Homeschooled Aspies?

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I was home educated, and I'm interested in hearing from others who were or are homeschooled. I'm especially interested in hearing from people who were educated through unschooling or other child-directed/interest-driven methods of home education, but I'd like to hear from those with more standard/structured curricula too.

Here are a few questions.

1. What ages/grades were you home educated for?

2. What sort of home education did your parents use for you? Did you follow the school curriculum? A curriculum of your parents' devising? Child-directed learning? etc. How did any special interests fit into it?

3. How do you think your home education served you academically?

4. How do you think your home education served you socially? Did it help your social development? Did it hinder your social development? Did it make it easier or harder to make friends than going to school would have?

5. Do you think being homeschooled has affected how obvious it is that you're on the autistic spectrum? Has it made it more or less obvious?

6. What else would you like to say about your home education?

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Here are my answers; I'll preface them by noting that if I'm on the autistic spectrum, it's probably as Broader Autistic Phenotype than actually Aspie.

1. I was home educated all the way from kindergarten until the end of high school.

2. Our homeschooling was mostly unstructured/child-directed. We (me and my 3 siblings) spent time doing and reading about things we found interesting, and learnt in the process. There were a few things that my parents would include some more formal instruction about at times, particularly math and, for some of my siblings, reading. Since our learning was child-directed, I had lots of opportunities to pursue my areas of interest (both strong specific ones, and broader ones), and I learnt a lot from that while enjoying it too. (For example, I learnt the dates of all the kings and queens of England and Canada from Queen Victoria onwards, because of my interest in coin collecting, so that I would know which monarch would be on Canadian coins of which date.)

3. I think my home education served me excellently academically - far better than school would have. It prepared me well for university. There are probably a few gaps in my education, but since they're things I've never really been interested in, I'd likely have forgotten them anyways even if I was taught them in school.

4. I think my home education served me very well socially too. It provided an opportunity to interact with people of all ages, not just large quantities of kids in a very narrow age range. Many of the kids I interacted with were homeschooled themselves, and so not forced into the conformity that school imposes, and so neither was I.

5. If I'm on the autistic spectrum (and it seems likely that I am, at the very mild end), I think being homeschooled made it less obvious as a child at least, in part because as I mentioned under the previous point, my homeschooled peers probably expected less conformity than schoolkids would have, so if I was a bit odd, it was less likely to be a problem, and in part because to adults, if I was a bit different, they probably just chalked it up to the fact that I was homeschooled. Certainly still as an adult I assumed that a good deal of my weirdness came from being homeschooled, even though not all my siblings are similarly weird. Also, me spending a lot of time pursuing my interests (though these may have been broader than typical Aspie interests) was not only unproblematic, but considered educationally good. This is actually a puzzle to me: I apparently have enough autistic-like characteristics as an adult that I and 3 friends have all independently thought I'm on the spectrum or wondered if I am, yet no one seems to have noticed me being weird in any concerning way as a child; there are a few stories about my childhood that are slightly suggestive of being on the spectrum even back then, but not much that fits into a pattern. This seems like the reverse pattern to many people here who struggled a lot as kids but learnt to hide it as they grew up.

6. Can't think at the moment what else I might want to say.

thats a really tough one because aspies are really easy to determine in public schools because they are easier to point out, home schooling certainly does not help but you said you had a reletively unstructured begginning moe mannerisms would be needed because your information provided little information just the fact you were home schooled and socialised with kids of many ages. no thing canreally be determined, It sounds odd but no information

1. Half of grade 3, grade 4, grade 7, grade 9, and grade 10.

2. We used many different curricula. My mom could never find the perfect one. This resulted in gaps in my education. She wasn't very involved in my education and essentially gave me the books or the videotapes and told me to learn them. I did, but I learned more reading books from the library.

3. My home education has served me academically primarily by keeping me out of the public school system; but that was a two-edged sword because during the times when there was a stepfather in the house, it kept me home, and that is a bad thing when those stepfathers do not like you. I would have had more opportunities in the school system, though. At home, the only thing that allowed for my talent for schoolwork was skipping the 8th grade due to a placement test; at school, I could have done things like taking honors classes or early-entry college. I think I would have liked that.

4. I actually used to think that my social difficulties were due to being home-schooled, before I learned about my autism; but whenever I was in school, I wasn't making friends, either, so I really should have thrown that theory out the window anyway. Today, I am largely indifferent to social interaction and do not really miss it. I get what I need from the internet, and do not have social anxiety in real-life. I can, for example, go to a job interview or make a presentation with only minimal anxiety. Large numbers of people cause trouble primarily because they are chaotic and noisy, not really because they are people. I have had similar problems with a kennel full of barking dogs!

5. It's made it more obvious because I am more confident about being myself. If I felt like I had to hide constantly, I would be a lot less obviously autistic--and probably a lot more neurotic. Actually, I think I would probably be anorexic if I had not learned to accept myself for the socially-awkward oddball I am.

6. If you home-school an Aspie, he'll probably be better off because school is very stressful... but only if home is less stressful than school; and only if you offset the problem of having fewer educational resources than a school does. You need to have at least a bachelor's degree in college to teach high school, for example, though most people should be able to do the early grades. Social interaction can still be gained through home-school groups and other social organizations. Most home-school families I know of don't isolate their kids; the kids have more extracurriculars than you'd think possible, plus things like church and volunteer work. at the high school level, many home-school parents who are specialists in some subject or other will cooperate to teach that subject to the kids in the whole group; that lets the kids take advantage of an expert teacher as well as cooperative learning and class projects.

I wish I used to beg my parents to homeschool me, but they don't really have the right amount of education to do that. I think i would have learned more that way. On the other hand, i might not have learned as much about social situations.. I didn't interact a lot, but something must be said for quiet observation. No one really realized anything was all that wrong, and, looking back, i kind of wonder why... Because i did have a bunch of symptoms of AS, many much more apparent than now... and it doesn't seem like many of the people working at my schools, who you would think would be familiar with kids enough to spot big abnormalities, did anything to get me assistance for what was likely a disability(and by "disability," i mean, at least disabling or limiting in the context of the whole school situation). My first grade teacher did tell my parents that she thought i was "slow," because i didn't really interact normally with others. I did have friends at that age, i guess, but i mostly just went along with people. Easier at that age, and i guess being female helps a little since boys are more likely to get crap from their gender about being different as kids. I didn't really understand anything at all about being social. I wanted to interact with people, but wasn't completely sure how to. I remember a few times when i was that young, just going up and bluntly saying "will you be my friend?" lol. But even though i do remember having friends then, i was still labelled as "shy" and "quiet"... which kind of annoyed me. I didn't understand why people said i was "quiet," because i didn't mean to be, i just usually couldn't think of anything to say or even know that i was supposed to say anything. But, yeah. My first grade teacher was wayyyy off about the "slow" part(two years later i got labelled "academically gifted," ha!), but at least she noticed that my development was abnormal. Parents said that since pre-school i didn't interact normally with my peers. I did like talking to adults though, and i got along pretty easily with the younger kids my mom babysat. I think that later everyone just thought that since i was smart i must be developing fine so they shouldn't worry. In middle and high school sometimes teachers would come up and talk to me in that way where they're trying to make sure you're not going to turn into the next columbine killer, hehe.. "are you okay?/why aren't you talking to anyone?/why aren't you smiling?" Other that the social stuff, i also had a few other quirks... In second grade i had an OCD-ish thing for awhile with washing my hands, to the point that they were constantly dry and cracked, and around that same age i was really picky about the clothing i wore, because most clothes didn't feel comfortable enough. I also always had an extreme obsession with some tv show character, went through a few. In middle school when i got really depressed i started going to therapy, and my therapist suggested Aspergers... She gave me a few questionairres and stuff. Thinking back, i don't think i really knew what to answer very well for a lot of them... but she just said that is was hard to diagnose, so she didn't go any further with that at all and just focused on my anxiety issues. It wasn't 'til recently that i started seriously considering Aspergers. It just confuses me and angers me a little that no one working at school took any real steps toward getting me help, 'cause it just seems so obvious when i look back. I'm thankful that i didn't have the problems with bullying that a lot seem to have had, though. Most people left me alone. But, yeah.. Ever since i was in the fourth grade i started to complain that i didn't like the way school taught things and that i thought i would learn better another way. I would often get into arguments with teachers about their policies and such, heh. If i had teachers tailored their teaching style to my needs, i probably wouldn't have started going completelydownhills with my grades, starting with middle school... and then pretty much completely losing interest in school. Elementary school was aways straight As, though. Even now in college i'm falling back into those old routines. My first semester i got dean's list, but after that i just couldn't keep that kind of focus on it.

I was homeschooled for a month. Every once in a while, a guy from the school would pick up my papers and give me new ones.

It was okay because I could just do my work real quick and have it over with, but it sucked not being able to see my friends every day.

Don't mind me. Just marking the thread so I remember to read it later. I'm homeschooling my Aspie son and my Mum homeschooled my sister from age 11 until uni. Our approach is unschooling with some formal stuff thrown in to cover the gaps. Basically Math. He covers everything else through his interests.