What was high school like for you?

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I'm looking for some help from folks on the autistic spectrum to help me out. My son is a junior in high school and is severely depressed. He's been hospitalized 3 times in the last year. School is his major stressor. He is currently going to school for 2 classes and will add the third one he needs to complete high school in a week.

I'm being pressured by his doctors to have him go back full time. The school would like to see him back as well. My son does not want to do this. My husband and I now agree with him. It would help us a lot if you could share with us what high school was like for you. I can take your comments to school and to his doctors and show them that this is not a spoiled child manipulating us - that his stress is real. Will you help?

you might reach a broader audience in the general forum. this is the parenting one, and a lot of people here are non-autistic, and many of the autistics on the boards dont come in here much. i am non-autistic myself so my experience doesnt apply.

not true, i'm here i was homeschooled for the first year of high school because of social phobia, then i did that first year again in a new school...because i didn't pass. that's not to say that it wouldn't work for your son though, did you consider homeschooling him entirely? you know it's legal in about every country except germany...
at his age he wouldn't need constant supervision ,but maybe you don't want to push against the doctor's advice...
but if you're just intimidated by them, remind them you want your child to have proper academic achievements, socialising or not....and remember you're the boss in what concerns your child's education.

High School was were I went to be tormented, beaten, and spit on. I am now full of hate of both people and myself. Perhaps homeschooling him would be the better option for him.

I think you may well be right about going only part-time.

Think outside the box here. You are not not spoiling him. Don'y let anyone talk you into sending him back.

9th grade was torture for me. By December I had missed 54 days and was put on probation for truancy. My parents were constantly told I was a "bad seed" that must be doing drugs when in reality I just could not take my environment, so I would stay home and read. I read text books, magazines, library books, etc. and I never drank, did drugs, or got into any trouble really. After they tried sending me to Juvenile Hall where I would have been forced live with kids who DID do all those things, my mom had enough and homeschooled me the rest of the year.

10th grade I got into a private school that made me see that life was worth living and that not everyone is a total jerk. It was a very laid-back school that had LESS discipline than my old school, so all the people who told my mom that all I needed was more "structure" were wrong. We could not afford to send me back for 11th grade, so I went back to public school since my depression had lifted and I seemed to have "recovered" from my 9th grade problems.

11th grade was a repeat of 9th. A month into class I asked to go to art votech classes at another building hoping that the time out of my regular school would somehow improve things (and though I liked art I always wanted to go to college, not art school so it was just a means of escape). It didn't help. I told my mom that it was all happening again, and begged to be allowed to drop out but she was being told by EVERYONE that I was spoiled and just needed structure.

One day on the bus back to my regular school I had chemicals from the cosmotology tech program squirted on me by other students. I immediately got hives and felt like I had triouble breathing, so I took some chewable benedryl out of my bookbag (it was kid strength because I babysat a child with severe seasonal allegies after school and it was from her mother). I yelled for them to stop because I couldn't breathe and they all started laughing and one said "Hey! Let's watch the freak die!" as they gathered to point and laugh. I went to the principals office immediately off the bus and reported it. He called the kids in question down to the office and said "Now, you guys didn't REALLY mean to hurt anyone did you? You were just fooling around right?" and of couse they said yes. I asked him to look at the video from the bus and without blinking he said "The video has been lost. Please go to the nurses office to wait for your mother. You are being suspended for 10 days for having an OTC medication on school grounds."

My mom withdrw me that day and was told that I would always be a loser because she was such an ineffective parent. I got my GED that December and went to community college that spring, where I took distance courses and got straight A's. I started at a large state university in the fall of what would have been my senior year without having ever taken my SAT's and with my dismal high school GPA which was almost all failing grades. I now own my own business and have a family...my life is nothing like what the awful people at my school thought it would be.

I was diagnosed with many things while growing up, but am now diagnosed with Aspergers and it explains SO MUCH. Had my mother listened to all the people telling her I just needed to be forced to go to school and be "normal" I would have probably killed myself. And that is not an exaggeration.

High school was very hard for me...I was picked on constantly plus the teachers labeled me as a trouble maker which did not help anything. I was put in a behavior ed class and most of my peers in those classes had major behavior issues, so in order to fit in... I adopted their behavior issues to keep from getting bullied as much. I cant say the classwork was hard, but the social problems that I had prevented me from getting a proper education in a school setting. I wish that I was homeschooled, that would have prevented alot of unneeded suffering on my part and also my parents in trying to raise me once I developed behavior problems.
I did go on to college, though, but had to take remedial classes.

yes. this ^what kreeblim said. This is the way NT kids act to autistic children and teenagers. I had a whole class sit as far as they could from me, so i was sitting surrounded by a circle of empty chairs, because i had replied ONCE to a bully, screaming at him to leave me alone, ( he used to randomly slap the back of my head whenever he passed me by) and they found funny to pretend they were scared of me at all time and whispering to each other "watch out, she's violent, let's run!" and giggling.
i started skipping school so much that my dad decided to homeschool me in december, but if i had been forced to attend every day of that school year, i would have hurt someone badly. i'm not the kind of person who commits suicide when treated badly,.
I'm also not a violent person but there is only so much you can take. my grades were so low because of the stress i was going through, , it took the whole following yeear to go back to normal , homeschooled, then we moved to the carribeans, and i started that first year of high school again, got the best grades ever,because the kids were more relaxed there and my fear of teenagers had soothed down a little, i was more confident, all in all homeschooling did wonders for my socialising skills and having been treated respectfully by normal people ( my father and other adults) i was a lot more self assured and felt i could face them.
i ended up doing great for the 2 following years and got fantastic grades at my baccalaureat ( i'm french).
give the kid a rest if he needs it.

High school was hell for me. The other students were cruel, there was no privacy, and it was all so over-stimulating that I often went straight to bed when I got home. Of course, going straight to bed meant that I wouldn't get my homework done, setting me up for added stress the next day. It was a vicious cycle. My mom tried to force me to finish high school, but when I turned 18, I decided that I would drop out and that there was nothing she could do to stop me. I then took the GED tests and am now waiting for my GED diploma. I plan to ease my way into college by starting out at a technical college. While I wait for a diploma, I am volunteering at a nice, quiet library. I don't see how my path to success is any less valid than the traditional path. Mine just better suits my needs.

The longer I'm here, the more I think that at least with respect to socail issues, AS fits for me.

So..... I couldn't be bothered by high school. the kids were idiots and paying attention to trivial BS. Unfortunately for me I would find some social misfit boyfriend and cling to him. The two that I had during my HS years were much older and were not in school. Every moment I spent @ school was spent trying to be invisable. All of my elective courses we spent as teacher's aid, so I could at least be around adults.
Therefore, I cut school for most of 9th and 10th grade, until I was old enough to take an equivelancy test that says you graduated.

I was 15 1/2 when I passed the test and I never looked back. I started working full time at that point. Fast forward to 19 years old and I started working entry level jobs in the industry that is now my profession. I did well and subsequently rose through the ranks. I am now a fairly high paid professional. I missed the high school experience, but it didn't really hurt me. I don't know if it would be quite as possible to rise like I did in today's environment though.

as a clue about how i viewed my high-school experience, i have not been to any reunions since my graduation in '79. i would have been much happier [as well as much more productive] if i could have been allowed to self-instruct myself at home.

I just posted this in reply to a thread in Random Discussion "Executive/Inertia Blues" and it occurred to me that it was rather relevant to this thread too:

I'm not diagnosed anything, so my view might as well be from a NT standpoint, but HS for me, for lack of a better word, was hell.

My mum took me out of HS into home school, best thing she ever did. Only thing that would have been better would have been if she did it sooner. HS is designed for the NT, auties will never fit into the world. It's far better to do the home school thing to have a nice relaxing environment to learn and have your son join some out of school activity for socialization. If he joins something that other kids have interest in he's much more likely to get along with them. School is all competition, social ranks, etc. Worst place in the world for an autistic youth, imo of course.

I went to a private Catholic HS. I had no supports, and I had no diagnosis. It was very difficult for me because I was an intensely emotional person, but I actually had quite a few friends in HS. It was much easier for me than "middle school" years. That's when I was tortured.

School was very boring. I was in honors and college level classes so I was a little more challenged and around other kids who were also "weird" or used to being picked on at some point, so we were a pretty tame bunch. I was also in a school where they had a no tolerance policy as to fighting and bullying. If you were caught fighting on school grounds, you were immediately expelled.