Would you have wanted to be homeschooled?

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Thanks everyone----I really do appreciate it. I am going to keep my options open for homeschooling. I have been doing a lot of research and have talked to lots of homeschooling parents. Homeschooling is becoming more popular than ever, and I think there are different ways to socialize. There are many groups and co-ops that we could become a part of where he could have a "safer" way to socialize. Anyway, I guess if he is adamant about not wanting to do it, then maybe I will let him try public middle school. Honestly, I really think he thinks it will be a continuation of elementary school. We shall see......

I would have rather they hadn't closed the local school for 1st through 8th grades.

At the time they closed the school, it had about 5 or 6 pupils spread out across those 8th grades.

My father, two older brothers, and sister all went to that school. In my father's case, he had to ride a horse about 4 or 5 miles each way starting the first day of 1st grade. The first 3 miles was by himself before meeting up with other students in the school. One odd thing about the school was that it used to be on skids. Before cars became popular, whenever they had a new teacher, the school would be moved to somewhere near their house.

So I would have much preferred the one room schoolhouse.

For me, no, never. My parents would never be suitable teachers for me. We would drive each other nuts. Plus they have careers and ambitions and our education were not exactly a top priority. I was independent and not very attached to them. I think public schools here aren't too bad so we won't consider that for our kids either. Personally I think for a person who might become fully independent later, being sheltered and overprotected can be worse than being bullied. Of course for truly disabled people who can't fend for themselves that wouldn't apply.

Yes, I would have preferred to be.

That way the bullying wouldn't still bother me to this day.

I would've liked that, I think, although you dont know till you try... I couldnt concentrate in school, but in a more private setting like at home with only me and the teacher perhaps I could. I didnt like school much anyway.

But every child is different. It may not work for the best for a kid who has close friends in school. And you dont know if your child will be bullied or not. maybe not. more likely yes since that so many aspies get bullied. I went to a girls' school, a good one, and I got bullied but not much, on slight occasions. It depends on the school. Few schools have no bullying, or zero tolerance for bullying.

In school, the teachers wasted so much time blubbering instead of teaching, and I hated it. It would've been more interesting to learn at home. I'm not sure if homeschooling is private teachers coming to the kid's home, or the kid learning from books. I'd have loved to learn from books and not have so much contact with teachers. It would've been ideal for me. There's nothing I'd have liked better.

I think there's a program where kids can learn from books only and then do their tests, but it costs money and I dont know many details.

It certainly helped me.

By the time my parents decided to homeschool me (at grade 7) I was terrified of kids my own age, and if someone said 'hi' to me I'd pretend I didn't hear because I was afraid they were trying to trick me into talking so they could say something mean to me. (Some kids actually did this.) There was no way I could interact with peers because I was putting all my energy into avoiding bullying.

When I started being homeschooled, I pretty much had no interaction at all with kids my own age, and that was a good thing. It allowed me to gradually calm down and feel safe again. I could still practice interacting with adults, knowing that most adults won't suddenly start bullying a 13 year old kid. (In fact, the adults I knew tended to like me because I'm very smart and love learning.) I'd hang out at the university doing independent study all day, reading medical journals and such because that's what interested me.

Now, in university, I don't need to interact with 10-17 year olds (except for my younger brother and his friends, who are nice). I interact with the kind of people my homeschooling environment taught me to interact with - university students and educators.

I really don't think the school teaches valuable socialization skills, because a) interacting with children as a child is totally different from interacting with adults or from interacting with children as an adult, and b) how often, in adult life, are you stuck with 20-30 other people the exact same age as you who have no shared common interests or goals with you? (Kids are generally put in school because adults want them to be, not because they actually want to be there.)

To the OP - if your son doesn't want to be homeschooled, don't force it on him. But if things start to get bad in school, keep it in mind, because it's often a far better option than regular school.

I would certainly agree with that. School is more about crowd control than socialization.

That's one advantage of a one room schoolhouse -- crowd control is not necessary. Also, it was common, I think, for the older students to help the younger students while the teacher went over something with other students. You won't see that in a modern school. That is something, I think, that should be quite important.

I know in the cases of my older brothers and sister who went to the one room schoolhouse for the first eight grades, when they then went to a larger, more conventional high school (larger meaning the number of students in their grade was about 20 to 25), they were generally further ahead academically than the rest of the students at the new school who had been subject to years of crowd control instead of teaching.

I know a number of people who were home schooled. I don't remember any who weren't quite social. After all, the "socialization" in a modern school is basically just a juvenile form of socialization that won't be all that helpful just a few years later.

I truly believe that a one room schoolhouse for several grades with a good teacher would be far superior to a normal public school.

I was homeschooled. Some days I wish I had gone to public school, but for the most part I'm glad I was homeschooled. The million dollar question is... would I have friends and be more socially adept or whatever if I had gone to public school? Maybe, maybe not. I have no idea.

I think if I had been home schooled during my teen years (if such a thing existed back then) things now would be much different and maybe a lot better. They say kids don't learn to socialize and have shyness and social anxieties if they don't go to a regular school, but since those are things you're supposed to know naturally and aren't taught I guess it wouldn't have made a flipping bit of difference. I was in a class where it was only my teacher and me and my grade in that particular class improved while all my other grades in "normal" classes went down. Of course having one private class was a huge gift that the school generously allowed me to have because I was "not special".

When I was in elementary school most of the kids I knew went to the same school and we lived not that far from each other and we would often visit on afternoons or weekends. It wasn't until I started junior high that I had to go to a school in a different town with a lot of unfamiliar kids who would treat me like garbage every day. Since you're only allowed to be yourself when you're a little kid public school was fine, at least back then.

I suspect that home-schooled children are better socialized then those who went to public schools. Like I said earlier, public schools are about crowd control, not socialization. Socialization is not producing people who form exclusive little cliques that pick on others.

Many people think that home schooling is all about avoiding teaching kids about "unreligious" topics, but I consider home schooling to be about educating kids.

I had LOTs of problems with school till I went to a school for dyslexia in middle of 6th grade. I don't know if I would of wanted to be home-schooled thou because my mom was a teaher & we fought about school stuff aLOT & we had LOTs of problems getting along in general.

I went to "alternative" schools growing up (a Magnet junior high and a Charter high school) and honestly, though I did feel out of place at times, I preferred it to being home schooled. Because the class sizes were lower, bullying wasn't really as much of a problem as a normal school (though I did get bullied in middle school before the kid was expelled). The kids were also a lot nicer and accepting than the kids during my brief "public school" experience and I got to experience a lot of fun events that I'd miss being homeschooled like prom and school outings.

Honestly homeschooling is a great option, but I recommend looking into an "alternative" school first so they still get the school experience without the bullying.

yes.

I think it might be a good idea. Me going to a significant special needs school is what was perscribed for me. And I don't really have to deal with bullying, outside of even special needs / asd kids can be mean sometimes. But there is a possibility that I will be home tutored soon for high school. School is hard on me because of the noise and lighting etc. I'm a lot more prone to meltdowns in school.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to respond. He still has one more year of elementary school, so I am going to continue to research our options. I am going to check into a couple of private schools with smaller class sizes. I guess I am fortunate that I can keep the option to homeschool open if necessary.