How the Socialization of Jason Improved When He Became a Home Schooler

When Jason started his special education class at a new school, the children were being  bussed in two different directions. I would often pick them up in the afternoons, since Jason's bus ride was longer than desireable. He was doing well academically with the extra attention, and we still read to both children at home. Jason had also started soccer, though he wasn't very enthusiastic about having so much time taken up with practice. He still preferred just playing in the neighborhood. Sarah was enrolled in competitive swimming.

At this point in his life, Jason looked at every acquaintance who didn't pick on him as a friend. He accepted everyone who accepted him, and wanted to visit and play with his classmates. Fortunately most of his classmates were not conveniently located for these play sessions, since the new school was in another town. Many of the children in his class had some very bad habits we did not want Jason to imitate. Their reasons for being placed in special education were much different than Jason's, and many of their behaviours were socially unacceptable. For this reason we did not encourage contact outside of school. He got along well with the children, who were probably glad he was kind to them when many at the school weren't .

Toward the end of that school year, Jason's teacher told me his test scores were too high to keep him in special education and he would have to go back into regular classes at his neighborhood school. You might expect this would come as good news, but it didn't. You see, there were only two first grade teachers at the neighborhood school, and you had no choice as to which your child would have. One of them had the reputation of hating any boy who was not academically superior and making their lives miserable by berating them and using a lot of sarcasm in front of the class. As a protective mom who had known this woman had left better adjusted and more secure children in tears and hating to go to school, I was not willing to take a 50-50 chance on getting his woman as Jason's teacher. When I picked Sarah up that afternoon, I spoke to her teacher about the situation and she told me to talk to Dr. Calvin, who was head of special services and knew both children, since she was also privately Sarah's therapist by now.

The next day when I picked Jason up, I mentioned to his teacher that Jason's scores had also been high when he was placed into special education and that I would speak to Dr Calvin.  Before I had a chance to do so, I got a call from the head of special education saying  he'd do anything I wanted. I told him I wanted Jason to stay in special education, where he was thriving, and that I wanted him moved to the same school as Sarah. That's what happened.

That next year went very well academically for Jason. He was in a 1-3 grade combination class, and his teacher knew how to motivate him with extra attention. He was soon doing everything the third graders were doing. (But still, that was special education third grade) He had no problems with his classmates, but Sarah began to have a lot of problems with hers when her teacher went on sabbatical and was replaced with a man. That left a very attractive Sarah as the only girl in a fourth grade class, and the boys made her life miserable with comments such as  how they'd like to "lay" her. The principal said she couldn't control what happened on the playground, that the teachers couldn't see and hear everything, but she would put Sarah in a reading resource room after the female aide in Sarah's class went home before the last period. I made up my mind then to look for a private school the next year.

Since the children's last school was very supportive of home education, they allowed my son to join the school scouting program, even though he was not still a student at the school. I was happy about this, because this made it possible for Jason to still socialize with boys whose parents had similar values to ours. We knew we could count on the scout leaders to work on building character along with outdoor skills. Jason was also active in the youth group at church, and we had joined the local chapter of our home school support group which had regular activities. Other families who lived close to us also belonged to the group, so our children could arrange to play together from time to time. Mostly though, Jason's socializing was pretty unstructured.

When Kosta had left for Seattle, our family was separated by the miles, and Jason was missing having a man to do things with. He soon met one around the corner from us, the same way he had met me. He'd seen a man working on fixing something in his driveway and asked about it. I was soon hearing a lot about Terry. Terry was a fireman who lived with his wife on the corner two blocks away. He was home a lot during the day because of this and was usually working on a car, boat, trailer, or other interesting project. He let Jason help him. (Yes, we had gone to meet Terry and his wife, and they had passed our scrutiny. ) He became one of Jason's closest friends, and gave Jason his first lawn mowing Job. Terry didn't have any children, and Kosta had to go to Massachusetts on contract the next year, flying back and forth about once a month for a weekend. I was glad Jason had a man's inlfuence.

Jason also loved it when one of Kosta's friends who had turned to gold prospecting when he'd left the aerospace industry came to visit us every few weeks. He loved to sit and listen to Floyd's adventures of finding and processing gold and living without leaving a paper trail. When we took our mother-son trip to Sacramento during Jason's last year, one thing he insisted on doing was panning for gold in the Sacramento River.

Jason also had plenty of friends in the neighborhood who were near his own age. He'd met them while riding his bike in the neighborhood. One became his closest friend, the one Jason would have named as best friend. Another also became significant. I'll call him D. D was a foster child about two  years older than Jason. His foster dad was a teacher at a local high school and a mutual friend knew the family well, so I knew Jason would be well supervised there. Jason was gifted with mechanical aptitude and loved building things and working on hands-on projects. So did D. Although Jason had lots of friends, D did not. Jason was his only friend that I know of. D was difficult to get along with and tended to pester people. He was very insecure and, like many children who have been in and out of the foster care system for years,  he was manipulative and difficult for his foster parents to handle. Jason was able to understand him and accept him, and the two built things together, including what we dubbed "the Hart cart" to be pulled by a bicycle, and a tree house in our back yard. If D's pestering became too annoying, Jason would just bring that play session to an end, calmly, and they'd play again on another day.  Besides these two friends, Jason had a couple more from the youth group and they went back and forth to each other's homes or went to ride bikes together. With yet another friend he enjoyed computer activites. We are still in touch with that friend, whom Jason was spending more time with in his last years.

Home education had given Jason more opportunities for desirable social interaction than he'd  had when he had to spend six hours of at school, another hour going to and from school, and another hour or so doing homework each day. That left little time for family life or play with friends on weekdays. Home education was individualized, so the lessons didn't take as long to complete. That left more time to play with friends or pursue special interests. Jason also had more time to explore on his own before and after his lessons.

He was extremely interested in construction, and there was a lot of it going on around our neighborhood. Every morning about 6 he would jump on his bike and ride over to the nearest project, where he would sit with the men and talk to them while they drank their coffee before starting work. Some even let him pound in a few nails until one sad day the foreman said he couldn't do that any more because of liability issues. After that he could only spend coffee time with them, but he still asked a lot of questions and learned a lot.

One afternoon he came home from a bike ride especially excited. Seems he had connected with a geologist on the contruction site who had told him there was a fault under it. He also brought home some clay from the site the geoloigist had given him. He had asked a lot of questions and had learned a lot more about geology than I had yet taught him. Now he was really interested in it because he saw what it had to do with real life.

There were many of Jason's friends I knew about. There were many more I did not find out about until Jason's memorial service when he died in 1991 at the age of fourteen. He had evidently met and formed relationships with many adults while on his bike rides. He must have had his rounds, knowing who would be working outside at what time, and he probably stopped to chat a few minutes with each of his friends he found outside as he rode by. We heard from some of these at his memorial service. Some things we didn't know until after his service, which was attended by over 400 people, many of whom were adults we had not met. We do remember Terry standing there in tears. He later told us the content of their conversations, and they were not just small talk. They were man to man and heart to heart.

We also heard from the mother of one of Jason's friends at youth group. She said that most of the young people ignored her and other adults, but Jason would always come by and  say hello to her in the car when she had come to pick up her daughter.

It was a couple of weeks later we got a letter that was addressed to the name of our church -- just that. It had gone to the dead letter office and had somehow got to us from the church. It was from another of Jason's adult friends. He'd been out of town during the memorial service and hadn't known of Jason's death. Somehow they had the local paper in the car on the way home and his wife was reading it to him. When she got to the news storry about Jason's death, he first wouldn't believe it was that Jason. When his wife confirmed it after seeing the picture, he said he had to pull over to the side of the road  because the tears were blinding him. He lived not too far from Terry and D. We found out from D's parents where he lived and went to meet him and thank him for his note.

After Jason's death, D coudn't handle it.  Terry tried to help D with his grief and took him on the boat ride he had promised both the boys, but Jason didn't live long enough to go. D later joined the miitary. A much younger boy Jason sometimes visited on Sunday afternoons also mourned, saying Jason had been his best friend.

After Jason had the extra time home education allowed him, he was a caring friend to many of all ages. The time to develop a strong bond with his family and to meet and choose friends with common interests rather than just those he saw at school made his socialization more like what he would encounter in the real world of work later on. He had learned to carry on conversations in depth with his peers and with adults both. Though I am sure he would have been social even had he stayed in school, he would not have had the time for such diverse interaction with all ages. School definitely would have cramped his social style and stunted it by limiting his opportunites to meet the people available only during the time he would have been in school. I see no way his socialization would have improved by being in school.