Difficult Day

Am sure I will post lots of these, though since I started home educating, these days are now occasional rather than weekly when we would be at loggerheads with one another.

The issue today was Maths. He could not understand it, he would not read the information to help him understand it, he could not see the point of reading it or learning it because it had no relevance to his future. Am sure that many neuro typical teenagers have the same resistance. So I adopted typical parent tactics, rattled on about his future, good job, wage etc and the final weapon in my arsenal was the removal of his computer until he came downstairs and LEARNT it.

He then became very sad and talked about how he was scared of his future. He does not feel ready yet for GCSES. I guess he isn't really. A few months ago, I met some of the organisers of the Dyspraxia Foundation and she told me that her son was 26 but acted like a 23 year old. The emotional maturity does not magically catch up it seems. Even though there is less of an obvious difference between a 23 and 26 year old, she could still see it. Throughout his life boy will often catch up with his peers to then have rapid changes of rules and expectations foisted upon him whilst he catches his breath.

Sometimes I think the girl is more emotionally mature and she is 3 years younger than him.

When I started home educating, I made it clear that I could not teach him GCSE level. This is starting to look as if I am going to have to. We have an Education and Health plan but that is not doing anything at the moment, it just loosely talks about supporting me with home educating him, so far, so nothing. The council want him to go back to school, I don't think that will happen either. The whole system of having to wear uniform, be timetabled and somebody else's routine to adhere to, let alone cope with the social skills, the chaos of lots of pupils is just an insurmountable task. I could join the millions of people who claim that this is life and he just has to get used to it, trust me I have tried. I see all of the teenagers walk past my house in their uniforms and my heart still sinks as I look out on a world that I can not be part of any longer.

But, I remember the tantrums, long and hard tantrums, the constant walking on egg shells, the girl crying in her bed because she was too afraid to come downstairs in case he hit her. I see a boy now who will laugh, reach out to touch me on my arms as a sign of his affection and gently tease his sister. This is our new world and we love it.

Anyway, after him getting the hang of his maths and answering all the questions correctly we went to our Home Ed group. As per usual he had the other kids laughing at his jokes which he tells in a very dead pan manner, I exchanged the horror stories of the morning with the other mothers who had similar things happen to them too. We are normal in our own way.