Need advice to deal with adolescent son with no insight

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do you have the ability to homeschool him? if so, i'd give it a try. i homeschooled my son from grades 5-8, despite everyone and their uncle trying to tell me otherwise. it ended up being the best decision i ever made.

i live in a state with some of the biggest red tape around regarding homeschooling; yet, i didn't let all of the daunting stacks of papers listing the rules and regulations deter me....in the end, it was quite easy, and my son learned a ton...especially with the self-paced, online courses, in which he actually enjoyed (btw, there are many more to choose from these days than there were back then).

if you homeschooled him and it worked out, the only problem you'd be left with is socialization -- i tried enrolling my son (an only child) in many social activities (such as boy scouts, karate, basketball, pokemon competitions, etc -- you name it) but he quit everything, except weekly guitar lessons, which he loved. he also hung out with my nephew (his slightly older cousin) twice a week -- and that was all the socialization he wanted/needed at that time in his life.

he decided he wanted to try public school again in ninth grade, and shockingly, he was very happy socially, but he still struggled with stress from trying to do the work and in dealing with teachers who were either clueless as to how to carry out his IEP, or just didn't care enough to. i was on the phone with the school staff virtually daily. yet, he still wanted to stay...but, if he'd told me he couldn't handle it, i would have pulled him out and homeschooled him again in a heartbeat. (btw, he'll be starting his sophomore year at a major university next month, and he's thrilled!)

good luck.

PS -- the best advice i ever got was from his neuropsychologist: "Don't ever let anyone sway you from what YOU think is best for YOUR child."

I totally agree with homeschooling. I did it myself by filing a Private School Affidavit for a couple years, and then recently I joined a charter school for people who homeschool. (I'm in California.) I have almost a master's in education so I'm familiar with the unschooling movement and non traditional types of schooling. Whenever I feel like I'm not giving my son enough academics, I give him more, and if things start to unravel I back off and feel like I collected useful data.

I work from home so it's very easy but if I didn't then I'd recruit relatives, friends and I'd even pay for a nanny (he's almost 12 so that's getting a bit odd) so that I could work and he could stay home. A companion I guess is a better word than nanny. He sleeps from 11 PM to 11 AM. He does a couple of household chores, some reading, and 20 minutes of math or science or language arts or whatever, and then some days he goes to swimming lessons or art class or karate for an hour, and sometimes he has counseling and he's about to start occupational therapy and an autism group, and then he's got free time to do his special interests. There is a limit on that per day so sometimes if he starts early I'll have him stop and do something else for more time later, like help make dinner or take out the garbage or straighten up. He doesn't comply willingly probably 40% of the time but every day he does comply or he gets no computer time.

There are a few activities that he won't comply with and he will scream for the rest of the day over them and not do them to get computer time because he hates them so much, so I only have him do those activities once or twice per week. They are important activities so we are considering ways to get them done more often but I made a recent decision that for now my focus is going to be on keeping him calmer. (These activities are showering and brushing his teeth.)

When he was in school, the demands were simply too great. Dealing with trying to get to bed on time to get enough sleep to get up on time then rushing around in the morning then getting to school and not being able to follow along and losing his recess and then having all his daily classwork sent home for us to try to accomplish in the evenings - way too much stress.

There is a lot of non academic learning, and a lot of time for what's more applicable to him at the moment - social stuff, family stuff, sensory stuff. Taking care of animals, building stuff with legos, watching science and history stuff on tv... It has really really made a HUGE difference for both of us, being able to not have to deal with a traditional school.

We are going to be homeschooling in the fall, too. I feel like my son is now labeled as a problem, and he has school aversion tummy aches, he acted out. I bet his issues are similar to your sons. It was bad. I know not everyone can do this. I think OliveOilMom mentioned the K12 online free charter school that is available some places. I think there is another company that does it, too. If you can trust him at home (your son is older than mine) then you may be able to do that without anyone being at home with him.

How does he handle time at home? Does he seem less tense, more relaxed. Mine does. We have had a wonderful summer, and I would not exchange it for the h*** we had the latter part of last year. I know some people have had successes getting the school to treat their kids appropriately. So, I don't want to tell you not to try. If I could have done that, that is what we would be doing.