Lindsey Casselman’s two autistic children were in Kindergarten and Grade 2 when she decided it was time to homeschool them.
Her youngest child, a daughter, was over-stimulated by her school environment and acting out at home. Her older child, a son, was disengaged in the classroom.
The tipping point came when her son showed her a school project in which he described girls in Afghanistan as “lucky” because they are unable to attend school.
“It just hit me … here is an eight-year-old [whose] … love of learning and curiosity is so fully and completely crushed that he has no appreciation for the gift that is learning,” said Casselman, who runs Schoolio Learning Corp., an online homeschooling platform.
Casselman and others say Canada’s public education system often fails to meet the needs of children with special needs, such as autistic kids. Many parents of autistic kids are choosing to homeschool as a result.
“I think autistic kids in general are square pegs in round holes when it comes to the school system,” said Casselman, who used to teach in an Ontario public school. “It’s a very one-size-fits-all model, and [autistic kids] have a higher tendency to not fit.”
Cyndi Gerlach, a director of the Autism Alliance of Canada, says her advocacy organization is seeing more cases of parents choosing to homeschool. “There is far more now than there was 20 years ago, and probably even 10 years ago,” she said. “It’s certainly growing.”
Lack of resources
Autism, formally called autism spectrum disorder, is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects how individuals behave and interact with others. Autism is often referred to as a spectrum condition because it varies widely in its intensity and characteristics.
About one in 50 children and youth — 130,000 minors — have been diagnosed with autism in Canada, according to 2023 public health data.
The public school system lacks the resources to best meet the needs of these children, says Kenneth Glazebrook, president of the Alberta School Councils’ Association. The association represents the interests of parents who serve on school councils to the province’s education ministry.
Teachers are not trained on how to manage or educate autistic students, Glazebrook says. And public schools frequently do not have enough special education staff — individuals who are trained on how to support children with special needs.
Gerlach says another problem is the public school environment is not well-suited for children on the spectrum.
“When you walk into a classroom today, it is so visually overstimulating … that impacts some of our kids,” said Gerlach, who was diagnosed with autism at age 57 and is a parent to two autistic children.
Teachers may misinterpret autistic kids’ behaviours as misbehaviour, says Jamie McCleary, executive director of the advocacy organization Autism Canada. But often the problem is “they are so overwhelmed with something that they can’t cope with their current situation,” she said. McClearly was diagnosed with autism two years ago and has three autistic children.
Parents who see their autistic children struggling to learn — and struggling with related issues of mental health and social isolation — may feel they have no choice but to pull their kids out of public school.
“We’ve really realized how many neurodivergent families are homeschooling,” said Casselman. “[For] a lot of them, it was never their intention to homeschool. School just was such a bad fit for their kids that they felt like they didn’t have any choice.”
In the US, data from the Johns Hopkins School of Education show 10 per cent of autistic kids are homeschooled, versus 6 per cent of the general school population. There is a lack of comparable, nation-wide data on how many autistic children are homeschooled in Canada.
But the total number of homeschooled kids has risen dramatically in recent years. In the 2022-2023 school year, 55,000 kids across Canada were homeschooled. This number is down from a peak of 83,000 in 2020-2021, at the height of the pandemic. But it is up 43 per cent from 2018-2019.
Homeschool advantages
One of the advantages of homeschooling is parents can develop curricula and routines that best suit their children’s specific needs, says Casselman. This can be especially helpful for autistic kids who often struggle to concentrate when a topic falls outside an area of their interest.
“When my daughter was really into dragons, we were doing a unit on Canadian geography. I just altered the project [so my daughter had to] invent a dragon that lives in each area, and [she had] to say what color it would be, and what it would eat, and where it would live based on the region,” said Casselman.
“You could never get [that] in a classroom.”
Casselman, who started homeschooling her kids in 2015, had initially created a Facebook group to share homeschooling tips, teaching advice and personal content with other parents. She had the idea to start Schoolio when many parents started asking to buy photos of her hand-written materials.
Before launching Schoolio in 2020, there was no “all-in-one” online or book-based homeschooling curriculum for Canadian parents, Casselman says. Parents who homeschooled had to convert US homeschool materials to fit Canadian standards, changing information such as degrees and measurements.
“You’re really pretty much on your own once you opt out of public school,” said Casselman.
Casselman says she designed Schoolio to work well for neurodivergent children. Today, the company’s online and book-based materials are used by more than 7,000 families in 12 countries.
‘You’re just on 24/7′
But homeschooling may not be the best option for every autistic child. Many parents of autistic kids found it was too difficult for them to continue homeschooling after the pandemic, says McCleary.
“Sometimes [autistic children] need that immensely rigid structure [in the classroom] to be able to learn,” she said. Two of McCleary’s children have returned to the school system, while one is still homeschooled.
And parents also need to consider how they will manage a never-ending job — while not neglecting their own needs, says McCleary.
“You’re just on 24/7,” she said.
For parents that do choose to homeschool, it is not an irrevocable decision. Casselman’s two kids have now returned to — and are enjoying — public school. Their teachers have described them as “very mature” compared to other kids.
But Gerlach says more needs to be done to improve education for all in the classroom.
“One teacher has to … create a universally designed classroom [that works] for a non-speaker to a gifted student and every student in between,” said Gerlach. “I think the education system really needs to … look at itself and how we deliver education to the students today.”
