I know that feeling very well. In my case, it is not just feeling like we don't fit in but as my son put it, it feels like we are being shunned. We are. I recently saw several of the homeschool moms together and they acted like they didn't even see me.
I felt at my lowest point about a month ago and I did something really stupid that only made things worse. I responded to an email by a member of our homeschool group who is also a member of the musical theater group my son is in. I was upset about something and wasn't thinking when instead of sending the email to this one person, I accidentally sent it to the whole homeschool group. I said things like "C doesn't seem to have that much in common with the few boys his age in the homeschool group" and I complained that he didn't get OT when he was enrolled in Kindergarten because he was reading at about a 5th grade level and also advanced in math so the school wasn't required to provide therapy because he wasn't yet failing. I meant to say this only to her because she had mentioned at our last acting class that she thought her son needed speech therapy and she wondered if the school might provide it even though she is homeschooling. She also has a gifted daughter that is a little younger than my son and she knew from her own experiences at our public school that she would need to homeschool her daughter, so I thought I could talk to her about some of these issues and she would really understand.
I went on to say in my email that I had sent emails and letters to the superintendent of public schools, my legislators and even the governor's office asking for part time school, but that I knew some of the people in our homeschool group would not like it because a few years ago some of them told me they thought I was wrong to want to put my child in the "government school" for part time classes or therapy or anything else.
My son and I also feel isolated within our own family. My uncle always invites all the cousins and extended family over for holiday dinners and they are very much a sports family. His grandchildren are close to my son's age and very good in sports so they spend a lot of time talking about football and basketball. My son can't play sports and he can't talk about the things he is learning or the spelling bee that he participated in or musical theater, so he says he feels like he doesn't belong in his own family.
I even felt uncomfortable when we got together with my husband's side of the family including his geology professor sister to go digging for crystals. I felt uncomfortable because nobody asks my son about what he is learning or doing but they ask the other young people in the family about school. The geology professor only seems concerned that my son, who has a mild motor coordination disorder does not cut his food properly and that it doesn't look very attractive when he cuts up his food and she has the nerve to point this out in front of him twice even though she has been told that he has motor dyspraxia that causes him to have difficulty with this.
My son asked me a few days ago if I ever wished that he was a sports kid so I would fit in with the other people in our family and our town. I think he feels responsible for our isolation.
