Discussion Are there many homeschooled people here?

[FlufflesAway]

I think homeschooling damages a child beyond repair once a certain threshold is passed, and that's probably after early social-skills are learned. If your child doesn't get to socialize as a child, with other children, some part of the brain just collapses. I've talked to 'mental health' professionals and I just don't think they understand. I have great difficulty _trying_ to talk in the first place, and I just can't outline just how despairing and insane-inducing isolation was due to 'homeschooling'. They always brush it off. I think they partly don't believe me.

"Oh, you grew up isolated? Like in the country?"
No, in the suburbs. But we weren't allowed to leave the house. We never left the house.

"Why did you parents homeschool you? (Fishing for mental-disabilities that would prevent them from sending them to school.)"
Because they're religious loons who think satan is in everything. They were like a cult!! But an isolated cult of 1 family! IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. MY PARENTS ARE MENTALLY ILL.

It's not fair. I didn't want to grow up like this. Why did no one stop my parents? Why did no one help us? It wasn't just me, my parents had multiple children. TOO MANY CHILDREN! We're all adults now, and none of us are "functioning". I want to commit suicide, but I'm scared every single one of my siblings will follow me. One has said as much. They've all tried themselves, and I've tried and been hospitalized.

The things the therapists say are just so hurtful.
"It seems like you haven't really tried."
"Well you haven't explained why you can't do this..."
"You're very nice, I think anyone could be your friend." (Ha ha ha ha! I've never had a friend.)

Just because I present myself "well" (which I think is an extreme attempt to be anything NOT like my father) they think I'm ok, and just need encouragement.

I'm not ok. I've been isolated so long I don't feel like a human. I have tinnitus and visual snow syndrome. I can't talk to people. I'm in a share place now, and I hide in my closet when I can hear one of the roommates. I'm just pure shame and regret. I can't stand being around other people, they scare me and make me feel guilty. I ruin their day. I shouldn't exist near people.

Antidepressants don't seem to do anything. I personally think I have ADHD, but as an adult without school reports (BECAUSE I DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL) I think it's too difficult, and expensive anyway. There's something wrong with me, but even if it could be medicated I'm too far along in life. They don't get it.

"How long have you been feeling suicidal?"
My whole life.
"What was the recent trigger?"
Ha ha ha ha ha ha

 

[Hunterer]

I was not homeschooled because my country does not allow it. You cannot simply force your child to not go to school. This will only make your child more and more antisocial, deprived of connections with other people, deprived of knowledge (although most of the time, this knowledge is quite useless, but still.)

Being homeschooled is not the best option, but I also say that going to school is not the best thing ever. I suffered a lot there, for a long 6 years. When the pandemic came, we had to stay home in quarantine, and when that happened, I was very happy, because I would be away from those people who made my life hell... However, 2 years later, I had to go back to school and I completely forgot how to socialize and I forgot how to study too, and then my grades started to drop, it was horrible. So while the time at home was good, it was also bad for me, especially because before all of this, I already had to deal with anxiety and social phobia.

But we weren't allowed to leave the house. We never left the house.

I identify with this part, because ever since I was very little I saw children playing in the street, but I could never get close to them, except for one time. My family never let me play with the other children and they were always controlling what I could and couldn't do, and they still do this to this day, and I'm already an adult, I'm 18. Because of this, I spent a large part of my childhood at home, without contact with other people, and even when I went to school and made new friends, they thought that the people I hung out with weren't good enough for me. And now, here I am, dysfunctional and lonely, with several problems and literally no one to support me. This is another reason why I'm going to CTB, the loneliness is slowly consuming me.

 

[ColorlessTrees]

Spot on. I'm in the same boat (albeit for very different reasons) but I feel very seen. That's crazy, because I also have visual snow and tinnitus. I dropped out of school very early due to months of staff abuse as a result of my anxiety disorder, and spent the entirety of my childhood & adolescence basically confined to my house in the suburbs. The only friend I had I drifted apart from after awhile due to our extreme differences in lifestyle. No outings. My mom was a teacher, but because of the unresolved trauma from said abuse I refused to do work and she gave up after awhile; so I do not even have a proper education.

It's extremely damaging to homeschool a child without, at the very least, taking measures to ensure proper development, such as socializing in groups, keeping up a proper curriculum, getting regular breaks from the house/isolation, etc. It's borderline if not outright neglect as a child cannot really make the best decisions for their future on their own, and it put me in a horrible position as an adult with other compounding physical/mental issues. I was so sheltered and am as a result so spacey and lacking basic skills that I can't keep up in work/edu/social enviroments at all.

 

[sickgirlzis]

i was as well. made me very much anti homeschool and religion. i still live with my family because I have nowhere else to go.

i used to go to school, which made it even worse that we had to pack up and live in a shittier place where my mom could attempt to indoctrinate me and force me to live with the man who sa'd me just because she wanted to be a stay at home mom and not have a job. i was too old when she started homeschooling me to even believe her crap, but it's what pushed me over the edge and made me feel even worse.

I can't believe other people want to do this to their children, it's the most awful thing ever, especially the isolation. i don't think ill ever recover on missing out on some important years of school that everyone else got to experience because of my own mothers foolishness. i know it's just dumb teenage years to everyone else but it's just awful that I never really got to be a teenager, and yet I still feel so childish.

 

[Seiba]

I was homeschooled starting from age twelve. I did not get a job until I was twenty two. I was educationally neglected so my education doesn't really exist beyond two months of sixth grade.

I was also not socialized, I had no real life friends for that decade. I'm on a phone and I'm a bit tired so I'm sorry for a lackluster reply.

I relate about the therapist bit. I tried therapy earlier this year, and I was honest about the neglect. My therapists response was "you seem to write very well, though!" and "I thought it was illegal to be homeschooled unless you were sixteen or older". That aside was dismissing it with "people go back to school/college all the time when they're older, it's not what you think"

Just cookie cutter go get social connections, go enroll into college. You feel disqualified from being human and experience little in the way of positive emotions? Why haven't you simply fine something you find enjoyable? Therapy was a waste time.

Maybe things would have stayed the same if I was enrolled into actual school, but I'd like to think there was a chance my emotional temperament would be different.