Homeschooled Aspies who went back to public high school?

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I am very nervously trying to make the decision about whether to homeschool, or not homeschool, my son who will be entering middle school next year.

My question is -- are there any people out there who have been homeschooled in the elementary or middle school years, but re-entered school at the high school age?

If so, what were the positives and/or the negatives of this choice?

Kris

I was homeschooled throughout elementary and middle school, and high school too except the final year. I can't say I liked it; I won't homeschool my children when I have them.

But I think this was largely due not to my being homeschooled, but to my being isolated at home. My parents were reluctant to allow me to go out and stay in touch with other children (I'll probably never know why). As far I can remember, I couldn't leave the house on my own at all until I was somewhere like fourteen. Then they let me go to the store nearby, or to rollerblade near the house (being watched from the window most of the time). I also enrolled in a tennis class, also in the same block, which I loved - I suspect not just because I liked tennis, but because it was a chance to be outdoors on my own, even if only for an hour or two. I was clumsy, had my head in the clouds and didn't hear what I was being told, as my coaches put it, but that didn't matter. The only other activity I took part in was dancing, which I couldn't stand and didn't have the guts to tell my parents about this (but I still looked forward to it each time, because the two sons of my mother's best friend also went to the same class, and I could chat with them).

My parents pressed me a lot to study, too. They stressed how this was the most important thing I had to do, and everything else wasn't nearly as important. Looking back, I think I was under pressure to continually "achieve" something and get good grades not so much because it'd be good for me later on, but for my parents, and just to be the star of the school and all. It seems like I was made to spend most of my time with my textbooks. I grew to hate it. I wasn't allowed to play with toys much, a bit later I wasn't allowed to read my favorite books, so it was increasingly frustrating and saddening (it all pretty much continued into my university years but that's a bit of a different story).

Of course I was lonely and kept wondering why I wasn't living like other children did, or the way I thought they did. When I came to public high school, I had no idea how to talk to people and what to do altogether. Thank goodness my classmates were tolerant, being older and generally good people; some helped me out in various ways and told me what I needed to do. But it was very awkward and stressful nevertheless.

On the other hand, there was a huge positive side to it all - the fact that I had more free time (even if I had to win it by hiding what I was really doing from my parents), and a more flexible schedule, so I could read many more books and go to the forest every day with my grandfather. This had a large impact on me because it helped develop a sense of beauty, a love for nature and animals, and generally encouraged me to reflect on life and on how things are in the world. So I guess I learned more and became a better person than I would've been otherwise.

All in all, I think, if I were given the chance to see other children more and encouraged to do things I liked and/or was good at, I would've been quite happy. The isolation would likely still be there and that's not so good, but we could've found ways round it. Shame that it all turned out so wrong, really.

ixochiyo_yohuallan,

Your post is extremely important for me to read. I really am interested in your experience.

I especially understand the isolation of being at home with only your parents. That is a major concern of mine. My son's closest sibling is 16 and will only be home for another two years -- then off to college. Hopefully, homeschooling has changed enough now that one can use cyber school programs provided by the state, which now provides more social opportunities with other homeschooling families.

I would be extremely interested in any other details you might be able to provide. Your description of the plus-side of homeschooling is one of the major reasons that I'm thinking my son might be happier. Currently, it takes him hours to do homework. When we have cub scouts or social skills classes after school, it makes doing homework even harder. I'm sure he feels lots of stress. I would really like to de-stress his life.

I would also like to hear more details about your return to public school. Were you able to make friends? I know that people were nice to you. Did you find others that you had things in common with? Did the noise of school bother you, after the quiet of working on academics at home? Was it more difficult to go back to public school than it had been doing schoolwork at home?

You write exceptionally well. A lot of people could really use the info you can provide, because the way you explain homeschooling is so fair on both the pro and con sides.

Kris

I was homeschooled for part of my 7th grade year because of the teacher and I went back to public school for high school. I would say I did enjoy it but I didn't do much in the way of learning stuff that I needed for high school, like algebra. It was not like I didn't do anything at all but i need the structure that school provided. However, I was glad when i went back to school in high school.

I have thought of home schooling. Especially when you have ignorant teachers and those who choose to remain ignorant about AS. However I have always thought about the isolation and I know in the real world my son will not always be sheltered. I also want my son to think of his home as his Haven and not some prison. He has had his times when he comes home crying and their has been plenty of times where I bump heads with teachers however all in all the ups and downs have been worth it. He is in a new school (due to us buying our 1st home) and this is a much better school. However he came over to this new school being in the band and chess club. He is also in GATE classes regardless of how many times the teachers pushed and may in the future push for special Ed. He has made friends who may not be AS kids but they are bright and think very like him.

ixochiyo_yohuallan~ thanks for sharing you are helping alot of parents either make a decision or be happy with the one we have made.

I'm glad my parents put me in the normal school with the normal kids because, to be honest, I think Aspies have much more in common with people in the gifted program than they would with kids in the special education program.

Also, what you said about not wanting to isolate your son is something I'm glad to hear. I'm pretty sure that the being in public school gave me the social coping mechanisms I need to survive in the real world.

I agree wholeheartedly with that statement. However, there were times when I had hostile NT teachers, and my parents had to be pains to the school administration to get me out of the classroom. I'm not saying that parents should intervene in every single difficult social situation that an AS child encounters, because that, again, prevents the child from developing social coping mechanisms. However, it should be recognised that some teachers are just plain abusive to children and parents need to step in.

When I attended regular high school (well, it was a Catholic school, but the difference wasn't that huge) I had severe difficulties adjusting from elementary school. In the 8th grade, although I had missed 60 days which is a heck of a warning sign, I had finally late in the year started to get used to the people around me. But in high school everything changed abruptly. My closest friend was suddenly on the other side of the building and gradually it became clear that he felt that I should be making friends on my side of the building.

Eventually I stopped attending altogether. I enrolled in the local public schools, and due partially to the fact I was having problems with headaches at the time they send me people to home school me. One man, who died recently and was pretty well known in the area, was really good. He tutored me at my home in history (which is my expertise) and math (which is not). He helped keep my spirits up when I got frustrated. I liked the fact he told me stories from his rather interesting life, and well as telling me historical facts that were more fascinating then those in the poorly designed textbook. He really explained things well in advanced math, but unfortunately I have forgotten essentially everything.

I had a tutor in science that tutored me at the local library. I don't remember very many of the details (science isn't really my area). I do remember that she liked to mention things off subject on occasion. This wasn't much of a problem because I worked very fast. I also had an art tutor who was very nice at appeasing my less then suburb (to put it mildly) art skills.

Eventually, after a while I tried a go at it in the local high school and that went disastrously. I do remember one teacher, a history teacher, that I liked. There was also a literary teacher that I attempted to politely engage once when I first arrived. He greeted me roughly and I did not feel comfortable speaking to him again. I had no idea what was going on in his class other then they were doing some sort of class play (which I would have loved to be involved in). He later did a bizarre Elvis impersonation to the class as some sort of reward for hard work, although it was all still confusing to me.

After I stopped going to public high school the tutors returned, and later I went to a more permanent and successful stretch at an alternative school mixed with group therapy.

Thank you. I often feel I can’t get my point across well enough, maybe because of the discrepancy between words and the images in my mind. What I want to say is clear to me, but it never seems to come out that way in writing.

No, I didn’t have friends in high school. My classmates didn’t have the same interests, mostly, and I think they also hesitated to approach me for different reasons. I was new; I was two to three years younger than them; I was evidently a little strange, difficult to understand; I was being advertised by the principal of the school as some sort of genius (I feel ashamed writing this because I wasn’t one at all, but this was really so), so people’s expectations hadn’t been all nice – they thought I’d turn out to be stuck-up, spoiled or whatever, and were surprised that I was no more so than most of them. This, taken together, must have created quite a barrier. Besides, it showed that they had known one another for years and formed a kind of small tighly knit community, in which I had no place because I’d arrived just recently. They had their own little groups of two or three people, who always sat together and talked about the same things, and I was the odd one out. But they were good to me and I feel very thankful for that. I can’t imagine how much harder things could’ve been otherwise.

I sensed that gap between me and my classmates, too. Everything about them seemed different: they lived differently, and I knew I couldn’t live like that even if I wanted to (even though I’d likely have trouble explaining what “that” really meant); they were well-oriented, much more at home with how things were, and had a lot more experience dealing with everyday matters. Sometimes I felt like an outside observer watching people who seemed to belong to another culture (looking through a glass wall is another comparison that comes to mind). At the same time, I don’t think I ever felt any acute isolation or rejection, certainly not the sort that may drive one to despair. There was mostly just that fairly vague feeling of being different, maybe very much so, and wanting to find out why.

One of my classmates was closer to me than the others, though still not close enough to call it friendship. We had little in common, she didn’t open up much when talking to me and was simply sympathetic and caring. But I must’ve been way too sincere with her, just because I wanted to have a friend very badly and clung to any person who looked more or less like one. Later, when we were both at university, she told me that when I had just come to class, she and quite a few other people were puzzled as to what kind of person I was, didn’t know what to do with me, and avoided me or even were a bit afraid. Eventually, we drifted apart when she transferred to another university and then moved to Sweden to study and work.

Also, there was one young man in our class whom I liked. He was in some Evangelical sect, and was the only one who didn’t mingle much with the others, so one could tell at once that he stood out. I think that’s what attracted me to him – he was also different, and he spoke a lot about God, spirituality and other things that struck a chord with me. Usually, he sat quietly in a corner reading a Bible or some book of theirs, but when he spoke, he looked sincerely open and enthusiastic. I used to think he had to be a very happy person because his eyes seemed to shine every time we talked, and he seemed quite exuberant. He dressed in the same simple plaid shirt and jeans all the time and didn’t fool around, and it was appealing.

I wasn’t infatuated with him or anything. I think it was just my need to have somebody who’d understand me and whom I could talk to, more than anything else. I was glad we could discuss God and other things that mattered to me, even if his beliefs didn’t chime with mine (they wouldn’t have even now, and back then I wasn’t even a Christian). Sometimes we argued over religious or moral issues, which I loved because I could share my opinions, give support for them and there was somebody who was actually listening to it. He was doing his best to convince me that his own point of view, or rather, that of his church was the only right one, but I hardly noticed. Later, when we weren’t seeing each other any longer, I learned he was a very depressed and self-centered person with a host of issues who had lately started to use religion as an escape. I also learned that he wasn’t interested in me and hadn’t considered anything remotely like a serious relationship, largely because he wouldn’t hear about girls who weren’t from his church. At the time, I had had no idea about any of that.

The next year, at university, I did develop four extremely close friendships, all of which have lasted up to now. These are pretty much the only true friends I have (apart from one other person), because later, when I started to study English, it was the same story as in high school: the people were nice and helpful, but we had little in common, so most conversations soon became boring and one-sided and I wasn’t too interested in maintaining contact.

At school, the noise was a problem, especially the shouting in the corridors during the breaks. It was much more difficult to concentrate, and it confused me why anybody would want to scream like that at all. During breaks the school seemed to explode in this whirlwind of smaller children dashing by, and screams coming from everywhere, which could again be quite disorienting. At times it was almost terrifying to be going down the stairs or along the corridor, with the little ones running past at breakneck speed; I’d think I was about to get knocked over, because I barely managed to step aside on time.

It was also difficult to sit still throughout the classes. They were extremely tedious most of the time, and I ended up looking at the clock every five minutes or so, wishing that the lesson were over soon and there’d be at least a short break. But I loved ethics and philosophy; we had great teachers who encouraged us to think for ourselves and to discuss different beliefs, rather than just learn about them by rote. During these classes I wished for the opposite, that the class lasted longer and we could debate and speak our mind as much a possible. It was difficult to speak up, sometimes, and I’d feel something next to panic when having to talk in front of the class (the real panic attacks came at university), but I liked it a great deal all the same. All the other classes got dull too soon, and I guess I ended up daydreaming during most of them, because occasionally someone would tell me that I was gazing off into space and not listening to what was being said.

Also, at home, I would pace a lot while listening to music, and did various things like lying down onto the floor, going to another room, having something to eat or drink when I felt like it, pulling out toys and playing with them, taking another book to read and the like, - all at random and with full certainty that nobody was watching. At school, I had to get used to not having this freedom to move about, and not having the privacy either. There were twenty or more eyes on me for a fairly long time every day, and this could be difficult. That is, I wasn’t too self-conscious and didn’t feel that everybody was looking at me, per se, not in the painful sense; but it did make me feel exposed in a way, as if I no longer had a sphere of my own where I could be myself and have secrets if I liked. It also seemed strange and a bit unnatural that so many people had to gather together in the same class, and then sit around and listen to the teacher and look at the blackboard, without even talking to each other much except during the breaks. At some times, I didn’t mind these things; at others, I simply tried not to think about them too much.

Another thing that could be disturbing was watching some of my classmates being foolish. There was this rather immature chap who told stupid jokes all the time and would do things like climbing onto his desk and jumping up and down in the middle of ethics classes. Some others would join in from time to time, and I’d be sitting there on the brink of hysterical involuntary laughter and wonder what had bitten them all. I wasn’t trying to judge them or anything, but it was annoying, and I couldn’t understand what was the point of behaving that way. I still don’t like foolishness – I love a good laugh and usually look on the bright side of things, but I don’t get it when people start to voluntarily act like idiots in the name of “fun”. It just doesn’t feel like fun at all. And back then, it was much more puzzling than it is now. I kept telling myself, “there are simply normal, ordinary fellows, this is only natural, everybody usually gets like that once in a while and there’s nothing bad in it”, but it was wishful thinking more than anything else.

(These were the most innocuous things. There were much more malicious incidents involving a couple of people from our class, when teachers were bullied and there was some really idiotic, obnoxious behavior – like trying to set fire to the blackboard or bringing a hammer into class and hitting it full force on one of the desks. Luckily, I wasn’t there to see it. I really don’t know how I’d have reacted).

Last edited by ixochiyo_yohuallan on 14 Jan 2007, 7:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm glad if it helps.

This is a very emotional issue for me. I know things weren't bad for me at all - they could've been a great deal worse - but I'd hate anybody to go through some of what I'd felt. On the other hand, I feel that homeschooling made me gain much more than I'd lost.

My suggestion to you would be to let your son make his own choices. My NT daughter recently tried school after being homeschooled exclusively up to that point. We had an agreement that if she didn't like it, she had to stick it out for a month, and then she could return to homeschool. She liked it at first but once the novelty wore off, she was begging to return to homeschooling. I made her stick it out 3 weeks (not a month, I finally caved) and withdrew her.

I have met adults very happy with their homeschooling experience and adults who feel that it damaged them. The common complaint among those who feel they were damaged is that there was excessive parental control and demands on the child, and the s/he wasn't allowed to make his/her own choices and decisions about either academics or socialization.

So the bottom line is that, probably, he should be the one to decide.

I was homeschooled from Elementary through Middle School; I didn't like it that much, but I think it teaches children to want to learn things, rather than Monkey See Monkey Do.

At least for my type of curriculum which was the Thomas Jefferson Education.

I went to public school through elemetary school, but was homeschooled after that. I'm very glad I was. School culture was already becoming toxic, and from what I heard after that, it only got worse. Besides, school moved at a snail's pace for me - I probably would have ended up in a gifted program if our school distract had anything like that, but there was no such thing. With homeschooling, I got to move as fast as I wanted to, and spend the most time on the things that interested me the most.

I may be in the minority here, but I think homeschooling can teach social skills a lot better than school can. Of course, you have to make sure you actually do social stuff, but from what I've found, homeschoolers are often a lot more friendly than people in school. And homeschoolers have the freedom to develop friendships with adults as well as people their own age. I really don't think school did much to help me learn how to cope in social environments; quite the contrary. I do not do well at all being stuck in an environment packed with other people for hours at a time every day, especially when many of those people are hostile. I think school made me a lot more afraid of other people, and a lot more reluctant to talk in social situations, than I would have been otherwise. Quite honestly, I think middle-school and high-school social culture would have broken me.

But that's just my experience, and I know some people are much happier in school than they are outside of it. The most important thing is to look at who your son is, and what he's like, and make your decision based on that. And involve him in the decision, too - listen to him.

I agree with AngelUndercover that homeschooling can actually teach better social skills than school. My kids are very friendly and polite, people comment on it all the time. And they don't hesitate to talk to or interact with people of all ages.

The real problem I have with my AS son is that he doesn't want to go out to do social stuff. He is perfectly happy being friends with his sister and me. He and his sister are best friends, and for the most part, he is very loving towards her, and to me to. But no, he doesn't have "lots of friends" or anything.

I was homeschooled. I loved it. I also went to school for a while but everyone was mean to me so i was happy when i went back into homeschooling.

I was homeschooled most my life. I am glad I was, as I am far too smart to be restrained by social and academic convention. I was put in public school for highschool, but my parents wanted to shelter me, and because my Father is strictly "logical", he didn't care about my social interaction, so they put me in part time. It was the biggest mistake, because I wanted so bad to go full time and be part of a social group, but I couldn't because I was there, but not enough to be part of anything.

It all depends on how well rounded a person is, but I think homeschooling until high school is a great idea. But from my experience, I would just say to make sure you really give your child a chance to really get involved in school, and really be involved in how he is doing. Being in high school for the academics is also important. Homeschooling doesn't give the same level of preperation for the college class room setting that high school does. But I see no need for a class room for elementary or middle school.

Another issue about social development is that public school can actually STUNT social and emotional growth if some one is being picked on. I also think that homeschooling lets a person be more of an individual. Especially if a kid is very smart and mature, as many of those with AS are, putting them in a setting where they feel they have to conform to immaturity can really drag them down. There are differing levels of social skills, and homeschooling (though completely dependent on the parent) can teach maturity and respect, while public schooling may provide more "street savy", such as how to deal with ambiguous social situations and conversation skills. Both are needed, so it really depends on the person.