Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Pulling an 11 year old out of school to "unschool"

I was reading where a few of you have pulled younger kids out of school to decompress and "unschool". If you've read my posts, you know we're having so much trouble with out son. Anxiety, fatigue, won't get things done, only wants to play on the computer, defiance. He can't get out of bed in the mornings.

He says he likes school and is challenged.

I'm wondering if maybe we should pull him out of school for a while with very few expectations on him? He's like a time-release time bomb - exploding a little at a time but with the big one yet to come. Or maybe like a coiled spring that releases just a little and then recoils. I don't know.

The minimum he'd have to do for schooling: finish Algebra I, do the required content for Social Studies, English, and Science. None of that should be too hard for him to do. The downside is that he wouldn't have anyone but me during the day, unless we temporarily joined a homeschool group. He might get bored. He'd probably be up at 6:30 every morning.

I just had this thought this morning so I'm not sure it's a good idea. I guess I'm just brainstorming. I would have a hard time selling it to both him and my husband. My son would really miss not playing in the band. We don't have partial homeschooling here, bummer.

We're looking into doing Neurofeedback therapy with him and possibly a dairy/gluten intolerance test (not having either for a month and then reintroducing one or the other) so not being in school for that time would be less hectic and stressful and we could do the NFT 3 times a week without him missing school. We have a neuropysch appointment in July.

How hard is it to pull out a 7th grader and then have him reenter in the fall as an 8th grader?

Just random thoughts about it at this point. I'm starting to think that the defiance and behavior issues aren't a diagnosable pyschological problem but exhaustion, stress, boredom, and depression. The psychiatrist is so sure it's ADHD that he won't discuss anything else so we are looking for a new psychiatrist.

Having him home would be very hard on me but it can't be much harder than what we are going through now. I feel badly posting another topic like this as I imagine that you are all thinking "what, her again, can't she give it a rest" or "what a pest" so I apologize if that's the case. I'm just so desperate and my IRL friends don't have a clue.

can't tell you much about pulling out of school since my boys aren't anywhere near that age just yet ... but just a thought on the dairy / gluten thing. We've been doing GFCF (gluten free / casein free) diet for about 3 months now and I have seen a HUGE difference in my boys before and after. They are both 2E and with the younger one I could see the difference within a week and with the older one took about 3 weeks. The dairy free part of the diet seems to kick in almost right away (days - few weeks) ... the gluten part though might not show itself till months later (it can be noticeable right away in cases where people are truly allergic or very sensitive but if it's just small sensitivities, it takes a long time for gluten to leave the body ... from what I've read and what I've seen at our house) ... again, looking at our younger one, I think the gluten free part of the diet is just now starting to take effect ... 3 months since we started. ... but it's most certainly worth trying!

If your son likes the band so much, maybe you should start with the diet first and if you don't see much improvement in a month or so, then pull out? Before we went on the diet, my younger one who was then 2.5 had been aggressive (for months) towards all other kids within about 10 feet radius and was very tantrummy (he has since been diagnosed with high functioning autism) and refused to communicate and just 5 days being completely dairy / casein free, he stopped hitting kids, his tantrums went from 30 minutes to 2-5 minutes if at all and he finally started telling us / showing us what he wanted or needed.

sorry I made it so long but wanted to give you some encouragement

That's not unschooling. If you've got problems with his behaviour at home and with him doing his homework efficiently, doing this is definitely not unschooling!

Don't feel bad about it; it happens when someone's child is having a hard time.

But honestly, this sounds, to me, from what you've said, like a terrible idea. He says he likes school and is challenged there and doesn't (from what you said before) have behaviour problems there; he does have behaviour problems and trouble getting things done at home. Sorry to be flippant, but I think I'd be considering boarding school before I'd be considering homeed!

I agree with Colinsmum.

Remind me, Petunia-- Have you made any progress toward getting a neuropsych evaluation? Until you have a full diagnostic picture, you're flying blind on how to fix it.

Keep him for as much of his time as possible in situations where he can be successful. If getting a tutor/personal coach for more hours after school helps him be more successful at home, I'd do that. (A college age boy can work wonders where I cannot, it seems.)

DeeDee

Petunia, I know that I commented in your 'piano' thread about some eerily similar things that I noticed about your DS and my DD13 when she was your son's age.

I would also have said that school wasn't "the" problem-- and probably DID, at least at the time.

But it was. It was so clearly the problem that within days of the end of the term, it had become unbelievably clear that my kid had nothing in particular "wrong" with her that wasn't about school.


We also battled over seemingly everything-- bedtime, computer usage, eating (we were doing weekly weigh-ins for a while), sleeping habits, hygiene, homework (and how)... just everything.

She was still a straight A student during this semester, which boggles my mind.

In the end, it was all about task-avoidant perfectionism run AMOK. It wasn't an eating disorder. It wasn't ADD (though we had a psych team fairly determined in that same area, too-- we cancelled with them once EVERY behavior resolved within three or four days of school ending).

You might hunt up that thread(Deterioration/perfectionism thread) from a few years ago. I have to agree with ColinsMum that homeschooling with an eye toward finishing some "core" subjects is probably not the best idea here, if my intuition about what you're seeing is correct.

It's possible that this is a fairly common stage that HG+ kids go through between 9 and 12 years of age. At least those who have the right cocktail of personality traits, that is. In DD's case, the worst of it was the spring just before she turned 12.

DH and I found it nothing short of harrowing. DD seems to have weathered it with few if any ill effects. She has since shed some light on her twisted reasoning and priorities during this bizarre period of her life; apparently, she was prioritizing Pokemon as an obsessive, addictive interest. She regrets that, by the way-- and the thing is, we weren't really able to "stop" her from indulging in it because of her cleverness at finding ways around our firewalls, both physically and electronically.

I don't have any real advice other than for you to look carefully at what your son DOES place a premium on (especially if he's hiding it from you), and ask whether or not your gut is telling you what the problem is.

Okay, well it wouldn't exactly be "unschooling". I just meant that to go back to school in the fall into 8th grade, he'd have to be able to show that he knew those things.

It's just so exhausting to GET him to school and GET him through the evenings. It took me 25 minutes this morning to get him out of bed, and that was starting an hour later than he usually gets up. He is always saying "I'm so tired". It's almost like he's sick and needs to recuperate.

We have a neuropsych appointment in July. I just don't see how we're going to get to July without something changing now.

Boarding School: I've considered it but it would break his daddy's heart. And, I think it would be very bad for him to be away from us. He's very attached to us.

Dairy/Gluten comments: thanks for the advice. The only dairy he eats is cheese and the occasional ice cream and he has no stomach complaints so I'm not sure about it.

Howler's mention of Pokemon got me thinking. You talk about him playing his computer games. Is it primarily just one game he is playing?

If he has a game addiction, many of the behaviors would fit with it. No or minimal issues at school would be because it is inaccessible (but he could be somewhat distracted there.) He may even say school is plenty challenging, because he wouldn't want additional work that might take away from it.

It would also be in line with defiance and attention issues.

I agree with the people who are thinking that this seems like a bad idea. You've written that he enjoys school and doesn't want to homeschool, so I'm confused about why you'd want to force it on him.

Do they have after-school study hall programs at his school? My son's did. The kids would all go to a room and do homework under the supervision of a teacher. If his school has this (I think most do) you sign him up for it? Then you might not have to fight with him so much about homework.

I think he says he likes school because that's what he thinks he's supposed to say. It would be less about homeschooling and more about just backing off and taking a break, lowering expectations and not having so many power struggles, resting, recuperating.

I have no idea what he places a premium on. I've been asking myself that for 5 years.

Zen, what would you do about a "game addiction"? He likes Minecraft but it doesn't work on our computer so he just plays it once or twice a week at a friend's house and watches the tutorials at our house. It's pretty much just computer games in general.

Augh!

I was just floating that out there. I think it would be obvious if it was something like World of Warcraft, and he was staying up late to play that. If it is a wide variety of games, then game addiction doesn't seem likely.

If it was an online game like WoW, then even impersonal impacts could cause freakouts. For example if the internet was out or the computer doesn't boot you'd expect some extreme reactions. I had a good friend who had a gambling addiction; she played on riverboats. When there was flooding one day and the boat was closed, she had a full on panic attack.