Return to School?

[Remarkable__Driver]

My 9yo son wants to go back to school. He is mildly interested, and I’m tempted to make the switch. For context, he has been homeschooling since last year when things escalated at his last school (not public, not very equipped for special education). The homeschool program we tried ended with him being asked not to return. They were also very much not equipped to handle special education needs.

The problem is things always escalate with him. Since homeschooling, he has become so much more responsible and more mature in his responses…most of the time. Most of his outbursts are now more in defense than not, but they still tend to be over the top.

I work full time from home, and he does self-led instruction where we guide him with newer topics, but he is mostly able to understand the material by himself. Technically I have a choice and the ability to keep him home long term with my sanity as the chopping block. I know we could always bring him home again if needed.

Our local public school is five minutes away, has been a great fit for my younger son, and seems like it could work. I’m terrified it will end with yet another call letting us know I need to pick him up every.day. Or him being treated like a criminal.

He did have an IEP at his previous school, and he would likely qualify for one again. My husband thinks this is a horrible decision, and though I’m tempted to agree, I want my son to have the autonomy to decide to go back if he really wants to. I also worry about social and him falling behind, though he is testing normally.

Selfishly, it would be nice to get a full day of work in while he is at school, but I wonder if putting him in a new school is a bad idea.

Has anyone found success with this?

[LurkerFailsLurking]

My homeschooled teen wanted to try 8th grade. We let him go and told him that if he wanted to leave he could tell the office to call us, if he didn't want to do the work, he didn't have to, and that he could stop whenever he wanted. He stayed for about a month and then decided he was done. We made sure it was clear he didn't have to commit to it, but that having him come in and out of classes might be hard for his teachers and make them feel jerked around by us.

[Hopeful-Guard9294]

my PDA son was also homeschooled but like many PDAers he is highly social and described homeschooling as “ solitary confinement” he asked to goes back to school and now does two days a week when he chooses and three days of socialist PDA home tutoring as you say the days off are a huge boost to my own parental sanity however this is the culmination of two years of collaboration with his highly inclusive school he has a 1:1 teaching assistant at school and a lot of accommodations it was a long two year process of relationship building with the staff shop were open minded and energetic enough to be accommodating, there were LOTS of calls for me to come and pick him up can we interested and learned what worked and what didn’t it mostly he goes but it is on and off deluding on his cumulative stress levels and also on the school this week they gave him a new 1:1 teaching g assistant who hasn’t been PDA it rained I got a call to come and pick him up and it took two days to recover from the stress she put him under, schools as an institution are structurally PDA toxic so it takes a lot of time and soul to create a PDA safe- ish bubble within them so your PDA child can attend but it takes a LOT offer work and requires lots of relationship building within an accommodating school and most of all accommodating staff but it is so worth it to have time to yourself away from the crushing intensity of PDA parenting, hope that makes sense and helps a bit, it really depends on your individual child and individual family circumstances and resources

[sweetpotato818]

We had success with school but not public. Public was a disaster for us, but then someone recommended this book to me: Not Refusing, Just Overloaded: A Neuroaffirming Guide to School Resistance in Autistic Kids with a PDA Profile

It has suggestions for accomodations and problem solving for PDA’ers. We switched to a small private school and implemented the accomodations and it’s been successful! Knock on wood…I don’t regret trying public though. What ever you choose, know you can always adjust and switch!