i'm just starting to comb through and steal each and every one of your great ideas on homeschooling, so please do ignore this if it's a blatant repeat of an older thread.

but i thought it might be neat to pull together thoughts on when/how y'all knew that homeschooling was right for your kid(s). tell me some stories!

My son is now in public school but I took him out after K. It was just too stressful for him.

The stress was the whole card pull discipline system (he was 99.8 percent always on green with just two days of non-green behavior that I never did get the full story on). And he hated it when the whole class got yelled at or punished for the actions of a few. And his class was a bit wild. He was fine in school and a mess when he got home. His anxiety was going through the roof. I was a little frustrated with the school/administration for other reasons that had nothing to do with him.


I homeschooled 1-4 and then he went back to public school. The break was the best thing I ever did for him.

My older son (2E) was in a Montessori school for first grade. His academic skills were *worse* at the end of that year than they were at the beginning. At first we thought we would put him in the public school with the idea that maybe a more traditional approach would help. So I tutored him over the summer hoping that I could get him caught up to something approaching a beginning second grade level. What I discovered was that he needed *a lot* more remediation than any classroom teacher would be able to handle and that tutoring him was working wonders. So we homeschooled instead, and I'm so glad we did! He's now 16 and doing well at the local community college, pursuing an AS degree in engineering.

My younger son is almost six years younger than his brother. So practically from birth he had the benefit of my experience with teaching the older one. By the time he was old enough to enter kindergarten, he was already doing first and second grade work. So we homeschooled him as well.

Just last fall, we decided to see if a b&m school would be beneficial for him. We did a one year skip at that point and the school allowed him to take Algebra I as well (he is 5th grade age). It became clear early in the year that a second skip would be appropriate, both socially and academically, but since he was in a combined 6-7 class, we just left things as they were. He will be skipping into eighth grade next fall. I really appreciate that the school is working with us to find an appropriate placement for him.

However... The acceleration has been great, but we need to find a balance between time spent on schoolwork and time spent being a kid. I can't justify having my 11 year old in school or commuting from 7:45-4:00 every day and then doing homework until 8:00 every evening (it wasn't like this all the time, but enough to be concerning). So we're going to homeschool math next year, since the school's approach to math is uninspired at best and, frankly, damaging at worst. It also seems to be the most homework intensive subject, so having control of it myself will solve a lot of problems.

I suspect that we will move back to homeschooling, at least half time, at the end of next year.

Homeschooling was the most difficult and the most rewarding thing I have ever done. My children benefited enormously, and I miss it very much.

heh - it's like you're living in my head, Portia! that's been our year, in a nutshell.

and these are all so great - keep em coming!

DD8 is a social creature who craves lots and lots of friends (not a lot of luck on that front, though), so we've given school every opportunity.

pre-K: Highly successful. Teacher and DD bonded, and teacher said, "I have nothing to teach her," but found ways to differentiate for her that kept DD engaged and included while celebrating her strengths. For instance, DD took over the reading during story time.

K: Abysmal failure, DD was yanked out and homeschooled after 2 mos. School rejected all our suggestions, decided on differentiation in class, then didn't differentiate. Our DD was bullied by the teacher to keep quiet so the other kids could learn. The tipping point was when DD, who had written beautifully since before she started pre-K, declared, "I don't know how to write an M." Her work output had been growing increasingly sloppy.

1: DD back in public school, now eligible for gifted program. Not a successful year, though she managed to last the entire year. The 90-min G/T pull-out taught 1-3, almost all 3rd graders (DD was the only 1st grader), and no differentiation was made, so she felt like a failure there. Meanwhile, everything in home room was chaotic, as she had the class where all the troublesome kids were stored. Differentiation in there was promised, but was spotty at best. DD began developing some rather alarming personality traits.

2: DD lasted a month before we yanked her out this time for homeschooling. Her home room teacher made no effort to differentiate for her, and was hostile to DD's requests for any. G/T class material was looking less like education and more like enrichment... but she was supposed to be getting these classes for math and language arts, which sorta implies there should be some education in there somewhere. DD's homeschooling involved identifying and addressing all the gaps that had developed, then accelerating her through material until she'd completed all 3rd grade requirements. Before any of this could be done, DD had to be restored to her previous levels of self-confidence and love of learning.

4: Going back to school again, because apparently we're slow learners. Different scenario again... G/T is longer in 4th grade (half the day), so you'd figure it has to be more than just enrichment, plus we've effected the grade skip the school always passive-aggressively refused to consider. Wish us luck.

Another variation/alternative to homeschooling is virtual school. I just posted in another thread on that.
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/159407.html

I really wanted to homeschool anyway, so public school really had a hard customer with me. Homeschooling gives kids more free time. It doesn't take much work to make a lot of progress when you have your own mom as a private tutor. All your lessons are tailored to your personal development.

I love the teachers and the principal and the kids at the local small town public school I sent my kid to this year for pre-k, not expecting academic progress, but expecting him to be taught "how to do school". I tried to get them to take him early, last year, before he was reading or writing very well. He would have been easier to direct a year earlier, I thought. Our state doesn't allow any early entry into public pre-k.

The pre-k teacher subject accelerated him to kinder for language arts because he was already reading well. At Christmas the kinder teacher told me the acceleration wasn't working. She said the pace of the class was too fast and he wasn't doing his work. I almost believed it might be true until I convinced my son to tell me exactly what work was too fast. It was to write a string of the same letter once across a page before a kitchen timer went off. He said the whole rest of the class could do it. I knew then that the pace of the class was not too fast but that the teacher fell for the boundry testing "I don't know how to do (what I don't feel like doing.)" I call not doing the work your teacher tells you to do a behavior problem. The school says it's not a behavior problem but a maturity issue. I say if I send you to school I expect you to do your work, or what's the point, really? I don't like that lesson he learned this year. I was disillusioned to find out he didn't do his busywork at school which I expect him to do. I can't reconcile with the teachers telling him that's ok. You know that parenting meme that says to make less demands on your young children, but follow through with what you tell them to do?

Besides, where could they really appropriately put him anyway? How many parents send their kid to school without expecting them to be educated? I did. But I did expect him to do what he was told.

I tried to use school for socialization and planned to afterschool. Afterschooling was no fun. I also considered asking for out of district placement in a nearby math and science charter school. It would have been 45 minutes extra on the bus twice a day, but I thought it would be worth the extra time to get both socialization and a good education at the same time. I was recently told not to try. The school used to take the cream of the crop but now it's lottery. They didn't have to finish the sentence because I've read about that problem here. It means they water down the education and add a ton to the workload to make up the difference.

It really seems best to keep my too immature to place kid at home and let him stay immature longer. I found out I am not doing attachment parenting because I spank, but some of it still fits. (besides just the waterbirth, ebf, and cosleeping). I went with the "be there for them while they're little and they'll feel secure enough to be more independant quicker." It's true, they feel very independant and secure. I think it might be the same for immaturity. I'm starting to believe I should expect EF to kick in around 12 yrs. old. I think holding up his academics until he's mature enough to choose not to weasel his way out of busywork doesn't make a lick of sense. I think I'll be the adult, tell him what work he needs to do, let his immaturity take its own sweet time. Maybe that will work in the same way that offering more security made them more independant instead of trying to get him to mature enough to go do school that's below his achievement and academic readiness.

I'll admit that beneath all these reasons I want to keep my little kids home and teach them myself. My sister and husband grant me that is part of it, but they say it's mainly because he's not able to get the education he needs at school. I'll be homeschooling next year.

Beautiful. Just beautiful. I love this philosophy

I made the final decision to homeschool my DS for K just a few days ago. I've been considering it for a few months, but the clincher came for me last week. He told me he doesn't "feel smart" at preschool, but he DOES "feel smart" at home. At home, his knowledge of biology surpassed mine a while ago and I had to resort to buying college text books and relying extensively on google to answer his questions - at school, they're learning worms are "squishy". Go figure.

I actually didn't realize my son was gifted until recently. Sure, he was talking in full sentences by his first birthday and uses his McDonald's happy meal toys to enact in amazing detail the mating rituals of various species of Birds of Paradise - but don't all kids do that?

I started my homeschool experiment a few months ago (in enough time to register him for public K if this homeschooling thing didn't pan out). I met another homeschool mom at a library class, and after talking to me for about 10 minutes she suggested I research homeschooling gifted children. Apparently, the "problems" I was having - finishing first grade math in 3 weeks and struggling with DS's ridiculous level of perfectionism - weren't just normal homeschooling stuff.

Before trying out homeschooling, DS had been increasingly withdrawn, moody, and self-defeating. I could tell his self esteem was dipping, but I couldn't figure out why. Everyone in his life is positive (including his teacher at preschool, who has done nothing but praise him and encourage him). The more we homeschool and the more I learn about his giftedness, the more I realize what's been going on inside his little head and heart. And it's bringing back memories of how *I* felt in public elementary school as a gifted kid.

During this homeschool experiment, I've slowly learned how to challenge my DS without putting too much pressure on him (motivate him without crossing over his perfectionist threshold), and he has flourished! My funny, happy, engaging, curious kid is coming back!

And that's how I know we've moved from "maybe" to "definitely" homeschooling :-)

For us, there wasn't any real "tipping" point, so much as a major epiphany.

I don't know why, but even after we struggled for six months to find a preschool (and eventually gave up, opting for a very loose Montessori at home approach), we still were 100% convinced that we'd be enrolling our then 5yo in a local public kindergarten.

Our local school is a good one, within walking distance of our home. Both my DH and I are products of public schools. My family is filled with public educators. I believe in that model. I do not believe in unschooling as a model of education except for some very remarkable circumstances.

So our epiphany occurred when I took my then newly-turned 5yo to kindergarten orientation. I knew that I was going to need to talk to administrators/teachers and find out the lay of the land, so to speak, on managing her life-threatening food allergies (let's just say that most people who THINK that they know about life-threatening food allergies, even, haven't encountered anyone like her, and this includes a number of physicians-- she's nobody's "starter" project)...

my daughter was quietly content to observe all that was going on around her, politely sitting and listening to the presentation (geared toward parents) re: kindergarten readiness skills that parents should "work on" over the summer... all of which she knew. But that wasn't why we were there. We were there to figure out how big an uphill battle it was going to be to get her included in classroom activities and not, you know, kill her.

So during the mix/mingle afterwards, she sat and continued reading while I sought information from anyone official-looking.

I explained her situation to a veteran teacher, who agreed with me that {local school} was an excellent one, isn't that great... she described the handling of food within kindergarten classrooms and I did sort of quail, I fear... then she informed me that there were NO school nurses in any building in our district, oh yes, and the cafeteria (which doubles as the gym) serves PB+J as a menu option every.school.day.of.the.year. (OMG)... at which point, I was reeling on that front, given how far we'd have to go to make it feasible...

so then I added DD's concern from the earlier presentation-- what do you do with children who are already possess quite good literacy and numeracy as entering 5yo's? She had clearly heard that question before. She said-- "Oh, there are always a few that have already started reading because their parents have worked on those skills. Teachers are used to seeing quite a range in kindergarten. Did your daughter come with you tonight?"


I responded, "Yes, that's her over there against the back wall-- she's the blonde little girl reading." You have to imagine the scene, here-- there are adults milling around talking, and about seventy 4-7yo children playing tag, shrieking, and generally burning off sitting for forty minutes through this presentation at the beginning of things. DD was clearly aware of all of that, but was reading a very fat chapter book, swinging her legs gently back and forth and rapidly turning pages every thirty seconds or so.

The teacher took all of this in, and then turned back to me...

"What... is... she... reading?"

I just shrugged-- she read all the time-- I seriously wasn't even paying that much attention by this time. Hank the Cowdog, I think? Maybe Magic Treehouse? She went through them like potato chips. She read everything basically, and had only learned to read about three months ago, so I wasn't really sure...

"Does she do math like that, too?"

I sort of casually explained what I thought were pretty straightforward skills, nothing too special... but the teacher's eyes bugged.

"I have never said this to anyone, and if you repeat it, I'll deny it. DO NOT put your daughter into a kindergarten classroom in this district. You'll be risking her life every day, and she will be learning NOTHING. Don't do it. I'm so sorry."

I was stunned.

When I called the principal of the local school later in the week, though-- the response kind of chilled me, because that was a cheery "Oh, don't worry... we'll figure out the food thing as we go. Just understand that we're all going to make a few mistakes as we figure things out, and all will be well..."

Well, that was that. My DH and I both knew what that meant. That meant that they didn't have experience with this kind of sensitivity/severity, but THOUGHT that it wouldn't be a big deal. We knew that "mistakes" cannot happen if they can be foreseen-- every 'mistake' is rolling the roulette wheel, and the odds are similar (according to our medical professionals). Our original allergist here had also recommended AGAINST a school placement for DD way back when she was just three.

After that orientation, I started seriously researching homeschooling philosophies and methodology. We were still thinking that we'd eventually put her into a public school placement when she was "old enough to manage" on her own-- maybe 8-10yo?

The trouble was that after 18 months of homeschooling, she was at 3rd grade level (and then some-- actually, and then quite a lot in some areas) and climbing rapidly. That was when the virtual school came into things. We were having an increasingly difficult time getting her into appropriate extracurriculars given the huge gap between her chronological age and her cognitive needs, and around here, people who work with youth all have learned to roll their eyes at the exaggerations of mamas who proclaim their children future Einsteins. (Note that teacher's initial response to me-- before she was presented with the reality-- we've had this happen many times here.)

so true. that's exactly what did it for me. if we can't send her to school for school - and we can't send her to school for friends... we'd best be thinking of something else. and honestly, no one in their right mind is going to send a 5 y/o to 4th grade...

thanks so, so much, everyone - it's been awesome to get all your thoughts on this.

an update - my husband had his epiphany this morning - so we have officially moved from considering homeschooling to actively figuring out the details of making it happen. all systems are go!

me too! it killed me to have consider a private school - and that was a disaster. ha.


seriously - it's like you read my mind. i'd met with a GREAT new principal at our local PS a few months ago, and i was SURE DD would be going there next year. then we went to the orientation night so that DD could have a look around and meet some kids. we walk in and sit down and she slings an arm over the back of her chair, looks at her contemporaries screaming and running around the back of the gym, gives me a world-weary eyeroll and says, "WHERE ARE THEIR PARENTS?" she then listens actively to an hour of presentations about curriculum and fundraising. she leads the applause, she asks several questions during the Q&A, she behaves like she's 40. and people are staring, like always.

i came home and cried. my poor husband (who only made the end of the orientation - dang transit!) couldn't understand how the meeting could have been so scary for me. i'm not really a crier - i tend to fall more on the "rage" side of things - but i just had this sense of rising panic. she's just. so. different.

i think i'm going to go and systematically read through all your posts, HK - i feel so incredibly hopeful now. thank you, again - i'm a fan.

Doubtfulguest, - yes, there can be a sense of rising panic. She's just. so. different. Love that one. Yes, you can feel like you've got a 40-year-old rather than a 6- or 7-year-old.

What was the tipping point? Um, two private gifted schools telling you that they may not be able to accommodate your child in pre-k and kindergarten. Problem #1.

Problem #2 is when your ds melts down and starts to act out and get bored because he cannot accelerate. When you're child starts to become listless and withdraw because he's not learning anything new, you decide to try out the homeschool lark and give it a go. You say how bad can it be and perhaps it's a least-worst situation.

Problem #3 is when public schools have no gifted mandate and absolutely refuse to accommodate/accelerate. What do you do when your first grader is reading adult books? You homeschool.

Problem #4 - 2e issues. Oy vey. Neither public or private schools can deal with it at this point, I've found. That's a double sigh. At least, homeschooling gave us time to do therapy. What fun.

oh man, cdfox, you've also nailed it.

Problems #1, #2 and #3 are definitely happening for us - i used to wonder about 2e (dyslexia) because she'd hoover up information, but didn't bother trying to read till this year. but you know, i actually feel excited - like i'm running toward homeschooling, rather than away from anything.

i do feel like a complete moron for having spent 4+ years of her life thinking that she wasn't that different. we're really weird parents*: we answer questions with questions, we assume she can rather than can't, we read her anything she's interested in, even if it is about schizophrenia.

but now that we've been through this horrible year, i know better. it isn't our choices that have made her who she is at all - at best, they've simply encouraged her. when i look back, i can see that i had a full conversation with her about mitosis when she was 2½ and that her hero at age 3 was Terry Fox, and now at 5 she wants to be a cancer surgeon or a biomedical engineer... she's just different - she's herself - and it's our job to make sure she has the freedom to stay that way.

my book will be probably called Sample Size of One: A Cautionary Tale.

(jk - i'm not writing a book!)

(*though i bet we're not at all weird around here - YAY!)

here's one of our tipping points pointing more and more towards homeschooling ... living in a school district that's low on money (while constantly increasing property taxes), as a result of which one of the schools will be closing down after this coming year, and with our luck it is OUR school that is closing down and having 2E kids, one with life threatening allergies and the other going from acting "normal" at home to acting "retarded" (it's really the best fitting word if I was looking at him as an outsider when he gets like that) when in a larger social setting ... the busride time increasing from under 5 minutes to about 20-30 minutes, we are looking at a serious safety issue for both of them (in terms of health and potential bullying with kids K-6th grade on the same bus). Also going from having the paramedics next door to having them 5-10 minutes away. This is a very big deal for us. So DS4.9 will start Kindergarten this fall before the school closes next year but what happens after that, we don't know.

My very social former cheerleader daughter went to public school and enjoyed it because she was smart, pretty, and could color in the lines. She has so many friends and so many good memories of school. I really, really wanted that for my son.

But he couldn't color in the lines because of a disability that caused him to have hyperflexible finger joints and muscle weakness. Lots of coloring and writing caused pain. My son's pain didn't matter in our one-size-fits all, everyone must learn in exactly the same way kind of education system where rules matter more than common sense.

When I was told by the kindergarten teacher at the end of the year that she recommended that he be held back in a transitional first grade the following year so that he could learn to color better and that he didn't need to really learn anything, I realized that what I had read about our education system--that "children should build on what they know" was just part of the public education system's propaganda.

We explained to the teacher that he had a disability that affected coloring ability and that we didn't care if he ever learned to color better. We didn't know the name of the disability because our primary care doctors didn't know anything about connective tissue disorders and would not refer us to specialists who did until almost ten years later. His connective tissue disorder does not affect intelligence or his ability to learn. He was reading beyond a 5th grade level in kindergarten. He taught himself to read at 2 1/2 despite the fact that Marfans also caused his eyes to tire very quickly. He was somehow able to compensate for his vision issues, but how would he have been able to compensate for a year of coloring and not being allowed to learn at his level?

After the kindergarten teacher's recommendation to hold my son back, I asked a first grade teacher who had gifted sons and training in special ed, including gifted education, for advice. I showed her samples of my son's work. She told me that she thought he might be highly gifted and I needed to homeschool. She convinced me that I could do it.

Before I made my final decision, I talked to our state department of education and was told that laws would have to be changed before my son could get occupational therapy for his disability because he was not failing. The final tipping point was when I realized I could not get help even at higher levels of the public education bureaucracy.

Lori - I can relate to the coloring. Ds7 had visual perceptual deficits and fine motor delays. He had 2.5 years of vision therapy between 4 and 6 years old due to the lack of eye-hand coordination, etc. He's better now, but he still hates coloring. Always has.

When ds was in special needs pre-k, they wanted to keep him in special needs for kindergarten too due to this issues and others. I pulled him and put him in a gifted, private school instead. I was also told by a 2e expert that I'd have to be prepared for ds to fail in the public schools before they did anything to help him. Gee, thanks.
..

Doubtfulguest - I do feel for you. I knew DS was bright when he was in special needs, but I didn't think he was 2e or so, so. I think a lot of us go through a process of grappling with what we got and how to deal with it, often without any help from the public schools.

No one mentions the fact that your child may not be accommodated at public/private school in the parenting books. Or the fact that the public schools are in such a state that you might not want them to go there anyway (e.g. bullying).

this year has taught me that what i thought i knew about school/teachers/education just doesn't apply to our particular situation, so we'll have to just make it up as we go along. and if that involves burning down the paradigm and starting from scratch, then so be it.

Oh, I'm sure we'll run into the color within lines comes Kindergarten in the fall. DS4.9 can't color within lines at all. But he can draw very extensive "machines" and "construction plans" on his white board. So what if he can't color! I LOVE the work he CAN do

Well, this is it. I don't know what to say, except to say I've been there and others here have as well.

Public/private schools seems to obsess about what 2e or special needs or kids in general can't do. They seem intent on 'fixing' them and concentrating on their weaknesses rather than building on their strengths or interests, which can be frustrating for 2e kids/parents. They'll focus on a child not doing timed addition rather than the child can do algebra. It's crazy.

Throw out the rules and start from scratch, I say. Homeschool/unschool and make up your own rules instead.

DS3.3 situation. Because of his high functioning autism diagnosis and the way he was behaving during the few school therapy sessions we let him attend, the school's opinion at this point is autism class to work on his behavior and social issues. NOTHING that would even remotely address his learning needs in terms of academics. For us, his behavior is not an issue unless he feels threatened in a particular social situation (such as school setting). He CRAVES advanced academics. He self-taught himself to read before he turned 2.5, same with basic math operations, he does a lot of other advanced stuff and absolutely cannot stand repetition, completely loses it around kids who are crying or slow learners ... but give him academic stimulation and he jumps right in, attention full on! WHY in the world would I put him in an autism class or even special ed preschool (that the school was very insisting on) to put him through learning basic alphabet and numbers to 10 for the next 2 years???

So, with DS3.3, our plans for the early years are to homeschool and use his motivation to learn academics to modify his behavior. Certainly NOT try to break him the way that was recommended to us.

I just didn't start with the belief that school is the "default" option. I've known many homeschoolers in my life. Public school is fine, but I don't think opting out is some big huge decision.

My kids don't have medical problems, or 2e, the school staff are literally my friends. They truly care about the kids and it shows. The kids in town are not clickish, they fight and cuss and spit and act like kids, but they're good friendly kids whose mamas have taught them better.

My friends and family keep trying to give me an "out" and claim I don't have a choice because his academic needs are not being met. I swear I am just choosing to do it by choice. I'm not at all sure about socialization. Before this year he socialized at the playground at the mall, at sports, and at public dances/bbqs, but school is the big social event. I don't know if his social needs have changed drastically from just one year in school.

One non-academic benefit that should balance the lost socialization is outside play time. All year long he complained about not feeling like he had enough time to play. Here it gets ridiculously hot most afternoons by the time he gets out of school. Next year when we're homeschooling I plan to kick them out in the yard in the morning when it's cool outside. I can sit on the porch and drink my morning coffee.

I guess I'd rather say it's just my choice because I have no reason to say the school's not doing a good enough job. I think it would have been different except he started out learning that he doesn't have to do his work in school. But that does not mean they did not do a good job. They did what they were supposed to do and they taught the lessons to their class. They made accomodations and advanced him from the start because he really is very advanced. He just didn't play along and was allowed to opt out of doing his work all year. I could honestly just let it go and I'm sure it would turn out fine by the twelfth grade. I'm not making any specific plans for or against mainstreaming them back into school some other year.

I left my job as a public school administrator to homeschool. You can imagine how many head-scratching questions, eye rolls and dirty looks I got for that!

Our tipping point emotionally was earlier, but our actual decision making tipping point was when I was spending more time at the school advocating, volunteering, fighting, arguing, photocopying and teaching teachers than it would actually take me to homeschool. That was the final "Why are we wasting all this energy when we could just do something else?"

That's it exactly, CAMom. When I think of all of the time I'd have lost over the years with my family as a result of spending that time gnashing my teeth and crafting well-worded responses, insisting on meeting after meeting, documenting, documenting, documenting, and being "on call" for the school for pretty much every day of the year anyway, it was just plain crazy NOT to homeschool.

2e issues really muddy the waters with school. Most schools in this country are ill equipped or totally unable to deal with them. The problem is that you often need the services and oftentimes you simply cannot get the services unless your child is enrolled in a public school or you go through them at the very least.

I had this happen to ds when he was 3.5/4 years old and in pre-kindergarten. I couldn't get the ot/pt/speech without enrolling him in a special needs pre-k program, period, authorized by the NYC Board of Ed. I had to obtain a lawyer and go through the ordeal of threatening to go to mediation. Talk about a major headache. There's nothing like the NYC Board of Ed and its bureaucracy anywhere on the planet. NYC has some of the best and worst schools in America.

We now live in MA and I'm still wrestling with the public schools over getting ds7 re-tested for DYS. If we could afford to get him re-tested privately, we would. We can't, but part of me also believes that my ds7 should get some educational 'services' from public schools even if it's a darn test or textbook. I don't feel like this is asking for blood. Oy. Will this ever end?

Yes CAMom, that's one reason why I decided to homeschool in the end. It's much easier than fighting, advocating, arguing, etc. the system. I'm a former public school teacher/college instructor myself. So I've had the eye balls and looks too - like how dare you ditch the public schools to homeschool! It's venomous at times.

Mk13 - with an spectrum diagnosis, try to get hold of Kristine Barnett's book, The Spark. She pulled her autistic son, Jake, from the public schools and used his interests to work on the behaviors. He's a math/science prodigy who's now 14/15 years old, working on his master's, and an original theory to Einstein. He was featured on 60 Minutes.

Many gifted kids hate repetition and rote learning, especially eg/pg ones. Another reason to homeschool!

My husband, son and I even talked to our state representative last year. We told her that the reason we were homeschooling was that we could not get an appropriate education in our state. She agreed that there were problems with our schools and that is why she supported homeschooling. Our state can't even provide safe places for kids to go during tornadoes because it costs too much money. They are certainly not going to do anything for my child.

We had to face the reality that our schools are indeed ill equipped or totally unable to deal with twice exceptional kids. It is the fact that they wouldn't even try that really upsets me. We pay taxes for other kids to get an appropriate education while my child is left out and if I say anything about this I am viewed as a "negative person" by people who are happy with the school system.

cdfox - thank you for the book tip! I'll look it up!

We are fortunate that while IL doesn't provide any mandatory gifted support and the gifted program in our school district is next to nothing, at least I can get services through the school district that DS needs as long as I keep his IEP going. For now we put it on hold but it's valid for 12 months and we are hoping that DS will be able to go back in later this year for at least some therapies without getting so majorly stressed out. I spoke with our special ed director about homeschooling and while she is against it she did say he would still qualify for some services like speech.

For what it's worth, most of the therapists he's had in the last year support the idea of him being homeschooled.

I am still unsure about how it works with us requesting testing further down the road. When I gently touched the subject, the special ed lady's reply was something along the lines of "oh, I don't think testing would be necessary. We can clearly see what services he needs" ... yeah. Right! That's why we ended up pulling him out because clearly they could NOT see what he needed. So we might have to do testing eventually at our own cost. Not that we would so desperately need it but I wouldn't want to wait too long to identify any other 2E issues aside from the ones we are already dealing with.

We're not homeschooling, but we came close to it. After an exhaustive school search for DS6 (in K now), he was not doing well in the one we finally chose. Wasn't learning a thing, and he was being stressed out by the green-yellow-red behavior system. By mid-December last year, fortunately, we'd found another placement for him that was much better - if not for that school, I would be homeschooling him now.

We figured the public schools would not be able to differentiate well enough for him (he's doing basic algebra, analytic geometry, statistics, etc.). We also knew they were anti-acceleration - I don't think there's been but one or two cases of grade acceleration in the whole district for the past decade! And we were quietly advised by a couple of in-the-know families to not bother with the neighborhood public school. So we didn't. (Good thing we didn't need SPED services; that might have been an issue, but he "graduated" OT and seems to not need it now. Like a previous poster said, school-age kids can only access SPED services through the schools themselves, during school hours.)

What shocked us was how poorly the *private* schools in the area handled kids with high math ability! Several of them told us frankly that they couldn't give him what he needs, especially in math. A Montessori school said he would be bored in math and reading; another recommended subject acceleration to third or fourth grade (yikes!); yet another school came right out and said that math was the one subject in which they would not ALLOW kids to work ahead of their age mates. Baffling.

I had already chosen curricula for homeschooling him. But his cup is full at his new school, and so is mine, so I won't be doing it yet. At least I can help my sister with her homeschooling.

cdfox, we're in MA as well. It's frustrating to see how little support this state offers to gifted and 2E kids, in spite of MA's reputation for great public schools.

Lori H - this a huge national issue with 2e kids. Only a handful of schools in the US are really equipped to deal with 2e kids. Most are not. Even in NYC, there's hardly any for 2e kids. They've got specialized special needs schools, but they can't really address the giftedness. They've got g/t programs and schools, but these don't necessarily address the 2e issues. In MA, there's nothing for 2e kids so it gets me very angry at times too.

Mk13 - you are legally entitled to testing with an IEP under IDEA or ADA, I think. In some states, you can request testing as a homeschooler; some states require testing too. The testing varies from state to state. However, you might be able to get the WJ-III testing from your school district. And, if this is the case, you could potentially get a qualifying score for DYS and/or other potential programs without going through your insurance and/or a big expense, which can be a big deal.

HAHA this was it for us, except in South Africa there is only 1 gifted school and after 3 different private schools suggested them we tried them only to realise all the other things mentioned here.

For me, the tipping point was the night my 5 year old tried to strangle me (the black eye was the night before) as I would try allow him to rage in an attempt to get his angst out. Fine at school - if you consider declining work output and declining social skills and declining capacity to learn and declining reading and maths skills fine. ("of course he has no reading/writing issue - even if it looks like dyslexia or something, he reads and writes above grade level so you are being paranoid and pushy")

At his worst his speech and motor skills deteriorated to those of a toddler, he wet the bed every single night, he stopped eating for the most part, he woke up in a screaming panic, he tried to hide his bag/shoes/waterbottle in the mornings, he had to be carried to the car crying and forcibly buckled in, the daily anger and screaming fits - sometimes 3 in the space of an afternoon (Except for friday and saturday). And then a therapist diagnosed him with acute anxiety and borderline clinical depression. He was my precious 5 year old and it was ripping our entire family apart. It took 8 months of de schooling and therapy weekly before he was okay to consider "learning" again.

I wish I didn't leave it so late. I wish I had pulled him the moment I suspected it wasn't working. Needless to say with son #2 as soon as I saw the aggression starting (towards the end of his second term in the 3 -4 class at the same school) we pulled him immediately.

Son #3 will not even be setting foot into that school. (In case you needed that clarified. lol.

I wanted to homeschool my children, but for safety sake we applied for a private school when my DD was very young. At the interview I asked what they would do about my DD when she knew the work in the class and they said that they would send her to a psychologist who dealt with gifted children and she would get additional work.

My DD did not need additional work - she needed less work and more play time with the work being at a more challenging level. Secondly when she was in preschool (at age 2.5) they had already mentioned ADHD simply because my DD was extremely active and never slept (they would leave her playing with the 5 year olds during the 2-4 year old nap time because she would not nap. I knew if my DD was bored in school and unstimulated that she would not sit still and concentrate and then she would land up being called ADHD - a diagnosis very common where I live.

Now halfway through what would have been her kindergarten year the academic disparity she would have at school would be even bigger than it would have been in January.

More tipping points that have nothing to do with her being gifted:

1. private school would have meant me back at work full time and my 2 year old in a preschool - and all I would have been working for is to pay for that when I can do a better job for both of them at home than they would get at school.

2. The availability of a good homeschool group where DD can play, ability to go on holiday any time of the year now, flexibility which enables DD to do activities that she would not be able to do had she been in school.

Our DS is 13 and has gone to public school, private school and homeschool. This past school year, he was in what we thought was a great magnet school. He was underachieving due to some recent emotional issues ( deaths in the family and a teacher at that school bullying him). We tried to work with the school to help him overcome his issues, but they refused to help in any way. Oh wait....I take that back...one of his insightful teachers did offer a solution. She said he needed to work harder.

The tipping point was when the counselor said that the only way the school could "force" their teachers to differentiate for our DS was to get him labeled with a learning disability/504 designation. Then the teachers would have to make accommodations. The counselor even said that the IEP's were not worth the paper they were written on. Homeschool.