Homeschool a better option than fighting the public school?

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I have been debating whether we should be homeschooling our ds instead of sending to public school. I am not sure I have the qualifications to do it but I am so tired of fighting the school. I am also worried about the cost, his social interaction, my sanity.... Does anyone have experience with this? Good or bad, I would like to know how it's gone for others. He is currently in 1st grade and seems to love school some days and hate it others. We have been refused a para because he is not failing yet. Don't know what to do.....

1st grade... hmm.. Does he participate in any out of school activities with other children? If he has a group of kids to socialize with out of school I'd give home schooling a try, see how it goes. I wouldn't take him away from kids all together though, he needs to learn off them.

I was home schooled, I wasn't saved from public school until halfway through 10th grade. I would have been far better off never entering the public school system, but that is me.

I'd like to hear others' responses to this as well. We're in a similar situation with our son, who is about to turn 9. I, too, have had great concerns about maintaining my sanity if we choose to homeschool. The only other social interaction opportunity our son currently has is soccer league, from October through February or so. But he doesn't seem to mind very much... Our son still likes school, but his self-esteem is starting to lag because he feels he's constantly in trouble and it's "his fault", somehow. We feel the atmosphere is such that he acts worse there than at home. But the school has so far done very little to accommodate him, despite his 504 and repeated meetings. We have another one this week! Joy!

Anyway, good luck, and I await many wise and thoughtful responses to your query.

I took my son out of public school almost 2 years ago.... The first year when he was diagnosed things were going well. But as the time progressed they had taken him out of his spec. ed. classes and mainsteamed him into reg. classes. They said he wasn't learning enough in spec. ed......So then he would be bringing home passing grades and the teacher would tell me how well he was doing, etc...until I got online and saw what he should know for his grade! They were just passing him through just based on the fact he tried! Because of the autism he wouldn't ask the teacher for help(nor did they look to see if he needed any). By 4th grade my son could barely print, could not complete basic multiplication, nor could read cursive writing. And THIS was passing?! I had also had to take my son to the doctor twice in one year for 'accidents' that happened from his schoolmates.
I have homeschooled him the last 2 years-when I started I was also caring for his grandmother who has Alzheimers and I am working full-time. No, it's not easy and he may not have all the 'extras' that come to the children in public schools, but I know that at the least my child WILL know how to spell, read and be fluent in math. We find a lot of course options online and I have realized sometimes you have to be creative in getting him to learn something. I would give it a try...you can always re-enroll him.

I was facing the same dillemma last spring. We opted to have our son placed in a self-contained special education classroom.

He has done wonderfully and is learning so much more. Being in a mainstream classroom was so stressful for him that he was becoming very agressive. Now he is in a classroom with a teacher who is more qualified to help him and he has a safe place to "flip out" if he is having a bad day.

If that was not an option I would have probably chosen to homeschool. He was not learning anything in the mainstream class. (In fact he has an above average IQ and still had to repeat a grade because his behaviour was interfering with his ability to finish his work).

I would like to give input. I'm unable to formulate a thorough reply. I'll be back a bit later.

for a short period of time when my son was 13, we opted for homeschooling......for our lifestyle it was completely impractical. We homeschooled because issues he was having at school were not being addressed, and he was feeling threatened and incredibly anxious. We finally got him placed in a therapeutic day school, and it has made a TREMENDOUS amount of difference in his life.

In my hometown, there is a therapeutic day school for preschoolers as well as for older children. However, many autistic kids are mainstreamed into the regular school as autistic kids can learn valuable skills from other children as long as it is not too stressful for them. Often, the autistic kids that are mainstreamed in the regular schools in my hometown are 2-3 years behind in
their usual grade level...and since autism and asperger's is a developmental disorder, they do fine in a classroom with kids who
are two or three years younger than themselves and don't appear "different."

Our experience of Home Education has been very positive. For a little on our situation and for more information:

Home Ed Articles:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt24892.html

The 'Mainstream': Inclusion or Intrusion?:
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt25227.html

All the best...

If we do decide to homeschool Bobby, I don't think we would homeschool his sister (she's currently in 3rd grade and she is excelling in her school). Has anyone had issues like this or when you decided to homeschool, do you homeschool everyone? I don't think it would be necessary for her and she is incredibly social. I would not want to take that away from her.

I'm also concerned about the cost. We live on a very tight budget, as a lot of people do these days, I'm sure. How do you afford the curriculum? I was a SAHM until this fall and have started working in the kitchen at a school in our district when the kids are in class. It is only 3 hours a day but that little extra $$ sure has been nice. Don't want to lose that.....

I was mainstreamed, and i think it was the best for me, i learned to overcome challeneges and face challenges that i would need to when i entered the real world. If i was homeschooled, i think change would even be ten times worse for me. Right now i literally freak out if theres a change, but not as near as i did when i was growing up.

I have a lot of the same questions. My son is in 9th grade and failing miserably at academics, but likes school. I think he would excel being taught 1:1, since he currently falls through the cracks because he's quiet in class and nobody notices what he is (or is not) doing. While I think he would do better academically if he were homeschooled, I think he needs the daily socialization of high school and I'm afraid I'd lose my mind with him home all day with me. Should the academics be the number one priority right now, then worry about everything else later?

Age1600 - you mentioned you were mainstreamed (which is where my son is). How did you do in school, academically, and what are you doing now (both academically and as a career)? I'm assuming you are late teens/early 20s.

Thanks!

Kim in Phoenix, by way of Cleveland

First grade is tough because the expectations on the children change. For typical kids it's easier to transition to this more academic setting. For autistic kids, it's anxiety-causing because they don't know how to act. It took a while to transition into pre-k and kindergarten-now they are being told that kindergarten behavior isn't appropriate anymore.
Typical kids are also displaying more compliant behavior in some settings and sneaky behavior in others, which leaves our kids-again-out of the loop.

Last year, when my son was in first grade the school (and by extension the district) wasn't recognizing my son's disability, they weren't providing autism support at all. We pulled him out out of necessity. this, after many meetings with school staff about all the stuff they weren't doing for him and eventually an "autism team" coming from district HQ. The "autism team" made valuable, sensible recommendations and the school said they didn't have to comply. So, we pulled him out, called out sick for a quarter and I homeschooled him.
This accomplished at least two things. They lost attendance money because he was on the roster yet not there. (I called in every day for about 3 weeks) This threatened them and caught the district's attention without us ever having to file papers (grievance or formal legal complaints).
Secondly, it provided a time to reestablish school work habits with my son. I kept a daily log of all his sensory, defiance, receptive language issues and milestones that he had. I included interventions that worked and didn't work. We were able to tackle academics and sensory integration at the same time.

Eventually the district offered us an "autism clinic" in another school. It's better but not ideal. I would prefer to homeschool him but being that he still has speech issues, we are trying to see if special ed services will come around and better serve him. If he were an Aspie, I'd keep him home.

Technically, you are entitled to the school district's curriculum and can use their textbooks. I bought my own (reading comprehension, Time and Money workbook, spelling words) and utitlized online resources for math. There are sites that actually generate math worksheets for free!! ! Of course there are library books for age-appropriate reading too.

So, I wouldn't make the cost of materials the deciding factor. As far as sanity goes, the situation was so bad last year that I was getting paranoid (not an exaggeration), weepy and my son was losing all communication skills. Homeschooling him was a huge destressor and put our life back on track.
He trusts us and knows we'll support him.

Yea im almost 23, i was in special ed mostly, i was put in a program called project hope my last two years of hs, where i was surrounded by emotionally disturbed kids but i mean they were either serving jail time, out of jail, drug dealers, had guns, all pyscho, ahh it was crazy, but if u explain to the school that ur son needs like maybe one and one attention or maybe needs to stay after alittle later to get extra attention from the teacher it might help. Today im training to be a sign language interpreter, but i volunteer everywhere i mean everywhere. Childrens specialized hospital, cattus island, homeless shelters, harbor house where they shelter abused and abandoned children, big sister/big brother program, where im a big sister to a child with pdd-nos.

my wife and I are both neurodivergent. We both had hell in school (even though I had great "acedemic success"). Our children (1 aspie and 1 williams syndrome) will not be attending school. We have organized our lives so that I am the bread winner and my wife is a stay at home mom, made the necessary financial adjustments, and are prepared to keep it so nobody but someone with extreme interest in the well being (emotional, physical, and mental) of my children has daily access to them for "learning".

Public school teachers in general try, and they often try hard, but it is still not good enough for my kids. Most of the private schools near us are full of people who live very "entitled" lives and I don't want my kids exposed to that daily either.