Why i decided to homeschool my autistic son

I never set out to be a home school teacher. I didn’t picture myself juggling lesson plans with client calls, or turning the dining table into a classroom. I didn’t imagine I’d be piecing together an education while also trying to earn an income. But here we are, because the mainstream education system was never built for kids like my son.

Classrooms are crowded. Teachers, while well-intentioned, aren’t adequately trained in neurodiversity or behaviour management. Teacher aides, when you’re lucky enough to get the hours, often have no training at all. And the funding? A joke. It’s barely enough to cover the cost of pencils, let alone the level of specialist support our kids need. And to access it is like some impossible lottery leaving parents wondering how broken their child needs to become before any help is available.

In this environment my son, bright, creative, autistic, was made to feel less than. He was excluded. He was misunderstood. And then there was the teacher.

She was the kind of teacher who, when teams of specialists gave her recommendations for my son, waved them off with: “I’ve taught autistic kids before.” She decided she knew better than the people who actually understood him. Worse, she took it upon herself to run her own version of exposure therapy on my “head-under-water” phobic child, by instructing another child to dunk him under the water. It took four years before my son would go near water again. Four years of avoidance, tears, and trauma. Four years of childhood summers lost because she thought she knew best.

By the end of our time at mainstream school, he was aggressive, reclusive, and angry. His nervous system was so shattered that I had to “unschool” him for an entire year just to let him breathe again. No formal learning, just healing.

When we finally left school at age 11, all I was told was: “He knows his 2s, 5s, and 10s… and he doesn’t read.” He’d been reading since he was two years old. The school didn’t acknowledge it because they could’nt “test” it.

Now, in our fourth year of home schooling, he’s studying the same English content as his peers. He’s working hard to catch up in maths. He’s excelling in self-taught music, Japanese, creative writing and digital art. But the trauma is still there. Recently, he ran into that old teacher, and his anger reignited instantly. It took weeks to help him find his calm again.

Not all teachers are like her, but every school in New Zealand lacks the adequate support systems for minds like his.

And let’s be clear, homeschooling wasn’t my “dream plan.” I had to pivot my career entirely because the school was calling me every single day to pick him up. They couldn’t cope, so I had to step in. That’s how my photography business became not just an option, but an “I have no choice”

Financially? It’s brutal. The government gives $700 a year to homeschool (in 2 payments). That’s not even a week’s wages in many households.

Emotionally? It’s exhausting. You are the parent, the teacher, the therapist, the advocate, the social coordinator. You’re constantly questioning yourself, am I doing enough? Am I failing him? And then there’s the judgement from others who assume home schooling is an “easy” choice, or that my child just needed more discipline.

The truth? We didn’t choose this because it was easy.
We chose this because the alternative was slowly destroying him.

And if you’re here too, balancing therapy appointments with work deadlines, explaining again and again why your child isn’t “just at school,” piecing together a curriculum from scraps of free resources and your own stubborn hope, then I see you.

If you’re lying awake at night wondering if you’ve done enough today… if the spark you saw in your child’s eyes this morning will still be there tomorrow… if you’ve made the right call when everyone else says you haven’t, then I see you.

We are the ones who didn’t plan for this. Who didn’t sign up for the title “teacher” but carry it anyway. Who love our kids so fiercely we’ll burn ourselves out before we let them break.

This isn’t easy. It’s not meant to be. But it is brave. And it is enough.

Even on the days you question yourself the most, you are enough.