“If you loved him, you’d just home school him.”
I’m sorry what?
“I’m just saying, if you really want what’s best for him, and clearly you aren’t going to find that in mainstream school, you might want to rethink your priorities”.
“Wouldn’t it better for you to give up work and home school him? You just said yourself he’ll get lost in the mainstream system”.
I had said that. And I knew it to be true.
We were talking about my son, Sam. Sam is 12-years-old and in a perfect world, would start year 7 at the same mainstream state high school as his 14-year-old sister next year. But it’s not a perfect world and Sam isn’t a “mainstream” kid.
I need to back up a little I guess. To tell you why this would have even been a conversation two women who had always seemingly been on the same page. You need to know also that I’m not a heated confrontation kinda gal. No, I’m more a ‘grab a box of popcorn and watch others go at it from the sidelines’ type of person.
But this confrontation, this debate, was unavoidable because I was being called a bad mother for refusing to give up my career to home school a child who, as far as I’m concerned, would not benefit from it.
Sam is a high a functioning Autistic child. This was, up until recently, labelled Asperger’s and is now diagnosed as ‘On the Autism Spectrum’. Academically, he struggles with the fundamentals and to comprehend in the most conventional of ways. Trying to do so comes with large amounts of fruitless hard work, difficulty and tears. Handwriting is painfully laboured and he is a good two years behind his peers in most acceptable areas, his reading level, at best, Year 4. And I’m being generous.
Top Comments
"Sam NEEDS more social interaction, not less"
No one needs the kind of social interaction you've described here. I am so lucky that my parents didn't think I needed "social interaction" when I was being bullied. I shudder to think of what would have happened if they hadn't decided to homeschool me.
Hi Bern - how is Sam doing now? We were having difficulties with our son and he was expelled from a Christian College when he was 6 in Grade 2.... Now he is thriving in a local state school (we almost went to Currajong) but it's time to worry about high schools. I will be interested to know if Sam is coping well in his current high school and where he is now... I agree with you on many counts - they need to be included in a mainstream school, I do not think I would have done him a favor by keeping him at home.