I am a big fan of education and believe it is the way forward for anyone. As such we enrolled our son in an independent school in the hope of enhancing his school experience and future potential. This may not seem like a big deal to some until you consider his school fees were more than our mortgage when he was there, this was not something we took lightly.
Independent schools are a luxury which felt the squeeze of the economic downturn. Meaning fees went up while quality of service dropped immensely. When they found my son's brilliance came at a cost, that meant them having to do more work for their money, we became unwelcome. The schools in our area aim for average and fall well short, I went to some like those, so know if you have a working brain in one of them you either let it wither and die, or get into a lot of trouble. Mine didn't die, and I don't want my son going the same way.
My son is Asperger's meaning he struggles in social situations but as with many similar is academically brilliant absorbing knowledge at a rate rarely seen. In school breaks and lunches are like having his worst topic 3 times a day, and he would be recovering from one, worrying about another, or in the biggest nightmare of his daily life, unstructured play. We have decided to home school, not a cheap option as it meant losing one income and still spending on equipment and resources for his education. But he's worth it
I have experience in adult education so am good at lesson planning, and have a very lateral mind meaning I am able to take the curriculum we use as starting point and add to it in ways that mean he will enjoy it and learn far more than most would need to in school. However I am not good enough at dealing with my son to be his teacher, fortunately my wife is. This presents an additional challenge when we are teaching areas my wife remembers little of, as she has to learn it before teaching it. However the music, art and creative work that many home schooling struggle with are her forte and he is learning these well, all in all his education is well rounded.
This means a lot of our time and energy goes into planning ever more advanced lessons for our son, who always wants to be learning more and gets bored with revision incredibly fast. In fairness when revising things he has forgotten it is accepted but he has yet to learn good grace when he has fully retained it first time.
There are a number of home educators who seem to have gone this route to skip parts they don't approve of, like or agree in. Some for social or religious reasons others I can only assume out of desire to increase ignorance. We are not in this group and teach everything, whether or not we like or agree in it, even when we know it will upset our son. The world is not pleasant and simple throughout and the reward for ignorance is limitation and isolation, not something any parent should want for their child. Others will disagree, as is their right, but I want my son to make his own decisions and am glad to say he is growing up different to my wife and I in many ways meaning he is becoming himself. I don't like all of his personality traits, but I don't like all of mine, so that's good.
We invited our local education authority to assess us annually. They visited once and were blown away, we haven't seen them since. They are not remotely helpful regarding resources etc. so it wasn't upsetting, just annoying that they haven't done as agreed. Many seem to want to fight the authorities, not sure why as all they need to see is that you are providing an education for your children and if you choose to home school that is the least people should expect of you.
This has been going on for almost 2 years now and we have made a few errors, but he is ahead of the standard required at his age, in some cases by a long way. Socially he is behind as expected but we work with this as much as possible and most meeting him don't see the issues unless we go over time. Basically he is learning how to behave and keeping himself in line for the times he has planned, but going beyond that will sometimes mean he is worn out from the effort and this can get difficult. My wife deals with him daily so is as used to this as possible, but anyone who has seen children with AS will know it's heart-breaking to watch when they can no longer cope.
There will be some things on here showing how well he is doing. It will not have report cards, just a few moments of pride and innocent amusement. If you want to know more about what we do etc. please ask. If it involves personal information I will often refuse, but guidance, support or good humour we'll be there.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned to you before that AS runs in my family. My mum and older brother are both diagnosed with it, my dad and I aren't, and if put through screening for it would probably fall on a knife's edge between AS and normal.
ReplyDeleteLike your son, socialising is where my bother and I had most of our struggles at school. We were at a public school all the way through. I did make some longterm friends at school -- years later I found out that almost all of them also had AS. Of the few that didn't have AS, I can only think of one that didn't have something else (such as OCD, which was popular amongst my non-AS friends), and he was just his own special brand of shameless weird. That probably made it easier for me, but dealing with the vast majority of other students was still a nightmare.
Since finishing high school, I've actually made a fair amount of progress in managing the more socially obstructive traits that come naturally to me, and I think I've got one specific teacher to thank for it. This teacher said one day that the real purpose of that class was to work on our intelligence, which he defined as our ability to analyse and evaluate. He went on to talk not about evaluating any of the information we'd deal with in the class room, but about evaluating our lives.
I remember, I used to think poorly of home-schooling, using the rationale that it doesn't let you become socialised. Since growing up, however, I've met the younger brother of my now ex-girlfriend...he was home-schooled all the way through high school, and came out the other end of it as one of the nicest guys I've met. This is probably a combination of positive family influences and the absence of the mental buggery that comes from how nasty other teenagers are. I don't tend to feel that schools are a great place for socialising children anymore, which (in hindsight) should have been obvious from my own experience there.
It sounds like you're doing the best thing possible by your son. Good work, and keep at it.
The choice was not an easy one, and scared the heck out of my wife in the lead up. But we don't regret it.
ReplyDeleteI have had to tell so many people that the socially important things in school are totally different to adulthood so much as he is missing some social interaction, I don't think this will be a major impact on him.
The most popular kids I knew from school often found the transition hard and ended up on narcotics, or on a few occasions committed suicide. In contrast I have met a few of the dorks from school and they have done really well.
Most of the people I admire have turned out to have serious AS characteristics. So when I look at my son I can honestly say I got exactly what I really wanted, now I am having to work hard to ensure I don't let him down. The greatest thing I have so far is that he is not afraid to tell me what I do wrong and how I make him feel, something I would never have dared do. This means I at least know what I am getting wrong or can explain why I have to keep doing some things. As I said he is brilliant, especially to be able to describe feelings he hasn't learned to cope with fully.