The "oh" response was not a good example, but it did add to our feeling of being shunned. There were members of our homeschool group that were angry with us for saying that we wished part time school and OT and PT were available for my twice-exceptional son because I would like for my son to go to some classes at the public school. I told them I had written letters to legislators. They said if I pushed for this that it would make things harder for them because somehow the government would tell them how to educate their children. Some of them thought it was terrible that I wanted to expose my child to the public school kids and some of the things they are being taught at the "government school." One woman in the group saw us at a Walmart, looked at us without saying a word, grabbed one of kids, and turned around walked the other way. We stayed out of the group for a few years but joined it again after a few people left the group, new people joined that didn't know they weren't supposed to talk to us and that was the end of that but my son still doesn't exactly fit in because he doesn't want to learn how to hunt and gut a deer or raise cows and pigs and chickens and it is hard to carry on a conversation for very long with people who are excited about these things just like they find it hard to talk to him about things he enjoys. So he isn't really being shunned by some members of the homeschool group any more. He easily wins their spelling bees, and wishes they had more academic type competitions, but most of the other kids don't seem interested.
My mother is one of those people who didn't go to college because she couldn't afford to go, except for a few classes, but learned so much on her own (without the internet) that she could answer more Jeopardy questions than anyone I knew, including people who had graduated from college, which is why I knew that my son could learn on his own.
Regarding the negativity, I do think this was why I was shunned for a while by some members of our church, so we stopped going there and only visit once in a while. I made the mistake of speaking negatively about our "perfect" school that refuses to even consider other teaching methods for kids who learn differently. All kids are supposed to be the same. All kids must learn to color in the lines before being allowed to learn anything else. IEP's? How dare anyone tell them how they need to teach, when they have been teaching the same way for years. They ignore IEP's. Nobody does anything to enforce it. They don't have a library in this town because the majority of the people don't believe we need one. They think that if people don't like the way they do things here, they just need to leave. I guess I am a little negative about that, but not enough to cause a headache. I really am happy that we can homeschool now. My son does have a lot of musical theater friends and they really are good friends.
