Seriously considering home ed.

Myself and my wife have a most wonderful 5 year old son who suffers with aspergers syndrome. He is a most caring, friendly and happy boy and has many traits associated with suffering from aspergers.

We have now some serious concerns around his schooling pre-dominantly due to his vulnerability. In his class there are at least four boys who are extremely disruptive and i fear that the majority of time is spent dealing with these at the expense of our son, who requires additional support. I have discussed this with his teacher and headteacher and was told that the boys just had 'colourful characters'. I have witnessed these boys' behaviour at parties and it is downright intimidating for the others.

We are additionally concerned that he is not receiving adequate support which was especiually shown when his teacher told him that if he could not dress quicker she would put him on a timer! She obviously did not read his physio report which stated that he had weak muscles and due to his geberal clumsiness, he has very slow movement. They seem to be questioning his traits rather than working with them.

We are now seriously considering home ed and really looking at what our first steps are and how we should go about it.

Any postive feedback around benefits of home ed would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks.

I definitely think you should go ahead and HE your son before problems at school get really bad. I presume you live in England so all you have to do is write a letter to the school saying your son is now home educated. You don't have to give a reason for home education and neither do you have to inform the LA. If you are planning on HE from this September then it will probably be a good idea to send a letter to the LA because schools are now closed, but remember to send a letter to the headteacher of your son's school.

Some home educating parents offer their advice and experience here.

I think Aspies can be vulnerable in a school situation because a lot of Aspie traits (eg clumsiness, rituals) can be perceived by others as naughtiness, silly or time wasting.
As a parent you hope that the school will be clued up about Aspergers but I think that is an unrealistic expectation- how can every dinner lady, supply teacher, parent helper etc have the necessary knowledge?
I know that during the year we have been home education so many of my Aspie's traits have faded away, she is happy, she is sleeping well, so our whole family is happier.

Dear Richard,

I hope this doesn't seem insensitive as I expect you are really busy with going back to school (or not, perhaps). I work for Windfall Films, an independent production company based in London, and at the moment we are developing an idea for a documentary about home education.

It would ideally focus on families taking their children out of school, following the transition to home education and becoming involved with their experiences. Your story sounds really interesting and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind sharing it with us- at the moment the idea is in the really early stages so there would be no commitment to actually be part of a documentary, but it would be great to talk to you and hear about your experiences.

Did you decide to take your son out of school in the end? I hope he is doing well wherever he is. I'm sorry if this seems intrusive, but any help you could give would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Grace Jackson
Windfall Films
development@windfallfilms.com

I second this. The teachers at my son's school regularly perceived AS traits as bad behaviour so lumped him in with badly behaved children which made things worse for him.



I remember the dreaded supply teachers all too well and how almost every lesson turned out to be a disaster. They are often called in at short notice so have no time to find out about individual children's needs and requirements. My son once had a supply teacher for a PE lesson and ended up running away from school until break time when he sneaked back in. Nobody ever found out.



Most of my son's AS traits rapidly faded away after he became HE. There are still a few issues here and there but nothing remotely compared to the scale of problems when he was at school.