Thoughts on becoming a SAHM

In My Humble Opinion
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I’m so so glad you are getting expert opinions and more resources and figuring out what is going on!! I know this must be so much. But it seems like you are super on the right track and figuring things out, which is amazing. Hang in there!

If homeschooling turns out to be a thing, you might check out to see whether your area has anything like a “charter homeschool” which are these programs where the charter homeschool does oversight of curriculum, etc. so you’re not homeschooling in a void, and are part of a community even if it’s mostly online. Our local charter homeschool even has a sub-program that involves in person classes two days a week, but I think that’s rarer.

I mean, this was totally the case with our ASD kid, who at that age shut down when she was around too many other kids or too much noise. She ended up at a private school with tiny classes and thrived there. But the public schools around here are sufficiently underfunded that basically if a class isn’t stuffed full of kids, they cancel it and shuffle the kids around other places. Sigh. (And actually our private school with tiny classes is chronically short on money and is always teetering on the verge of collapse. Smaller class sizes turn out to be hard to maintain.)

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I talked to one of my friends yesterday who is a neuropsychologist and she couldn’t believe they put him in a classroom with 22 kids and one teacher and no support.

Homeschooling would be really hard for me, personally, in terms of what I need to be happy. I’m not saying I could never be happy but it would take a lot of work.

So hopefully not that.

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I wouldn’t have minded homeschooling my younger one, but I would have had a really hard time homeschooling the older one. Partially due to their personalities, but also partially due to a bunch of people I knew going that route in the meantime, so if we had done it (or if we do it in the future) with him, we’d have had a community of kids and parents even starting out.

On the private school front, if you go that way, be aware that financial aid for private school is definitely a big thing (especially if they have empty seats – in that case, the marginal cost of having an extra kid is pretty small compared to all their other costs), so don’t necessarily rule out options based on cost until you know for sure what the actual cost is.

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At least there, I think money will not be a concern. My husband’s grandmother has already offered to help pay for private school if necessary. She is big on getting kids a proper education and she knows how gifted he is.

It’s just a matter of finding the right fit for him.

ETA: I could actually see some massive change happening in the medium term, like us buying a house to be closer to whatever school he goes to. It would be a stretch financially but I’d move heaven and earth for this child to succeed. Which means if I have to home school him, I will.

I just have executive function problems myself, I need structure to hold things together including my mental health, and my career is a big part of my mental health, and I just think it would be really hard for me specifically to create the structure we both needed.

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I would have gone nuts and probably abused the kids if I’d tried to home school. I don’t have the patience for it.

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I’ve been following the thread, and I hope it works out in the best possible way for all of you. I do have a question, why a sleep specialist? Did you and your husband request that?

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She is an ADHD researcher/clinician who happens to be a sleep specialist. As I understand it her research expertise is in the way sleep disorders impact executive function. But the practice itself specializes in neuropsych testing and evidence-based ADHD interventions, which is why we sought it out. They also do school representation so I really feel like we’ve found a great ally here.

She helped me understand that there are options beyond trying to get him through this public school. We’re still going to try to make it work at his current school, but I’m less panicked thinking there are other options out there. We’re also going to apply to a local public charter school for gifted children. Admission is based on a lottery and I’m not entirely sure he’d be eligible based on his language scores, but we plan to apply every year and hope we get lucky. We know someone with neurodiverse kids who attend that school and she has raved about it. She’s offered to help walk us through the process, as it’s a bit involved.

I think if we work on it, we can get his vocabulary up where it needs to be to qualify for gifted education. The doctor has a recommendation for that. I actually think his vocabulary is much better than the tests show, especially with regard to his special interests. He can go on all day about supermassive black holes. He just has a problem articulating the meaning of the word, even if he knows it. I think it’s more of a pragmatic speech delay than a lack of knowledge.

The public charter school is a bit of a drive, but if it ends up really working for him, that’d be worth a move.

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That makes so much sense that sleep disorders would be a factor in executive functioning. As to the language, it’s so complex, right? Finding the word, or knowing the word in our minds but not being able to express it. There’s just so much there. I teach kids that struggle with spelling and grammar, but oh my, can they express their thoughts. I see the opposite, too. They will ace grammar tests, but the actual writing is problematic. Speech, speaking I think is even more challenging because you don’t always have the time to think about it like you do before it goes on paper.

I really hope this all works out for your family. It’s so heartbreaking to see our children struggle.

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So, all testing has been complete. We had a phone session with the doctor today.

The additional tests were also all over the place. He had tests ranging from below average to very superior. He struggled the most with memory, strategic planning and inhibition.

I think she’s thinking ADHD predominantly innatentive, but she hasn’t yet met him so I think she’ll see the hyperactivity.

But more important than the diagnosis is developing a deeper understanding of why he’s struggling. Her theory is that because of his high intelligence, most things come easily to him, and when they don’t, he gets overwhelmed and doesn’t know how to respond, which is where we are seeing the defiance at school. He’s so used to instant understanding that he doesn’t know how to learn. He’s also struggling with seeing the big picture because he’s such a concrete thinker. He’s easily overwhelmed (like his mother.)

This makes sense to me.

She’s putting together a care plan and some stuff for our IEP meeting prior to the full write up because she says it’s important to change the school’s perception of him, as right now they are just seeing the defiance.

She thinks the autism is a misdiagnosis, but she is very wrong about that. Perhaps her view will change when she meets him, but even if she doesn’t back down from that, this executive function issue is a piece we needed and I’m really glad we found her.

I’m still processing (just got off the phone) but my initial idea is that since his thinking is so concrete and zeroed in on detail, it’s possible that’s why social stories aren’t working for him. He has trouble reading context and generalizing information. I was thinking maybe he needs a very concrete procedural list of steps to follow when he doesn’t feel like doing something, is overwhelmed or struggling with transition. I’m not sure what that would look like yet, but something like, take a minute to regroup. Read the first step. Etc.

So we want to work on using skills to clean his room and do homework projects. Not just doing what he’s told (“start by cleaning up your magna tiles”) but learning how to decide where to start on his own and really strategize. Patience, patience, patience.

There’s still a part of me that wants this wrapped up and put behind us, but it’s not really that. It’s a marathon and it’s one ultimately he has to run, and we have to spend the next 13+ years teaching him how to run it.

I’m really glad we did this evaluation if only to help understand him better.

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We got the care plan. Official DX is ADHD predominantly innatentive, though there’s a note that it often presents as combined type due to other issues. And then on top of ADHD just a general note about deficits in memory, inhibition, and strategic planning that are greater than would be explained by ADHD.

Most helpfully she gave us a list of recommended accommodations to give to the school. We will be starting him in a program for improving executive function and therapy outside of school.

It’s been kind of a whirlwind, but this has been a very useful process and now I feel like we at least have a plan.

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Hurray!

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I hope the best for all of you. Keep us posted!

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Oh I’m SO GLAD. This all sounds immensely helpful!

Oh ha, yeah this is not totally dissimilar to my kid, although in her case it’s not because of her intelligence, she in particular gets easily overwhelmed by anything that doesn’t have a single right answer. I may or may not have told this story before: when she was in daycare, the daycare teacher (who did not understand her in the slightest) told me about how she had melted down, “and all I said to her was, ‘do you want the red or the blue pitcher?’” And I was like, well, yeah, of course she melted down, she didn’t know what the right answer was, and at that time she couldn’t understand the concept that any answer would be fine! (She went on in her school career to strongly dislike open-ended assignments that – again – had no single right answer, and they still aren’t her favorite, though she’s now developed some strategies for them.)

Concrete procedural list of steps have been useful for us. We didn’t twig to them as early as would have been nice for e.g. the red/blue pitchers, but… yeah.

It’s a marathon, but if you and he have a working plan (even if it changes as he grows) and support, that’s just so much of it right there.

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First week back and he’s had two Grow Notes in a row. Sigh. Yesterday he threw his grow note in the snow because he didn’t want us to find it. Then apparently had a 45 minute meltdown during after school care.

We’re looking at every alternative school available. We have a tour scheduled with one that provides 1:1 instruction for kids that for whatever reason don’t fit in the public school system. It’s college tuition-level expensive but we could probably get help. It would start in first grade.

That and an open house for the public charter school for gifted kids.

Gathering our options right now, but I do see this largely as an exit strategy.

We’ve started daily homework at home. You can see the struggle right there. He expresses frustration that he doesn’t know what to do and has a lot of trouble staying on task, we have to erase things frequently. It’s no small wonder he refuses his work at school - it’s clearly very difficult for him. Hard to start and hard to follow through. I’m hoping with daily homework though that he can learn how to start, how to determine what to do, how to follow through. (In all fairness to him, some of the assignments genuinely confused me.)

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He is so lucky to have you. As a teacher I’ve seen it from both sides. There are kids with challenges that get so much support at home and those who do not. As far as the homework, I rarely assign it unless it’s work that needs to be finished and we’ve started it in class. They know the plan, they know the instructions, they know what to do. You will make the right choice know that in your heart and mind.

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I have as well and agree that @Spice_Weasel is doing really well.

When I was teaching at a bilingual kindergarten in Taiwan, there was a boy on the spectrum. The parents were really proactive about getting him help, and it really made a difference. Other kids with issues didn’t have the same support at home and they didn’t make the same progress.

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Thank you guys, I really appreciate it and I’ve appreciated this space to work through everything.

We are getting really excited about this 1:1 academy. Their website heavily emphasizes special needs and they are equipped to provide gifted education while helping him catch up where he’s behind. Basically he’d be learning every subject at whatever level he is at. It’s like a private tutor with the resources of a school. They are fully accredited with a high rate of college placement, including our Alma Mater which is no joke academically.

And the school is 45 minutes from home but only 20 minutes from my work and 10 minutes from his. Which means my husband could pick him up after classes and take him to childcare if necessary.

The only thing is we’d have to find alternatives for that social piece. But we agree the first step is stabilizing him emotionally and academically. Maybe after three years or so at this school he’d be a good fit for the local public charter for gifted students or something more peer-oriented.

We will probably get help financially but we had to crunch the numbers to make sure if something happened and our financial support fell through we could still afford it, and it’s a stretch but I think we could make it work. If it’s the right fit for him we’ll move heaven and earth to make it work.

I’m SO glad I’m starting therapy tonight. It’s been tough processing this on my own.

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Like everyone else I want to say that you are doing an amazing job and he is so lucky to have you!

In kindergarten! That’s even worse than when my kids were in kindergarten. (And when I was in kindergarten, decades ago, we mostly just played. Sigh.) Poor kiddo.

(Erased something I wrote about a 1:1 academy in our area that I thought might be a branch of the same program, because I looked at ours again and it’s probably not – ours is only middle and high school. Anyway… it’s a model that seems like it can work!)

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Yes, it’s nationwide. It’s called Brightmont. Seems to have a good reputation.

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Ah nice! Not the same as the one in our town (Fusion Academy), but it sounds similar, and ours also is pitched to kids who don’t fit in the public school system for various reasons. My kids haven’t personally done it but I hear people seem to like it. Of course it’s always good to be on top of it in case it turns out not to be a great fit after all, but I know you will be!