Homeschooling versus public schooling

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So you're saying that's typically the case with aspies?

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I've no idea what the stats are - but, it's not unheard of for someone to have AS and be athletically talented. All I'm saying is Annmaria's son may very well be athletic, not just active. That's certainly the case with my daughter.

I personally have always been rotten at games involving throwing and catching and have never really been interested in team sports involving a high level of social interaction and learning a lot of rules. Swimming, working out with machines, doing the monkey bars when I was younger... these have always been more my speed.

My older son with high functioning classic autism has a wiry build, and I've been told that he's good at running at school. He climbs like a monkey at home (but got thrown out of gymnastics class when he was four for behavior issues). He is not very social at recess, though, and cannot throw or catch well.

My younger son is naturally very strong and tall, but not very social or coordinated. I'm sure that he would do great at sports where he could use his natural strength and height.

My daughter is also very tall and strong; swimming and athletics seem natural for her body shape. She has been enjoying PE, until recently. At her age, it's mostly running around, playing tig, climbing, etc. But, her year has been afforded a pair of football coaches, once a week. She still loves PE on a Monday, when they do the usual thing, but Thursday is football and she hates it. We don't fully know her reasons, but she says all they do is learn how to dribble the ball. We've had disasters with gymnastics, TaeKwonDo and dancing, after school, but have finally found what she likes and excels at. It's just a matter of finding the right fit.

I was the same at school. I'm fit and active and loved cross-country running, gymnastics, aerobics, dance, etc and I still dance (mainly Zumba these days). The teacher often asked me to demonstrate moves and apparatus use to the class as I had got it right away. But, I loathed team sports and trying to hit a ball with a bat - awful and embarrassing.

Here's my two cents as we are on our 6th year of homeschooling our 14 yr. old son. I don't see homeschool vs. public school anymore. You can hardly compare the two, in my opinion. Homeschooling is not for everyone just as public school is not for everyone. My son attended public school from kindergarten through 3rd grade, started getting bullied in 3rd grade, public school totally clueless about what to do with my son - he was in the gifted program but never really challenged. I had to make a decision for my son- do I spend every week at the school banging my head against the wall trying to get them to protect my son or do I take him out of the environment. I chose to take him out of the environment.

Socially? he doesn't care about sitting in a classroom of 26 other kids. He has had some really great experiences with other homeschooled kids..a novel writing class, book discussions, field trips, etc. that he never would have had a chance to do it public school. He has a best friend (who has never attended school) that he bowls with, goes on field trips with and hangs out with. For my son, this is a HUGE blessing. I ask him periodically if he would like to attend public high school and he always very forcefully says "No!"

When we initally started to homeschool it was really difficult to believe that it was the right thing. But it is the right thing for my son.

One last thought...people who have a negative opinion about homeschooling usually know very little about it...once they see the opportunities available they change their minds a little. But, I don't try to change peoples minds. Homeschooling is one way to educate your child, public school is another...we've chosen homeschooling.

I would also like to say that I don't think that homeschooling is right for every parent, even if the family has the finances to make it possible. I think that the parents who do better with it are the same parents who are better at helping their kids after school, during the summers, over the weekends, etc.--basically just increasing the level of care and help that they are already providing.

And if the parent already fights with the kids a lot or the parent is already clinically depressed, homeschooling will not improve the situation.

Lack of diligence on the part of parents and inability to control discipline problems all day every day are also problems that I hear about from people in my local Autism Society group.

Patience, diligence,problem solving ability, and teaching skill are all required on the part of the parent, I think.

I agree to an extent. if a child is not learning in school and is getting terrorized and bullied when there, even an inept parent will do better than what the child receives at school.

I always ruled homeschooling out because I didn't think I was organized enough, need to work and struggle with getting DS to get anything done. While those things are true and are challenges, he is still learning so much more at home and hasn't had a real meltdown in months. I was medicated for depression when DS was in school and he was on meds too. Now that he's home, we have both gone off all meds.

It's not perfect, and frankly I would still prefer him to be at school - but while our conditions are decidedly not ideal for homeschooling, they are infinitely better than the school options in our area.

It totally stinks that kids have to be pulled out of public schools to protect them from bullying and violence. Schools should properly address these problems.

totally agree but we probably would have pulled him out for other reasons anyway.

This school's principal (who has since been reassigned) was just sort of dumb. Thought the best solution to a bullying problem was to bring the bully and the bullied into his office and say "Now what do you think we should do about this problem?" to 3rd graders! what a fool he was!

I have so many pro-homeschooling reasons for my son:
he has sleep issues (when he was in 3rd grade he sometimes couldn't fall asleep until 1:00 a.m and had to get up at 6:30 to get ready for school....how could he function well on 5 hours of sleep - he didnt'!
*thankfully his sleep issues have lessened a great deal - now that he's a teen he's able to wake early if need be but if he sleeps until 8:30 and we have nowhere to go- no harm done

* he is too smart for public school (that may sound arrogant but it so is not) Public school does a good job (well...not in our school district according to today's newspaper ... but I digress) of teaching facts, and teaching "to the test" because of time constraints and sheer number of students that need to be taught . My son is a thinker...there simply is not time for kids like him in public school. He has spent the months of Sept. Oct. and still now in Nov. learning about the pre-Columbian period of America up until the early 1600's- he is so engaged and curious - public school would just bore him to death.

*there is so little time in public school for critical thinking...kids need to learn more than just facts, vocabulary words and time tables. They need to learn how to think, research, form opinions...homeschool affords my son that opportunity.

Just to be fair I'll give a few of the downsides:
My son is always here. Not 24/7 but he doesn't leave for 6 hours like a public school kid would.
I, shamefully, admit I loved when he was in school for 6 hours a day. I've always been a sahm/work part time mom and I relished the idea of 6 hours of "freedom". I have no freedom but it's better for my son and he is old enough now that I can leave him at home alone.

We never have enough money because I only work part time (or used to ) so there's the money thing...but even if I worked full time I think I would somehow come around to using the phrase "we never have enough money"

It takes a lot of planning to find the right material (for my easily bored son) that doesn't cost a lot and will teach him in an engaging way.

The downsides were really an issue when we first started homeschooling - now that we're on our 6th year this is just all sort of normal and the life we lead.

Well to be quite honest I see nothing good about our public education system, it seems focused on the wrong things. I mean I did not learn anything from public school other then it was apparently socially acceptable for the students and teachers to pick on me or exclude me....also they try to make everyone fit a specific mold, well it didn't work on me.

So I would say homeschooling is probably better because there is more flexibility probably then you find in most public schools, though it also depends on the situation....when I was growing up public school did suck but at the same time my mom and dad did not always get along and yelled at each other at night a lot of times......so yeah home was a pretty stressful place to so homeschooling would not have made things much better in my case. Also, some overly religious people homeschool their kids in an attempt to isolate them from the rest of the world which I don't agree with.

Other then that I think the school my brother goes to is pretty cool, and its a public school but its quite different then most others. The focus is on the students intrests and talents and pursuing those....its more about what they want to learn and what skills they can increase rather then making sure everyone learns the exact same things, works on the exact same skills with no regards to what they personally are intrested in......and there is hardly any problems with things like bullying at that school.

[quote]
cjn wrote:
When we initally started to homeschool it was really difficult to believe that it was the right thing. But it is the right thing for my son.[quote]

That is absolutely true. I remember thinking I would never have time, patience, etc. to do it. I am not currently homeschooling my child with ASD, because she is enjoying the social aspect and the structure of school right now, but I did homeschool a child with ADD and loved the experience. It was sooo easy, none of the problems of distractions of other kids, his anxiety and resistance to learning went way down, and we found ways to teach to his style.

I don't believe that parents have to have a particular personality type or education to homeschool. Many, many different kinds of families I know are enjoying the experience. Some have children with special needs, some are (or were) stressed or depressed, *most* are poor or working-class, but all are well-read and put their kids first.

I don't think I buy this idea that experts are the only ones who know how to do things: doctors for treatment, teachers for helping kids learn, speech therapists for communication etc. I do appreciate the input of specialists I consult, and I read everything I can find. Just as a child ultimately learns on his own with the help of others, rather than is taught, we can acquire a high level of knowledge. And since we know our kids best, we often find the best way to apply the knowledge to our own child and circumstances.

I wouldn't want anybody to be discouraged from considering homeschooling because they feel inadequate.

J.

I homeschool my kids an certainly feel inadequate academically. We recently had my aspie tested by the school system, and will meet with they school to discuss the reports in a few days. The written reports I received say he is doing average or above average in every way they tested. They say his stregnth is his friendliness and personality. My husband and I conclude that his friendliness is due to homeschooling - he doesn't have the kids in school to damage his self esteem. We decided that that is more important than any gaps in academics he has. BTW, his gaps occur b/c he resists doing schoolwork. I know he'd work much harder for other teachers than me. I feel I don't draw him to his school work very well but my husband assumes that familiarity breeds contempt. Nothing I can do but press on.

I personally may very well end up homeschooling my older son with high functioning classic autism once my four-year-old with AS starts kindergarten and seems to be doing well. (My younger son is doing very well since he's been put on meds recently for OCD, has started regular ABA, and I'm working with him every day on speech and reading. I think that he'll do just fine in school when he starts in 2013).

My older son is doing great, all things considered, but social skills and staying on grade level will probably always be a challenge for my older son with high functioning classic autism, who is currently 7 and in the second grade.

Just playing it by ear at this point.

I know of a couple of moms with very challenging kids who had difficulty controlling their kids' behavior before they started homeschooling. (These are kids with serious mental health issues, and the parents have issues, too.) The school couldn't handle them, but the parents were unprepared to handle them also and now question whether homeschooling was the right choice.

However, many kids do just great. It depends on the situation.

This has been a hard decision for me as well. I was a product of public schools and thought it would be good for my kids too. I'm an Aspie, married to an Aspie, with two aspie kids. The reality is that the school district where I live are no where near prepared to handle a child like mine. They decide that since my kids are capable of learning (talk about subjective) and because they are bright, they don't need any services. The school claims this even though I have doctors and therapists, etc., in writing stating otherwise. The school staff seem to be personally offended and have their pride hurt that any parent would question their decision. In America, things at the schools are bad. Teachers are given pink slips (i.e. you are laid off and may not have a job in the autumn) every end of the school year. They don't know if they have a job until it's almost time for school to start. Some don't know until after school starts in my district. Money is supposedly so tight that the principal tells the teachers NOT to write down all the troubles your child is having. The principal tells the teachers that they are NOT to ask for anything for any child, and especially never in writing. If they do, the principal makes it clear that they will not have a job in the teaching profession ever again. I know this as there have been a few brave souls of teachers out there who have bravely approached my educational lawyer and told her. My lawyer tells them that it's against a federal law to punish a teacher for trying to help a student receive special education services. But, no teacher will rock the boat. So, they all live in fear. The teachers live in fear, and the administrators have hurt pride. My son's previous teacher sat there in the IEP meeting begging the administrators for services for my child. If you were to look up the school's record of that meeting, there is nothing at all about the teacher's comments. It's as if she hadn't even been there. At my children's school, it is a time bomb that went off. The teacher decided she could "cure" my child. When it didn't work, she became enraged and started becoming emotionally and physically abusive. My son doesn't talk much, which makes him an easy target for teacher's and students. I never knew what was really happening at school and couldn't figure out why he'd become so enraged at home. I tried communicating with teachers, staff, etc. No one would help. I just wish the school would spend their huge attorney fee bank account on giving our kids services instead of just waiting for us to sue them. Unfortunately, if my children were to remain in school, I would have to sue the school district yearly.

As for academics: My child learns more through "unschooling" than he ever did at public school. There is too much stress and anxiety at school.
As for socialization: He is the child also wandering the perimeter of the school grounds. He is the one who is all alone even though he is sitting at a table full of kids. I don't know about you, but if my co-workers were picking on me and bullying me I'd have a talk with my supervisor to get them fired. Why do we expect kids to put up with this mistreatment when we as adults don't have to?
As for emotional well-being:
Now that we've taken both of our kids out of public school, and started to embrace the beauty of being an Asperger's family (i.e. not trying to live up to NT standards and just being proud to be us) we are all so much happier. When we took my son out of school (at the age of barely 6) he had regressed to where he had been at the age of 4. We have spent day and night and the last of our monetary (and sanity) resources to get him back from his autistic mind and back to being an Aspie again. If this ever happened again due to Public School, I don't think we could ever bring him back again.
I was also that Aspie kid back in public school a million years ago. The strain and stress of trying to live in an NT world is too hard for anyone, let alone a child. We are a different species of humans. We can't be forced into the constant scrutiny and judgments of the NT world. Of all the Aspies I have known throughout the years, almost all have taken to illegal drugs to help them fit into the NT mold. Many have tried to commit suicide, and some have even succeeded in suicide.

As far as I'm concerned, the choice for us was simple. Either force my child to stay in Public School to learn how to "socialize" and adjust to the NT world, watch him regress and probably kill himself, and watch the school and the system destroy his spirit and everything beautiful about him, or keep him home where he can stim if he needs to, have down time when he needs it, and fidget when he needs to. The first scenario I lose my son forever. The second one, homeschool, he is alive, and his spirit is alive.

Each case is different, I'm sure. I say stop forcing us into an NT mold and just help us embrace the beauty of who we are. If your child can not saw off his square corners to become that NT round peg society wants him to be, then stop forcing him. If, however; his corners were rounded to begin with, and has little trouble fitting into the round peg hole, then by all means, Public School is the way to go.

sorry, I guess I'm just a rambling angry Aspie Mommy today. Best of luck to you and your decision.

Beautifully put LittleMama!

there are so many issues that go into this decision for each family, its never simply a matter of which is "better". they are both equally valid, but one may work better for a specific family. its also highly dependent upon the available options, and that changes for every family based upon where they are and what is available where they live.

ironically, ive been super busy and away for a while, but came back today to post and share our recent success with finding what feels like the perfect placement for our son, which happens to be in a public school system.