caayenne
-
Posts
226 -
Joined
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by caayenne
-
-
Welcome!
Thank you!
-
Thanks! Nice to meet you too!Welcome! It's nice to "meet" you!
Thanks for the welcome! Yes, it certainly seems to be a good fit for him. I am lucky to have such fun kids! Even when they're bouncing off the walls, like they are right now! :willy_nilly: :glare:Welcome Andrea. Glad you're out of the closet or is it off the shelf?:lol:I was a lurker also but joining in is much more fun. Sounds like you are enjoying homeschooling after the traumatic first year we all have had.
I once heard that homeschooling was made for Aspies or is it vice versa? Your boys are very fortunate to be at home with you.
-
I've posted a couple of times, but I've mostly just read the board for the past year or so. I'm notoriously shy to meet people, even online, but I've been feeling more and more like I'd like to join in here. Soooooo........(gulp)
Hi! :tongue_smilie:
We're on our second year of homeschooling, and I'm finally starting to feel like I sort-of know what I'm doing! I still tend to plan the next day's work the night before, but we're at the point now where my kids don't ask me, "Are we doing school today?" every single day! :lol: We took the summer off (DH is a teacher), but we just started up again last week with the basic subjects while I wait for the rest of my curriculum to get here.
Let's see......
I've been home with my kids since the very beginning. I wasn't so good at being home with littles, mostly because the days seemed endlessly long, but as they have gotten a little older, I've found that I like being around them more and more. Our oldest did go to school for K and 1st, but I never felt good about that experience. I remember dropping him off at his classroom for the first time and just feeling so sad, like I was abandoning my baby! But my youngest was a handful (well, more like 4 handfuls :glare:) and I didn't know what else to do. By first grade, I was strongly feeling like we should pull DS out, but my DH was genuinely convinced that I wouldn't enjoy homeschooling and that I'd lose my mind (figuratively, I think! :lol:).
DS was doing extremely well academically, but not so much socially (he's an Aspie). He was constantly bored in class, and very unhappy on the playground, where he would finally get a chance to talk but nobody wanted to listen. He started getting into trouble for reading his own books during class after finishing his work, and then he started having trouble with bullies on the playground. I spent months agonizing over what to do, but when I finally just listened to what God was putting in my heart, the answer became very clear. I made my decision to homeschool shortly before the end of 1st grade, and when I told my DH I was sure, he agreed. And I have to say, I've never felt such peace in my whole life!! :)
Our first year was pretty crazy, as we all got used to each other again, and we had to do some major deschooling with my oldest. He had lost some of his love for learning, and it took awhile to get it back. And my youngest had a lot of trouble adjusting to his big brother needing my attention too! But we're finally getting to where we can do lessons and actually finish them the same day! We're doing lots of reading aloud, both of my kids adore history, and we're even doing Latin because DS8 insisted! And my youngest is reading really well, even though I sometimes wonder how he can possibly learn anything since he never. sits. still. :confused: :lol:
So anyway, that's my novel for today! I already feel like I know many of you from reading so many posts. Now I just have to write some more of my own! :tongue_smilie:
-
That's okay......we became friends about a month after she died, and we started dating after a few months. When we got married, she had been gone for over 2 years. Our situation was kind of strange, though, because DH's first marriage was not a happy one......he knew that, and I knew that, but his family really didn't. He tried to talk to his parents about it, but they really didn't want to hear it. They wanted to keep their happy memories of their daughter-in-law and the marriage that they remembered.Andrea, please forgive me if this question is too intrusive, but how long had your dh's first wife been gone when you arrived in his life?-Andrea
Alex (8) & Ian (4)
-
Well, I can relate quite a bit to this, as I married a man who lost his first wife. They didn't have children yet and had only been married four years, so obviously it's not the same exact situation. His family felt much the same way that your DH's family does. They said that it was too soon, and his parents felt like he should wait to move on until they were ready. They thought of his first wife as the daughter they never had. When we told them we were getting married, his mother acted completely surprised, and said that she had no idea we were actually serious about each other, even though we had already been together for well over a year by then. She promised to try harder to like me but then continued to act much the same. His dad just mostly seemed uncomfortable, but I know that he talked with DH before the wedding about whether or not he really wanted to be "tied down" again.
Even after we had our first child, they still had pictures of his first wife up all over the place. It was very uncomfortable for me, but I never said a word to them about it. My husband would occasionally discuss it with them, but mostly we just did our best to show how happy we really were together. For what it's worth, some of his extended family (brother, uncles, aunts, etc.) came around pretty quickly, but it was only maybe 2 or 3 years ago when DH's parents started really treating me like one of the family. By then, we had been together for 10 years!
I think that my being a good mom to my kids has gone a long way, and I have always done my best to smile and talk with his family regardless of how they were acting. I used to feel really hurt about it, but I finally realized that they just had a really long grieving process and I kind of.....disrupted it, I guess. Try not to take it personally, especially if they are doing their best to be okay when they're actually around you. Hang in there and just keep being yourself, and I promise that it will get better in time!
:grouphug:,
Andrea
Alex (8) & Ian (4)
-
My older son, Alex, had similar episodes starting when he was around 18 months. At that age, he would just scream at the top of his lungs, run around the house, and generally act.....weird, I guess. It was so freaky! But he didn't talk that well yet, so he couldn't really let us know what was going on at all. But it was very much the same: completely agitated, crying, calming down only to freak out again, looked like he was awake but somehow he just...wasn't. He would run away from us, but if we didn't follow him or stay with him, he would get even more scared and scream for us to come. These would last anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour. And then he would finally just fall asleep, and he never remembered anything in the morning.
By the time he was three, he was having them 3-4 times a week. It was awful for us to witness, but we always just assumed it was a form of night terror or sleep walking/talking. As he got older, he talked more and more along with the screaming, and let me tell you, the talking was bizarre. He would have entire conversations about stuff that was not happening. And he would try to argue with us, almost like he wanted it to go on and on. Sometimes he would seem really angry. We finally learned not to engage him in conversation at all, but just to pat his back and say, "It's okay, it's okay." And nothing else. Although he often wanted us to turn the lights on, it always seemed to instantly make it much worse. When he was four, he was finally able to "explain" to us during the episode that he couldn't see very clearly while it was happening and that everything looked different and weird to him. It's so scary for them, I think. I used to just cry and cry after he would go back to sleep.
But to make a long story short, we took him to a pediatric neurologist when he was four partly because of these episodes. And he assured us that while these were not classic night terrors, they were "sort-of related". I don't remember the exact term that he used, but it basically means that during the early hours of sleeping, while they're still in a deep stage of sleep, (not REM sleep), they wake up, but not fully. It's called partial arousal, or something like that. But it's like they're "stuck", somewhere between asleep and awake, and they can't transition one way or the other. He reassured us that this was not that uncommon, although Alex was having them about as frequently as he had heard could happen. He said that there was nothing for us to worry about, and that he would grow out of it eventually. And after a few more months, it did start to get a lot better. And now he only has one a couple times a year or so.
Sorry for the novel, but I hope this helps a bit. It's so scary to see your little one so scared and out of control, but they really are okay.
:grouphug:,
Andrea
Alex (8) & Ian (4)
-
:grouphug:
My almost 8 year old sounds similar to yours in many ways. I should preface this by saying that we do believe he has Asperger's Syndrome and sensory processing problems. He is always very focused when it comes to anything he wants to do or enjoys. However, when I want him to focus on his work, he really has to be in the right frame of mind or it will literally take three times as long because of the daydreaming and wiggling and spacing out. He is terrible at transitioning from one activity to another, especially if it's something unexpected. And if we want to do something in the afternoon or on the weekend and he's not interested, we can count on at least an extra half hour of "discussing" and whining and stalling.
The hyperfocusing on himself and his likes and dislikes has been getting more obvious over the years, but we are learning that this is just the way he is wired. The constant discussions (almost arguments, but not quite) do wear me out, but I am getting better at not engaging with him so often. When I really need him to do something or go somewhere, the best method is to just calmly repeat what I need him to do as many times as it takes. He is so focused on what is in his own head, that I truly think he doesn't always hear what we are saying. It's like ADD, but from within, if that makes any sense.
Alex doesn't have an official diagnosis, but we did have him informally evaluated when he was four. I came into the evaluation feeling fairly certain what was going on, but I didn't mention anything specific to the neurologist. He told us that Alex "very likely" had Asperger's after about 40 minutes of working with him.
I hope this helps a little!
-Andrea
Alex (7) and Ian (4)
-
A hopper ball
Yes, this.
My two boys each got one last year for Christmas, and I don't think we've had a day since that they haven't used them. They have races, use them as horses and pirate ships for battles, and sometimes just bounce around like loons. I don't know what we did without them. :tongue_smilie:
-Andrea
Alex(7) & Ian(4)
-
:001_huh:
Sometimes, you really have to wonder what people are thinking to amuse themselves at their child's expense. My sister's boyfriend's name is, I kid you not, Tim Burr. He says that he was teased for years. He does seem to like it now, though. He even put it on his license plate.
And recently, my brother's best friends, who have an extremely strange sense of humor, named their baby Walken South...
-Andrea
Alex(7) & Ian (4)
-
I'm new here, but I thought I might be able to help a bit. My son is 7, and is an Aspie. We took him to a pediatric neurologist to have him tested when he was 4. At that time, we couldn't get a "diagnosis", because 4 is considered too young to be sure, but the doctor told us he was relatively certain that Alex had Asperger's. He actually still doesn't have an official diagnosis, but we haven't needed the label so far. Anyway, I would try a pediatric Neurologist. Our guy was very familiar with Asperger's.
Hope that helps a little! :001_smile:
Andrea
Alex (7) & Ian (4)
Coming out of (mostly) lurkdom to say hello!
in General Education Discussion Board
Posted
Hi Caroline! It's nice to meet you, too. Wow, so you have twice the fun with four boys, huh? ;) Yes, I'm very happy to be past the first year. It was a lot harder than I had anticipated, and I always expect the worst, so.....:).
I hope your first day goes well. Our first day was still pretty crazy but so much better than last year's first day that I was thrilled.