Homeschooling your aspie teen?

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I am new to the wrong planet discussion boards. I have a 14 yr old son, dx AS when he was 5. He has always been public schooled and due to his major noise sensory issues and just generally being overwhelmed in that environment, we are planning to homeschool starting next fall. He'll be starting 9th grade.

I am curious if any of you homeschool your aspie teens and how that is working for you.

Thanks in advance!

There's a few homeschoolers floating around here! My son is 10.5 and we pulled him for the same reasons that you mentioned.

It's been incredible to see the difference in him. He's much more successful in social settings because now he's not being triggered 24/7. So when we take him places or he's with his friends, he's enjoying himself a lot more.

If we were to keep him in public school, we would have had to increased his meds dramatically in order for him to just get through the day. That wasn't something I was willing to do when what we're doing at home is working so well.

Don't worry about the people who will tell you that he won't get enough social interaction because that's far from the case. It's just a common assumption that people make about homeschoolers.

Good luck on your journey! Have fun with it.

Thanks so much for your reply! I know the whole "they don't get enough socialization" is bunk! There is a local homeschool band, student government, etc in my area. I am not worried about getting him socialized--although he'd just as soon stay home! But I am sure there will be naysayers...especially in my husband's family which is filled with public educators! But they don't live in our shoes every day. They don't see how depressed and stressed he is. I know we are doing the right thing. I'm not sure how it's all going to work, but I am determined to make it work. For my boy!

Is there any specific curriculum you are fond of? I have no idea where to start with that end of things!

I'm just about to get the kids off to bed and then I'll be back so we can chat.

Good for you for being so proactive. We left an incredible school. They were willing to bend over backwards for us and had no problem "thinking outside of the box" to meet my son's needs. But there are some kids who just get too overstimulated to be able to function, no matter how supportive you try to be. My kid was one of them.

I don't really follow a set curriculum. I take his interests and I build on them. He is naturally talented in computer programming and likes to create his own video games so I give him topics. He's made math games, puzzles, riddles etc. There's so many lessons in those activities!

He also loves Orca whales. So we're in the middle of a unit on the ocean. We adopted a killer whale named Fin through the Vancouver Marine Science Research Centre and they have us an awesome package of information and a picture of fin and all of his scientic naming codes, information about his pod and his ancestors. So there was a whole whack of stuff to work with. We've been building a saltwater tank at home which requires a lot of research, measuring, basic chemistry (measuring nitrates, nitrites, calcium, ammonia etc).

We focus a lot on life skills too. Cooking, cleaning, self care, laundry, gardening, taking care of pets, plants etc. When you think about the things you do just in a normal day, there are so many valuable lessons and you've covered so much "curriculum" just by being in tune to the experiences around you. We're taking a road trip this summer to New Brunswick to go to the Bay of Fundy. Since we'll be there, we're about to study the loyalists because we'll be visiting the place they landed at when they came to Canada. There's history for you.

The fact that your son is getting so much one on one time, you'll probably find that it's much easier for him to retain what he's learning because he's not so stressed with the extra stimulation of the chaos of school. That was the thing I found most shocking. When he was at school, he could only stay on task 2-4 mins at a time. Now, his whole day is one big lesson and he has no idea because he's enjoying himself so much.

We have a pretty relaxed approach to homeschooling. Some days require more pencil/paper tasks than others. It all depends on how everyone is feeling. I find it helpful to keep a journal and jot down everything we do in a day because you'll be amazed at how much you cover.

Right now we're doing math, reading comp, vocabulary, the human body, ocean unit, and life skills. I swear I'm coming out of this smarter too. We were reading up on pennipeds and I had no idea that lion seals will eat a human.

Feel free to PM me whenever you want. I think you'll have a lot of fun. Both sides of our families are teachers and administrators and now that they've seen the huge change in my DS, they're much more accepting of it. In the end, you have to go with your gut instinct. Take what he loves and build on it.

My wife and I took our daughter out of school after grade nine, our daughter did online school through our school district. Our daughter was capable of doing alot of work on her own, so this program worked well. The online school did not cost any money and the district even gave us money towards paying for a computer, they also had teachers available to help the students if needed. The one thing about the online school is we didn't have to come up with a curriculum, she could work at her own pace, and it was fairly easy for us to follow if she needed help. Anyway I don't know where you live, but in our district we have several alternatives to actually going to mainstream school. Unfortunately our daughter was really sick through her grade nine year, and the teachers were treating her like crap (they didn't believe she could be so sick from chronic tonsillitis) which sent her into a depression and she refused to go back to school, so the district sent a teacher to see her twice a week to complete grade nine. Anyway I hope you find what will work for your child.

The main problem for us has been finding a non-creationist science curriculum that is packaged for homeschoolers. I know there are lots of secular science textbooks out there but I haven't been able to find formal curriculum sequencing the school years that is affordable, secular, and designed for homeschool.

Thanks so much for your reply! Sounds like you have figured out what works well for you guys. That is great! I think that since he has always been in public school we will probably start out pretty structured and transition that way and then see if we need to modify how we do things.

I know my son is going to be so much happier doing school at home. I am getting very excited about it! And I can tell my son is so relieved.

Thanks for your reply! We live in South Carolina (US) and we do, in fact, have an online public high school. It is finishing its first year of operation and I just feel like it has not been well enough established. There have been mixed responses...as there are with everything, right? We have certainly thought about it, though! And we'll evaluate as we go how things are working and if the homeschooling isn't working, we'll do something different!

Ahhh...you're in SC? You're lucky. Activities for homeschoolers are everywhere in the south. My parents moved from Canada to GA and my sister was 11 at the time. My Mum started homeschooling her then and continued until she went to uni. She's now in grad school at Emory. I was always amazed at how many opportunities there were home HS families. We have some resources up here in Toronto, but nearly as many and they usually seem to sort of fizzle out before anything really good gets started.

My parents have been homeschooling me since fith grade. If I had stayed in public school I think I would have commited sucide. Supposidly all the bullying I had received was my fault. If I was was sexually assulted or raped too I wonder if that would be "my fault" as well.

jojo I have been pretty lucky, I was diagnosed with autism when I was around 3, but with the parents I had I have made long strides. What worked for them and me was a really small school that had 10-15 students per class. With our daughter we have been really fortunate, the online schooling in our area has been in existence for at least nine years. Oh yeah I forgot she also went to a program called work and learn, at both places the teachers were very supportive, but my daughter found that at the work and learn program that they were really supportive, and understanding, she can get really emotional, and in the regular school, the attitude is 'just get over it'. We were able to teach her the courses with the curriculum set up for us online, so in essence she was homeschooled, the curriculum was set up, we taught it (and she taught herself alot of it), but it was submitted online for someone to grade. Anyway like I said I hope you find the thing that will work for your child

I took my AS 16 yo out of school for some of the same reasons, and for different ones. Depending on what state you live in there are several different online schools. There are upsides and downsides to online schools.

PLUS
*The kids can move at their own pace which mean they can accelerate themselves, or get more help if they need it.
*Many AS kiddos love the computer, so school becomes play.
*They no longer have to deal with the NT world - so it gives them a break in order to grow up a little more

MINUS:
*My son worked so quickly that he finished an hour class in 5 minutes - but he did that in a regular school too - except now that he was at home - what was he going to do with all his time.
*No modeling of "correct" behavior
*No learning through others in the classroom
*YOU become HIS WORLD

Another big PLUS - HE GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL!! !! and did not drop out because of the sensory integration issues and no more bullying! Yea!! !!

I'm no parent, but being a teen I can say that homeschooling can have it's disadvantages.

It would be really, really hard for him to learn any social skills if he doesn't attend a normal school with other people. If he were to I'd recommend other extracurricular activities with other people. We can't isolate aspies from society, or else they'll never learn social skills and it would be hard for them to start their own family someday or find a job.

Exactly! With my son, yes, school overwhelmed him but he knew he needed to learn how to cope with people. We took him out of middle school. Then tried again in high school. The school just followed his lead. He'd take as many classes as he could but then he'd start to feel overwhelmed. So we'd push a little to see if he could get over the different hurdles. When he was sure, we'd drop the classes that were too much and he'd just stick with the ones that he could cope with. It didn't mean he was in dumbed down classes. He was in classes which let him cope and learn about himself. Advanced chemistry was on of the classes he felt comfortable in, for instance. In addition, one teacher asked if he could be in her low level literature class even though he was a much better reader than the other kids. It was a very good experience for him because he could study his social interactions in that gentle class.

He went to the video game club and the anime club.

He didn't get enough credits to graduate but the credits he did get were all A's and what he learned from school was priceless, something we couldn't give him at home.

He's in college now. They never asked about a diploma. I think modified diplomas are silly.

My 11yo has been HSed since he started school. There is no way he would be able to be in a classroom. We are very active so socialization has never been an issue. So far it is working great. I wouldn't go back and change it for the world. We are doing switched on schoolhouse. I think what you pick really depends on what you want and how independent your student is. What ever you pick be sure you get an accredited high school diploma in the end.