Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi all. After so many years of struggling through school I decided to home school my 14 year old son. We began last September, And is now the equivalent of a year 10 student (working at a about a year 7 level). He is so much happier in himself since this decision.
However I am at a constant battle with myself about how much to push him to socialise. I am undiagnosed ASD myself so completely understand the long list of reasons why he doesn’t want to join youth clubs or groups or any kind of meet ups, including extended family. But am I doing the right thing allowing him to live in his bubble? I start to worry about his future in society and his social skills (or lack there of) but it’s so stressful for him just leaving the house at all. I feel guilty for not making him do these things and feel guilty if I do.
Any one else home schooling, or have teenagers with similar issues?
If you attend as a helper, you'll see exactly the evening that he experiences and then you can do a de-brief afterwards to help him process it all to get everything straight in his mind (we reprocess any negative experiences in our mind until we can make sense of it and put it in the 'solved' folder of our brain).
You'll be able to explain all the good and bad points so he can build a better picture of the small social details.
Have a chat to your local scout group - I'm sure you'll find them really helpful.
Wow thank you that’s great. Feeling much better about all this now.
I would second trying scouts. I did it all my childhood and volunteer a lot now. Leaders are generally very accepting, and will normally already have had some other autistic scouts within the group. If not, there is training available to them to assist them too. You can always go along before hand to meet the leaders and see how it works and discuss your sons needs before he tries it. Then you can make sure you can prepare him and the leaders will know what to expect.
Here is the Scouts pages with more information on their autism policies if you want to learn more: https://members.scouts.org.uk/supportresources/search/?cat=377,786
Thank you , i had never actually thought of me volunteering to be with him for support (seems obvious now in hindsight)
i guess sometimes you need an outsiders point of view
not me sorry
How social is he? Is he chatty? Have you talked to the local scout group? They're very accepting - and you could volunteer to be an adult helper to keep an eye on him to give him the clues about what's really going on - almost like a study of social games.
Something to consider is that scouts are normally nice kids - and it's a very adult-driven, task-oriented social evening for a couple of hours a week.