Home Schooling & Surviving Bullies ?

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BreakingBad
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04 Mar 2012, 2:43 am

Ok, Have any parents on the forum decided it was best to Home school their child with Aspergers? If not, can you provide any tips to surviving Bullies in 3rd grade thru High School? I am an adult with aspergers and my son is 9 years old and in 3rd grade with Aspergers, He was ok in Kindy and 1st grade, as it became more apparent to other children in 2nd grade and now 3rd grade that he was different , kids have started to pick on him and he is frequently in trouble, kids have started to even blame him for anything negative that goes on in the classroom. He had a ton of friends but they have dwindled away as he has become older. Recently a boy was picking on him during lunch and he responded with a Threat towards the bully and they have started a file on him. He heard the threat on a youtube video or tv and just repeated it, he has no idea what it even means. Have any parents ran into this in your school and how was it handled? I have a teaching degree and I have suggested that Home schooling,( maybe starting 5th grade), might be a good idea for my son. He's incredibly intelligent, creative and verbal, but between adhd and aspergers and his social skills I am worried he will not survive mainstream schools. Any thoughts, ideas? He has already been prescribed on Focoline XR, with some benefits. Thanks for your input..



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04 Mar 2012, 2:45 am

Well first off it looks like the school is doing nothing about the bullying directed at your son, but instead allowing him to be pushed to the point of reacting kind of extreme to it. So I would certainly look into different schools or homeschooling.


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Keyman
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04 Mar 2012, 4:31 am

As for bully survival. Tell him how other people work. The system manual if you like. If physical activity is okay, then learn him how to beat people up. And to only do it when no other choices are present. As for the school, inform them that preparation for suing has been done but that you are willing to compromise if consideration for his needs are taken into account. That ought to send a clear message.

What country?, city or rural setting?, educated (academia) parents to kids or lack of such? public or private school?



LittleMama
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04 Mar 2012, 6:02 am

I feel your pain. The same sort of thing happened to my son. But, in his case it was not as much the other kids, but cruel sick twisted school personnel. The school wouldn't honor his IEP. His teacher was a sadistic freak, the parent volunteers wouldn't allow my underweight child with food sensory issues to eat his lunch, his teacher would eat his lunch and his snacks, his teacher would purposefully allow the other kids into the classroom at the start of the school day but leave him outside in order to count him tardy, the list goes on and on. We spent the last of our money sueing the school disrict. In order to win our case, we would have to let them do more harm through their "assessments" and by then he had regressed to how he was at age 3! After our last meeting with the school district, a woman came up to my lawyer to talk to her. As it turns out, she was a teacher in our school district. She, too, has to sue the district to get her own child services. With lawyer fees of $5,000 per child per year to fight for my children to go to public school every year for the next 12 years is ridiculous. Yet, where we live, private schools start at $26,000 per child per year. Private schools here refuse to take children with special needs. They claim they do not have the resources to properly provide them services. The special autism private schools who would accept my kids, cost over $46,000 per child per year.

I looked into public charter schools and even our local school district's Montessouri school. None of them would accept my children. They all claimed that even if we didn't want them to honor the IEP (just like the private schools I had talked with) the potential that my kids could need special services in the future existed. That was too much liability for them and since they all take federal money, no one wanted that liability.

Given that our yearly household income doesn't total the $92,000 it would cost to put my kids in private school, we made the decision to home school.

I have always been against home school as I always thought it inhibited a child's learning potential and limits their social skills tremendously. Boy, was I wrong!

My husband and I are both Aspies. Both of our kids are. Since choosing to homeschool, I don't even have the words to describe how much they have blossomed. Without all of the drama and trauma of school, they are learning and retaining faster than ever. Their social skills and language skills have increased exponentially, and they are even cooperatively playing pretend play together! Just taking away that stress has improved my relationship with them. now that they are free to be themselves their gross and fine motor skills have gotten better than all of that so-called adaptive PE. My 6 year old actually talked down my 4 year old out of her freak out. They actually talked it out and problem solved together! It was amazing!

The bottom line is that you can't do any worse for your child than the school has. The school's here in America don't actually address bullying. They just do superficial programs and superficial lip service so it appears they are addressing the issues, when they are not. Perfect example to their superficial programs would be the anti drug program DARE. It hasn't been shown to be effective and drug use is still on the rise. Yet, they continue to use this program because it looks good.

You are the perfect person to home school your kid. You don't have to wait until 5th grade to start it. I had that grade in mind too, but keeping my kids in that situation was just too detrimental.

Plus, odds are your kid is a genius and will pass the GED by the time he's 12!

Good luck to you!



PenguinMom
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04 Mar 2012, 7:23 am

http://www.education.com/static/ebook/e ... -ebook.pdf

http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/e12011405.pdf

You may want to read the above and review your school districts policy on bullying. You will have better luck if you drop the term "bullying" and use the words harassment or discrimination. Bullying is not an official term and has different connotations to different people. Schools are legally obligated to protect students from harassment and discimination.

As a parent, you are in a frustrating position. The school can not, under any circumstances, tell you how they are dealing with other students due to confidentiality laws. The school was doing the right thing to create a file on your son, and hopefully this indicates that they have files on the perpetrators as well. They should be using the file to look for patterns of behavior. Make sure that the file includes your child as a target of harassment and acted itself defense. The file can then be used as proof to demonstrate that there has been a pattern of behavior targeting your child.

You can help the cause by creating your own "file.". Get a notebook and write down any time your child is being harassed. Include what happened, who the perpetrators were, who the harassment was reported to, and the school's response. Once you establish a pattern, you can take this "file" to the school and demand a response.

I hope this helps. You have my complete empathy.


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Kailuamom
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04 Mar 2012, 12:05 pm

We are homeschooling and really happy about it. We tried and tried to keep DS in school until finally mid way through fifth grade, he was just falling apart, it was so bad. We brought him home and I haven't looked back.

DS still has memories of all the friends he once had, and thinks if he goes back to school that's what it would be like. He is lonely. But here's the thing, if he went back, he wouldn't have all the friends he had in 2ng grade, and he would be more lonely - he just doesn't know it.

So, fo us, it's homeschooling or maybe eventually a school designed for Aspies. Maybe we can enroll him in a single class in public school nd do the rest at home, I'm not sure. I will never just throw him into that world again. The IEP process was a nightmare for me with the "team" not hearing me when I told them how wrong things were going.



luna12
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04 Mar 2012, 4:09 pm

Hello all,
I have a son w/ Aspergers and a son w/ PDD. If you would have asked me 10yrs ago-I was dead set against homeschooling. Now with so many online charters and various social options, it's a wonderful option. The difference between succes and failure in overall developmental achievement is the parent. You must be also willing to commit to engaging a child in an outside classroom-life. Not in the vein of running to different therapies but predictable routines fashioned around everyday activities-visiting the shops and making a link between the material in the text and it's IRL equal.
The bottom line is that learning cannot take place when anxiety is present, he could go to a brick school every day and not learn a thing. If you can commit to forming a well rounded plan than do homeschooling. This is more about his abilities at the end of the road, not the actual road he takes to get there.



MagicMeerkat
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04 Mar 2012, 5:12 pm

I would have commited sucide if my parents didn't take me out to homeschool me when they did becuase of the bullying.


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MusicMama
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04 Mar 2012, 7:09 pm

The best thing my parents ever did for me was to pull me out of public school and home school me when I was a 4th grader. I only wish they had done it sooner... I know that it doesn't work for everyone, but I was a complete social outcast until after I chose, in the middle of 6th grade, to try going back to school just for band. I'm very musically gifted and I made a couple of friends in band who were also misfits (AS diagnosis was brand new when I was in 6th grade since I was 11 in 1994).

I ended up having a whole two good friends by the end of 8th grade. I had maybe 5 or 6 good friends total in high school and I went to all of the band/orchestra classes that were offered at the high school. I was practically a full-time student but I only had to deal with one teacher and most of the band kids were outcasts anyhow so they were pretty nice to me.

I spent a blissful 4 years in high school playing trumpet, learning how to play every instrument I could get my hands on, and being a TA for the band director during free periods.

My theory is that I did better once I was able to decide and control how much interaction I had to have with children my own age. I was able to choose to go only to classes that were a special interest of mine so I could talk reasonably well with the other students and the teacher.

When I was forced to go to full days of school with kids my own age, my differences were more pronounced. Once I was able to voluntarily go and be picky about what classes I went to, things went so much better! Having part of my 4th grade year completely off from forced social interaction helped a lot. In 5th grade I started attending a couple of classes (of my choosing - science and art) at a resource center and there was a fairly wide age range in those classes which helped a lot.

I know that not every family is in an area that provides opportunities such as the ones I had access to, but I cannot say enough good things about how my parents went about homeschooling me. I was able to pursue interests as much as I liked and I had much more control over the frequency and types of social interactions that I experienced.

I also wasn't taken out for being AS - I was taken out for being bored and picked on.



DW_a_mom
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04 Mar 2012, 8:58 pm

There are many families here that homeschool and love it. We do not, simply because things have never gotten that bad. I've long had a good relationship with the schools and the other families in the schools, and we've got a huge circle of people that have long looked out for our wonderful son. The few bullying type incidents he experienced - and an incident or two will happen to nearly ALL children - were nipped in the bud right away. In elementary school I could go straight to those kids (I remember 2 incidents) because I knew them and they knew me, I would get their side, and then I would tell them point blank it could not happen again. In middle school that isn't a viable route, but I did get more eyes paying attention after the sole incident we had, and that resolved it - bullies don't like to get caught. After that middle school incident we seriously considered moving to home school, but my son did not want to.

How well your child might be able to navigate traditional school does, in my observation, seem to bear a relationship to how well you, as parents, navigate the community at the traditional school. I was a super active parent in the elementary school and did a lot of fundraising; people listened when I spoke up. I wish that didn't make a difference, but it does seem to. Not so much that people intentionally play favorites, but that when a relationship already exists, there simply is more opportunity to bring things gently to the attention of the right people, in ways that don't put anyone on the defensive. Plus, parents volunteering tends to force their kids together. The more kids have a chance to understand your child, the better things go.

The elementary school really did have a strong inclusive culture on so many levels, and that helped, too. I've always felt we were really lucky with that.


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04 Mar 2012, 10:13 pm

One thing to keep in mind: bullying that suddenly crops up around grades 3-5 could easily be a sign of a pragmatic language deficit in your child. This is not to excuse the bullies, but when there is a communication breakdown for any reason it's not uncommon for children to respond inappropriately.

We had exactly the same sort of thing happen with my son, I detailed it here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt136523.html

Homeschooling is an extremely personal choice. I, personally, would have a hard time giving up the social contact my son gets out of school, and the break I get from him during the day...but that is only as long as things at school are tolerable. I haven't ruled it out entirely - just for the time being. We will see how middle school goes. I think the Parenting Index has a section on homeschooling, and on bullying, stickied at the top of this board.

However, getting his speech assessed by our school district and having appropriate therapy provided made a HUGE difference.



BreakingBad
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05 Mar 2012, 1:21 am

Wonderful responses. Thank you for the feedback.



Keyman
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05 Mar 2012, 2:03 am

DW_a_mom wrote:
The elementary school really did have a strong inclusive culture on so many levels, and that helped, too.


What do they practically to make this?



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05 Mar 2012, 6:48 am

I have a nephew who has Aspergers, and it wasnt until he graduated HS that he told his mom all the torture he endured at scool. She told me it was so bad, she cried as he told her. I wonder how many kids with Aspergers do this. DOnt disclose the torture they are put thru becasue they feel there is no other option and they just have to suffer thru it.

We homeschool, and it is the best decision for my son. He has freinds now, and he isnt picked on or bullied. He learns at his pace, and we have plenty of time to work on real life skills, like getting along in society, not a 4 walled classroom. After all, once our kids are out of school, they need to make it in the real world.

It works for our family and has been a blessing for my son, who has found nothing but acceptance, patience and tolerance from the homeschool community!


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LittleMama
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05 Mar 2012, 2:05 pm

I love this article from Autism Asperger's Digest and I hope you find part one and two helpful in making your decision
http://autismdigest.com/homeschooling-a ... as-part-i/