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[SJC <indexer AT localnet.com>]

My 3 kids (now 39, 35, and 31) were "unschooled" many years before I 
ever heard the word, in Virginia's tidewater area (a particularly rabid 
bastion of  stay-inside-the-lines).

It came about when my firstborn was diagnosed as profoundly retarded at 
birth and institutionalized without my consent (or knowledge, initially) 
in the area state "school for the mentally retarded".  I took him home 
(and promptly was charged with the federal offense of kidnapping....that 
was years' worth of battle) and it was of course clear to me that 
something was not square with the kid but I'd been working for the past 
seven years with retarded (now call developmentally disabled if you want 
to be pc) kids, many of them infants, and this kid did not fit the 
clinical picture.  So I kept him out of sight of those who would remove 
him from his home and simply observed him closely for 'successes' (not 
screaming for one minute in the beginning, is a goal I clearly remember, 
although basically he screamed at the top of his lungs for about 20 
hours a day for 2 years). There were many days I was tempted to throw in 
the towel, but.....he was my kid.  Weird as he was, I loved him and 
wanted the best I could supply for him; "they" were not interested in 
'him', but in statistics, studies, blah, blah.....

So he stayed home and gradually learned to take nourishment, open his 
eyes, all the things one assumes a new baby will do.  He had some very 
serious medical issues and we had to move to get anyone to treat him, as 
the local doctors to a person refused to treat 'that kid' whose mother 
was crazy, keeping him at home.  Who does she think she is?  Eventually 
we got all those repairs made, and he was up walking (well, sorta), 
doing some talking.  He was a nutty kid.  Ate anything he could get in 
his mouth; you'd be surprised how many dangerous things there are in an 
already kidproofed house....routinely banged into the door jamb rather 
than go through door on first try--at top speed.  Literally bounced off 
walls.  Found out later he had no sense of taste, pain yet, no sense of 
perspective/distance.  Curiously enough, he remembers this behavior and 
can explain it now, 30+ years after the fact.

So what do you do with a kid like that?  Homeschooling was not legal at 
the time in VA except for religious convictions and we didn't fit their 
rules on that one.  What I did was put him in school; they promptly sent 
him home as "not ready for school".  From then on they never checked to 
see whatever happened to the kid.  What happened to him was that he got 
a monstrous dog bite (unprovoked, in our own yard, dog came over fence 
and it was over in 2 seconds flat) that removed half his neck and a 
quarter of his head, all muscles on one shoulder.  Great.  So now he's 
wacky, doesn't look like a human, wears a halo for 4 years, and is on a 
respirator for 12 years.  Getting to be more fun by the minute.  By then 
there was no hope of putting him in a school of any sort.

We went at the time to a church where there were several deaf 
parishioners.  The sermon was always signed as it was spoken.  Within 3 
weeks of the bite (first time we went back to church) David lurched up 
to one of the deaf folks and started signing to him.  I nearly fell 
over.  When I asked him later why he didn't try it on me, he said he 
didn't think I'd know what he wanted to say.  So this nutty kid, at 4 
yo, had learned to sign by watching the preacher sign sermons once a 
week.  It was an open door for me.  If he can pick that up on his own, 
what else can he do?  Must be plenty.  From there on I was naught but 
resource facilitator.  And the other kids followed in his footsteps.  
Although we had tons of books, some of which were my old schoolbooks, I 
don't ever remember the guys in them.  We spent plenty of time with 
books, people, and outdoors, mostly just living our lives.  All 
questions were answered or ideas/questions given, if need be, about 
where one might look for that information.  By the time David was 12 he 
was still wired shut but fluent in written and signed Spanish and a very 
localized language (Guinea) plus English.  The Spanish came about 
because he was keen on armadillos, soon found out most of the 
information about them is in Spanish.  He still has 4 file cabinet 
drawers full of information abut them, all of which he acquired on his 
own.  He soon found out the hardest part of that whole project was 
earning $$ for the postage!

So, quite unlike James, I sort of fell into it.  The thing is, though, 
it works so beautifully, so 'organically'....and kid comes away not only 
with what he needed/will need but with the knowledge and confidence (for 
the rest of his life!) to get anything else he want/s needs.

In case you are interested, David is classically autistic, now that we 
have that word in our vocabulary.  He made it though a long tour (7 yr) 
in the Marine Corps (trickery---those guys don't look beyond the tests 
they issue...!), and has lived independently since then.  He now keeps a 
job which he can do "on remote control" (currently air traffic control, 
shudder.  But for sure one of the things he's very good at is keeping 
track of tens of things at a time, he's very black/white, everything is 
either right/wrong, so actually, it's a natural), then goes home and 
spends the rest of the day doing his own chores, doting on " my son, 
Blackthorn" (Siberian Husky), and kayaking/fishing with the dog.  So 
he's living way closer to a 'normal life', for sure, that he would have 
if he'd been kept in any sort of institution; I can't even imagine what 
would have happened to him but it's not a pretty picture at the best.  
He remains very compulsive and knows it, so that makes it a little 
easier to take.  I adjust.  He's my son; I'm his mother and very proud 
of him: he's doing much better than 95% of adult autistics I've met.  He 
still is uncomfortable for the most part with people but was empathetic 
enough to quit his job and move up here (he lives in VA, I'm in ME) for 
a year to help me rebuild after the fire.  His brothers are average 
guys, plenty bright but not exceptional, and just a couple of weeks ago 
the middle one commented, "You know, I guess we should thank David for 
paving the way for us learning the way we did."   Indeed, kiddo.

Susan Jane, in Maine