To feel hacked off at the home ed community already

[dontknowher]

Hi,
I am a mother to a neurodiverse child who has struggled in school since reception. They have had a complete burn out and now cannot access school at all. They are 8. We have tried EVERYTHING to make school work. They aren't suitable for a special school.
I have a reluctant home educator. I say reluctant as I never really envisaged being my child's main source of knowledge. I am a single parent and have very little support. I am also a home owner with a full time job.
I receive nothing from their father.
All of the above means that home education is not really an option but I have no choice due to child's refusal to go into school.
I have tentatively been looking into home education groups which may mean I can keep my career. At the moment I am on a sort of extended carers leave but this is untenable in the long term. My mortgage fixed rate also expires in August and I need to renew!
There is, on the whole, a complete lack of empathy for my situation from the local home education groups. The whole thing feels like a very entitled, white woman's, heterosexual, almost trad fem secret society.
There are very few which offer any support for ND kids, very few who offer hours longer than 9.30 until 2, even fewer which are ofsted registered meaning I can claim UC for the costs. I understand the reasons for this but it's the way that they all act like I'm the first person to ask or the only lone parent they've ever met who isn't willing to Jack in their job at the drop at the drop of a hat.
No one can make my situation better. I know that. But it makes you feel even shitter to feel too poor, single and not 'child focused' enough for the only other option. My only friend who is experiencing the same is utterly miserable, stuck at home with her challenging ND child, declined from every home Ed group and unable to access mainstream school. I just can't believe our lives have turned out this way. We both have qualifications and ambition. No one tells you that your child will not be able to go to school, that's something I always assumed was a given!

After you wrote to the LA to request a needs assessment, what happened next?

They had 6 weeks to say yes or no. If no then you had options of mediation or appealing straight to tribunal.

If they said yes then you are in the needs assessment phase of a 20 week timeline. Week 6 was when they agreed to assess, what week are you in now?

@octaurpus
Give the OP a break, she's coming to terms with the massive disconnect between how she expected her life would look, and how it is at the moment. There's a lot of anger and grief in this process for most of us. And so much rejection! Some of our ND kids are not welcome at school, or in (some) home ed groups - even with a parent present. It's so isolating.

just to amplify this

@Quitelikeit with all due respect you do not have to accept the violence and anxiety. There are strategies and interventions that you can do to really minimise these.

Really?! There are approaches- yes. I’m not sure that the PDA community would agree that there are strategies to minimize anxiety. We cannot control the environment to that degree.

It is very hard for single parents in rented accomodation to home ed. I know one who works 2 well paid 24 hour care shifts a week while child is at alternative school and overnight with the father. I think it must be exhausting, but she would probably say she has no choice but to get on with it cheerfully. I think it would be nice if home edders were given the equivalent of what would have been spent on their child in school. It wouldn't be much but it would be a nice gesture.

Trouble with that is that you are providing a big financial incentive for people not to send their kids to school. Societally that could have really negative impacts.

I'm in favour of home-ed where it feels right for the parents and child. But if families who weren't interested in home-ed were pushed by dire financial straights, or by greed, to take their kids out of school, i don't think the outcome for the kids would be good.

I do think more money should be directed to offer alternative provision from mainstream.

@MMMarmite You are right, of course, it would be very difficult in practice!

What on earth are you talking about?!

Yes you can do things to help with anxiety?! Both in the home and out of the home!

If you haven’t discovered them yet then that’s not my problem

@Quitelikeit - please can you link to these strategies and interventions? I'm sure they'd be useful to the OP and those of us who also struggle with children who school refuse.

Not strictly PDA, but 'The Explosive Child', was a helpful read. I particularly like the technique where, instead of getting upset that they are taking ages to get ready, you just observe every step in the right direction, like 'you are getting your socks on now,' or 'you are finding your coat.' I don't remember it very well as it's a long time since I read it, but it was really helpful to me once.

Never heard that. I thought that was what ADHD Hyper-focus was

A lot of people I know with adhd (including myself and dc) All went from subject to subject learning everything there was to know about a certain topic and move on.

We are a font of knowledge on the most random stuff.

@Kennykenkencat from my personal and professional experience of ADHD, yes obviously hyperfocus is definitely an element but unless family is fully committed to child led learning (which OP doesn't seem to be), providing extensive appropriate resources and no significant cognitive issues (unlikely the case with even a mild learning disability), just letting the young person get on with online schooling wouldn't work for the vast majority of people I know.

I totally accept your experience might be different though.

I know what you mean. I was hoping to join a co-op thing where I could drop my kids off one day and have other kids over the days that I don’t work. That doesn’t exist yet in Kent it doesn’t seem. We pay an arm and a leg for a childminder to have our 3 kids on a Monday cause that’s the day we both work.

One reason is that you have to be very careful with this sort of thing or you find you're (in law) running a school. Which means a lot of paperwork etc.

@Quitelikeit
What on earth are you talking about?!

Yes you can do things to help with anxiety?! Both in the home and out of the home!

If you haven’t discovered them yet then that’s not my problem

Your tone is fairly angry teenager but I’m used to that, so I’ll deal with it.

When you have a teenager with ASC and PDA, no you can’t control their environment (which includes interactions with friends, going to town, etc.)

I have read the books, academic papers, spoken to experts. Tried to get my dd to attend all sorts of therapy-she’s done a bit, usually ends up refusing.

I can’t control her anxiety or give her strategies that help enough to stop the auditory hallucinations that have already caused an overdose and rows and rows of cuts on her arms and legs . School and teenage life (hormones included) have caused burn out and there’s no convenient set of strategies that help to overcome these huge environmental challenges.

yes- we’ll keep trying, my dd and I.

Loads of the home ed community are in exactly the same position as you, with ND children who can't tolerate mainstream education but don't qualify for special school.

If you're looking for childcare, then I would look for a childminder.

Lots of home edders work to some extent. My husband and I work full time around each other. Lots have had to give up their jobs to care for their children though - I doubt they feel very privileged.

Gosh how patronising.

There are treatments and strategies and I stand by that.

@Quitelikeit there are indeed strategies. As you’ll know, it doesn’t mean they work for long or work for every child. If a child continues to have situations that create stress, the strategies won’t avoid burn out or crisis situations when it all gets too much. Usually during adolescence.

I have just finished home ed my 16 yo while working full time and being a single mum but it would have been very difficult/impossible through the primary years or prior to home working as I have no support. As it is I work flexible hours and have take parental (unpaid) leave and annual leave so that I am more present. I have been able to take a break or a long lunch and make up the time later when this was needed. DS has worked online doing courses while I facilitate and motivate and deal with life skills and PHSE. I have been much more involved in the run up to exams which we split over 2 years. There has been a financial cost but it has been worth it.

I haven’t had much experience of local groups as DS wouldn’t go. I am on some facebook groups and there is a lot people who have removed children from school due to them being ND or having school anxiety. These grouos have been a huge support to me. I can recommend ‘Home Education for All’ and ‘Single Parent Home Education’.

Just to add I am not aware of any HE groups locally where you can drop off your child. However my DS has enjoyed art classes on a weekend which cater for ND children so maybe explore options that are not just for HE. I realise though that this won’t help with your work but would give your DS the opportunity to socialise (and that can be just being around people not always interacting).

I would have loved to have been able to stay at home and study what I wanted

Instead I was in school. I came out with predominantly U’s except for a subject that I loved

Just because you stick to the school curriculum if a child who has ADHD and is not medicated and doesn’t like a subject then nothing will go in
You are wasting your time.

Its about dopamine. If we don’t like a subject then nothing you do will help. For a NT person even though they might find a task boring there brains know they get a bit of dopamine when they are doing the task and when the task is over.

For me and I am sure those who have adhd if we find a task boring then it is never getting done. I have walked out of jobs because when they become boring nothing, not even losing the roof over my head will get me to go to work.

I will say the best decisions I have made in my life have been the ones that were heavily influenced by my ADHD and I just did the most random stuff which turned out brilliantly.

The worse decisions have been when I ignored the ADHD side of me and did the sensible thing. I have ended up with several nervous breakdowns

If NT could stop their dopamine production for a few weeks and see the chaos it causes then they might understand what we live with 24/7

Occasionally with meds (about twice per year) things start to kick in and I act like a NT. In those few hours twice per year my brain goes quiet and I can do one task at a time and I get through so much stuff.
If I felt like this all of the time I could run a huge multinational company whilst raising 6 children and do long distance running in my spare time.