Curious about homeschooling vs mainstreaming

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Hi, Just wondering if anyone has had their AS child in public school, but removed them and homeschooled for a period, and then reintegrated them back into the school system later? Was it successful? . . . or have most of you found that once you start homeschooling, then there's no going back?

I don't have any specific advice for you, but wanted to point out that there are a lot of services between homeschooling and mainstreaming. Those are both extremes and it doesn't have to be one or the other ( If your child qualifies for special education) Good luck. It's a big decision.

I started homeschooling with the idea that I would get my son back into public school at some point. However, after teaching him, I realize that he learns in a much different way than other people and I don't see me returning him to public school. I would like for him to attend college at some point, but public school is not in his future.

I say this because he did qualify for special ed and they did not meet his educational strengths. They taught him at the bottom of his capabilities. He was the weakest in language arts, so everything else was taught at that level. He was not in mainstream classroom. They didn't have the resources to give him a highly individualized lesson plan...which is what he needs to attain all he is capable of acheiving.

After a year of homeschooling, I got his language arts up to grade level.

Send him/her to public school and you be the after school tutor and also help build his/her "self confedance"
public schools are good for social skills building as thats is the main part of life.

It very much depends on the situation. I started homeschooling my son and daughter when he was in the 8th grade and she was in the 7th. She went back to school in the 9th grade and did wonderfully. (She felt that education was a small price to pay for a chance to socialize with her friends. Seriously, she said that to me.) My son, however, never went back to public school. He got his GED when he was 18 and goes to college now. I was accused by many people of denying my son a chance to learn social skills, but since I took him out because he'd been bullied his entire school career, I ignored them. Both of my children are successful individuals who cope well with college courses. I do believe that keeping my son out of school saved his sanity and his willingness to get to know people in the future. His self esteem and confidence were nearly gone when I took him out.

You did a good thing for your kids, in letting each one pick their own path, doing what was best for each one, and not trying to make them fit into the same mold. As far as socialization in school goes, I have been to both public and private school and it didn't help me with socialization either, as I was often bullied like your son. All school socialization did was make me not want to socialize even more, something I've carried with me much of my life.

College was better socially though, since there wasn't the forced socialization of high school present.

Yeah, there's going back, but most parents don't quit homeschooling because they want to but instead because their financial sources or family dynamics change.

I personally was home-schooled for 1/5 of my total educational career. I enjoyed each minute of home-schooling and really enjoyed it; the learning environment was much more similar to college than it was to the public school. I think public schools could learn a lot from home-schoolers of qualified parents who teach. I think if a parent isn't qualified to do it, they should either join a group or look at charter schools as a potential option.

I remember it being a ton of work for the parents between lesson plans to generating the workload to having to prepare reports for the school. However, for the student who is right for it and for the parent that is right to do it, it is a very good experience.

It is a very minimum 1-2 year commitment, however so you really need to be sure you want to do it. It's more glamorous that it appears unless you really enjoy learning. Not many students, including those with Asperger's, have such an intent on learning. It's extremely intensive or at least it should be! It's not just study time, but also a lot of physical exercise and field trips in regards to science or library study. So that means you might have 4 hours of school-work, an hour of riding the bike or some type of gym activity (for a young elementary school student), 2 hours in a library, and 1 hour in a museum makes up the average day. Another sample day may be 1.5 hours of each subject, an hour for lunch, and an hour for gym. That's very similar to the curriculum in Japan, but the student is rested enough to move at, at least twice the pace of the average student in a public school. That's what allows a student to become an expert at a particular subject as well as being well-rounded in general.

Activities with home-school groups and other social events, such as karate, basketball, and the YMCA is definitely a necessity as there needs to be room for social interaction even in a 1:1 to 8:1 group of homeschoolers.

Last edited by Differences48 on 06 Oct 2008, 5:05 pm, edited 4 times in total.

My son never went to school until this year, he was homeschooled all his life. He is 11. It has only been a month. The hardest part for him has been handwriting... I always let him type. His handwriting is horrible and he struggles to keep up with notes. I think by the end of the year he should be ok.

Socially... 2 of his 3 teachers seem to really care about him, the 3rd finds him annoying. He has made friends but he is already being teased. I have talked to him countless times about bullying and bullies and how he must tell me if he's being badly treated. So far he laughs along with the teasing and thinks it's funny. I'm not there to see but I think his strong sense of humor has saved him so far.

Prisoner Six, yes, my school career was exactly the same, which is probably why I was so willing to let him finish school at home. I didn't find that my time in school gave me any social skills at all but I did leave with a healthy, growing, social phobia. (It's now grown to epic proportions -- I'm so proud!) lol

Rebecca

I don't remember learning any social skills at school. I learnt social skills from my parents and other adults. For any AS child who is being bullied at school, home schooling would have to be the best possible option.

I can believe that. I went to a total of 7 schools, 6 private, 1 public, and most of them were miserable. 8th grade in public school was the worst. Spending 4 years in a very clannish Christian high school didn't help either. In that environment, if a student hadn't gone to one of a small group of Lutheran elementary schools, or was a member of the Lutheran faith, it was hard. Any one or two of those things could have been overcome, but I had all 3 so I was pretty much screwed the day I walked in the door. The fact I refused to be hazed didn't help me either. Of course, my parents wouldn't transfer me out, which bugged me since they had moved my sister out of schools for lesser reasons than what I dealt with.

Spending so many years as a social outcast didn't help me much, i often liked being by myself. My father seemed to understand that it hurt me being in a place where all they did was put me down, but my mother thought if I had just ignored everything I would have been fine. It doesn't work that way.

I agree that learning social skills is a very important life skill. But public schools are the 'worst' place to build social skills if not monitored.

My younger Aspie is in public school right now. They have him in the corner, at a desk all by himself. He eats lunch in the prinicple's office and is singled out to do other things in PE.

How is he learning social skills? By telling people things like, 'You live in a toilet', he gets laughs. A good, happy response even he can understand. But is that learning social skills? No, he is learning to be the butt of others jokes.

But if I can monitor him in social settings, such as Scouts, music class, family get togethers and homeschool groups, I can help him learn the not so subtle difference between genuine acceptance and being the buffoon.

That is outrageous!! !

I agree with Kelsi. I'd insist on an immediate school meeting about something like that, and pull my child out of school if a different way of dealing with my child's needs wasn't met. This is socially isolating and it singles him out.

My oldest grandson has a tough time in school because of ADHD (and possible Aspergers) and an inability to filter sounds properly. His desk was rearranged so that he sat in a group of four with his desk next to the classroom door. This helped cut down on the noise level he had to deal with without isolating him. He also had permission to go out in the hall to work if the noise got to be too much. (He also is supposed to have earmuffs he can wear but I think he refuses to even try them -- the hall can be viewed as a "perk" but earmuffs are just weird. lol)

I shared that because this way you have some suggestions to bring to the table. It's important for you to stress that your son is there to learn more than just academics, and shuffling him to the periphery doesn't meet anyone's needs. If they won't listen, I would seriously consider pulling him and homeschooling him where you can arrange for controlled social interactions for him. (Boy Scouts, Karate, that sort of thing.)

I was in a special education class in first grade because I didn't speak English. However, by the end of that year, I was reading at fifth grade level. I was mainstreamed for the rest of my school career, and did a significant amount of my own research on subjects that interested me. I wouldn't have learned a lot of the things I know today at school.

Public schools aren't good places to learn social skills, but neither are private schools. I've been in both so I know.

What the school is doing to him is outrageous. Sounds to me like the school administration is joining in the persecution of your son. If you can get him out of there, do it. Even if you can't homeschool, even just getting him into a school not run by those crazies might help.