Q. Our son is very mildly on the Autism spectrum but he does daydream a lot. His school sent a note home saying he daydreams too much. They no longer want him and suggested he might do better in a homeschool setting. What do you say?

A.  I say you want to figure out what would work for your son to give him the best advantage in life. Dr. Steven Campbell recently had this little piece in one of his newsletters. The story is as follows.

A little boy came home one day from school and gave a paper to his mother. “My teacher gave this paper to me and told me to only give it to my mother.” His mother's eyes teared up as she read the letter to her child: "Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have enough good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself."

Many years after his mother had died, this little boy now grown, was looking through old family things in her desk. When he saw a folded paper in the corner of a drawer he opened it and read, "Your son is addled. We won't let him come to school anymore."

That little boy was Thomas Edison, the genius of the 20th century. He had always been so, but his genius came to the world because one person—his mother—believed in him enough to teach him how to believe in himself. Years later, when a reporter from the New York Times asked Edison how it felt to fail 999 times as he looked for the filament of a light bulb, he answered, "I did not fail 999 times! I simply found 999 ways that did not work!"

This school may not be the best match for your son. He may be another genius, unrecognized by the typical school or teacher. Look for a better match. And that could be a homeschool option.