homeschooling, good or bad?

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My son hates school. he always has. he is 6 and in grade one. this year i started home-schooling him. he is so much happier and i feel we are making a lot more progress than he would be at school. last year they told me he didn't understand math at all and he was not making much headway with his reading/phonics skills. we started homeschool in oct and he is 3/4 done the curriculum for grade one, in two months. now the psychologist and social workers are telling me that what we are doing is detrimental to his well being. so i signed him up for a school program that is based mostly on socializing and extra-curriculars so i can continue doing his lessons at home. he hates it. he doesn't want to go. i don't want to make him. he is happy at home. he has 3 siblings, one is a year older, one 2 years younger but very advanced. he also goes with me everywhere and has no issues engaging in conversation with the people he chooses to talk to. he has no problem playing with the kids we meet at the park either. they are making me feel horrible and like i am being selfish(yes, they actually said it was me that was causing this) not making him do what they deem to be in his best interest. honestly i wanted to pull him out of school as soon as i put him in because he went from happy go lucky kid to anxious, angry, silly, hyper, and started having nightmares and meltdowns all the time. they keep telling me it is a fair trade off for what he will gain there but can't seem to tell me exactly what they are offering him that i am not. i recently came to accept that i have Aspergers as well as ALL my kids have it and i have so many of the traits myself. i also hated school and totally get where he is coming from. i stopped going when i was 12 and realized that no one could really MAKE me go(in canada, i know in the states it's different) i don't think going to school did me any good. i completed the rest of my education on my own when i was in my late teens and was still able to get well above average. i am confused as to what he is missing out on as no one seems to be able to tell me exactly what is so detrimental but they have threatened to call CAS on me if i don't participate. i called CAS myself as a preemptive measure and they support my decision to homeschool. i tried to be reasonable, i told them i would go with him until he got used to being there again because i don't want to trigger melt downs/ night mares. he has been uneasy all day and is now refusing to do his homeschool because he thinks if he doesn't finish it on time he'll miss his chance to go to school this afternoon. am i wrong to tell them my way or the high way? they are supposed to be the experts. i am not really against him going, it's the way it effects him i am not okay with. there are only 3 other kids in the classroom and i am wondering why they are so against me sitting in until he is happy to go with out me. like a what are they doing that they don't want me to witness type of feeling. i am also worried that he is going to feel i betrayed him if i force this on him. we have finally gotten our bond back to how i feel it should be where he is co-operative in most areas and wants to please me. i know that if i make him go it is going to hurt my relationship with him. i hate the system. it's not made for us. i want out......... sigh. i need advise from people that know what i'm dealing with and actually hear what i am saying with out labeling me as a bad mother causing her son issues, that is not the case!

Where do you live? they are BULLYIING you and in most states homeschooling is legal and perfectly acceptable. Do you belong to any homeschool groups? Can you contact/join HSLDA, they will let you know your rights and help you along the way.

My son is homeschooled, and the district TRIED to bully me into sending him. It didnt happen and isnt going to happen, they can keep all their threats! It is LEGAL and my son is more then thriving being homeschooled. He HATED pre school, was much more anxious, shy, behavioral when I sent him to school (in school he shut down, didnt talk, didnt paly with the kids) then he came home a huge mess, tantruming, scraming, hitting...the change was immediate. Within a month of no more pre school he was much happier, much more social with other kids, etc...

DO you want to continue homeschooling? Sure sounds like your son does! Are your other kids homeschooled?

I would love to know where you live so I can help direct you towards resources to empower you and your son!

hang in there and DONT be bullied. THey are bullying YOU imagine what will happen to your son.

Also, you arent a bad mother, quite the opposite. You are listening to your child and doing what is best for HIM, not the system.

I say keep homeschooling and what do you need the district for anyhow?

I do not have kids, but there is a kid in my family/ life who has a possible AS diagnosis and his Mom was having the exact same problems at school with him as you describe. He was bored, the other kids drove him nuts, he melted down, attacked teachers and students when it got really bad. But he is the sweetest, gentlest soul when he is happy. His mom took him out of school and is homeschooling him now. It is like night and day. He is very bright, reading a lot and no more behavior problems. They enrolled in a home school program to keep the officials off their backs.

For what it is worth, you have my 100% support to homeschool you kid(s).

The school system in US (don't know so much about Canada) is designed for a special purpose: to produce obedient workers for the Machine, to sift out the "rubbish" and send them off to some kind of institution (mostly prison these days) and to identify a few bright sparks to advance to management levels. Google search John Taylor Gatto and the Oddessa project. He is an ex-public school teacher who quit (after 20 + years) and researched the real history of compulsory public schooling. It is not pretty.

There are only two apparent drawbacks to home-schooling (imo):

1. Poor development in social skills. A child who is raised in an homogenous environment may not develop cross-cultural social skills, and this may be reflected later in life.

2. Some parents home-school to impose their narrow-minded religious doctrines on their children, who then grow up to be just as narrow-minded and intolerant as their parents.

Other than that, no worries!

We belong to many homeschool groups and are exposed to many different cultures and religioius backgrounds.

MOST people who homeschool do it to enrich their children, not to shelter them. I am sure there are some extremists out there, but there are extremists everywhere. I was sent to public school but other then that came home to my bedroom and was behind a closed door most of my life. I had no opportunity to have freinds over, go out with freinds, or do anything at all. Just sitting in school alll day, I didnt learn how to socially interact with kids. I didnt know how to play with them, I could talk about school work, play on the palyground, but other then that I had ZERO skills. Just sending a kid to public school doesnt make them a social being.
Once I was able to break away from my dysfuctional family more, as a high schooler, I figured out my ways to get out, like cutting classes to be with friends. But I had to really learn how to interact, casue just going to school every day and then comong hme to a bedroom didnt teach me. And I feel to this day I still pay the price. The social skills dont come natural to me casue I was not exposed as a kid.

I shared that story cause people believe that school is where socialization happens, and other hten that a child is sheltered and will be an outcast in life. I went to school but had ZERO other interactions with kids until my upper teenage years, and it had a severe impact on my social development. School is not the end all of social development. Sure wasnt for me!

My son is homeschooled, and has tons of freinds, activities, groups, programs, etc...as long as the parent is active and keeps the child engaged and with other kids, there is NO harm is homeschooling.

I see no positives whatsoever to sending your child to a public school. All I learned in 13 years in the Kentucky public school system was that I wasn't worth what the teachers scraped off the bottoms of their shoes. I swore I would homeschool my son before I put him in it. That would have been a problem, as I do not have the capacity to teach. I completely back those who do, and support their right to do so. Had I not stumbled on to a perfect little private school with only 24 students and a good friend whose children go there to assist with tuition, I would have had to stumble through as best I could. Good for you for having the strength to stand up to the bullies and do what's best for your son.

Imagine you would talk to a grown up person, that is talking about his work

... nevermind how much that person would be earning in this company, you would never say, that all these bad things could be traded off in some way.

I agree that you should look that your son has activities out of home too, so maybe some kind of sports he like, or maybe playing in an kids orchestra or scouts...whatever your son likes and have fun with, so that he can learn some social stuff nearby. But if he is completely stressed until his limit, then he will learn nothing. I did not get bullied in school or anything, but still it was often too much for me and I didnt have any energy left to do activities with my classmates. Only when the stress was reduced i started to act with my classmates, because i wasnt tired all the time any more. When all you want to do is get away from everyone because its to much stress, you dont wanna play with other persons either.

We live in a small town in northern ontario. i have searched and searched for other suitible homeschool kids and haven't been able to find any yet, still looking! i haven't got him in any activities right now, i know i should. he is not isolated though, and i am certainly not teaching him to be narrow minded, i am trying to teach him to think for himself instead of blindly following what everyone else does. his siblings are all in full time school and aren't having any major issues. well, my 7yo is not in mainstream school, he is in a special education classroom but he is making amazing progress there and i'm happy with that. i have not joined any home school groups or anything. the only 'homeschooler' families i have found around here are either natives who are pretty much free-ranging their kids and not teaching them much and morman/amish kids(i'm not sure which they are, they use horse and carriage and wear different clothing) they seem to be putting their kids to work more than anything and i don't want him around that. i will look into that site MMJMOM mentioned. and Schneekugel you are exactly right, i would never expect myself or their dad to go to work at a job that was making us miserable and that is why i don't want to do that to my son. i never thought of it as bullying. i feel a bit better now

The concept that he will somehow learn "social skills" just because you put him in a social environment is bunk. I think the more basic concept that you might want to consider is increased flexibility. I believe this can be done without any type of public school setting, however. I do think there is a valid concern that only doing the things he is comfortable with and not pushing him a little at a time can lead to greater rigidity and that is probably not good in the long run. Perhaps that is what the psych et al are really concerned about but they don't know how to express it. I know the therapists that work with my DS make a focused effort to work on flexibility. They purposefully change things up a little bit and focus on helping him learn how to cope when things don't go exactly as planned. I would imagine that you could do this within the framework of your homeschooling. I know I've read some articles about this but can't put my finger on any at the moment.

my son is homeschooled, and he is pushed daily. He HATES to do school work, he cannot focus or pay attention...so just the mere act of doing school work is pushing him out of hsi comfort zone. Also, he has had so much opportuity to socially interact with kids on a more stress free basis, that he now seeks out kids to play with on a dialy basis. this is a kid who when he was 3-5 in pre school, didnt seek out any kids in his class to play with. HUGE improvement!! !!

I also dont think you NEED homeschool groups, but it is nice to have some others who are doing what you do. Even if they arent int he same neck of the woods, just an online chat group might help!

good luck

While it helps learning and creativity a great deal, the child can also become disconnected from the realities of the rest of the children in society. Putting a child in a home schooling environment that is more conducive to creative learning is a great thing, but how about the lesson of how to face and live with the rest of the kids/people in the society, warts and all?

Harsh experiences or uncomfortable encounters are not always necessarily "bad" things, and may even sometimes contribute to a more tenacious character and resilience being developed in the child.

It sounds like the school system here, like what they want is the funding they get from keeping the numbers up (especially the special-needs kids, in the States anyway you get more money for them) and like what they see their mission as is making industrial products, good little round pegs.

They are right about one thing-- he DOES need those difficult experiences. Even though he hates them, he needs them. Unless you think you can shelter him forever (say you are self-reliant survival farmers and can teach him the business skills to make handing the farm down to him a viable option or something), it's better he gets them now.

It's more painful for you to watch the beautiful snowflake hurt, but it's going to be painful for him no matter when it comes. At least now he is close to the ground and the potential consequences are not so harsh, the stakes not so high.

So, make sure he gets some of those slaps in the face. Harsh as it sounds, kids NEED to burn their asses and sit on the blisters. I might be happier if I hadn't, but I seriously don't think I'd be as functional as I am. It didn't need to be so harsh, so repeated, so pervasive as it was for me, but it did need to happen.

Now-- are they right in what they're doing to you?? NO. MMJMOM is right; they are bullying you. They might or might not think they have the kid's best interests at heart-- there are still lots of people that think that what autistic kids need is stuffed in a Skinner box until they learn to act NT at any cost. I HATE it, ABHOR it, but I cannot with any confidence swear they are wrong. Then again, they might or might not just be trying to keep special needs kids in the system for no more altruistic reason that to protect their own goddamn paychecks.

I want so badly to homeschool my kids. Flexibility, enrichment, the right to work at their own pace, to be on one grade level in one subject and another in another, lower stress levels, more individual attention...

...not to mention, yes, sheltering them a little. It is much easier to learn phonics and math when part of your mind isn't always busy worrying about when you are going to get in trouble again. To paraphrase what I told the psychologist this week-- You have to understand that you cannot shelter him forever, but right now he is for christsake SIX. He damn well needs a little sheltering now. You're his MOTHER. That's part of your JOB.

So-- make sure he is exposed to other kids, and to the same groups of other kids repeatedly. Suck though it does, make sure he gets those harsh experiences while you're still there to teach him. Other than that, my dear, HOMESCHOOL TO YOUR COLLECTIVE HEARTS' CONTENT!! !! !! !! !! !! !
Just my possibly completely invalid opinion, and it's not like I have enough balls to stick to these guns with my own kid, so don't feel bad.

Here is the thing that many AS kids have been able to point out to us adults: most AS kids do fine with adults, it is kids their age that they have difficulty with, because they are constantly changing and developing. So if the purpose of education is to be able to function in the adult world, and if an AS child can already interact with adults on a peer level, then why is it so important they learn to deal with children?

Yeah, that one will stump the experts who think the kids need to socialize with peers.

All that said, it is good for kids to learn how to make social connections within their own age group, but it is also true that many AS kids find it a whole lot easier to do so outside of a classic school environment than in it. Personally, I don't have a problem with that. From what I've seen, most homeschool families are very careful to provide the opportunities for peer relationships.

I think that homeschooling scares many experts because it doesn't have the same clear standards, and the quality of the schooling is so varied.

Can they give you a specfic list of what they think your son is missing? Challenge them on it. Get the list. Then accommodate the concerns in a way that works for your unique family.

As for the value of harsh experiences ... it isn't like they won't come. They will. I have no regrets about the time I spent sheltering my son; I gave him that protection because he had enough challenges to deal with, and he needed to be able to focus on some specific skills with as few extraneous worries as possible. Over time, I was able to let go. I don't shelter him at all anymore. As long as you don't let fear drive you, and you keep your eyes and ears open, you'll know when to nudge or take a chance.

I homeschool my kids. I wasn't able to start homeschooling until they were halfway through 1st and 2nd grades due to having to keep working until then. The younger one the school wanted on high doses of Ritalin and the older one...they really had no idea what to do with him (this was before he had a diagnosis). His teacher was a wonderful person who had been teaching for I think 38 years, and loved children. She freely told us that the school environment was not helping him. That he was too smart for warehousing in their special ed classroom (I substituted for that class once. It is warehousing at that school), but he wasn't getting anything out of the regular classroom, because he was constantly lost in his own mind. He was also getting bullied. Not like the "I'm going to beat you up for your lunch money" kind. He has always been on the 99th percentile for height and weight, so he was twice their size. It was the sneaky manipulative, "Let me trick you into doing things that will get you in trouble" kind. The kind where he thought they were his "friends". His teacher saw it for what it was, and kept him out of trouble for the most part. She would explain to him whatever they had talked him into was wrong and why, and tried to keep him from interacting with the troublemakers. A lesser teacher would have freaked out and gotten him suspended over some of it.

So that was the experience I had with my kids in public school. My personal experience with going to public school was much worse, but I won't get into that here. One was singled out and picked on by his teacher because I refused to medicate him and the psychiatrist agreed with me. (I do have examples of why I am saying she singled him out.) The teacher also frequently told him that he was too stupid to learn how to read and that was why he was in the reading group--not because he had needed glasses and couldn't see the letters for the first few months. He was utterly miserable in school. The only thing he liked was recess, but he missed that over the time due to being in trouble. And when he got home, he was a wild child from all the pent up frustrations and frequently threw up in dread of having to go to school. The oldest was being manipulated and taken advantage of by the other kids, was lost in his own world all during the learning periods, and if he hadn't had such a wise teacher (and that is so incredibly hit and miss with public schools) he would have been in trouble constantly. His behavior while going to school was also much worse at home.

Some of the advantages of homeschooling: We picked the topics--more so with elementary than now, we set the schedule--we're all night owls, so we do school from about 11 am to 5 pm, we set the curriculum--for homeschool elementary science this really is more about actually finding books that aren't purely creationist, but for history and geography this is amazingly fun. They've been to see Gettysburg, the Liberty Bell, and many other museums and living history displays, watched documentaries, and done hands-on projects. For literature we can choose the really great books and not just the latest fad book (ok, ok, I had one kid that until recently had only ever read Captain Underpants on his own--but he has listened to many many great books through Librivox!). We can use biographies and actual documents to learn history and make it interesting. More importantly we set the interaction.

There were seven boys all pretty close in age living in this neighborhood, and it is a neighborhood that the kids can play in the street and be reasonably safe, so they had other kids to freeplay with. The advantage to that is I spent a great deal of time watching how my kids interacted with others, so I didn't hear it filtered through his perceptions what happened. This allowed me to roleplay situations with him that were actually coming up. It gave us a great deal of time to work on things like shaking hands and greeting people and idioms.

We also belong to a pretty active group, so they have homeschoolers to meet and a music class and a band class to go to. The interaction has been a bit more difficult lately, because some of the boys moved away and there is a lack of tween activities in the homeschool group, but we're almost out of that, and we've agreed to let the middle child join a sports team, so he has more kid time. Overall though, I believe that my kids are more socially adept than the average public school kid. My kids know how to interact with all sorts of different people--different age groups, different ethnicities, to a certain extent different socioeconomic backgrounds (this is probably our least diverse area, as there just isn't a lot of variation in this region.) My kids do not use the many, many racial and ethnic slurs that are extremely common with the public school kids. The middle child went to school for one semester in 3rd grade while I was having health problems and couldn't handle all three of them at home, and the things he learned on the school bus were like horror stories. You know the favorite 'games' on the school bus? "Who can hit the hardest?" (in multiple variations), "Who can give the nastiest insult?", "Who knows the most about sex?", "Who knows the worst racial/ethnic/sexual slur?" I feel no remorse with not giving my kids that kind of "socialization".

Quote: morman/amish kids(i'm not sure which they are, they use horse and carriage and wear different clothing)

Very possibly Conservative Old Order Mennonites. If they are anything like the congregations in this area, they are actually way cooler and more open than they seem like they would be based on their clothing and lifestyle. My dad and step-mom started attending a local Mennonite church last fall after being invited by some they had met at a little bent and dent grocery store one of the families runs. As they like to say, "We're just regular folks. We just dress differently" It is deeper than that, of course. It's kind of hard to interact with the preschool kids, because they don't speak English very well. The kids don't learn English very well until they start school in first grade. Some of their social conventions are very different, but it has been a good learning experience for my kids in dealing with new people. And my middle child has decided that being a blacksmith would be an awesome career. Did you know there is actually a college that will give a BA in blacksmithing? More for the artistic side than the simply practical side, but still, I think it would be a great fit for him. Homescooling has given him the freedom to consider non-mainstream careers and develop his own quirky style.

I do know there are people that "homeschool". My husband's sister has been one of those of for years. They were doing it to isolate and indoctrinate. It does happen. His sister finally left her man, and enrolled the kids in public school. The oldest isn't allowed to enroll, because she is 19. She's having to go to adult GED classes instead. The youngest is in 8th grade. The middle child, I believe is about to be 16, but they had to enroll her in either 9th grade or the alternative school that aims for high school age people to get a GED instead of a diploma. Their math placement tests ran from 1st grade to 5th grade scores.

This kind of thing certainly does happen. However! I would be willing to bet that just the fact that you are thinking about it--hat you are here asking about the possible pitfalls, that you aren't going to be falling into this category. In my experience, these people are absolutely sure of themselves. They don't ask questions as questions are dangerous to their narrow world view

I experienced both of these. Honestly, I'm not sure if it helped or hurt overall, however. I was saved from bullying. I am the type who probably would have taken a gun to school and shot people if I had been subjected to bullying like some young aspies are.

So, I grew up without knowing bullying or shooting people. Although I had 8 brothers and sisters, I did not learn how to relate to people outside my family until I was 18. It may not have affected my social skills that much, but I definitely feel like I can't relate to anybody, including other aspies, so I tend to surprise people as someone with decent social skills and a good sense of humor who doesn't really have any friends. I don't know if homeschooling had anything to do with this or not.

I don't know what my life would be like had I gone to school -- whether it would be much better, the same, or if I would have been a school shooter.