Supported Homeschool

JJJ

Active Member
Well, it looks like they are not going to be able to handle Tigger at his home school. They have thrown every support that they or I could think of at him (1:1 aide, small classroom (4 students, 3 staff), daily counseling/social work, incentive charts, behavior plans, modified work, breaks).

They are having a staff meeting this week to try and generate more ideas to get him through the year. They said I am welcome to come but since it is not an IEP/FBA meeting I do not have to if I don't want to. I'm still thinking about it but I'm leaning towards not going because staff may be more willing to throw out ideas if they don't have to worry about saying stuff in front of mom (the ones that know me would say anything but there will be some higher ups from the Special Education coop that have observed Tigger this year that I haven't met).

Any alternate placement is at least 90 minutes away and he is way too young for that. I don't even know if those places take 2nd graders.

I think we are going to give him another few weeks to see if Spring turns things around (maybe a little SAD going on???) but if he continues to become violent when he arrives at school, I think we will go on some kind of supported homeschool.

What can I ask for at home besides a tutor???
 

pepperidge

New Member
I think I may have posted this before, but my older son tends to the depressed anxious end of things. He hated school, it was a major struggle to get him there, and often when he got there he refused to do any work. He had all the aides etc but it didn't seem to help.

He is now in sixth grade and I feel like we have made progress of sorts.

We got him on Lamictal which really helped the depression (along with Risperdal, which I think helped lower some of the anxiety). that was key. This year, after school refusual mode set in again, we went to a shortened day. (Started it with 3 hours). This has made a huge difference. He feels like he gets a lot of parent time, but is going for his most important academic classes.

I thought alot about homeschooling him, but didn't want to because of his opposition to school work, plus school was the only thing he was doing outside of home. So right now I am pretty happy with the way things have worked out.

I might look at medication changes, and also at some part time arrangement if you can arrange the transportion.

good luck. we had several years of real hell on the school front.
 

Martie

Moderator
JJJ,

"Supported" home schooling basically means a tutor comes however often and you are on your own otherwise. I would ask for 3 hours PER DAY--and see how that goes over. Not well I would guess--but the original purpose of homebound was for medically ill children--short term. Then a very small amount of instruction makes sense because of the child's physical frailty. However, use of home tutoring with very low levels of support for EBD difficult child's makes no sense to me.

Maybe others will have specific suggestions regarding what to ask for if Tigger cannot make it to school. by the way, I don't know whether you are aware of this or not, but I had good success with half days for ex-difficult child in both 7th and 8th grades. It actually kept him in public school two years longer than otherwise would have been possible.

Martie
 
Top