u/golfingphysio1

I shared this on the other homeschool subreddit and someone recommended I share it here for more advice :)

TL;DR- My kids burned out in the public school system and we're exploring other avenues, including homeschool. Looking for any advice for success including curriculum suggestions (preferably free or cheap) and pro tips to make it successful. Ages are 8th grade, 6th, 4th, 2nd, and kindergarten. (Yep we're crazy haha). 13 year old and 7 year old are high functioning autistic and 13 year old has a PDA profile. Thanks in advance!

Hi guys,

I never thought I'd be making a post here, but here we are. I was the biggest public school advocate you could find, believing that "kids need exposure to all sorts of people. People who think differently than them, believe differently than them, and sometimes who can be just plain mean, so they can learn how to interact with all varieties in the real world."

Life has a funny way of humbling you.

Last year, my oldest son (13 years old) called my wife from school and told her he was quiting. He had been in autistic burnout for a while and hit his limit. We transitioned to online school through the district. It wasn't perfect, but he wasn't actively melting down every few hours.

A few months later the wheels fell off with my whole crew. The 11 and 9 year old started avoiding school like crazy. My wife would hang out in the office with them for hours while the school counselor talked with them and the principal talked with them and we set up 504's with them. She would sit outside their classroom to try and be a safe person and help them feel comfortable enough to go in the classroom and learn, but they were getting frustrated and my wife was burning out.

If my wife wasn't there, the 9 year old would elope. One time he made it two miles from the school with the principal following him. The police offered him a ride back and he was like "nope."

They do therapies, take medications, we've tried any number of parenting approaches, and ultimately we decided the kids needed a break and so did we. That was last January.

We told the district we were starting "homeschool", but really what we were doing was trying to stabilize these anxious and agitated little fellers.

It was crazy hard at first. Massive meltdowns regularly. Hitting. Screaming. Breaking things. My wife got so burnt out I thought I'd have to take her to the ER for an inpatient psych stay.

Our oldest has PDA autism, so we just started trying a low demand approach with all of them, and little by little, they started healing and changing.

Now, all these months later, home feels stable. Meltdowns are infrequent. Peace is restored. They've returned to participating in extra curriculars, playing with friends, helping around the house, and just enjoying life. (While they were all burned out they quit everything and didn't want to see anybody.)

So... School is on the horizon and I'm feeling nervous. We've already decided that we're done with public school (see. Here's life making me eat my own word and change my beliefs. Public school is certainly not for everyone!)

The options we're looking into include a tuition free charter school in the neighborhood, online school through the district, or homeschool.

I was shocked when my wife considered homeschool as an option since she's so overwhelmed and has so much on her plate (we have 6 kids ages 13 and under). But she is so committed to helping them thrive, whatever it takes. She's quite the mama bear.

Anyway. If we go the homeschool route, how can we make it successful? Any curriculum recommendations for these age ranges? (8th grade, 6th grade, 4th, 2nd, and Kindergarten.) How to prevent it from becoming a power struggle with my wife and the kids? It's a real concern with my oldest's PDA profile.

Also, as I was searching for your subreddit, one of the first ones that came up was "homeschool recovery", full of anecdotes of people who found homeschool harmful. I'm sure there are many who could say the same about their public school experience, but I wanted to hear your thoughts about why that subreddit might exist and if homeschooling how to ensure an appropriate education so my kids aren't posting on it one day haha.

Any advice would be appreciated for two total newbies! Thanks in advance.

I just barely got accused of sounding like ai on a different post in a different subreddit haha. which got me thinking. How do we survive this ai revolution and the growing suspicion over anything potentially being AI generated?

I agree that we need to protect industries that involve human creativity, but sometimes the AI sniffers out there are so intense. And I think maybe it's a compliment to AI that it's so dang hard to tell what's real and what's not anymore.

I've written a few independently published middle grade fantasy novels for my kids to enjoy. I had the thought many times as I was writing that I should sprinkle in a few typos here and there. Also, I avoid the emdash like the plague, even in places I feel it belongs. I'm like, "hmm... How can I rephrase this to work around needing an emdash." My wife is my editor and she'd go through and add them and I'd delete them. When I told her why, she said "that's so stupid. Just write the way you want to." I said if people suspect AI they will crucify you.

Same thing with the cover art: my brother in law is a digital artist and drew the cover art on his phone. I've got the progress sketches to prove it. Now that AI has come along, suddenly his art style looks suspicious and I'm worried about my book looking like AI to anyone scrolling Amazon.

Apparently it's even bled into calling other users out on their posts if they're well written and organized 😆 So where does that leave us? How do we navigate this collision between human creativity and computer super intelligence?

Submission statement: Generative AI is quickly reaching the point where polished writing and digital artwork can be mistaken for AI output even when created entirely by humans. This raises questions about how we'll establish authenticity, preserve trust in creative work, and whether expectations around authorship will change over the next decade. What systems might emerge to distinguish human-created work, and will that distinction even matter in the long term?

TL;DR- My kids burned out in the public school system and we're exploring other avenues, including homeschool. Looking for any advice for success including curriculum suggestions (preferably free or cheap) and pro tips to make it successful. Ages are 8th grade, 6th, 4th, 2nd, and kindergarten. (Yep we're crazy haha). 13 year old and 7 year old are high functioning autistic and 13 year old has a PDA profile. Thanks in advance!

Hi guys,

I never thought I'd be making a post here, but here we are. I was the biggest public school advocate you could find, believing that "kids need exposure to all sorts of people. People who think differently than them, believe differently than them, and sometimes who can be just plain mean, so they can learn how to interact with all varieties in the real world."

Life has a funny way of humbling you.

Last year, my oldest son (13 years old) called my wife to "quit" school. He had been in autistic burnout for a while and hit his limit. We transitioned to online school through the district. It wasn't perfect, but he wasn't actively melting down every few hours.

A few months later the wheels fell off with my whole crew. The 11 and 9 year old started avoiding school like crazy. My wife would hang out in the office with them for hours while the school counselor talked with them and the principal talked with them and we set up 504's with them. She would sit outside their classroom to try and be a safe person and help them feel comfortable enough to go in the classroom and learn, but they were getting frustrated and my wife was burning out.

If my wife wasn't there, the 9 year old would elope. One time he made it two miles from the school with the principal following him. The police offered him a ride back and he was like "nope."

They do therapies, take medications, we've tried any number of parenting approaches, and ultimately we decided the kids needed a break and so did we. That was last January.

We told the district we were starting "homeschool", but really what we were doing was trying to stabilize these anxious and agitated little fellers.

It was crazy hard at first. Massive meltdowns regularly. Hitting. Screaming. Breaking things. My wife got so burnt out I thought I'd have to take her to the ER for an inpatient psych stay.

Our oldest has PDA autism, so we just started trying a low demand approach with all of them, and little by little, they started healing and changing.

Now, all these months later, home feels stable. Meltdowns are infrequent. Peace is restored. They've returned to participating in extra curriculars, playing with friends, helping around the house, and just enjoying life. (While they were all burned out they quit everything and didn't want to see anybody.)

So... School is on the horizon and I'm feeling nervous. We've already decided that we're done with public school (see. Here's life making me eat my own word and change my beliefs. Public school is certainly not for everyone!)

The options we're looking into include a tuition free charter school in the neighborhood, online school through the district, or homeschool.

I was shocked when my wife considered homeschool as an option since she's so overwhelmed and has so much on her plate (we have 6 kids ages 13 and under). But she is so committed to helping them thrive, whatever it takes. She's quite the mama bear.

Anyway. If we go the homeschool route, how can we make it successful? Any curriculum recommendations for these age ranges? (8th grade, 6th grade, 4th, 2nd, and Kindergarten.) How to prevent it from becoming a power struggle with my wife and the kids? It's a real concern with my oldest's PDA profile.

Any advice would be appreciated for two total newbies! Thanks in advance.