Most Likely Coming Back Home

Big A is against D being educated at home for social reasons. He remembers having fun in high school and that's where he made lifelong friends. But that's not quite true. The friends he has now are people he met OUTSIDE of school, one was our neighbor (it's so funny to see these boys now as husbands, fathers, ADULT MEN), one was met through the neighbor.
I have two best friends, one was a neighbor, one I met at work.
Big A's main deal is that he wants D to have the chance to do things he shouldn't without Mom finding out! Is that really a necessary part of growing up? I do worry that D will change as he gets older and resent being home for school, by high school it's kind of tied in for the long haul, isn't it? In the earlier years, in and out of public school was not a major concern, whatever was best for the child at that time in his life is what we did. Now that D is older, it seems there are more things to consider.

One thing is that I have to force D to interact with other people, he never wants to initially but is always glad afterward. What I'm noticing is that the things he needs as part of his education may not be best addressed in school. Can I really do better by him at home? Some things are a definite yes. Ritalin was suggested for him when he was little but I didn't want to do that. Music worked instead. Now his behavior is fine, if there was something wrong he went from ADHD to ADD. He knows he has trouble focusing and paying attention. These are things that I believe will respond better to home intervention than a public school setting - they don't have time or even the know-how there. At home I can have him do a subject for two or three hours at a time so that once he manages to focus on what he's doing, he's not interrupted and forced to change focus to something else. He's excited about doing math and science for extended periods, but history and language arts? I have some ideas about all of it that I believe will work, even English. He enjoys writing, his problem is being under time constraints. He has to learn to handle deadlines but I believe we can work him up to it a little more gently at home. A fifty minute class, fifteen or so minutes of which is used up doing other things, is not enough for him to produce a piece of writing that he can live with. He's a perfectionist, slow, and very thorough; if his writing did not explore every possibility, he can't imagine calling it finished. Being made to hurry and just get something written in his opinion produces sloppy garbage and makes him very unsettled. Like Big A says, these characteristics are not well-adapted to life, my worry exactly. But if that's how he's made, there IS a place in this world for him, he may have more trouble fitting into certain work situations but I'm sure there are plenty that specifically NEED his type. Why should someone be punished for believing in quality over quantity?

Also, for purely practical reasons, having D at home will make it easier to get back east to my sister's wedding this spring without huge hassles and worry over missing school! He loves to travel, he was raised in an RV after all!