Well, if it’s any consolation, I went to public schools my entire educational career, and I still don’t know who I am or how I fit into anything. I was a misfit in school, I still had no clue how to talk to my high school classmates at my 10 year reunion (my 20 is next year, and I don’t expect it to be much different), and…I don’t think being plonked into a classroom with 30 other kids guarantees you find people who will be suitable friends any more than being plonked into an office guarantees any will become your friends. I don’t think it guarantees you’ll learn any social skills either. My brothers had varying experiences too - from popular jock, to withdrawn “brain”. If you had gone to public school, you might have had a wonderful school experience and felt a sense of your own identity. And maybe not. We can’t know that. As for me, I didn’t get even a shred of a sense of being Chotii, instead of Daughter of Well Known Local Business Owner…until I went away to college. And even then, going back home for summers was very hard.
True, my mom seems to think I would have been miserable there. I expect I’ll do better once I transfer and can go off and explore somewhat on my own… if I can’t get on-campus housing I’ll just use loan money to rent a room if they let me do that, or work two jobs. My dad thinks I should live with my mom to save money, but I just don’t think that’s an option.
My thoughts exactly, auliya. Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. And as far as homeschooling a child with Asperger’s syndrome, I’d like to “talk” to you if you’d want - if so, my email is in my profile. If you don’t want, good luck to you too!! I (probably) know a lot of what you’re going through. :):)
RFBluesValentine, I’m sorry to hear about your negative experience! It sounds like you were really lonely… That’s the kind of thing I want to try to avoid with my daughter - Luckily for now we do have enough disposable income to get her to the YMCA and private lessons, etc. so she can socialize. The Camp Fire club and 4-H are really active here too and I’m not totally ruling out the Girl Scouts (do they hate gay people like the Boy Scouts do???). Also, church youth group provides some caring kids and adults even though we don’t totally agree with the main ideas of our church’s culture. We’ll see. It will take a lot of running aournd, trial & error, etc. to get her some good social outlets.
My daughter’s social experiences in a (rich, white, rural) school have for the most part been negative. She has one friend and a few allies, and the rest sling abuse with little or no consequences because they are mostly kids with higher social skills than my kid and are very sneaky and/or subtle. I had a very similar experience in K-12, being a certifiably “odd” child and having skipped a grade in elementary school. School was a hell. It took me until I was about 30 years old to fully recover from the public school experience. See, my perspective is colored to the quick with that experience, just as I’m sure yours is marked by your not-too-great homeschooling life.
I’m rambling, sorry.
I don’t think Girl Scouts care about homosexuality. GS is a lot less religious than Boy Scouts, at least in my experience. I mean, if you join a troop that’s run by a church, of course it will be religious, but you could start your own troop. My friend’s mom was our GS leader, and we had meeting at her house once a month or so. It was a lot of fun, since all the girls went to different schools and I never got to see them otherwise, and we did a lot of community service and craftmaking stuff. We all ended up getting our Silver Awards (about the same as an Eagle Scout).
Another thought, totally uncconected to the above one, is that all schools, public, private, charter, whatever, should crack down on bullying and cliques. The (public) elementary school that I went to was really zero-tolerance about bullying, and the administration really tried hard to stop it. I think that if more schools did that, instead of just going, “oh, kids will be kids,” then there would be a lot less social problems at school, especially if they started in kindergarten and first grade.