Can homeschooling cause Asperger's Syndrome?

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That's absolutely fine.

Biological environment (eg brain injury) can, but it's not been proven that psychological environment can. Closest is post-institutional autism, and that disappears within months after leaving the institution. Some people have suggested 'feral children' as environmental autism, but there's evidence that most, if not all, feral children had problems before they became feral. (The Wild Boy of Aveyron, for example, was most likely only 'wild' for a few months, based on the sores he had from crawling.)

Regarding homeschooling in particular, a homeschooled NT is unlikely to be socially isolated. The child's instinctive drive to socialize will lead to them creating social opportunities. Things like going to the park knowing there will be other children there, or chatting people up while parents are shopping. In fact, they may even get better social stimulation, because they're interacting with a greater variety of ages in a greater range of contexts. In order for an NT kid to be unable to get sufficient social interaction, you'd have to do something a lot more drastic than homeschooling. And even then, the prevailing evidence suggests they'd make up the deficit once their situation changed.



Quite the contrary. Homeschooling can be very beneficial to an autistic kid. School usually does not provide opportunities for these kids to learn social skills - instead they're thrown in to 'sink or swim' and end up sinking. You don't learn much of use by being bullied and rejected all the time. Whereas homeschooling parents can set up more carefully controlled social interactions, which will be more beneficial. And even if they don't, being isolated does less damage to your social skills than being bullied does.



In DSM 5, you'll probably have Social Communication Disorder instead. That category was made precisely for those people who have social difficulties without RRBs.

Exactly. It sounds as if there was far more than home-education going on in OPs life, that might have affected him, however, even that can't cause ASD.

I really doubt it. I'm schooled and I remember Asperger traits all the way back to when I was perhaps six years old. I think that homeschooling might have enhanced my traits and held me back as far as learning socially though.

I thought similarly, I wasn't home schooled, but went to a Fundamental Baptist school for elementary, and was halfway raised by Bosnians. I'm sure my cultural perceptions and whatnot are different, but my sisters both are socially fine.

I have NVLD, but for me the cognitive problems are quite obvious. I'm also relatively outgoing, but still socially inept a lot of the time.

I had the restricted interests and the monologue tendencies up through my early twenties. But those are now gone. My diagnoser said I scored "1.5" on the axis dealing with autistic behaviors while 2 or more was required. I also have NVLD. I may have SCD, but I don't think individuals who qualify for PDD-NOS under the old DSM are considered non autistic now.

What I'm thinking is that severe NVLD (56 point VIQ/PIQ gap) + homeschooling in a restricted conservative environment = Autism. I definitely meet multiple criteria for PDD-NOS. There is absolutely no question about it. If anything, the DSM is flawed, not my particular physician. AND GAF of 50 is pretty low even for HFA.

What could be the case is that the Autism Spectrum groups many different things together. What could be caused by brain injury in one person may have been caused by homeschooling or sexual abuse in me, or being a feral child in others, or darkness/Vit D deficiency in still others, even if the behavioral manifestations are the same.

Given that NVLD alone often is misdiagnosed as Asperger's, even without homeschooling, I think there's no question that NVLD plays a key role in my symptoms while homeschooling made it bad enough to qualify for an autism diagnosis. Or I may just have Asperger's and grew out of some of the traits. God knows.

Asperger's isn't 'caused', it is congenital.

Oh golly yes. Probably more. I just meant to say that being homeschooled in the middle of nowhere with no contact with neighbors=complete isolation from peers, so that is the same thing there. (And my siblings were already adults when I was born, my parents in their 40's. So that is a huge age gap, and my dad was gone most of the time, so I'm about as isolated as you get.)

I'm not at all arguing against homeschooling. Quite the contrary. I do believe that, had I gone to a public school, I might have been better acquainted with social expectations and more fluent when speaking with others and making friends, that sort of thing, I definitely feel out of place when I'm with peers and I think it would have helped that situation if I'd been more exposed to them growing up, because socialization is something you have to learn. So as far as the social aspect goes, yeah, I really do believe that going to school can polish your socialization skills that would not have occurred in a home environment. I don't think it can cause traditional Asperger's, but I do think it can make it harder and more awkward to socialize with peers, whether you're autistic or an NT or whatever. But to that I say, big whoop. I wouldn't change anything about my childhood. It was great, and I'm happier than most people.

Compared to the good things about homeschooling, I think the benefits far outweigh the so-called bad things. I think one of the best things about it is that it did foster my individuality-and growing up in that environment with nobody else around, I learned to really just enjoy being myself and being by myself and doing my own thing and finding ways to entertain myself without needing somebody. It made me really independent and confident, I don't care at all what other people think. I wouldn't trade that for any of those social skills. And that's something I think this world needs more of, like you said, you can feel really lonely in school, but you wouldn't if you had learned how to be happy when you were alone like I did. And especially for somebody with ADHD or autism, who naturally stick out from the crowd. School is really awful for them, I know because I went for the last two years of high school and barely made it through, and the others I knew had such bad bullying they were suicidal. The educational system isn't designed for people with neurological differences. I can't imagine how terrible it would have been to go all the way through, I don't think I would have made it, and I'm sure I'd be really depressed and insecure about myself from all the bad experiences. School tends to do that to people, especially if you don't fit in and have been taught from such an early age that popularity is just *so* important. I was rejected and talked about because I was so different, but I didn't really care in the slightest because I'd been alone all my life anyway and I knew I didn't need those dorks. =P I think homeschooling is a good option for those with ADHD or autism.

But, you know, you just have to figure out what works for you as an individual, because what might be good for one person might not be the right solution for another. You have to decide what you really want, to try to blend in with society or to be an individual? I would rather be an individual, with all my quirks intact. =P School might be good for some people, though. I think it should be up to the child. I wouldn't trade my childhood of homeschooling, but then I wouldn't trade those two years in school, either. I learned from both of them.

You know, when I brought my eldest home to school after fighting with the school to manage the bullying (the final straw was the 15 person "happy circle" that had a round out of him and broke his glasses - and as he swung a punch at one of his attackers, we were told he could be charged as well if we pressed charges - I did not have the personal resources to fight it at the time) ...

start again - when I brought my eldest home to school ^ ...

People were very judgmental about "homeschooling" and yet if he outright quit school and went to work, that was okay. Never mind that he was heavily involved in a youth group, never mind that he went to dances with friends who went to other schools, never mind that he had online classes and friends who home schooled - there was still a lot of judgement with the moniker. And yet, there are kids who quit school and that gets treated differently. There are different connotations between quitting school and home school, and I think people in the main stream associate home school with deviance. They understand quitting, but they seem to pluck "weird parenting" with home schooling. I had a neighbor who pulled her son to school when he was bullied and suffered severe anxiety with no resolution at school. The health professionals involved with him freaked out, but later conceded quite enthusiastically that given the strides he made that was the best thing they could have done - he later went back very successfully in a different school environment.