I will preface this by saying that I'm not American, so my experience/memories of "high school" is probably a fair bit different from most people in this thread, but I think the worst thing you can do for a nerdy socially awkward kid is to homeschool them. The point of high school isn't really education. It's a controlled, low-stakes environment where you learn how to interact with other people.
Exactly, and my mom didn't want me interacting with people away from her. The only people she wanted me to be friends with were the weird homeschooled kids. She told me she thought I would start doing drugs if I hung out with the "wrong" kids, so I would have horrendous anxiety if I interacted with the "wrong" kids at one social event. I was so nervous because this "wrong" kid was sitting at my friend's table. I hid in the bathroom almost the whole event.
"Extracurriculars" also aren't some once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Being an adult doesn't mean you aren't allowed to have hobbies. High school isn't the only place where you can play chess or rugby or whatever else catches your fancy,
It kind of is. I mean, things like basketball, sure, I can enjoy them playing at the YMCA, but I will never get to compete against other kids my age in an actual competitive environment. Same thing with rugby or football or most other sports. Chess is a little bit different. I could learn it and play it against other people, but the actual good players started as kids, not to mention the fact that I have no real-life friends to play against.
you could have done these things even when you were being homeschooled. The fact you were apparently given the impression you couldn't makes me think you were being overly-sheltered.
I was overly sheltered, and I begged my mom to let me play sports, and she gave me some retarded rant about how only coaches kids get to play sports even though I lived in a tiny town and that team sports were bad because you had to rely on other people even though you work with other people in the real world, but my mom insists I start an online business. so I can stay with her forever and never have to work with other people. My mom has this stupid anti-people mindset, and it's killing me because I always feel great being with other people, but I basically never get the chance to interact with people on my own.
What made this worse was that I wasn't allowed to play online video games because people are bad, even though the little online gaming I played felt so amazing. Then my brother got caught talking to some random person on GTA, and my mom screamed her head off at him because OMG WHAT IF HES A KIDNAPPER? She's so irrational and stupid. my brother. Later, told me it was what sounded like a 12-year-old asking him about his car or something, but my mom thinks she was protecting me from the evil real world and people, even though I am so socially anxious and crippled from it because I'm afraid of her snapping at me like she does when I interact with the "wrong" people or make a mistake.
My mom would snap at me if I started blinking. She snapped at me as a kid if I cried, so now I'm afraid if she even sees me blinking. She yells, "QUIT YOUR BLINKING!" I remember one time when I was a kid I cried in Walmart, and my mom was pissed and said, OMG, insert her friend's name SAW. MY SON CRYING; HE EMBARRASSED ME because she's a narcissist who wants to pretend everything is perfect and that kids don't' cry for some reason. She made me cry because I asked for a bicycle or something, and she yelled at me, NO, which it's very understandable why that would upset a kid.
After this incident, she stayed pissed at me in the car while I was still upset, then my dad left, and he brought me a bottle of water. This meant so much to me because my dad actually cared about me, while my mom only cared about herself and how I made her look in front of people. She then later gave me a half-assed apology, and I pretended to accept it because my dad made me, but this is one of the many instances that made me hate my mom and her stupid way of life. There have been so many instances like this too, but my dad was always nice. While she was always the villain of my childhood, then people on KiwiFarms wonder why I'm so weird.
Time to move out of mom and dad's place and get on with your life.
The problem is I have no way of driving on my own; my mom doesn't want me working and moving away, so I'm basically trapped with them.
You might as well just drop out. Then you can be a NEET for a while. I mean there is no real point and rushing off to get a low paying shitty job. Just go enjoy yourself. You are going to be broke and depressed either way.
I have been a NEET my entire life, and it's made me depressed. I can't stand waking up every day without a reason to live.
Despite all of that, I would still prefer to have attended that school rather than be homeschooled. Why? Because I learned how to function in an institutional setting.
Exactly, school is a key part of growing up and socializing with other people, and the chances I had to socialize with other kids as a homeschooler were denied. I wasn't allowed to play sports or do anything besides the baking club and the handful of events that my homeschool friends attended.
I have heard many professors say they can always identify homeschooled students in college because they can never function in group projects. Kids need to attend school not only for academics but also to learn how to act independently of their parents.
My mom didn't want me to be independent; she wanted me to be sheltered forever. I never got the chance to be independent. The few group projects I did, my mom was constantly there monitoring me. so I could never have a relationship with a girl because she is constantly watching me. I could never interact with the "wrong" kids because she's always watching me. I could never make a mistake because she's always watching me. This crippled me and made my childhood social life way more difficult than it should have been.
