I am so glad that I found this forum. My son is 14 and is in 7th grade. He has been struggling since beginning of 6th grade with "hating and not wanting to goto school." In 6th grade he was bullied and that kid was punished and suspended from school. He never bugged my son again! I made it clear to the Principal that if this happened again I would press charges. Needless to say, they have watched my son and made sure he knew he could walk out of class at anytime and not get into trouble from his teachers. So, this year, no bulling, but he is so stressed out with the work, his grades, the amount of pressure in the 7th grade that he just crys and panics as we are driving to school. I have tried everything. I have begged, threatened, tried giving rewards for going, taking things away for not going, talking to his teachers, (who say he is happy, friendly, does not cause problems, never is disrespectful, does his work, etc. they see none of the anxiety), and I have had him get called down to the counselor twice a week. None of it has helped. He has missed 17 days this year and we have just begun the 3rd quarter. For 1 1/2 years I have struggled with the thought of home schooling and I have given him other options such as changing schools, etc. He just wants to be homeschooled. So, after realizing that it is severe stress on him and I have to remove my fears of homeschooling and focus on him, I started doing research online and I have talked to his IEP teacher. She wants what I beleive will be the best for my son and has not tried to talk me out of homeschooling. However, the hard side is this. My son is very strong willed and at the age where we argue and he likes to give me a lot of ****. Ie, if I tell him to do something he will say "no". Yes he does this when I tell him it is time to goto school too. As well as many other things. I don't take no for an answer so yes, he does end up doing what I say but the fear of us arguing and me tryingn to get him to do his studies if i homeschool him is my greatest fear. I know I can teach him and I am lucky where I work out of my home on my own hours so I have complete ability to do this. I had the talk with my husband last night. His fear is that our son will think it is going to be a "free" time to play the xbox and will bully me and stress me out and not do his work or listen to me. I have to say I am also afraid of this. So, I looked into how to get him back into public school if this does happen and I made sure I explained it to my son as well. Wow! any advice from anyone would be great help as well as the best place to find and get curriculum workbooks etc
Thank you all very much. Sorry to ramble on.
Anne