Can anyone reassure me about deschooling?

[BigRedCat]

Ds is 13. He’s been out of school 2 months.
He’s autistic, struggled at school from the word go, year 8 things were escalating and he had low attendance, very low mood, and we offered home ed as an option for him.

I work 2.5 days a week and some evenings (but H is home then), and I have elderly parents I help once or twice a week (I try to make sure one is at the weekend).

Ds is still on the low side, but I’m slowly seeing improvements, more interest in things he wants to do, although still low resilience in actually doing these things. He’s more willing to try different foods (has suspected ARFID so this is a real improvement).

He is starting maths tuition soon, and is joining a sports group two nights a week. He wants to go to college at 16.

When I’m at work he will go on his Xbox (he wants to learn how to live stream so is looking up how to do that and practicing), he will also go on live play with friends later on (most of his friends are on the spectrum and this is how they socialise, so I don’t want to cut ds off from this). He will occasionally go out to play with friends (not as often as we’d like him to, but we’re making some progress).

When I’m not at work we’ll do some things like going out for walks, doing some cooking, working on some art stuff he’s interested in, we’ve been to the cinema. We have a long list of museum type experiences to visit, but he doesn’t yet feel up to going out to unfamiliar places.
There are local HE groups but ds is very reluctant to meet up with anyone, but I’m working on it.

Am I doing enough? Is there any more I can do to encourage him out of the house and doing stuff?
My gut instinct is that he’s doing ok and it’s early days yet, and the EHE officer is happy with what we’re doing.
Some family members are very vocal that he’s not doing enough, and any explanation from me comes across as defensive.
Thanks for any advice.

That sounds great to me. You say your son's mood is improving and that's the main thing. Everything else will follow on from that. Look only at him. He is your guide.

It doesn't matter what the schoolchildren his age are doing. It doesn't matter what your family or the postie or the next door neighbour say. Your lovely boy is all that matters. You know him best.

There is no hurry to get him out doing more. You have all the time in the world now. From the sounds of it, he's already doing a number of challenging things: new educational environment, new sports club, new maths tuition, new foods, more playing out with friends. That's a lot!!!

You're both doing great. However I would urge to reduce the Xbox usage. My asd son would be on it 24/7 if allowed but we pushed on through with restrictions. As a result of us being stricter he found other interests and had become good at carpentry, playing the guitar and piano. He goes arranged to go out to meet up with people as he is bored (this took some time to learn to organise but so glad we didn't go do the only xbox route to socialise as those friends now at 17 just xbox and smoke dope the non Xbox ones who he met through scouts and sport do other stuff.

We’re keeping an eye on it at the moment.
He’s happy to come off it and do other stuff.
I’m keen for him to keep up with friendships though, so I’ll keep watching, but not allow it during the day when I’m at home maybe.

Sounds like your doing well and yes just keep an eye on the Xbox but if need be weave it into his learning. My child same age has been HomeEd for 6months now and we’ve really turning a corner now. We started with about 4-8 weeks of their project led interest stuff it was mostly around Roblox and slime. Then I added in 30mins a day of maths weve using Corbett maths and maths genie as free and they like the videos doing gcse lower grades at the moment but this is a strong subject for them. We’ve also using an English tutor and now looking at layering in some science gcse physics will probably be easier for them. I think if you can keep him engaging in some form of interest led learning and social opportunities he will slowly start to re-engage. Some local colleges do 14-16 courses for HomeEd or you only really need Maths & English functional skills or iGcse depending on their level to access college at 16. Mental health has to come first. Good luck our kids are amazing they just don’t fit in square boxes but they can still thrive.

Thank you!
I’ve noticed this week that he’s bored, which is new, and wanting to do things but refusing to do anything. Tricky, but I think this is part of the process and he’ll reach a point where he’s more willing to get out and about.

Is he into learning coding stuff? The site freecodecamp.org has loads of stiuff and the £2 tuition hub has lots of different things you can try out for min spend. Random stuff like Japanese club, cooking, alongside traditional maths/English etc. so just getting into the swing of “learning” non-school style stuff first can help rebuild confidence.

I just started laying out random things to n the kitchen table like puzzle books or jigsaws or board games so when my kid was “bored” there were different things on offer. We enjoy playing the Geography game as we chat about all sorts of random stuff off tangents from looking at the cards. They “hated” geography at school mainly because of the teacher but this way I’ve started introducing the topic by stealth 😂

I’ve been trying to introduce things by stealth but he’s resistant to doing anything new, although a week or two more of boredom might do the trick.
He’s not into coding at all, but we’ll have a look at the website and see if anything appeals to him, thank you!

It’s early days @BigRedCat honestly I could have written your post 6 months ago except my child spent a lot time on Roblox, it does take time and it’s really hard to hold onto hope that you haven’t messed up their lives taking them out of MS school. Dr Naomi Fisher with ‘Missing the mark’ does sone great Eventbrite zoom presentations on learning in different ways and parenting teens on different paths. plus she’s written a couple of brillant books.
But seeing my child blossom back into the person they were and not the shell that came out of MS schooling last year is just brilliant. A lot of year8 learning in school is rehashing prior knowledge so you can find what out what makes them tick and I think going through the “I’m bored” stage is part of it, as then they start to want to find out things themselves which is the best way to learn.

You might like out school?my ds loved doing a weekly history with Minecraft group for example,it was really good and out schools got so many different interest things may be worth a look