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Should I home school my dc who has ASD?

3 replies

Retreatbynameretreatbynature · 17/04/2018 12:30

My teenage ds has high functioning autism and severe anxiety, has been unable to attend school for a number of years due to this anxiety. My dc sees a psychologist regularly for her anxiety but this is a very slow process. Various attempts at online learning haven’t worked and I’m now reassessing our options. Do I try to Home School my dc myself? But I don’t want to shrink their world even more, they have no real social interaction apart from within family. Any suggestion of trying a club or visiting a school for a look around simply causes such anxiety that my dc is literally floored for days on end.

OP posts:
lanbury · 26/04/2018 13:51

No personal first hand experience, but a lad who att need my son's special school who wasn't coping for reasons you describe is home schooled now bit his mum has managed to get an arrangement where he visits a school for short periods for certain subject (I think things like music, drama) it means he has a routine and can be prepared in advance and isn't totally isolated.

incywincyspideragain · 22/05/2018 14:52

I don't know as we are in EHC assessment period and I'm really stressing about schools but we currently flexi school - is that even an option? I'm not thinking immediate but could it be a longer term goal with a period of 'healing' and maybe unschooling. We're on roll and my son attends for 3 days a week, the other 2 he works at home and has space to relax/recover from sensory and social pressures of school (its not a long term solution though for us)
The other option is maybe a setting that takes extremely anxious children (we are looking at one for my son but he probably 'isn't anxious enough' as he masks so effectively) maybe one they could go to flexibly (SENDAIS should be able to advise if they exist)
Or try being at home and see if that relieves some of the anxiety so they are more able to or willing to try 1 activity a week and build from there x

Frazzledbutcalm · 23/05/2018 10:18

Sounds very much like my dd, year 10. She now receives her education at home under EOTAS system. She currently has 6 hours per week but this will be upped in due course. I’ve seen a big difference in her general stress and anxiety levels since coming out of mainstream. The home learning only became available once we had an EHCP in place. Does your ds have an EHCP?

I was told by professionals all along not to take her out of school as she wouldn’t then get any social interaction ... my argument was she has no social interaction really after 11 years at school! I thought that if she’s out of school her stress and anxiety levels would drop and she’d therefore be more likely to want to engage with others/go to shops/just go outside etc. But they all said no, it wouldn’t work that way, she’d be completely isolated .... turns out I was right Wink

It’s not plain sailing and we’ve a long way to go but I’ve definitely seen positive improvements.

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