations, but I really do not agree that this is true for MOST Aspie children. Most Aspie children need more to find a school that is understanding and accomodating, than to avoid the experience all together. I live in a county that has many choices for families with special needs children. Small classes specialized in Autism, with sensory adjustments made to the entire environment. A private school devoted to special needs children, that adapts depending on the child, changing classrooms, curriculum, etc. Classrooms limited to 6 children, with a teacher with each child. My son's school, which has bent over backwards to help him, and provided services I never dreamed he even needed, but with which he has prospered. If something isn't working, we try a different environment. All the choices are there.
You are assuming that if a child is miserable in school, that it is the institution of school causing all the issues, and that the only answer is homeschooling. I do not, EVER, advocate leaving a child in an environment that is negative for him. In these threads you reference, you should have noted that I consistently say, FIND ANOTHER OPTION. The difference between you and I, however, is that I feel it is likely a school can be found that WILL make the child happy and allow him to thrive. As a parent, I would not settle for anything else. If there was no such school available, I would home school. But in my experience, such a school often IS available, so why not allow a parent to look for it? I have seen it many times: find the right school, and the issues the child has faced melt away. It doesn't HAVE to be homeschool for that remedy to come about. You incorrectly assume that it does.
It has nothing to do with wanting my son socialized. It has everything to do with wanting him to receive an education I do not feel I can provide. My son enjoys school. It is entirely possible. You just need the RIGHT school.
There-in lies the basic difference in assumptions that you and I start from.
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DW_a_mom
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Posts: 645
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 6:52 pm Post subject: |
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| ouinon wrote: |
Why, as soon as I post a thread arguing passionately,( because I'm feeling so sad and angry about all the school-related pain that's written about on here) , for home schooling, are there no longer (m)any parents having serious problems with their children at school?   ......
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Perhaps they need time to digest the idea. A LOT of time. As in more than a day or two.
You are asking people to flip around their entire vision for their family. If they have not considered it before, they won't even be able to answer why they have or they have not. I did actually consider it, which is why I can answer at this point in time. And I have already told you that the box I would mark is not on your list. You downplayed my position, but it doesn't change the fact that the box MUST be on your list for it to be valid. That is my reason, and would be my reason if my child was unhappy at school and I was trying to investigate solutions. Homeschooling would be a last ditch choice for me.
Having been years ago in the position of having my son at the wrong preschool school, and feeling desperate for a solution, I know how difficult it is to properly see the alternatives in front of you at the point in time you most need to. There is so much momentum in the direction you are going, so much, and so much invested, it is almost impossible to see your way out of it. If you had mentioned homeschooling to me at that point in time, I would have felt that you were doing the equivalent of asking me to jump off a bridge and hope I survived it. I had obligations ending far out into the future that I felt very locked into, and that could not be met with my child home during those hours. I felt that my son would be emotionally damaged if yanked him out of a familiar situation, regardless of the fact that it was also a negative one, because so much had been invested in helping him adjust to it. I don't even remember all the emotions anymore - just that there were so many of them, so many conflicting considerations, and so much momentum.
It isn't about money. It isn't about stubbornly feeling the child must be socialized. It isn't about having had a great school experience as a child v. not having had one. You need to see that it is a LOT more complicated than that.
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KimJ
Legend in my own mind
Joined: Jun 11, 2006
Posts: 2538
Location: Arizona
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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I can say that before coming to WP, I never contemplated homeschooling. Once I was hit with the idea and sometimes shamed about sending my son to school, it took another 2 months for me to agree that in our case, homeschooling was the best solution for our immediate problem.
It was like jumping off a bridge. Now, I know I can do it again and I'm not afraid to ask for more from the school and threaten them with keeping my son home if they don't budge. Yet, even after that experience, my husband isn't convinced it's the optimal solution. C'est la vie. |
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schleppenheimer
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 01, 2006
Posts: 868
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject: |
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I have just the opposite situation -- my husband really likes the idea of homeschooling. He doesn't think that my arguments are necessarily valid against homeschooling (and I'm not against it -- I'm just trying to weigh all the options). The thing is, he's not as involved with my son's education as I am, so I tend not to weigh his opinion as much as my own!
Kris |
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schleppenheimer
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 01, 2006
Posts: 868
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:18 pm Post subject: |
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DW_a_mom, where in Northern California are you? We lived in the Sacramento area, and had a really awful time with the school district there. I grew up in Northern California, and I've always wondered what it would have been like to have my son in school there.
Kris |
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DW_a_mom
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Posts: 645
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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I'm in Marin County. Even within the county you can have differing experiences but quite a few schools are known for doing a top job with special education. Turns out our local school is one of them.
There is also a private school, Star Acedemy, strictly special education, that I have heard really good things about.
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Nan
Phoenix
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Joined: Mar 02, 2006
Posts: 2936
Location: left coast
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 8:55 pm Post subject: |
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| ouinon wrote: | Currently the poll shows that 5 people already home school, and of the parents who do not, 2 could, and 2 could not. I am not surprised that so few of the parents whose children are frequently/constantly having trouble and suffering at school have so far voted. I would be surprised if they did.
But I am once again, as previously, as always, depressed by the Parents Forum, and think it may have a lot to do with its posters being largely NT with NT priorities. Which means "socialising" for their AS children. And the pervasive and crushing belief that however bad school gets it couldn't possibly be worse than/anything like as bad as home schooling.
PS: What is the % of parents of AS children who are themselves AS? as I am?
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I am AS, ouinon, as is my kid. As was one of my parents.
I was not home schooled - my father was a school teacher, but my mother was uneducated. She never worked out of the home a day in her life, but she'd have been a hell of a task master. She'd have been the better of the two had she actually home-schooled us, as my father was very rigid (Aspie) and unable to vary his approach. But they were both very two-dimensional thinkers. I had absolute hell in school, but I think it was probably the right place for me to have been. At least in my early grades (before high school).
I was sent to a very old-fashioned, very strict catholic school.( Later I went to a public high school, a relatively good, but very large one (about 3,500 kids) - the only one in the town where we then lived.) I am not only Aspie, but I have a central auditory processing disorder. None of that mattered in that catholic school - I was treated no differently than any of the other kids. We were all treated exactly the same, held to the same standards, equally miserable in our own way. But you know what? We all graduated. And I learned how to navigate that world. Maybe not as well as some of the NT kids, or as easily, but I'm sitting here in my own home, with three university degrees and only a dissertation away from a terminal degree (that I walked away from). I'm functional, more or less. I had a damned good education - even if most of it was self taught after elementary school. The nuns did teach me how to use a library, thank whatever higher power you choose to name.
My daughter - if the school would have been a good one, if I could have found a catholic school like the one I went to and afford the tuition, I'd have happily sent her, even if she'd been less than happy there. She'd have gotten a damned good education, too. But that wasn't an option. And THAT'S why I support homeschooling if it's warranted. I know some kids can't function in the school setting, but, in many cases, it's the school that's not functional. If you have no other option, you gotta do what you can do. If that means pulling them out of a bureaucratic mess, then pull them out by all means. If you can....
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Novinson's Revolutionary Discovery: When comes the revolution, things will be different - not better, just different.
Last edited by Nan on Wed Mar 19, 2008 9:39 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Nan
Phoenix
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Joined: Mar 02, 2006
Posts: 2936
Location: left coast
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 9:01 pm Post subject: |
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| KimJ wrote: | | comparing war scars doesn't further the conversation. |
Oh, I think it does and should. You cannot possibly accurately interpret what someone is saying without knowing them, where they've been, what their lives are/were like. Otherwise, you just read what someone says of their life as if it's the same as your life - which is, I'm willing to bet, far from accurate a good part of the time. That is, if you've lived a basically middle-class, middle-American life - say someone from a middle sized town in Kansas - you can't really have an understanding of what it's like for someone who's been quite well off from birth from a major metropolitan city or a foreign country, or someone who's grown up in the ghetto of East LA. You simply don't have a clue. You see what you see on TV, which is pretty much fantasyland, and assume you do. But you don't. Therefore, you have to rely on those individuals' sharing their experiences with you. Otherwise, you condemn yourself to living in a wonderbread and mayonaise kinda world. And that neither furthers understanding or allows for growth. Of course, those may not be your priorities, hard to say.
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Novinson's Revolutionary Discovery: When comes the revolution, things will be different - not better, just different.
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Nan
Phoenix
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Joined: Mar 02, 2006
Posts: 2936
Location: left coast
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 9:11 pm Post subject: |
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| DW_a_mom wrote: | | I'm in Marin County. Even within the county you can have differing experiences but quite a few schools are known for doing a top job with special education. Turns out our local school is one of them. There is also a private school, Star Acedemy, strictly special education, that I have heard really good things about. |
Wow, you are really fortunate, DW_a_mom. I've just wiki'd Marin County - it's got the second highest median household income of any county in California. No wonder you've got the resources you do! I do wish it was that way everywhere. Even here in San Diego County, what's available really does depend on where you live in the county - which district, which schools in the district.
I am wincing and wondering what the upcoming budget cuts will do? They just sent over 900 potential layoff notices to teachers in the San Diego Unified School district. The nurses, too, librarians, aides.... I hope your kids are insulated from all that up there.
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DW_a_mom
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Posts: 645
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 19, 2008 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Nan wrote: | | I am wincing and wondering what the upcoming budget cuts will do? They just sent over 900 potential layoff notices to teachers in the San Diego Unified School district. The nurses, too, librarians, aides.... I hope your kids are insulated from all that up there. |
Unfortunately, our district is not insulated, and will be affected. There are districts that receive no state money and will not have to make any changes, but ours is one of the poorest in the county. Still, they have learned to do a really good job with what they have, and I trust they will do the best possible under the circumstances. Right now they've got a really strong lobbying effort going on. The president of the school board has children currently enrolled in the district, so I know he is going to do everything he can. The school community has already been handed marching orders on some little stuff (paperwork and flyer distribution is being cut and streamlined, for example), but there are still some big, tough, decisions to be made. Our PTA is gearing up to find a way to fill in as we can, and so on. When you've got a community that believes in education, and parents willing to help, things can happen. It isn't the first money crisis we've faced, and it won't be the last.
I do, btw, consider myself REALLY fortunate, when it comes to school. I am not sure how middle school and high school will play out, but we've done well so far.
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Nan
Phoenix
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Joined: Mar 02, 2006
Posts: 2936
Location: left coast
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 11:01 am Post subject: |
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| DW_a_mom wrote: | | Nan wrote: | | I am wincing and wondering what the upcoming budget cuts will do? They just sent over 900 potential layoff notices to teachers in the San Diego Unified School district. The nurses, too, librarians, aides.... I hope your kids are insulated from all that up there. |
Unfortunately, our district is not insulated, and will be affected. There are districts that receive no state money and will not have to make any changes, but ours is one of the poorest in the county. Still, they have learned to do a really good job with what they have, and I trust they will do the best possible under the circumstances. Right now they've got a really strong lobbying effort going on. The president of the school board has children currently enrolled in the district, so I know he is going to do everything he can. The school community has already been handed marching orders on some little stuff (paperwork and flyer distribution is being cut and streamlined, for example), but there are still some big, tough, decisions to be made. Our PTA is gearing up to find a way to fill in as we can, and so on. When you've got a community that believes in education, and parents willing to help, things can happen. It isn't the first money crisis we've faced, and it won't be the last.
I do, btw, consider myself REALLY fortunate, when it comes to school. I am not sure how middle school and high school will play out, but we've done well so far. |
Best of luck with that! There are always things that can be cut until it really gets tight, but there are some that absolutely have to be there. You can make do with less, you can substitute homemade things for professionally created, but the lessons themselves have to continue. If you can't find volunteer librarians, you have to have one on staff. Same with nurses.
One of my co-workers' kids' schools have gone electronic - flyers are now sent via email, their journalism classes are creating web newspapers instead of the old traditional hardcopy (which is really a smarter option, anyway, as it gives them something to put in their "work" portfolio for when they graduate), the science teachers are having the kids go back to the "coffee can and string" science experiments and they've quit ordering the higher-priced pre-made kits. But this school is in a relatively well-off community where they all have computers at home, etc. Won't work in SouthEast San Diego. I guess each district is going to have to get incredibly creative, given the task at hand and the resources available.
It can be a positive thing, if one looks at it that way - it's a chance for them to find out what it is they actually have to have to get where they want to go, rather than what they'd like to have. Or what they think they have to have. Could be an excellent chance to teach the kids the principles of economics and the financial systems.
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DW_a_mom
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Posts: 645
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:19 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, Nan, there is only so far the creativity will go. But it is still a really good exercise. The truth is salaries are something like 80% of the budget. Right now they are hoping attrition will take care of a lot of the cuts needed there, and I already know some working in admin at the schools who are thing of taking this as an indication it is time to make life changes they have been considering for a while. I hope we can keep the teachers, but we may have to go the way the rest of CA went a while ago, and give up the bonus money we've been getting for keeping lower grade class size down at 20. We haven't had a school nurse for years, and counseling has been off and on already for the past few years, so I suspect it will fall to "off." Hopefully that can be picked up by organizations outside of the school. It is a shame, I think a lot of children can benefit from counseling, and having it at the school helps them access it, but I just know it's going to go.
We actually had a banner year this year, when it comes to funding. Our principal rushed out and put in orders for all sorts of things that had been on the wish list for years, and we got most of them. Capital improvements, equipment, stuff like that. Next year we won't get any. We also had some grants for special projects, which will not repeat. Too bad you can't just say, "no thanks, the picture looks bleak next year, so lets save that money until then." Doesn't work that way.
In the 6 years I've been involved in the public school system, I've learned a lot about how fickle the funding is, and how political, but I've also seen our principal do an amazing job of blowing with the wind and keeping all the core consistent from year to year. It truly is a shame that it works this way in this state, however. It takes leadership that is exceptionally talented to make it work without the kids feeling the swings.
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DW_a_mom
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 23, 2008
Posts: 645
Location: Northern California
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 12:24 pm Post subject: |
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Now that I've posted WAY off track, lol, I want to say: I want to encourage the homeschoolers on this board to keep advocating for the option. I am sorry you get frustrated and feel you are not heard, but you are. Just remember that this is not an easy transition for a family to consider. It will always take time and patience. But there most definitely are times it will be the right decision for the family you are talking to and, if it is, they will eventually figure it out, and enjoy your support in making the transition. Keep focused on the positives of this choice. Options are a good thing, and proper education about them is, also.
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katrine
Phoenix
Joined: Nov 24, 2006
Posts: 550
Location: Copenhagen
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks Nan for great insight. |
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LynnInVa
Blue Jay
Joined: Dec 05, 2007
Posts: 84
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| Posted: Fri Mar 21, 2008 7:34 am Post subject: |
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| ouinon wrote: | there seems to be very little comprehension of how damaging schooling is/can be for many sensitive children. I think that it is urgent to broadcast this, so that at least some people, those who do have a choice, rethink their priorities, really "hear" that school can be/is often like gluten/wheat to a coeliac; continued use/exposure destroys millions of the fine little cilia in the intestine which are essential for absorption purposes, and results in serious deficiencies, aswell as lost defences against noxious particles.
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This I do agree with - but I also think this can happen even when the schools are in compliance. Where I am there is currently so little by the way of emotional/behavioral support in school - this is something I want to see change.
The No Child Left Behind bus didn't think about stopping to pick up the children who fell through the cracks along the way... |
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