What type of school?

[inlalaland]

Hi!
I am very new here. Still figuring this site out.
I was wondering for everyone who cares to share, what type of school do/did you send your autistic child(ren) to? Private, public, homeschool, charter? How do/did they do? Anything at all that you care to share about it please do!

If you are reading this and you're autistic and you want to share, please tell me what type of school you attend(ed) and anything else you care to share about it. Things you like, things you didn't like. Also, I can't recall if there is an age limit on this site, so if everyone is out of school please forgive me there.

My son will be starting school next year. He is "very" high functioning. He has a late birthday so he will be five very soon making him one of the oldest in his class when he starts next year. During his evaluation with the psychologist he ranked as high as she could go in spatial awareness. He was average in a lot of categories. He has been reading since he was three. He could count to 100 very early on. I've heard sometimes that autistic kids can fall behind that start off ahead in school. I've also heard of autistic kids being bored because they already know the things being taught. So I am just really curious and want to hear everyone's experiences. Thank you all in advance!

 

[Cryptid]

My parents sent me to public schools from the 1960s to the 1970s, so this was well before I could be diagnosed with an ASD. I survived 13 years of Hell-on-Earth, and eventually became what most consider a successful adult.

 

[VictorR]

I went to a regular school and for the most part attended regular classes.

For me, elementary school was a challenge in general given that everything is done together as a class, and I had a rather uneven profile (well above grade level at certain subjects, and struggling in others), and I would had much preferred a format more similar to high school or post-secondary where there's some core courses, but one could spend more time taking courses that specifically appealed to them.

Social connections was a challenge, and it didn't help that I have poor coordination and limited athletic ability (i.e. last to be picked in PE class, etc.) and so reflecting on my childhood what I wish I had the opportunity for was to play non-competitive sports in a supported environment outside of school. (and in my area, we do have such programs now, but not then)

Something I'd say to parents in general is that if you find your autistic child seems to have an interest in something, as long as it's healthy/appropriate, try to support and encourage it as much as you can. It might potentially turn into or lead to a career or otherwise open the door to other things.

 

[Outdated]

I also only went to public schools, and I could read and write a little and do some very basic maths before I started. This was back in the 60s and no one knew anything about autism back then. We had just moved back to the city so Mum walked my sister and me to school for the first couple of weeks so that we knew the way, then she started work and we were on our own.

We had a back yard full of fruit trees so in summer we used to go home for lunch but we didn't go in to the house. We'd just go out the back and stuff ourselves with fruit and have a swim in the pool before going back. I was picked on and bullied by other kids from the very start.

Sometimes I wouldn't go back to school after lunch. Sometimes I went home at morning recess and didn't go back. Sometimes I didn't even bother to go at all, I'd just sit in the gutter down the end of our street and watch for Mum to leave for work, then I'd go home again. I was locked out of the house but that didn't matter, I had toys to play with and the dog for company. I was always so much happier by myself.

Teachers never reported my absences, I think they were happier when I wasn't around.

I probably only went to school 2 or 3 days a week yet I was a straight A student. If I was allowed to learn at my own pace I could have finished highschool before I turned 12 and had a PhD by the time I was old enough to leave school. To me school was incredibly boring and a huge waste of time. The only value I saw in it was that it feeds fresh victims to bullies.

In every school photo my nose is in a different position on my face. I was kicked in the nuts that many times that when I reached puberty they retreated back up in to my abdomen for a while and I was never able to sire children. And I was expected to somehow learn social values from these people?

In high school they even held me back and made me repeat a year because I was socially immature, that was the final straw for me and I stopped going to school all together. I showed up for the first week of the year to find out who my teachers were then I showed up for the last week of each term to do exams. I still got straight As in everything.

For me school was just 11 years of torture camp. It provided me with little to no value academically or socially. The day I turned 16 I started applying for jobs and was out of there as soon as I was able. I never looked back.

When I started work I was still very much just a little kid mentally. I had no social skills at all, I learnt those from the people that I worked with who were really great people. It's a lot easier to learn social skills from people you look up to and admire. Something that always stuck with me is that all the people that picked on me and abused me during my early life were all Aussies that had grown up here, the people that I worked with and that treated me well were all migrants.

By the time I was 20 years old I was far more socially skilled than most people as well as being incredibly good at my trade. I had a very active and busy life and I had a lot of fun.

 

[Shevek]

My parents (AS mother) were useless as teachers. There was probably some expectation that my older sister would pass on what she had been told, and she didn't. I was sent to overcrowded, post-war schools, and pushed ahead a grade, which I assumed would leave a big hole in my education. I entered Gr. 9 at age 12, on shifts because the school board had not anticipated the baby boom getting to high school. On the first big science test, I thought a typo was a trick question and gave the only correct answer, but got a zero for it. This was discouraging. I never learned how to study; I just watched my marks go down as the lessons got harder. I did well in shop, and one year in Physics, when I had a brand-new teacher who gave a synopsis of the lesson at each end of his period. That I could pay attention to, as it didn't belabour the points and keep repeating them when I was expecting the lesson to be moving on.
I flunked gr. 11, getting closer to my age group, but my dad warned me he wouldn't let me repeat gr. 12, so when I got my results, I just didn't go home, at age 17. Mother had left two years earlier, and assumed it was all my decision for the rest of her life. After kicking around for a decade, I got interested in improving vehicle efficiency. I went to the library for the relevant engineering, and was subsequently invited to lecture to graduating engineers. I won prizes, but had never learned to work with people, and never found the business partner recommended by my successful heroes.
I am appalled by all the special help provided for AS kids now. It is all about putting all effort into acting normal, not developing a special talent. At least equal effort should be put into teaching NTs how to recognize and work with a competent, logical, and original thinker.

 

[vergil96]

I was a top student at school. The first time I heard the word autism was with regard to myself when I went to kindergarten. I didn't quite know how to join others playing and wasn't quite interested in playing with others. I was quite the little professor. It was a purely social difficulty that didn't last past kindergarten either. I learnt how to read and self-taught mathematics in kindergarten, could do math on my first day of it just with intuition. I read books at the age of 4, 5. I learnt everything earlier than others. Walking and speaking too. There was this lady at the kindergarten who said I didn't pay attention and wasn't ready for school, because I was too distractable, but it never proved true what she said.

As for boredom, intellectual stimulation is important, my parents taught me more at home after school and it kept me interested in studying. That was in elementary school, later they've found me academic extracurriculars to attend.

 

[Rodafina]

@inlalaland

You have noticed that your son is "very high functioning" and some of his strengths that you've describe will surely help him through school. I just wanted to mention something that seems pretty common among us based on discussions here on the forum. Terms to describe it are "uneven cognitive profile," "a spiky profile," or "splinter skills."

Some of us can have highly developed skills in certain areas while also having skills deficits in others. It becomes pertinent to a school aged child because it can help explain why a seemingly very intelligent and "high functioning" child may also run into some unexpected challenges and apparent skills deficits in school. An autistic child who seems well ahead of his peers in some ways may still require special support for other areas of functioning such as emotion recognition and expression, navigation of social relationships, managing sensory overstimulation.

It is good to focus on your child's strengths, but also important for caregivers and teachers to realize that this child still may need unique support to really thrive in school. If at all possible, I think a smaller school environment where there is adequate staff to give children individualized attention is the best scenario for most children.

Here's a link to more about the uneven profile of skills:
https://ausm.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Splinter-Skills-Resource.pdf#:~:text=A splinter skill is the ability to do,"spiky skills profile" that is typical of autism.

 

[vergil96]

managing sensory overstimulation.

I wish I got help with that earlier

 

[Misery]

Public school for me. Though my parents have since said that they wished they had homeschooled me instead.

As with many others I was bullied a lot, and generally when it came to the lessons and such, I found it to be an absolute waste of time. It was often... what, 45 minutes per period, and it would often take a couple of freaking weeks for some teacher to teach some concept that, these days, could be learned in 10 minutes on Youtube.

Due to that, well, I always say that school... all 12 or so years of it... taught me only a couple of things: How to read, how to write, the absolute most basic arithmetic (very, very badly), and near the end of highschool, how to type. Absolutely everything else I know, I learned outside of and despite school, not because of it. Computers in particular.

With all of that, I was a terrible student. Tended to get Ds and Fs a whole lot. Stuck in a place I hated with people I couldnt stand and having to listen to brain-meltingly boring lectures that took a month to do what could instead be done in days, just "because"? Even worse when so, so, SO much of what was being taught was bloody useless, and I knew it. Being constantly told "you'll definitely need to know all this stuff" really, REALLY didnt help.

Some classes also proved to be extra problematic because of the whole autism thing. Like I remember certain classes where chemicals or... I dont know, goopy things needed to be touched, and I've got a lot of tactile sensory issues, and chemicals make me nervous to deal with. Science related classes went about as well as it sounds, as did things like shop class or whatever else. Later on, by the time I'd hit highschool, I eventually just started outright refusing to do certain things rather than put up with the sensory triggers and get a failing grade anyway.

The absolute worst of it though was PE (though I just called it "gym class" at the time). I hate sports, and really... why in the funky heck would I ever want to be on some sort of freaking team with any of the little monsters that attended that place? PE was one of those "I refuse to do it" things. I got all my exercise outside of school instead, as I got into hiking through forests and whatnot.

And all of that while constantly being told that hey no, cant be myself at all, gotta be like all these other kids. Doesnt matter how much it hurts, BE LIKE THIS. What's that? Sensory issues? You arent supposed to have them, BE LIKE THIS. And worst of all, freaking art class. Not even allowed to be myself in terms of being creative. Dont make something unique and possibly interesting, only make this thing here in this way or you're doing art "wrong"... be like this.

These days, when I think back on it, I think of school not as a place of learning, but as a place where often uncaring idiots use hammers to smash you into some sort of shape that they think you should be. While giving you a general distrust of others as a magical bonus. Certainly what I got out of it.

I didnt realize until very recently just how much of an effect it all had on me either. It's been 24 years since I graduated, and I can still be made *very* angry about some things that happened there, since the impact of those things apparently has not faded even a little. It's been a recent and very frequent topic during sessions with my therapist.

On the plus side, I type really, *really* fast. I do use that skill every single day, so I guess I gotta give school a point for at least that.

That's all I'll say about all of it, or I'll get myself all fired up again.

 

[jsilver256]

Welcome.

I was in special ed for most of my primary school and had a number of behavior issues. Had occupational therapy, language therapy, after-school therapy, etc. However this was attributed to my deafness, so while many of the treatments were the same as one might receive for autism, it was not recognized as autism.

My youngest son, age 6, is ASD2 and gifted. He always had behavior issues, which we attributed to him being bored or being creative. But in kindergarten, it became more and more apparent that he had something else going on - the way he could not follow multi-step directions, destroyed stuff, ran out of class, etc. The aide ended up managing him almost full time.

Now, homeschooling is out of the question. We do not have the training or capability to teach him or give him the constant structure he needs. We just don't. Public schools are the only schools in our areas semi-equipped to handle these behavioral issues.

My son is in a very tricky position education-wise. He is obviously not suited for a mainstream classroom being in first grade. But he is incredibly intelligent. He can read close to a high school level now. He doesn't write-write but the sentences he writes are very crisp, spelled correctly, use advanced vocabulary - he has better handwriting than my fifth grader. He can do math way beyond his years and is working his way through third grade mastery (times table) at an after-school math academy.

I mention all this because, he falls in a strange situation where he does not qualify for IEP because despite the obvious behavioral issues, he is ... not impacted in learning. The school can provide him with language therapy, occupational therapy, etc... but ultimately, he doesn't qualfy for that stuff because he falls through the cracks of a system that doesn't take in account that autism doesn't mean intellectually disabled.

So we have to source all that therapy on our own. It's madness. We've joked that all the other kids in class should be put on IEPs because their learning is impacted (as a result of my son). But at least every classroom has an aide to help manage that.

We put my son in ABA after school three days a week. I think of it as mostly a structured environment where he can play and learn to not to be so destructive. The other two days, he will go to math academy and soccer. He loves ABA and is excited to go there.

Hope this helps.

 

[Peter Morrison]

I went to a regular school and for the most part attended regular classes.

For me, elementary school was a challenge in general given that everything is done together as a class, and I had a rather uneven profile (well above grade level at certain subjects, and struggling in others), and I would had much preferred a format more similar to high school or post-secondary where there's some core courses, but one could spend more time taking courses that specifically appealed to them.

Social connections was a challenge, and it didn't help that I have poor coordination and limited athletic ability (i.e. last to be picked in PE class, etc.) and so reflecting on my childhood what I wish I had the opportunity for was to play non-competitive sports in a supported environment outside of school. (and in my area, we do have such programs now, but not then)

Something I'd say to parents in general is that if you find your autistic child seems to have an interest in something, as long as it's healthy/appropriate, try to support and encourage it as much as you can. It might potentially turn into or lead to a career or otherwise open the door to other things.

It's hard to predict where and when learning difficulties may arise, and you should be prepared to address those needs with extra help. The world requires that we be able to interact with others and share experiences as well. A standard public school offers that. As VictorR explained, support special interests. It's good to be exposed to everything in a society, so diversity of any kind is beneficial. Give attention where attention is needed.

 

[Judge]

Public school for me as well. Somewhere between the ages of 9 and 10 everything seemed to go south for me, relative to socialization with my peers.

But I survived to go onto higher education, and much later in life to go to a vocational school.

As for the "learning process" itself, it never struck me as being easy. A key consideration why I still ponder whether or not I may have ADHD as well.

 

[FayetheAspie]

I don't have any children of my own, but I have ASD and ADHD. I was homeschooled and did very well. I was in the top 1% some years during high-school in certain subjects according to the end of year test results. There were other subjects that I was in the average range in. I believe that being homeschooled helped me learn because of the one on one teaching, the fact that I was not required to sit still as long as I was consistently working on my assignment, and the breaks to exercise between classes. I also think that it helps due to limiting exposure to consistent bullying. Almost anywhere that I interacted with other children, I was bullied so I am fairly certain that public school (or any school with a lot of other children) would have been a nightmare and would have negatively impacted my ability to learn.

 

[Judge]

I also think that it helps due to limiting exposure to consistent bullying. Almost anywhere that I interacted with other children, I was bullied so I am fairly certain that public school (or any school with a lot of other children) would have been a nightmare and would have negatively impacted my ability to learn.

I sometimes reflect on my life, wondering how much better I might have been on any number of levels without all the bullying I had to endure in public school. And at certain points of my public school life, that bullying did impact my ability to learn.

From my perspective, I'd say you dodged a big bullet.

 

[FayetheAspie]

Yes. Many of my interactions with other children were not positive. They did not like kids who were smart, liked science, and obeyed the rules.

 

[Peter Morrison]

The best education for a child is to be exposed to as much as possible. All the basic skills are important, but abstract learning needs to be included. My school had 1 field trip to a farm. That was the extent of our education about agriculture. To augment traditional education, take trips to museums, historical sites, city hall, a railroad station, and examine everything in detail. Ask and answer questions about oil paint pigments, tools used in sculpting, and explain how the government has different offices for various elements in our society. Public, and private schools, have limitations with time and financial resources. Many schools function like a bureaucracy. You can even ask a drama theater to allow you in to examine how stage plays are put together. Education is about understanding. Go on a hike in the woods and examine the plants and trees. Follow up with on-line research. The more vocabulary you are exposed to, the better your reading skills will be. Use the Internet for something productive. Learn to discern what the junk is.

 

[vergil96]

I had some language therapy and physiotherapy but privately, outside school. It was in kinderdarten and early elementary school.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

Public school all the way, looking back was pretty obvious I was on the spectrum, no interest in playing with other kids during recess.