Aspies For Freedom

Ug, school. I know.

My AS son is in 2nd grade and we (he and us) have just about had it.  He is flat miserable. Every day. All day. It show in him physcially and now, more recently, it is showing in his grades. He is just checking out and giving up. And, frankly, I don't blame him. He has communicated to us the best he can how unhappy he is and why (as best he can tell us). We, in turn, are communicating with the teacher and school with no appreciable results. He is in private therapy and this week he is starting a social skills groups. We're doing the "provide him the tools" to cope thing (the school's main focus), but the environment is simply never going to change.

As I see it, we have 4 choice:
1. Support his as best we can (the "tools" approach) as he struggles though school. Maybe it gets better, maybe it doesn't.
2. Private school. No guarantee that the environment will be any different (especially the bullying/teasing etc), it will be expensive, and we are limited to the options that are reasonable close to where we live.
3. Homeschool. He would love it, but my husband and I both work full-time and even if we re-structure our days, there will still be some gaps.
4. Other? Some combination of home/private schooling? A co-op approach? On-line school + tutoring?

I am leaning toward 4 and just getting creative with it. The way I see it, kids are in public school only 180 days a year, 7 hours a day. A fair chunk of that time is spent on "busy work" and non-academic activites like recess, PE. Academic progress will necessarily be slower for a group, so the amount of material presented is smaller than the time spent on pure academics. In short, I don't think a traditional classroom at the stage really teaches all that much. I am confident that we could steer DS through the basics and then have alot more fun with additional material that he chooses. The scheduling is the main obstacle right now....

Anoyone else doing this? Suggestions? BTDT advice?

Thanks so much.....
Liz

Does you school have an "independent study" program?

Hmmm... I have no idea. I'll have to check the school district web site?

One part of the Problem was bullying and teasing, the problem appeared physically and is now showing on his grades.

Personally I didn't get much of a picture of what the problem was except from bullying.

I think it is great that you are able to acknowledge that he is being bullied, cuz when I told my parents that I was getting bullied they just said I wasn't.

Please be supportive of him, what inspired me to make the Dialogue with Parents thread was when I watched a norwegian drama serie where a boy who was being bullied tried to tell his dad that he was getting bullied, he tried many times but the father didn't realise before a call from the school, and then he reacted as if the boy had done something bad - not supportive.

Option 4 sounds like a nanny/tutor arrangement.  I've seen that done here and it can work with the right help. It can also be a big hassle if you don't hire the right help. I know one person for whom the county is providing in-home tutoring because her son has a doctor's prescription for in-home tutoring. But they have to jump through all of the hoops every 9 weeks.

Erkolos, that's just it, bullying can be a subtle and pervasive thing. Hard to identify and address, and teachers/administrators are already overworked.

I've battled myself with the same problem, over and over. Sometimes we find a way to help, sometimes we have had to remove our lad from the school in protest.

I don't have an answer. Last term schooling was mornings only for a while, but then he had to stay home for the last four weeks with a post-viral syndrome.

It may well be that we'll end up home-schooling, because that is effectively what we are doing anyway.

The bullying and teasing is such a tough issues. We believe him that he feels very picked on and is very stressed out about it. Compound that with the fact that we continue to make him go every day and that his teacher has not made any signifcant improvements on his bahlaf and he is understandable pissed most of the time.

However, while there have been (from our outside perspective) a few instances of "real" bullying (tripping, pushing, teasing, etc) many of the occurances that DS reports are things that bother *him* a great deal, but are not things that the teacher can reasonably change. Eg, kids talking during a film. A child who doesn't follow the rules during a game. A child that spits while he talks. All these things really really bother DS.  He does not differentiate between these things and the more "typical" bullying - tripping, pushing etc - they all piss him off.

The teacher and school should absolutely intervene WRT tripping, teasing, etc - but how can we ask them to prevent another boy from burping because it makes our son mad? I'm not discounting DS's anger and frustration - for him they are very real (and we're working with him to deal better with the annoying things in life) but it limits what we can expect the school to do in response.

  

Personally, I think that schooling is such a large part of a child's experience that a parent should do everything in their power to make it as positive as possible.  Which, I realize, is easy for me to say, since my son is in a school that is working very well for him.  BUT, that was not the case with his preschool, and that was not the case before his qualification for special education.  Yes, kids can shut down or tune out or give up, and that is such a huge waste of potential, that I never want to get anywhere near that edge again.

The thing is, I now our kids CAN be happy in a school.  Friends of ours achieved that by placing their daughter in a private special education school, others have achieved it by transfers among private or public schools.  I know so many special needs kids that are THRIVING.  My son is.  It's been really cool how he has come into his own this year.  He loves inventing, and he actually has a group of younger NT kids that I think of as groupies, constantly following him around asking to play whatever new game he may have invented that day.  They so totally look up to him, and it is the cutest thing.  He calls them his Beta testers.  OK, lol, they try his patience, but he also knows it's a good thing with respect to his goals.

So .... why settle for something that clearly isn't right for your child?  That squashes, instead of inspires?  It's tough, I know it is, because the alternatives can be expensive and most of us don't have the resources to make the full range of choices accessible.  We've been lucky, and I can only hope it stays that way.

Now, that doesn't mean that every school day is supposed to be smooth and easy.  It isn't.  It isn't that way for ANY child.  But as a parent you can see the difference between total misery and normal frustration.

You work with the system for as long as is reasonable, until you feel that this is as good as it is going to get within that system, and then you look for a change.  Transfer to another school, or try one of the other options you suggested.  Personally, I would try another school first, before going to a home situation.  While there are no guarantees it will be better, if it is, if you are lucky, then you will have a partner in your son's education, and that will take a lot of pressure off for both of you.

I can only wish you the best of luck, I know so many parents before you that have been in similar situations, and I hope it can be resolved in a way that works for everyone.

Might it be that people do it intentionally to piss him off?

I think that would be something else.

If it is it might be that he actually tell what kind of things that annoy him even to those who may bully him. That's what I did naively when I was in primary.

I also think some people did stuff like annoyingly clear their throat around me once they knew I didn't like it.

Lizmom, I don't think it's a matter of us coping with it better, but a matter of us being lucky enough to have a better and more suitable school.

Luck, not any skill I have.

Also, when someone has been bullied a lot, they start to see a whole bunch of things as personal attacks that really aren't. It wasn't until I had been awhile at my high school I transferred to, after several months away from all that negativity, that I started to realize how jumpy I was, and that I was easy to set off because I interpreted benign things as harmful.

Of course, there was for me about equally as much stuff with people taking advantage of my sensory sensitivities to get a rise of me (as when kids made fun of me covering my ears from loud noises, so they started pounding my desk every time they went by). A lot of physical, a lot of annoying, a lot of psychological, and a lot of annoying things that weren't meant to specifically annoy me. It's really a very bad climate to grow up in.

If it's possible, I would try some form of homeschooling, or alternative school placement, if he really is miserable from this stuff. It does get easier to cope with some stuff when getting older (while I am still quite sensitive to perfumes/lotions compared to peers, I'm WAY better at handling than when I was 7). However, there are also some stresses that just aren't as prevalent in the "real world". Crowded hallways with a bunch of screaming, running, mean-spirited kids are not the norm of adult life. There are certainly exceptions, but it is very different from the daily stress of going through these things.

When I was 13 and really pushing to be homeschooled, they were going to send someone from the school district to come by once a week and go over materials I had worked on during the week. This never materialized (because my awful counselor basically put the kybosh on it by telling people I'd changed my mind), but it was the plan, and certainly doable.

With me, my dad stayed home during days and worked nights, so the scheduling wouldn't have been as much a problem for us as for your situation. If you have someone to look after him, and he is motivated to work independently while you're gone, then maybe he could do work and studying during the day and go over it with you when you're home. (It always helps to motivate me to complete tasks when it gets broken up into lots of bits, so that I get to take breaks and read/do what I want.)

Some homeschooling parents say the curriculum work only takes about 4 hours per day or less.  The rest of the day could be spent on your son pursuing his special interests.  That would really make him happy.   I don't know if you could hire a nanny to homeschool.  Most nannies, except me, do not have much education beyond baby/toddler care.  I would love to have a job doing that.

I think when you are looking for someone to educate, not just watch, a child, the term used would be "governess" as v. "nanny."  The hiring of governesses is becoming popular among some groups in some areas again; if that is what you love and are qualified to do, M, I would look into it.

I've spoken to some non-aspies and they say throat clearing and pen tapping noises irritate them too. Only thing is, I can't ignore them like some people can and over time, it becomes very stressful.