Did a bad school experience make you more reclusive?

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I've noticed that since I've started homeschooling my sons, they now avoid people almost all the time. They only want to interact and communicate with their siblings and us as parents. They spend a lot more time in their room and don't want to play outside with other children anymore. I might have thought they were depressed but they are actually happier and a lot more calm since they've been at home with me. My younger boy rarely has aggressive outburst at all anymore and seems content - he's even developed new hobbies of drawing comic strips and animating on his tablet.

Family say it's weird and not good for them to spend so much time at home but they complain outside is too noisy, smells bad and there are too many people.

Is it possible that the daily sensory overload of being in school has pushed them into becoming so antisocial? It doesn't personally bother me that they are like this as I can relate, being this way myself, but I feel as though school might have been the trigger and I feel a sense of guilt that I didn't withdraw them sooner.

I can't comment about your sons reclusive nature. I don't know why they are like that. I can tell you I've never liked socializing. I was forced into it many times -- for example in 3rd grade I was forced to go to a halloween party that one of my classmates hosted. Had a terrible time. Also was forced to do a few sleep-overs with a few church daycares that held overnight camps. Also had a terrible time. The only time I was content was if I was in my own room reading, watching tv, doing homework by myself. I'm just a natural recluse, because all the sensory input just wasn't worth it to me. I don't enjoy it. I do like interacting with people online -- that was a surprise when I started doing it more in 2015.

I spent my time in school daydreaming. I was quite surprised the first time I really surveyed a whole calendar, and saw that the school year was ten months and the summer vacation was two. If you had asked me to guess previously, I would have been sure that the vacation was much longer, because it generated more memories.

I'd actually say the opposite, that going to school daily forced me to learn how to deal with having thirty+- other people around. It made my interactions with others more natural and less stressed. As an adult, I don't work & am only around many others when I go out for a few hours about twice a week. My social skills have fallen by the wayside, & I am anxious and stressed in public now.

So looking back, I'd say that staying home & being comfortable has made me become more reclusive. Going out daily reinforced those little daily tasks and conversations allowing me to interact naturally rather than the stop, pause, think/stress, answer that occurs now. That said, I had a very good school experience overall, didn't have accommodations, & wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's until my late 20s. So take it with a grain of salt & all that.

Staying home made me depressed. There were two years (2011-2012) when I seriously considered ending my life. I am glad to have social opportunities now.

The school was a terrifying experience. When I was not actually being bullied I was at home scared and obsessing about what was going to happen to me the next day.

In answer to your question, it certainly did nothing to help me develop a trust of others

I believe that if I had been pulled out of school and home-schooled, I probably would have become calmer too, like your sons, more relaxed, a happier child and able to focus my energies entirely on learning.

There's no way to know that for sure of course. But knowing myself, I feel it might have been the case.

I was academically very bright, but I vividly remember feeling stressed at the whirl of social interaction school involved, I felt stressed, tense, didn't enjoy being there even though the WORK was good and fine and I was an A student.

But I very early on began to fake illness to get out of having to go. Just because of the social aspect being so torturous to me. I have a long history behind me of at first faking to my mother-- and she seemed complicit in allowing me to avoid school. I think she knew I seemed to be a happier kid when spending a week at home "off sick with stomach flu". . . . And then when I was older, just straight-out skipping school and going missing for the day. It was blissful. This was back in the day when no parent even really got punished for non-attendance of a child. Today things are a lot stricter and people get prosecuted.

This is why I feel if I had been home schooled I would have been a happier child and teen altogether. Many of my meltdowns and shutdowns arose from getting back from a day dealing with teachers and kids and being bullied or rejected or a multitude of other things.

As for the exposure supposedly helping a child to learn to deal -- never did that for me. Only made things worse.

I didn't become reclusive, just paranoid. However, it didn't stop me from going to school. Fear of falling behind in my studies was much worse for me even than dealing with bullies. It was really just for five minutes a day, but the experience sent my adrenaline into overdrive. The reclusiveness set in around 2008 and didn't end until I finally got my driver's license in 2013 at the age of 48. If I was reclusive, it was really my own fault, because I wasted a lot of time I could have spent in a better way.

school definitely made me more reclusive as every interaction with others end badly/awkwardly. i way preferred being alone to do whatever i wanted to at the time.

if it had not been forced on me i may have been able to develop better coping mechanisms over time. in retrospect this was not possible at the time. a special school would almost certainly have been better for me in the long run, but i was not different enough to be "noticed" or did not get noticed by the right people or some other reason.

thinking about it, i reckon gradual socialisation and developing individual interests earlier may be better for everyone in the long term.

I was reclusive before school age, it's simply my nature. I always preferred to be alone or around close family (parents, grandparents), and found other people annoying for the most part. (One example of how annoying I found people: One day, before we moved to where we live now, which means I was 5 or younger, I really wanted to go to the beach. I asked and asked, okay nagged lol, and finally my mother gave in and said fine, we could go. I was very happy, until we got there. Then I just sat right down and sulked. Because there were other people there. Not that many, a couple of families or so, but that ruined it for me. I sat there fuming until most of them were gone. Then I was ready to start having fun there, but that was close to when my fam thought it was time to go home.) Even my playmates that I didn't mind, I never missed them, even when they moved away or we otherwise lost touch.

When I was 9 I used to day dream about a great flood that made our apartment float away and we would tie our apartment to that of my grandparents, and we would go in and out to each other, living as if the apartments were boats. It was just us and no more neighborhood or school.
I also used to daydream that we had our own private island.
My idea of heaven is an appropriately big house where we live with our pets near a small river. The obly other signs of life we see, are the occasional wildlife.

I am very much a home body, and I'm not even gonna say how long I can stay indoor for! I have never experienced cabin fever, I'm feeling best when I'm at home and can do what I want. How anyone can tire of that is beyond me. Regardless of how short or long it's been since I was around others, I never long for it.

Some of us are simply naturally reclusive and never seek out new people, because we just aren't interested, and prefer to be home and do the activities we like there. For the record, while I found plenty of other kids obnoxious when I was a kid, I wasn't targeted by anyone, and only experienced bullying the year I was 10.

I learned from being bullied - become more violent and they leave you alone. Then you have to handle the fact you become what you most hate...

I don't know if it works the same for everyone at all, and I'm no parent. I have no conclusion of my own to make a suggestion or even a guess for anyone because everyone is different -- individually and situationally.


This is my story: I've became reclusive for sometime in the past.
Yes, I'm one of those who stopped going to school out of circumstances and then turned out alright later in life.

I tried resisting every negative experiences I had for years of bullying at school. I had the signs since before I turned 9, yet I refused to back down just because I want something -- although I did had those wants granted as a fulfillment, it held little significance back then.
My grades were fine, I wasn't a trouble maker, and had friends...
Then anxiety started to rob my defences, literally and figuratively -- I was a sensory seeker, then I became intolerant and prone to sensory overload and meltdown. I became more violent, more paranoid, and more hateful...
Until I gave up and depressed at 13. Whatever it was, it was that unnecessary feeling that drove me to it. Said 'feeling' certainly had something to do with social desires, it screwed up my priorities and took advantage of my immaturity, lack of realization, and lack of acceptance.
During those times, I confess that -- I skipped and escaped classes behind my parents' back. Little did they knew I spent my days on the somewhere else other than anywhere at school.

Went and completely recluse for about 2 years. Decided to stop going to school as soon as my previous school year ended. My parents tried to let me take alternatives, yet I never went along with it. So they just let me be for those years.


And I'm so grateful it happened. I'm seriously grateful that they never decide to force me out or take so-called shortcuts.

It was my own decision to come out, go back to school, and finish my studies.
It was also my decision to be all out aloof to the point that I never remembered a single name at school -- it was the best school years of my life.
It was also my decision to learn and figure my own sensory system in hopes of getting rid of weaknesses and all the problems it brought. I rarely ever had overstimulation or ever be prone to sensory overload. Never had a meltdown since.
It was also my decision that I'll find a way for me to function and adapt, without the need to cope and accommodate.

My parents had attempts for me to socialize -- until they got the message that I don't want to, realizing the difference between what I actually wanted from what they ought that I 'want'.
I would find out when I'll truly want a 'company', want for a 'belonging', and a want for 'fitting in' -- the past, which is during late childhood and early teens, wasn't the right time nor necessary as it was destructive maybe dangerous for me back then.


For now, that's what my own experience 'says'.

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About grade 2, a teacher hit my knuckles with a ruler for talking in class. After that, I didn't even try to talk at recess, I just daydreamed all the time except with one friend. Classes were overcrowded, so they still jumped me a grade up, so I became the youngest kid in grade 9, unable to keep up socially. Then, on the Christmas science exam, I noticed a trick question, and answered correctly. Unfortunately, it wasn't a trick, it was a mistake, and I got nothing for being right. I stopped listening as well as talking at that point. I flunked out, went to the library, and then guest-lectured to graduating engineers.