Difficult time in public high school. Need advice

Post Reply New Topic

Please for the sake of your poor daughter - research homeschooling more thoroughly and you will realize that she will not only get socialization but better socialization that she can handle.

I agree totally with Rachel46 as a prior home-schooled student and public school student. I felt that in the public schools, I had less opportunity to socialize. I mean if you are not asked out to the dance (other than parents playing setup, what's the real point of going to school for four years). You're daughter actually has a point. I myself was homeschooled and there is a lot more socialization opportunities that are appropriate to the child with AS than can be found in school. AS students tend to form interactions with people of different age groups since there is a little bit more tolerance than peers of the same age and that is pretty consistent throughout one's life. The creativity of a college class may enlighten her educational experience.

Enroll her in a college class; as a parent of a minor child, you can even dictate what classes your child can enroll in, what their professor is, and if they need to withdraw from a course, since everythnig requires your signature. You have much more limited control though, but you have many of the responsibilites as if you are her in that situation, since she's still a minor. For instance, if you don't like the syllabus of an instructor, you could switch her into a class that has a lot more work, but you are unable to arrange accommodations, since that is her role. That's because you are able to sign for her, but are not able to self-identify.

In college, they don't want the parent around for accommodations, but in terms of class selection and even for the providing of documentation, you must provide a secondary signature. That means that you probably cannot sign up for classes online. The placement tests are free at community colleges and many state colleges might not even require that to take it on an undeclared basis. I really think that's a good idea, however. There might also be a gifted school in your area that requires advanced mathematical and/or language thinking.

I think the most important thing is to get your daughter into things that will assist her in communicating with others. Maybe, the homeschoolers get together and you have a soccer game. Maybe a hike. It all depends. I mean you might not be good at the thing, but it definitely gives you a chance to interact. There are so many homeschool groups around since they have the ability to provide a better education.

By the way, I'm wondering if anyone can post to my message on visual difficulties that I'm having. That would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

I agree with you completely, as someone who is 26 with Asperger's Syndrome, and went through the living hell of high school. I think the problem is most schools will toss Aspie kids into Special Ed. I simply do not understand Special Needs teachers. I would say I'm being bullied, I should learn to ignore it. I need help, well they're too busy with their work. Can you imagine someone saying this to a Special Needs child with a handwriting disability, who needs them to write math out for them. It's like telling someone in a wheelchair who can't move it themselves, sorry I have too much work to do to bother helping you.

About teens not respecting parents, I hear a lot of people say when you talk to teens, they might roll their eyes at you but it doesn't mean they're not listening. A teen might act completely outright rude to their parents when they're talking, but somewhere the message gets through to them eventually.

My parents after the hell I went through in high school, say they wish they had homeschooled me instead. Perhaps I'm saying, you might want to homeschool your daughter now, than live to regret it later.

You haven't mentioned working with the school's guidance office, or their school psychologist, if the school has one. Since exerting parental authority hasn't worked—to a point beyond what's norm for her age, if I understand you correctly—perhaps consulting them might open up some other options.

As for home schooling, you might ask yourself how competent you feel about being able to teach your daughter as well or better than the school's teachers? Teaching, and doing it well, is a daunting task and a job all in itself. Are you up to it? If you think you can do it, then that's great. Lots of people homeschool, and many of them do a good job. There are excellent curricula available commercially that are designed to help. The ability to homeschool, however, is not automatically part of the human parental, genetic makeup. You would certainly know your daughter better than the school's staff would. Ask yourself whether that would that be enough to offset the hugeness of the task. You are the only person who can answer that. Me trying to homeschool my four-year-old daughter would be a complete waste of everyone's time: I haven't the patience. My wife, on the other hand, is a trained teacher. She does well with the four-year-old, who is also in preschool. Her attempt at homeschooling teenage daughter, however, who is probably an NT but has other, emotional issues, was a different story entirely. That lasted less than a month. Frustrated by the daughter's outright refusal to do any schoolwork, we ultimately gave up and sent her to the local public school. If you have any doubts at all about how effective a teacher you might be, for any reason, you might do well to exhaust other avenues, through the school and elsewhere, first. I think I remember you saying she didn't respect you. If that situation is worse than the average teenage contrariness, it will be yet another problem making the process difficult. Been there, done that, choked repeatedly on the tee shirt.

Your concerns about homeschooling were my concerns before I pulled my son out of public school. However, his social skills have improved since leaving public school and his behavior has improved.

I used to think my son was kind of lazy when it came to school work and I feared that I couldn't "make" him do his lessons. This has turned out to be the complete opposite. He does his school work without fights. That was not the case when he was in public school. Homework each evening was a nightmare when he was still in public school.

With homeschool, the day is structured. I lay out the lesson plan and he must finish the work in order to end his school day. He is highly motivated to finish his lessons and I feel like he's not ADD (like I used to think.)

If your daughter is very miserable at public school, but you can't homeschool. A very small private school might work.

Glad it's working out. Your son has incentive now, i.e. if he doesn't cut it in homeschooling, he gets sent back to regular school<grin>.

In addition, he can probably work at his own pace, and give extra time to the stuff he finds harder to do. He also doesn't have to deal with all the nonsense that goes on in regular school.

A small private school might be a better alternative in some cases, but not all. It all depends on the school. Some are open and accepting of new students, while others are very closed and not friendly to outsiders, aka those that haven't been going to school with those students for a long time. I went to a small private high school, which my parents hoped wouldn't have that stigma, but it did since almost all of the students came from a few elementary schools or churches and those of us who weren't part of that weren't readily accepted, and the fact I didn't want to degrade myself with a week of hazing by seniors didn't help my case either. My parents also wouldn't let me transfer out, so I suffered for 4 years in a so called Chrisitian school. There was nothing Christian about them.

Seeing as your daughter has AS, you might not know what is best for her

I was going to say the same thing but schleppenheimer already said it perfectly. There are lots of choices out there. I hope you find what works for your family.

A small warning about the above - it's going to depend on the college. You can't just walk into any college or university and expect to place your child in a class. Doesn't work that way across the board. You'll have better luck, generically, with community colleges - but even those vary from state to state as to their requirements. Some universities now have early admissions academies, which is definitely a step in the right direction. The kids accepted to them are treated as high school kids, have the appropriate-for-emotional age support in place, yet are offered greater intellectual opportunities. I think that it's a really good idea, if doable in your case and if your child is ready to deal with the inherent change. You may have to find your own support system for dealing with the "Aspie" support aspect. There's really nothing I've heard about in place for that for "special" early admits as a rule. The federally-mandated support systems that are in place up through high schools are not mandated after that point. IEPs are from another universe. It's doable, but be prepared.

I spent half a day at the community college in my hometown during my last semester in high school several decades ago. II'd taken enough courses to graduate early, so I had the credits, but the rules didn't allow me to get out with a HS diploma until I'd "done my time." So the cc option was really, really appealing. It was a good way to transition in to the college environment. In a way. Of course, I didn't do well there, as it was a different environment entirely from anything I'd ever known. I didn't know where anything was and just fell apart when I'd get lost, the class wasn't nearly as structured as I needed, and I was not used to being proactive in any way after having been regimented for so long in the public school system. But I had no support system in place. I was doing it as a "go alone" pioneer - not a pioneer Aspie, a pioneer ANYBODY. I was one of the first high school students in my community to do this, and the first (and only, for a very long time) female to do it. Wish it would have turned out better, as I'm afraid that my fiasco may have been held up as an excuse to deter other students from trying - particularly young women. The support system is critically important. If you and your child do this, make sure it's in place.

Thanks to everyone that responded!! ! A lot of great input. We are working with the school councelor and phsycologist. I am hoping public school will work for her. If things don't turn around we will check out home school or other options. Also thanks to those that recomended the books for girls with AS. I will be reading them! Take care, Ericka

There is no easy way out of life. High school is a great place to meet and learn the different personality types in
society we have today. High school is a great place to learn to fail or make mistakes in social and acadimic areas and
really learn from failure of "trying". Even the easy way out ends up being harder in the long run.
If you learn how to make friends and how to deal with jerks than have it made todays society. It is all about
self confidence and discipline, so help her build those two and sky will be the limit in life.

I couldn't agree more. But, I choose to homeschool my son because I don't think he needs to learn about life in a setting that is completely wrong for him. He is the kid with a target on his back - the naive kid that will and has been bullied. I don't think being bullied, teased, shunned or made fun of makes you a better person unless you have the tools to combat that. I am able to give him those tools at home and then we go out into the real world in somewhat controlled environments so when things do go wrong he is better able to handle them.

In a noisy, crowded high school of 500, 600, 800 kids that is probably not going to happen.

There are plenty of places besides high school to meet people and there are "jerks"in other places besides high school so he will get a chance to meet them- it's inevitable.

High school was actually quite positive for me. Middle school was hell because I had to contend with bullies in the halls. Also, I felt there were long periods of time where there was nothing substantial going on academically. I went to a private high school which stressed hard work. I worked hard and did well.

My sense of optimism gradually eroded in college and graduate school. While I did well in my studies, I was really a social misfit. I had some friends, but didn't do the college partying scene. That, and my social awkwardness and perceived "dependence" on my family (I lived close enough to home to go home every weekend to see my family, including my cat), made them think something was wrong with me. No diagnosis was made, so no help was given. The nonsensical assignments given in grad school didn't help. I had a near breakdown in 1989 and was diagnosed with a seizure disorder. I finally graduated but, as someone stated, all of those degrees are lines on a resume.

I have a job I love now and love to go to work. It is not high paying, but utilizes my skills perfectly and I accomplish a great deal of work in four hours. I am consistently busy, and work pretty much on my own.

I've had a nice experience in a Jewish private school, where I went for a year, until my family moved to another neighborhood. I'm actually part-Jewish biologically, so that might have helped. There was no requirement to be Jewish, but I had to go along with school's religious aspects. In other words, I had to pray in Hebrew every day (a language I still don't understand, but there were Latin transliterations in the school prayer books), learn about all the holidays that seemed strange to me at the time, wear a yarmulka all day, and have restrictions on what foods I can bring to school for lunch (e.g. no combinations of meat and dairy, no pork, no shellfish, etc). There were catered lunches (kosher, obviously) on occasion, which were really good. Overall, the rules seemed restrictive and complicated, but tolerable enough to let me get through the day.

But there were a lot of upsides. The school day always ended early on Fridays; then the school had Friday night services for Shabbat (Jewish sabbath, also a Hebrew word for "Saturday"). The services were long, but pretty interesting. Music lessons were fun, since I really liked the Israeli songs I learned. But the best part were the students. Everyone seemed very friendly and accepting of differences. I realize now how weird I might have acted when I went there. But no one gave me a hard time about it, ever! When they pointed out my actions, they did it in a tactful manner. No one picked on me there, which wasn't the case in public schools. The history of Jews being persecuted probably has something to do with how respectful of differences (i.e. me) the students were.

Maybe your daughter might have an easy time in a Jewish school too. Just let her know about the "strange" stuff she'll encounter; perhaps you can let her read this post. (The yarmulka won't apply to her; only men and boys wear them.) Emphasize how important it is to respect the religious aspects in school, even if they don't apply to her life outside of school. It's best for you to stick with Reform or Reconstructional schools, which don't follow religion as strictly as Orthodox or Conservative schools. Talk to the principal about what's exactly required of students, and what accommodations the school has.

I ended up greatly benefiting from going to that school many years later, when I went to Israel. The culture I found there didn't seem strange at all. Stuff that would have seemed completely illogical had perfect explanations for it, the ones I learned in school. And the Israelis seemed really nice and easygoing. (Although I heard that Israel is one of the few countries that likes Americans nowadays.) I ended up having the best vacation in my entire life.