Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Another reason to homeschool.

Injuries From Teen Fighting Deal a Blow to IQ
http://www.newswise.com/articles/injuries-from-teen-fighting-deal-a-blow-to-iq

Serious Fighting-Related Injuries Produce a Significant Reduction in Intelligence
http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(13)00333-9/abstract

That wouldn't persuade me to take my children out of their schools.

Three points is not very much, especially when you look at what it would cost financially to homeschool for 13 years and the low probability of an injury like that occurring whether your homeschool or not. Still, interesting to know the size of the IQ loss related to injuries like this so thanks.

Were my children getting beaten up at school, IQ wouldn't be my first concern...

DeeDee

Well, violence is definitely something I associate with Brick and Mortar schools. It must be nice for this not to be a problem in some places.

Well, the article states that about 4% of high schoolers experience a physical fight. I think this is about the same or perhaps a little less than teens' risk of being involved in a fatal/injury causing car accident.

The good news is that this means that 96% of high school students don't experience fighting in school.

My son saw the article and told me about it. He only went to kindergarten at our small town public school, but he went long enough to see that bullying was a problem there. It wasn't just physical bullying that I was worried about. With my son's chronic pain and fatigue issues that now include heart issues that can be made worse with stress, I know we made the right decision to homeschool.

I can't imagine what it would have been like for him to wear the scoliosis brace for years and deal with frequent migraines and sleep issues and then all the worry that came with finally getting a correct diagnosis and needing a very painful surgery and then having to go back to a place of bullying. I think it would have been very easy to become depressed in that environment. I just don't think he would have been able to learn if he had to worry about the bullies in addition to all the medical issues.

I will be meeting with my old boss who works for a state organization for kids with disabilities. I think she will try to tell me that public school can work, that there is an IEP for everything. Can you get no bullying allowed in an IEP? I don't think so, the school will not admit that there is a problem. Can you be allowed to sleep in when you could only get three hours of sleep the night before because of pain issues which make it even harder to deal with everything including verbal bullying?

YES!!!

We definitely have really good reasons to view public schools as an unacceptably dangerous setting for our DD-- like Lori, basically-- but I've never felt that we were homeschooling to "protect" her from the environment barring those specific medical concerns and the possible bullying associated with them.

If DD did not have those medical vulnerabilities, then safety while at school wouldn't even be on my radar. Truly.