God what do I do with my poor DS?

[inappropriatelyemployed]

He couldn't get to school at all today. He has only been going in for part of the day with me. He was wailing and crying about putting his uniform on and how he can't cope.

Where do we go from here? His third school. One period of HE already. School will do whatever they can but he can't cope and I worry I am damaging his mental health.

He finds it so hard to explain how he feels but he can';t cope with kids at school. We went to a special school to look around yesterday and he wouldn't look in the classes and got visibly stressed out at a glimpse of a child in a far off corridor.

What do you do?? CAMHS? HE? This can't go on.

It's my fault. I hijacked.

I wouldn't have to homeschool everyone, but I figured it was easy to do a round the world kinesthetic geography lesson without having to factor in the school run for the other kids........

Ah, I get it.

Total x posts!! :)
Justa...I asked star the same question when I started to home school ds1 3 years ago :)
She would be a far better home educator than I ever was!
It's strange...prior to actually home schooling I knew nothing about it. I thought it was something only right wing religious Americans did (sorry!) but it didn't take long to see how wrong I was.
The HE boards in MN were a lifeline for me.

Don't worry - homeschooling would be an absolute last resort for us. DS1 and I would drive each other round the bend!

And I should have read on :o

Polter...the he board is fab.
Such kindness and knowledge in one place...very much like MNSN :)

This has been such an empowering thread

I can't tell you how different this week has been.

DS and I went into town today. He paid for the bus tickets and told the driver where we were going.

He had a MASSIVE chat with the guy in the Games Workshop, resulting in mammouth war game and date to return tomorrow (he says 'I need to bring my brother' OMG!! )

Then, wait for it, drum roooollllllllll, on the way home on the bus, he continues prattling about Warhammer but stops and says 'I'm not boring you am I mum?'

OH MY GOD!!! I mean SERIOUSLY MID MONOLOGUE

I just hugged him and said 'DS you have got your mojo back'. Cue very embarrassed DS.

I know it is not all plain sailing from here but what does school do to children like this? Really? He has learnt more about social skills in a day then he would in a term at school.

Home ed isn't perfect though, and it depends a lot on which part of the country you're in. Some places there's lots going on and a great deal of choice with HE groups and activities, some good LAs and some awful, it can be a bit quiet and cliquey sometimes. And you still get bullying children and pfb parents - you get those anywhere. The beauty of HE is that you can do everything at your own pace and pull back if things don't feel right. You have control, which is something we don't get much of in the SEN school system.

I agree. With HE there are massive drawbacks but control is so attractive when a lot of our stress and trauma comes from having things snatched entirely away from our control.

And from constantly having our family life invaded.

Homeschooling is emotive for me. Besides the childcare thing there is something else.

My Dad spent a year after dx stressing the importance of not upsetting the school/LA etc. as they are the professionals, and know best and parents are a bit pita at the best of times but moreso when they have a child with SN. He was a universtiy lecturer in a teacher-training college after 35 years of teaching in primary, specialising in IT.

Then he saw what we were doing, what we wanted for ds and how unreasonable and defensive the reactions to this, and he did a u-turn. He stated that he was doubtful any school could meet ds' needs after all and the teachers he was being forced to pass by pressure from his university were very illequiped for teaching NT children, let alone complex children.

My Dad enrolled himself on a NAS Help! course, started to scan local shops for deals on resources that would be useful for our ABA programme. He told me that homeschool was a much better idea for ds and he told me too that I could do a good job of it should I ever decide to and as soon as he was retired he would be available to help/support/deliver. He adored ds and only ever saw the positive in him, treating every unusual aspect as a positive to be harnessed and developed.

He passed away 2 years ago, a year before retirement.

I would never homeschool as well as if he was around. He made netts of polygons and sewed mathematical designs onto card, and despite being an IT specialist was a great believer in pencil and paper. He taught a whole class of East End disaffected boys from a very rough school to Morris Dance to a standard that got them invited to international festivals on expenses (though he often drove them all there in the back of his transit), and taught them all how to play instruments despite never being able to play one himself. I just don't have his mind and would never live up to it.

I'm also not very disciplined.

That's wonderful news IE. How lovely to see him beginning to blossom already .

'I'm not boring you am I mum?'

Woowzers!!!!

"I don't see why you couldn't hire babysitters/tutors if you needed time with only one child or just time off."

Money, I would think zzzz.

For me anyway. If money was no object, I would get specialist tutors in. But HE means less work opportunities and less money.

Wow that's great IE :)

Yes, for us it was money.
We live in a village too so not much in the way of a thriving home ed scene.
But a big city would be different.

Your dad sounds like a lovely man, Star. You must miss him a lot.

Home ed IS emotive and full of pros and cons. I know ds has missed a lot of opportunities by not being in school, but in truth he could never have accessed them because he never had the support he needed to enable him. We were thrust into this situation and make the best of it.

But he also gets a lot from HE that he'd never have got in school. Above all, he's calm and controlled whereas in school he was a violent, raging, frightening beast. He's got a couple of friends now whereas he never had any before.

And that combination of pros and cons will be different for everybody, whether they school educate or home educate. Because every child is different and has individual needs.

From what I know of you from MN I think you'd be disciplined enough to HE, but you have to be ready to make that choice if it's to be successful. Maybe you're not there yet and may never be. If school works for your family then that's fine - and lucky! The HE option is always there if there comes a time when it doesn't.

Tutors have been a great help for us and a way of giving me time to do stuff of my own, without being attached to ds all the time. I get university students who are more willing to work MY way than dyed-in-the-wool school teachers who insist on following NT to the letter. My students want to learn about ds's conditions and support him the best they can, and they can be fairly flexible with timetables and schedules. Plus they are VERY cheap .

yes for us money too.

We will need a second income shortly, and we're absolutely broke from our journey so far we have nothing available for babysitters etc. so that happens extremely rarely.

I like the idea of running a small livingroom homeschool where I get the basic rate from the government per child plus DP for their statement needs (i.e. SALT/OT etc.) and I hire in specialist staff and take no wage.

If i was doing it formally and with other people's children I'd be much more disciplined and perhaps the children can work together to make the money go further, write to people to get free or cheap visits/resources etc as part of their literacy/groupwork/communication/budgetting lessons.