At what point should you pull the plug on school?

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Hi, Just interested in what people think about AS kids having meltdowns at school and at what point (if any) should you take your child out of school? Should you never worry about this? How long should you let it go on for, to see whether things will improve? Is it just a "fact of life" that AS children will have meltdowns and we just have to get on and make the best of it? What if they're regularly resistant to work and teachers? What should you do about feeling "guilty" for giving the school a problem to deal with? What if you do the whole IEP thing and behavioural support plan, and it doesn't seem to work?

Does anyone else relate to these questions . . . and have any answers?

If your child is showing signs of deep distress at home as well as school, pull him. Isolated meltdowns kind of are a fact of life. Bullying is not. Depression is not. Violence, whether on the part of your son or the people around him, is not. Pervasive, lingering anger is not*. PTSD-style nightmares are not. Suicidal thoughts are definitely not.

*meltdowns tend to burn themselves out in a few minutes, but if your son seems to be in a simmering rage most or all of the time, something is seriously wrong.

Hve you asked his teachers if anything has changed at school? Perhaps have an IEP meeting to see where things are going wrong and what can be done to fix them. What is he like after school and how does he feel about school in general?
Don't every feel guily about giving the school a problem, he has a right to an education and it is up to them to help him get it. But if things are not going well at school then perhaps those who homeschool can give you some advice.
BIG HUGS to ya, your doing a great job!! !! !! !! !! !

I can only speak to my experience so here goes. My son was diagnosed in the 3rd grade and that was his last year of public school. We are starting our 3rd year of homeschooling. We pulled the plug on school when we realized that IEPs, while good in theory and on paper are not always worth the paper they're written on. How do you write an IEP so that someone will be my kid's friend, so that all the kids will not shun and ignore him? My kid was not good IEP material. There was nothing concrete they could have done for him to make his miserable school existence better. He is high functioning, gifted, he stims and is a magnet for bullies. When I realized he was being beaten down and was starting to believe what the mean spirited bullies were saying about him and said he wished he'd never been born I knew we were done.

IEPs can definitely work but if you have a kid that is not an academic failure in any subject, is not a behavior problem but just sort of spends his 6 hours of school alone IMHO there is no IEP for that and I wasn't willing to wait for one when I knew that homeschooling would allow my son to be who he is without fear, without anxiety (which he had a lot of during ps) and would have the space to learn how to "be social" on his own terms and when he was ready. I am not one of those who believe a bad school experience (for ex. with bullying "it will toughen them up" "they need to know that is what the real world is like) will make a kid stronger. I think it's a terrible way to teach a kid a lesson about life when there are alternatives such as homeschooling.

If you can stand having your son at home and have some competency in learning how to teach him and enough health and will to actually do it, I would advise homeschooling. You will want to join at least one homeschool group for field trips and "socializing" with supervision and join at least one club (or start one) with his interests. There are both secular and religious homeschool magazines. Almost all libraries have homeschool sections now. And homeschool conventions are a lot of fun.

I wish my mother had homeschooled me. It would have save me a lot of emotional trauma. But no one we knew had thought of it then. Nonetheless, everything I learned, I learned from her and the habits of reading she encouraged. I homeschooled for fourteen years. I'm sorry I couldn't homeschool my brain-damaged daughters. But my sons turned out great!

IMO, you need to make every attempt to ensure that your son is actually receiving the services he is supposed to. as many of us know, just because it's on the IEP or in a behavior management plan, doesn't mean it's actually being followed.......check out and see what's going on before you pull your son out.

I second MissPickwickian's comments.

Yes, I think Ms. P got it in a nutshell.

Let me share some perspective. My son likes school. LOVES school. He had maybe 2 meltdowns at school last year, maybe 4 the year before. We go through a week or two every year where he doesn't want to go, but we pull together all the resources, find the problem, put something in place to deal with it, and he moves on. Such a result IS possible. If you aren't getting anything close, then you have to question if your child's needs CAN be met at that particular school, or school in general.

I personally would move to a different school before homeschooling, but I understand not everyone has the same options. And I am secure in the knowledge that school CAN work for my son, it just may need some tweaking.

My son's preschool was an altogether different matter, with weekly meltdowns, constant tears about having to go, and so on. I have never stopped regretting that I let it go on for so long. Not that I didn't try to find another option, but I couldn't see my way clear to just putting a stop to it, and I didn't fully understand that the school was simply all wrong for my child. I would not allow that now. I know it doesn't have to be.

I agree completely with your post, DW!

NT schools are crap and don't even work for NT kids.

If i had kids i would home school. Period. With or without AS.

If your child has a disability, all that school can do is harm them.

sad but true.

I think you do a disservice to parents, children and educators by making such a sweeping generalization. Schools vary, teachers vary, children and what they need vary. A wise parent is flexible, able to see what will and won't work for their unique child, and stays receptive to the benefits of all options, while being aware of the burdens.

normally, sweeping generalizations are ultra lame and false.


Not by that much considering that I could probably design an educational system easily ten times more efficient.



I'm sorry I don't mean to be harsh but there are some harsh realities. School is not an institution in our society for teaching, its for programming. Its not about the needs of the child, its about the needs of the up and coming labor pool. the information which is available at any modern education reform college is light years ahead of whats done in schools. The methods currently employed in schools are almost 200 years archaic, and we have in theory such much better now that if we employed it, aspies would just be a minor bump in the process, not victims of a broken and corrupted entropy driven accident of a system.

http://mytalktoday.com/solutions/viewforum.php?f=19


REFORM General
Curiosity drives learning if it is allowed to do so and not shut down.
Curiosity is shut down via the current system, creating the ADD disorder sudden appearance on the charts. One half of ADD is a person who can’t pay attention. The other half is a boring culture, delivery of information modus
operandi.
Curiosity driven learning involves more brain area participation. If a person doesn’t really like their experience, the subconscious mind edits it and doesn’t learn from it. Using curiosity driven learning potentially accelerates the learning curve such that it would not be unreasonable for the society of the future to expect the equivalent of a multiple PhD education from High School.
The largest obstacle to curiosity driven learning is the current student to teacher ratio. Curiosity driven learning requires a personal curriculum to be developed per child, an enormous labor process for most teachers. The cure is to use peer tutoring, and older child tutoring in conjunction with professional testers. Teachers are being asked do two different jobs, Teaching and Testing. Testing is incredibly underutilized. How can you know what a child is ready to learn if you have not learned from them who they are and what they know already?
The second largest obstacle is a lazy educational system which must be corrected
and re-educated itself. The educational paradigm being taught for use is not the one which is being taught in reform education psychology and sociology classes.
The first battery of tests should be; IQ tests, aptitude tests, Sanity tests, Type of intelligence per intelligence tests, learning style tests, performance tests, peer skills tests, comprehensive topical subject tests, and in general, any test which can be used to effectively appraise an individual child for the purposes of creating for that child a personalized curriculum.
The topics of psychology, sociology, conversational logic, and ethics should be added to the current curriculum for all Middle School (ages 12 to 14 or grades 6 thru and High Schools
Personality differences including learning styles and Types of intelligence
Can mean that people learn in very different ways. Groups of students should be organized without regard so much to age as to learning style. A class full of visual
Learners from 3 age groups is better than a class full of kinesthetic learners and visual learners who find each other distracting and each others interactions with the teacher bizarre. Throw in some introverts and some extroverts and a speed-reader or two, and a teachers modus operandi cannot hope to reach well the different types of Students that s/he is teaching.
10. Our society is composed of a population which is by about 50 percent Anti-intellectual. (As part of a deep and long term attempt at denial of science facts)
The sheeple will crucify the nerds, that’s the end result of pack psychology and anti-intellectualist mob events. Both alleged “Sides” in the great orchestrated argument between left and right are delusional dogmatist simple minded over simplified versions of reality, oversimplified problem solving process, and thus oversimplified and therefore
Usually counterproductive pseudo solutions. Polarity does not contain sanity, both sides are polarized via each other, but the line that connects those two dots at no point in time Ever gets around to the big picture or the whole truth. Evolution and mother nature will on the other hand favor the nerds.

Education reform;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_reform
http://www1.worldbank.org/education/glo ... ionreform/
http://www.education-reform.net/
http://dmoz.org/Society/Issues/Educatio ... on_Reform/

Curiousity driven Learning
http://www.csl.sony.fr/~py/developmentalRobotics.htm
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/interest.html
http://www.childtrauma.org/ctamaterials/Curiosity.asp
http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/students/explore.htm


Types of Intelligence;
http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/wh ... types.html
http://www.ldpride.net/learningstyles.MI.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_intelligences

Learning Styles;
http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Learning_Styles.html
http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/ILSpage.html
http://www.chaminade.org/inspire/learnstl.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles
http://www.funderstanding.com/learning_styles.cfm

Student Teacher Ratio:
http://www.edspresso.com/?OVRAW=educati ... C=advanced
http://www.edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseA ... ctionID=97
http://www.dreamagic.com/jesse/isedurat.html

Anti Intellectualism;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i15/15b00701.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectual ... 0394703170
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0121/p17s02-lehl.html
http://mtprof.msun.edu/Spr1997/TROUT-ST.html
http://www.wayofthemind.org/2006/07/26/ ... ectualism/
https://urresearch.rochester.edu/retrie ... ualism.pdf
http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/ ... Maine+news

prometheuspann- you've obviously had difficult times in school. not everyone has had the same experiences as you. some people enjoy school ( not my son ).............are you an educator or just interested in reforming the system?

true.



not relevant to the argument, but also true.




What are our criteria? I would answer that i think i qualify as an educator. I'm approaching it from the problem of education
first and systemic reform second. But good change is big change thats not my fault.

prometheuspann- are you a formally educated teacher ? do you have an education degree?....this is not to say that you can't be a part of a meaningful debate about education reform, just that i think the view from the inside is a bit different than the view from the outside. as a teacher, i believe that the education system in the US desperately needs to be reformed. I also have inside information about how systems really run & some of the obstacles that they face.

backtracking a little bit RE: when i stated that not everyone has had the same experiences as you & you responded that it was irrelevant...............indeed, i feel it is relevant when you let your view of school being an atrocious place to learn , taint your discussion of education reform. I think you need to take into account that some people have indeed had good experiences with school. it is unfortunate that most current school systems are not set up to nurture the child who does not fit in & conform to "social norms" . there are, however, some schools which strive to embrace those who "don't fit in" or those who struggle with the "regular education world". if more schools worked from a therapeutic standpoint, i think we'd have far less problems.

Thanks for the posts everyone. I still think school is the best place at the moment for my son, provided there is curriculum adaptation that suits his needs. We are making good gains in forming strategies, with a very supportive group of teachers. It is just sometimes a long process of trial and error, and I get a little overwhelmed at times and feel a sense of guilt for giving the school a "problem".