Nomad, you said, "The psychologist that I heard speak against homeschooling special needs children implied that they will AVOID learning how to behave appropriately in school and even if they are being radically difficult, LEARN is what they must do."
One problem I have with this psychologist's statement is that it implies the special needs student is CAPABLE of learning how to interact appropriately, and that if removed this will feed a RELUCTANCE to learn to interact. This is not the case with difficult child 3, at least - first, he simply hasn't been capable, but he has very much wanted to learn to get on with other kids all the same. His desire to learn to get on has not diminished since beginning correspondence; in fact, he makes good use of every opportunity he does have, and in the smaller doses he now has, is doing much better.
An argument to put before that psychologist - if the social problems at the mainstream school are age-related (such as a lot of bullying - I found that by senior high school, for example, there wasn't the same problem) then taking the special needs kid out of the loop for that period of time when they are most a target, did help. Also, when a special needs child is older they often have more skills to cope - certainly that is our experience. The bullying hasn't stopped with difficult child 3 at home, but his exposure to it is greatly reduced and at times when it isn't impacting his learning. And he IS coping with it in a much more mature way and thereby less of a target.
Also, if you realise that the school environment is NOT a typical or normal environment and that nowhere else in life are you put with a group of other people the same age as you, with one more senior person in charge, then you can see that learning to fit in at school can be rendered entirely unnecessary, should you be choosing to never send the child back to a mainstream setting.
However, if you intend only doing this for a short time then a child who is being home-schooled for social reasons or anxiety related to poor social skills, then some preparation for re-entering mainstream will need to take place.
What finally convinced us of the speciousness of the "he needs to be in mainstream to learn appropriate social interaction" argument, was the writing of an Aspie teen called James Williams.
http://www.jamesmw.com/
It made perfect sense to me and was the final nail in the coffin of the arguments used by admin to block difficult child 3's application for correspondence study.
Even if difficult child 3 goes to university, the classes (tutorials at least) will be much smaller and there is far more support available. The maturity and age range of students is far broader and he would be much safer than in the playground of his mainstream primary (elementary) school. By then he will be better able to cope as he is constantly getting more self-control of his Sensory Integration Disorder (SID), distractibility and anxiety issues. His social education is now much better directed and giving us much more positive improvement. In general, he is learning appropriate social interaction from adult models; and since we're not letting him back into a mainstream education setting until he is an adult, we feel this is appropriate for him.
I was a child in an adult family. We did a lot together as a family and as a result, I blended in with adults rather than children. I had social problems as a child mostly because I was unused to 'getting on' with other kids. One of my sisters had similar problems. But as adults - neither of us have any trouble at all. And we are spending a lot more of our lives as adults, than as children.
I just figure - we skipped a stage, that's all.
Marg