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I am thinking of home schooling my daughter with my wife. For one my daughter is autistic and special needs programs in Texas are fairly ok to bad. Two because

I am thinking of home schooling my daughter with my wife. For one my daughter is autistic and special needs programs in Texas are fairly ok to bad. Two because the curriculum is so brain draining and well my daughter simply would refused to participate in some thing like that. I just am afraid of the socialization with other kids. How did you get around that?

VoiceOfWisdom 9y ago
Not the OP, but I was homeschooled. I was in a local homeschool co-op that taught classes that we're better in a group setting. Had a lot of friends there. Was also programmer for a FIRST robotics team, where I met my now wife. I never struggled to socialize as a kid. Homeschooled for my entire education.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
The social question comes up, generally first or second[1], when people find out that my wife and I chose the homeschooling route. We live in the Bay area, which is pretty urban, and there is a pretty vibrant homeschooling community. One of the activities my kids participated in was the Riekes Nature Studies program. Once a week a group of about 20 similarly aged students would spend all day (9AM to 3PM) at Huddart Park (a wooded nature park near Woodside) and study different aspects of the park. They would count bird populations, identify tracks, identify plants and their properties, relationships between water and plants and animals, Etc. They also did camp trips to nearby places, once as far as Death Valley. All the while teaching camaraderie, respect, and how to socialize with your peers. We also did a 'science roundabout' with 6 other families home schooling where all of the kids would go to one of the parents houses for a half day of science curriculum. We had a Doctor, a couple of engineers, a couple of Chemists, and a biologist I believe. Two days a week. each day one of the parents would host the group, so while the group met twice a week each parent saw them once every three weeks. That was a good amount of time to work up a concept/lab for the next group session. They also participated in a bunch of other activities as group, whether it was Church related or softball or scouts. What they didn't have to deal with is bullies in middle school and uninterested adult supervision. Or being traumatized by kids that were attempting to establish dominance through social stratification. When one of those negative patterns surfaced in one of the kids in our cohort it was pretty clear pretty quickly that either they could learn to be an adult about this stuff or not participate. That is really effective on 10 and 11 year olds who are trying to figure this stuff out. [1] In my area the other question that competes with this one is "Can my kid get into a good university if they have been home schooled?" and the answer is yes, and sometimes more easily if they have a lot of activities and projects. [2] http://www.riekes.org/nature/ http://www.riekes.org/nature/
- fsck_hmschling 9y ago
  I will go ahead and challenge this- not that you can't be right, or even aren't right in the case of your kids (who I am sure you do a great job of taking care of- this isn't meant to insult you personally), but as someone who was homeschooled and had a very different experience, it's worth having a cautionary point of view- if for no other reason than to illustrate how NOT to homeschool. First, OP is specifically asking about their child, who is autistic. While I would generally suggest that the average person is incapable of providing an education equal to that provided by a whole school full of teachers, it's often the case that if one child requires more attention than the rest of class, they might benefit more from additional attention and 1-on-1 teaching than they might from having more skilled teachers without additional time to spend. So it is a reasonable suggestion. I'll start at the end, with the question: can you get into a good university? Sure. I didn't really apply to a lot of universities but I did get a full ride at the best engineering school in the state. It hinged more or less entirely on my GPA and standardized test scores. There's probably a whole book you could write on how poor these criteria are, but that's tangential to my point. I was homeschooled through high school. In general, it was a negative experience. Primarily, I would say, it was because I didn't socialize much. That's not to say that I didn't have bs activities that my parents came up with, I did. We were a part of the local home school group, I took classes with a group of other home schoolers at what I pejoratively referred to as "homeschooler public school." I even managed to join a sports team for a tiny christian school that couldn't get enough players for a full team (I did enjoy that). I think that probably my parents would have said that I had all the social interaction that I ever needed. But actually I spent days or weeks completely alone. I had essentially two friends, that I saw every few weeks. In high school I basically taught myself all of my classes, then studied and took the tests. It sounds like you're doing things a lot better than that. But this isn't meant to be a critique of you(I don't know enough about what you're doing to even attempt that, even if I wanted to), it's supposed to be a cautionary tale. I don't know if my experience was "average," but taken from my acquaintances (all home schooled) my results were actually better than average. Many had no outside contact for even longer periods of time, and lived in more isolated areas. Most did very little after high school and then joined the family business. I suppose it's likely that this is a difference between rural Missouri and SF. >What they didn't have to deal with is bullies in middle school and uninterested adult supervision. I my experience, that's not really a plus, it's just another overextension of supervision which has become so common these days. The world doesn't stop functioning the same way just because you don't experience it. You just wind up with kids that don't know how to deal with that sort of thing- or worse, try bullying themselves when they think they can get away with it. I personally witnessed this on multiple occasions at ostensibly supervised events where the adults were on the other side of a room or we had gone out back. My parents were very strict and I was virtually never away from them until after I got a job, but that didn't stop me and my five siblings from breaking rules, instead we worked out systems to help us break our parents rules with no or minimal repercussions. We would have whole fake storylines of what we were doing going on that we would switch to if we got caught and post sentries. The sentries would frequently have codewords so that they didn't get caught helping others disobey. My point, so tangentially made, is that kids sometimes need a chance to interact with others without omnipotent but less than omniscient judges interfering. In summary, what I am attempting to say is that homeschooling certainly can work well but from my (admittedly quite limited) sampling rarely does. That's not to say you shouldn't do it- just make sure that you want to, and that you're ready to spend the time to do it right.

VoiceOfWisdom 9y ago

Not the OP, but I was homeschooled. I was in a local homeschool co-op that taught classes that we're better in a group setting. Had a lot of friends there. Was also programmer for a FIRST robotics team, where I met my now wife. I never struggled to socialize as a kid. Homeschooled for my entire education.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

The social question comes up, generally first or second[1], when people find out that my wife and I chose the homeschooling route. We live in the Bay area, which is pretty urban, and there is a pretty vibrant homeschooling community. One of the activities my kids participated in was the Riekes Nature Studies program. Once a week a group of about 20 similarly aged students would spend all day (9AM to 3PM) at Huddart Park (a wooded nature park near Woodside) and study different aspects of the park. They would count bird populations, identify tracks, identify plants and their properties, relationships between water and plants and animals, Etc. They also did camp trips to nearby places, once as far as Death Valley. All the while teaching camaraderie, respect, and how to socialize with your peers. We also did a 'science roundabout' with 6 other families home schooling where all of the kids would go to one of the parents houses for a half day of science curriculum. We had a Doctor, a couple of engineers, a couple of Chemists, and a biologist I believe. Two days a week. each day one of the parents would host the group, so while the group met twice a week each parent saw them once every three weeks. That was a good amount of time to work up a concept/lab for the next group session. They also participated in a bunch of other activities as group, whether it was Church related or softball or scouts. What they didn't have to deal with is bullies in middle school and uninterested adult supervision. Or being traumatized by kids that were attempting to establish dominance through social stratification. When one of those negative patterns surfaced in one of the kids in our cohort it was pretty clear pretty quickly that either they could learn to be an adult about this stuff or not participate. That is really effective on 10 and 11 year olds who are trying to figure this stuff out. [1] In my area the other question that competes with this one is "Can my kid get into a good university if they have been home schooled?" and the answer is yes, and sometimes more easily if they have a lot of activities and projects. [2] http://www.riekes.org/nature/ http://www.riekes.org/nature/

fsck_hmschling 9y ago
I will go ahead and challenge this- not that you can't be right, or even aren't right in the case of your kids (who I am sure you do a great job of taking care of- this isn't meant to insult you personally), but as someone who was homeschooled and had a very different experience, it's worth having a cautionary point of view- if for no other reason than to illustrate how NOT to homeschool. First, OP is specifically asking about their child, who is autistic. While I would generally suggest that the average person is incapable of providing an education equal to that provided by a whole school full of teachers, it's often the case that if one child requires more attention than the rest of class, they might benefit more from additional attention and 1-on-1 teaching than they might from having more skilled teachers without additional time to spend. So it is a reasonable suggestion. I'll start at the end, with the question: can you get into a good university? Sure. I didn't really apply to a lot of universities but I did get a full ride at the best engineering school in the state. It hinged more or less entirely on my GPA and standardized test scores. There's probably a whole book you could write on how poor these criteria are, but that's tangential to my point. I was homeschooled through high school. In general, it was a negative experience. Primarily, I would say, it was because I didn't socialize much. That's not to say that I didn't have bs activities that my parents came up with, I did. We were a part of the local home school group, I took classes with a group of other home schoolers at what I pejoratively referred to as "homeschooler public school." I even managed to join a sports team for a tiny christian school that couldn't get enough players for a full team (I did enjoy that). I think that probably my parents would have said that I had all the social interaction that I ever needed. But actually I spent days or weeks completely alone. I had essentially two friends, that I saw every few weeks. In high school I basically taught myself all of my classes, then studied and took the tests. It sounds like you're doing things a lot better than that. But this isn't meant to be a critique of you(I don't know enough about what you're doing to even attempt that, even if I wanted to), it's supposed to be a cautionary tale. I don't know if my experience was "average," but taken from my acquaintances (all home schooled) my results were actually better than average. Many had no outside contact for even longer periods of time, and lived in more isolated areas. Most did very little after high school and then joined the family business. I suppose it's likely that this is a difference between rural Missouri and SF. >What they didn't have to deal with is bullies in middle school and uninterested adult supervision. I my experience, that's not really a plus, it's just another overextension of supervision which has become so common these days. The world doesn't stop functioning the same way just because you don't experience it. You just wind up with kids that don't know how to deal with that sort of thing- or worse, try bullying themselves when they think they can get away with it. I personally witnessed this on multiple occasions at ostensibly supervised events where the adults were on the other side of a room or we had gone out back. My parents were very strict and I was virtually never away from them until after I got a job, but that didn't stop me and my five siblings from breaking rules, instead we worked out systems to help us break our parents rules with no or minimal repercussions. We would have whole fake storylines of what we were doing going on that we would switch to if we got caught and post sentries. The sentries would frequently have codewords so that they didn't get caught helping others disobey. My point, so tangentially made, is that kids sometimes need a chance to interact with others without omnipotent but less than omniscient judges interfering. In summary, what I am attempting to say is that homeschooling certainly can work well but from my (admittedly quite limited) sampling rarely does. That's not to say you shouldn't do it- just make sure that you want to, and that you're ready to spend the time to do it right.