Our big clue was that DS6 lost his spark. He stopped caring about anything, he stopped asking questions.

He was noticeably dumbing himself down at school, his teacher was sending home Kindergarten beginning readers saying he was having trouble reading them out loud (when I asked him, he said that he was reading them slowly because the other kids did).

Up to that point I had been trying to work with the school and had gotten a "wait and see" response over and over. No one would meet with me face to face for a meeting, but I was still under the illusion that they were the experts so I kept deferring to that expertise. They said they were differentiating, I took it at face value. They said they put him in the pull-out program the GT teacher volunteered to do for the Kindergartners during her free periods, I thanked them profusely. I *wanted* it to work, I *wanted* to believe them.

The closest he came to being disruptive was the day that he colored the entire back of a worksheet in small bands of alternating colors instead of doing the work on the front. My question at that point was how he was left to his own devices long enough to have accomplished it. It had to have taken him half an hour.

At home though, he was angry. Very, very angry. Starting a bit after Christmas he started having hour long tantrums, the likes we hadn't seen since he was 3. He screamed at us, he was defiant, he lashed out at anyone and everyone. It seemed to get a bit better after we started afterschooling in January, but that only worked for a few weeks. Then he was angrier than ever.

The thing that finally got my attention that *something* had to change was at the beginning of February we went to PetSmart after school, I refused to buy him a snack and he tried to hit me. I finally sat him down and *asked* him what he was so angry about. He just started sobbing that he was so tired of never learning anything at school and that they made him do the same things over and over. After that we had tantrums every morning over him going to school. Over and over he said begged me to make them teach him 'real things'.

He had overheard me talking to DH about homeschooling and he started begging me to take him out of school. He was begging me to homeschool him. Even when I told him that if I brought him home I would except him to actually work and that I wouldn't let him skate by. He said that was exactly what he wanted.

I tried for almost another month to get the school to listen to me. At the beginning of March, the principal out right refused to meet with me, ever. She said we had nothing to discuss because they weren't changing anything. I pulled him the next day.

Homeschooling has been hard for me, but it's been one of the best things we could have done for DS6. Almost immediately he was his old self again. He is just so *happy* to be home. Even after almost 6 months, he still regularly tells me how much he loves homeschooling. It's just amazing to me that he knew exactly what he needed, he just needed me to listen to him and trust him (and myself) more than the 'experts'.