20 year old furious with me for home educating them

[woollybean]

Has anyone had any experience of this as I am really struggling. They are depressed with anxiety and blaming it completely on them being HE’d. They have alway been able to communicate with anybody when they were a child and they were never isolated, encouraged to join groups etc. Their mental health is really bad at the moment and it’s breaking my heart. I have suggested making an appointment with the GP for help and they already see a private therapist for CBT but they’re just getting worse. They say that they’ll never get better and they’re just existing.

I’m sorry you feel as if you missed out on things, is there anything positive you can think of that you experienced because you were home educated?
As I’ve mentioned, my son struggled at school due to his ASD, it would have been easier on me if he could have coped with school as home educating properly takes massive sacrifices.

Just to add a different perspective, my son also had a diagnosis of Asperger's. We kept him in school because we thought it was important to give him social contact with his peers. It turned out to be a huge mistake. He was mercilessly tormented by the other kids before we realized what was going on and pulled him out and it took years for him to recover from the psychological damage and feelings of anger. Sometimes, there are no easy answers. Would your son be open to family counseling with you?

I’m so sorry you and your son experienced that, how awful for you. I’m hoping my son will be open to counselling of any kind at some point in the future even if he probably wouldn’t at the moment.

I think if your son is currently experiencing depression, it’s probably a good idea to give him the space to express the feelings he has right now, which could well become reframed once treatment gets on track and as he gets older. I know when DD had OCD, she had intrusive thoughts that she really struggled with and it was important that she could voice them without judgement as a way of working through it. Once she was medicated, it improved.

As you say, your son seemed very happy and adjusted during the home schooling process and you made the best choice for him at the time. There is no guarantee that had he gone to school, his life would not be where things are at now. Your son has never been a parent before and doesn’t understand the uncertainty of each choice that’s made.

At the time compulsory state education was introduced (albeit for a few hours a day) most children were working in factories. In fact, they went to school for a few hours, then went to work. I am not sure it was natural to work 16 hours in a factory either!

There are of course so many positive outcomes for those with neurodiversity. For example, www.thealexmanners.com is a site created by Alex sharing his own experiences and how he has overcome many difficulties to date. Might be useful for yourself and/or your son. There will be other examples too.

Op . I have the same from my adult son who I removed from secondary school at the age of 13. He also had a diagnosis of Asperger’s although,for us we prefer to say he is on the spectrum. That’s just a personal preference for us.
my ds blames me for him not growing up with his peer group .
until anyone has gone through the very real trauma of prising fingers from door frames to get them out of the door in the morning, they shouldn’t be so quick to judge.
OP you can only play with the cards you are dealt with, you do what you think is best.
the mental strain my ds was going through at school ( despite the school cutting his hours down to one or two a day) was massive. He was on the verge of a total breakdown.
we had no real choice .it was HE, or the nearest mental health unit, where he would probably have been sectioned.
my ds has no qualifications , but he is alive.and for a while there was a very real chance of losing him.
he did blame me for a lot. even though he agrees now that the situation was impossible.
not everyone’s experience of school is good .for some it is just day after day of sheer terror.

Another vote for a neurodivergent-aware counsellor from me. My daughter and I are both autistic. I've had a lot of frankly useless therapy both NHS and private over the years, so I paid through the nose for a therapist who uses mixed methods and is autistic herself to help my daughter when she was self-harming with disordered eating and CAMHS were seeing her, but being useless. She was great, I found her through an online therapists directory. Taught my daughter a bunch of grounding techniques for her anxiety and to reframe her perspective on life.

I agree with a pp who said about autistics being easily traumatised. Autistics tend to ruminate and fixate. I managed OK at school as had a handful of peers who 'got' and accepted me. The wheels fully fell off at university, which really did traumatise me. I try to tell myself I did the best I could with what I understood about myself at the time, but it's still a struggle now and it's been 30 years. Your son may well struggle to let go of the idea that it could have been better for him in a school (not that that is necessarily true, but it's very hard as an autistic not to wonder if I tried X or Y instead, perhaps the outcome could have been better). I would focus on getting him to a GP and considering medication too.

Finally, and I know this is turning into an essay, is your son engaging in his special interests? They're vitally important to autistic people. You say he's not continuing with a college course, but what else is he doing? Autistics need our special interests, it also stops us ruminating on past events we are powerless to change. If he's dropped them, that's a sign of depression so it would be helpful for him to restart if he feels able.

The reality is that for many young people with ASD there is no ideal educational experience.

@WondererWanderer I'm sorry for your experience but I don't think you can generalise. My girls were traumatised (in the true sense of the word) by their school experiences and it has taken years to repair that enough that they can engage with education in their specialist settings.

Change the therapy. Too many therapists are causing issues between parents and children. Home Ed is not the problem here (and I’m not a fan of home Ed) blaming the parents for the child’s unhappiness is the problem

ive heard a couple of stories from people who went through similar- struggled with anxiety etc so parents pulled them from school, didn’t make them do homework etc and that actually they do resent the parents for not taking a more firm hand with them
it’s really hard, it sounds like you were doing your absolute best, he is obviously hurt by being young and autistic and struggling to connect with others, it’s not really the home schooling that’s the issue, it’s more of how autistic young men are seen in society :(
but that said I really think we will see a lot of anger and resentment from kids in the future who were allowed to not go to school etc, kids need structure and discipline and prospects, they only realise that later of course. I think sometimes parents think they’re doing the right thing by wanting to make their child’s life easier, spurred on by online communities but yes in the long run the child may struggle.

I have 6 children three are autistic. The older ones started out at primary school it was a disaster we lasted a few years then decided to home ed. The older three are done now one at uni, one in work and one doing a levels at college and they have never mentioned hatinh home ed in fact most of my kids talk about home edding their own children.

i am full expecting though when times get tough they will blame something in childhood an home ed would be an easy thing to go to. We all do it! Blame our parents!

OP, what @ObstinateHeadstrong said is bang on. I have 3 ND kids, one of whom is not in school. Is your DS ever in a place where we is willing to talk and listen to you? I realise if he is full of anger and depression that might not be possible right now, but if it is, I would see if he will engage with activities that will make him feel better. (Is he eating at the more nutrirtious range of what he will eat, is he going outside and moving his body every day, is he engaging in decent sleep hygiene / sleeping enough, is he off devices for (ideally) several hours a day, is he engaging in a special interest.) And if he's not, is there anyone else in your family / network he might listen to?

Whether or not you HE him was the right choice is past and neither of you can go back and undo it (I know you know that, but it's still worth saying alout to yourself and to him, but in a gentle way when you are not in the middle of confrontation). I'd also be minded to say you are sorry if you got it wrong. (Maybe you already have.) In other words: take the hit and be very explicit that you are sorry and sad if collectively you made the wrong choice but you were doing the best you could; you are explicitly sorry and sad he is feeling XYZ (if he can tell you in words what he is feeling and if not, supply them for him and ask him if it's right).

And then, having taken the hit, talk about where to go from here when he is in a listening mood. Cycle this conversation on repeat when you get the opportunity.

I feel for you, and him. Good luck.

Is that not the point, that we’re still educating kids (pretty much) in the same way we did when schools were first introduced. Sheep dipping 30 kids through a standard curriculum that doesn’t really take their learning styles, strengths, abilities, interests etc into account, and conforming to rigid structures.

I say this as a parent of an ASD child who the school have had to adapt for, but this is the exception which I had to advocate for, not the norm.

Have you asked her why she home ed you “no good reason”? Seems an odd thing to do as it’s certainly not the easy option!
for transparency I home educated one child who’s now grown up from age 8-14, her choice, also ASD, now thriving in the military!
I also have two who are still in school, full time, mainstream, and home ed was by far the more difficult choice, from a parenting point of view there’s no break for a start.

CBT for autistic people needs to be done by a specialist practitioner and they're rare, or it can to more harm than good. Most of the CBT practitioners have not experience or knowledge of CBT for autistic people.

And the term Aspergers has fallen out of use as Hans Asperger was a Nazi eugenicist who is known to have sent at least one disabled child to a death camp to be experimented on and euthanised, saying she was a terrible burden for her mother. He only saved certain people on the spectrum because he thought they were intelligent enough to be of use to the Nazi party.

Here's a helpful link that explains why CBT must be adapted to be effective: https://www.autisticadvocate.co.uk/post/why-cbt-is-often-not-helpful-for-an-autistic-person

Basically the CBT practitioner's assumption is that we are falsely believing ourselves to be, e.g. unlikeable. When of course, being autistic we have plenty of lived experience of being unlikeable. We actually need a more trauma-informed approach, but when we try to tell therapists what our trauma is, it doesn't sound (to them) like it should be that bad. Add in that many autistics also have alexithymia so we do not know our own emotions, so the commonly used therapy-speak of "how does that make you feel?" is pointless.

How do you feel about him rejecting HE? Because it's so personal - you made the sacrifices for his benefit but now he resents that.

A common human problem is comparing a real unhappiness to an imagined alternative happiness, when the alternative could have been worse. If he'd stayed in school he could now be angry you didn't take him out.

Have you had therapy for yourself to deal with his situation and feelings?
You might benefit from support about how to respond to a child when they resent a parent's choices. Would you say you genuinely tried to do right by him? If so then surely all you can do is say that, but say you'd like to understand more about why he feels it was so hard, and then support him to take ownership going forwards.

It really isn’t anything to do with being HE, OP, you probably know that.

Your DS hurts because being ND means he can’t find his niche in life, and it must be someone’s fault so it’s you. The best thing you can do for him is try and help him find his place in the world, whatever that is, and accept that he might need more help than other boys his age.

I say this often, people with NT children have no idea how different it is parenting an ND child. Night and day. That’s not a criticism, it’s just experience. but the advice you get from people who don’t have an ND child - however sensible and well meant - is based on an entirely different premise.

He will probably always struggle with bouts of depression like this but it isn’t a permanent state. Get him through with love and reassurance, and try to keep the pressure off. It will pass.

Oh OP, this is not about the merits or otherwise of HE. You did what you believed best for your DC at the time, which is all a parent can ever do. No-one can know how the alternatives would have worked out.

So please, don't fall into the trap your DS is in and start believing this is about HE. Your DS is severely depressed - for whatever reason - and needs help to move forward. The HE is a distraction. You sound a thoughtful and loving parent, once again trying to do your best for your child under challenging circumstances. Please don't waste time or energy on debating HE.

I hope it goes well for you and family.

I had to home ed for part of my DC childhood too ,for same reasons.
I'm autistic
I've had 5 lots of CBT ..it didn't work ..to much pressure and the counsellor decides each session what we will take about ,which I can't cope with that demand.i got given constant homework and tests to fill in before each session that were utterly ridiculous and added to the stress.waste of my time ..just plain counselling would of been better
I've tried every antidepressant possible,I can feel them working in a negative way after 4 hours of taking .never managed to get past the first few days on them.
But what does help ,is Propranolol
It's a beta blocker,I can take it when I need it ,or not at all ,up to 3 a day .
It's for anxiety and I'm in charge of when I take it ,..it is the only thing that has helped with my anxiety ..might help your son ..I asked my doctor for it ,he was happy to let me try it

Tricky this. I wasn’t furious with my parents for home educating me-but I really wish they hadn’t.

I grew up with a sibling with the same diagnosis as your child, OP. Of course, we're all different etc etc but my sibling also made it his life's work to find fault with our parents. Whatever they did, they were wrong. Special school? wrong; mainstream school? wrong. Therapist? wrong; no therapy? wrong... you get the idea.

This is just my way of saying sometimes there isn't much you can do. I know others have said the same already on here. My sympathies for you and your son - depression is bloody rotten.

You have a rigid view about HE which you're entitled to but which isn't really helpful here as the HE has happened, and the child was not thriving in school.

All parents impose choices on their kids, that's the way parenting works. If you choose the majority option it gives some protection but children can still resent/reject/criticise those choices.

What matters here is how the parent responds going forwards.

He is lashing out as he is frustrated with life. He went to college so did have the experience of being in an educational setting. Does he feel he didn’t reach his full educational potential as he must have left before 18? At 20 it isn’t too late to return to full time education when he feels ready.