My child is currently home edded. We're paying for a qualified primary SENDCO to teach him 3 hours a week, and we take him on lots of trips, arrange lots of playdates etc but there are limits and it isn't as useful socially as school. At all.
The problem is his autism means a school has to know how to manage him for him to be okay, and most don't, which is worse because he masks (hides confusion, anxiety and distress) in school to the point they are unaware how unhappy he gets, and he's gifted, so he's not a problem for them there, either.
He's on the waiting list for a school with excellence in handling autism, and who agree they will seek to get him attending 3 days a week, to reduce sensory stress, with an hour the other two days with his current tutor. But when your child needs a class of around 12 kids to cope, and state schools have 30, what can you do? School to him is like a nonstop rave, because his sensory processing challenges are so enormous. He wasn't able to cope. He'd had clinically diagnosed anxiety for two years, which has left him within months of his being home edded.
It's hard because he is also demand avoidant, and masking for school meant he conformed there and did what they asked. His one to one tutor finds it far harder to enforce learning and at home, it's near impossible. But when he was in school he struggled to learn because of the overload, anyway. He was also bored stupid by a lot of what they did because it wasn't truly differentiated - how could it be, in a class that size, with a child who is both autistic and gifted? He would clock watch and was so unhappy.
I hate home edding. I love my kids, but he has no capacity to entertain himself at all so he is very full on. It's hard work and inferior to school, what I can offer... but he would need either a 3 day week at a specific and full to capacity school, or alternatively to attend a local private school with small classes and the traditional approach to lessons he actually thrives under. And we can't afford the latter. So home ed it is.
Believe me, I am worried a lot of teh time that I am failing him and he is missing out in a way that could further handicap him in later life. It's just that I had a child with clinically diagnosable mental health problems, and now I don't. And one who reads a 300 or 400 page paperback in a day (Percy Jackson type level) when he never read for pleasure - he reads the Junior Week every week now, too. So in some academic ways he's doing well. And his scientific understanding is such that his tutor says he outstrips her capacity to teach... but he hates to learn grammar, or other essential building blocks. Her take is that he would struggle with mainstream school, and she's not certain he is suitable for it, but at the same time he would comform more, and that would mean learn more. And as long as he was sheltered from bullying, and his vulnerability recognised and countered, he would benefit from the socialisation. But... we've all been to school ourselves, right? And would we all, hand on heart, say that being the weird kid who finds social interaction hard socialises someone into anything but the sort of cowed body language that attracts yet more bullying, without expert and consistent intervention?
It's very difficult. I find it so. I don't know what the answer is, and I often lie awake panicking that I am shortchanging my son. I'm just trying to do the best I can.
My older brother, also autistic and very bright, was brutally bullied and left school without qualifications - got them as an adult and now has a good job. He's emphatic to my mother that we are doing the right thing. But who knows, really? Nobody on this thread.
I wish people didn't all need others to mimic their own parenting choices. It happens at all stages, and over almost everything. Remember the BLW versus purees idiocy, with tinies? Honestly, most of us do our absolute best in very imperfect circumstances. And if people are really this agitated about HE, then perhaps they should lobby hard for schools to provide better for square pegs, when schools currently provide solely round holes.