Yes, as soon as our first son got his DX, our neurologist said in almost the same breath as "your son has Autism", "he needs to be put in public school, here's a note to help with the process". Everyone assumes we will public school him because of his DX. Our younger son has his own special needs and we get the same assumption. Of course, my Mom is totally on board and thinks it's great to homeschool him so when he's in 2nd grade he will be ready for public school. Huh? OK Mom. No one gets that he's just a little boy that needs to have the best education possible and, for him, that's at home. We were successful this past year and will continue to be so. My younger son will be once he's older enough. Stick to it!! They deserve it.

My children do not have ADD/HD, but my cousin did. And I clearly remember this happening to him on the medications, even as he got older. I was a teen when he was born, so I was much older than him and remember his Mom dealing with this. Sigh, I wish I had clear advice for you, but wanted to send you a :grouphug: as you guys walk through it. Having a very young child that is stressed all day long and has these types of meltdowns all day long, I know it must be miserable for them to feel that way. I can't even imagine.

:lol:I am so stoked. Both of my sons has speech issues tied to their Autism. We can't afford Boardmaker at this point. I decided to just ask our flexible spending account people if that's something it would pay for (we have a bit extra in there after bringing therapy home for the boys). Without a question they immediately said yes we will, order it. All I had to do was ask my doctor to fax them a letter stating the boys have Autism, nothing else needed. Wow!!! I got the Boardmaker Plus V.6 with all the addendum PECS and used a promotional code to save over $100 on that and free shipping. I am about giddy with excitement. They have needed this so long and I never thought to ask.

We homeschool our older son. This past year has gone well with "homeschooling light" as we were gearing up for a full schedule this coming year. He learned all of his alphabet, how to count to 14, what some of his letters were "for" (a is for apple, but we used words that were important to him like names and such), basic addition, and so on. It's been a bit since we worked on letters, though we read all the time and build off the previous information with each week's lesson. Today he told me he wanted to learn to read, so I pulled out some supplies and we started on the basic phonics lessons. As I began to talk he didn't know his letters. I mean, they were gone! Totally gone! Not there. He looked at me like he had never seen them before. He knew A, B, I, E and O. That was it. Do you guys have any ideas of tips and tricks to help him retain information? I put his alphabet on the wall, we will work on the letters daily in school, we will sing the alphabet song, but do you have any ideas for information retention? The reason is, surely this won't be the only thing we have this type of issue with.

I am always, always interested in any information to help our kids. Please, pass that information on to me. :001_smile:

Our older son has Autism, SPD, hypotonia, and some other issues. Our younger son has SPD, hypotonia, developmental delays, tons of allergies, and other things. Today we had our follow up with his neurologist about his Fragile X testing. After a very long meeting (he doesn't have Fragile X), we finally got down to what's going on. He has Autism as well. Sigh. This isn't anything we didn't expect. We have been surprised he wasn't DX'd sooner. He hasn't been "normal" since the day after his birth. This has been the longest 29 months of our lives. But to hear someone finally say it officially really hits home and makes it all the more real.

Anytime. We just couldn't afford that with all the other needs our kids have. But the program looks good enough to invest in the time it takes to deal with setting it up at home. I knew it was going to be pricey when they wouldn't give me a price unless I went to their sales pitch. That normally means that something is expensive but they either want to tug at your heart or make you really feel it before they tell you the price so you don't freak out because you are thinking, "yes, it's expensive, but how can I NOT do it?"

There is a variation in cost, depending on your child. But it can be from $4000/$5000 on up on average.

Yes, that's me!!! Wow, small world. I remember you very well. How are you?

If a professional is really not an option, you can do it. I do it daily with my boys. I wouldn't start big. Start very small. Look at what causes the biggest issue. My son's first major issue was his running for hours on end at a stim. He would hit into things so hard that he nearly popped a window out of it's frame. We first put up safety things, then we started working on the stim. The running and slamming into things were doing the same thing for him, deep impact. OK, now we work on that. We looked into the sensory exercises to do for deep impact. We did these at regular intervals (don't wait until they stim to do it) to prevent his need. Then, if he had an especially stimmy day and did it even though we were doing the sensory stuff, we stopped him and did the exercises. It's like a person with asthma taking a daily preventative, but when they have an attack on top of that, they use a rescue inhaler. KWIM? Then, once we had those exercises down pat, we moved to the next thing, then the next. You can't just start a full program all at once when doing it on your own. Even professional sensory certified OT's don't start everything the first day you walk in for therapy. They start with the big things first and add on as they go. One point you might want to make to your husband, if he's open to conversation, is that if your son had a broken leg he would let a professional take care of it. Well, your son has a broken body (this is a legitimate DX), and there are sensory-certified OT's that can help him take care of it. We had private OT, PT and such for our sons but brought them home for very specific reasons that have done nothing but help them develop faster than they were before. But it wasn't easy, isn't easy, and I am not sure I would have succeeded without at least a little professional help stepping in to give me a jump start on what to do.

I am a fanatic about car seats. If you need one, you better be in one, or you can go in someone else's car. I won't risk a child's life because a parent doesn't want to take 5 minutes to deal with it. My children are both in 5 point harnesses and that's not changing anytime soon. They both have hypotonia (weak muscle tone that's neurological, not physical). If we have a wreck, I want them fully protected. They are called accidents for a reason. You don't plan on having them.

We are doing it ourselves. I am about half way through the testing (it's not something you can just sit down and do in one setting) and will be interested to see what we find. I would love to be able to place both of our sons in the program, but that's just not financially feasible in any way.

Very nice to "meet" you. I am also new but on the opposite end of our homeschooling journey. We just started with our older son and our younger is too young for school (29 months old). I have already gained so much knowledge on these boards.

I can't even imagine the stress you guys are going through. We had therapy, though we discovered it wasn't top notch by any stretch of the imagination, and we gave it up to bring our sons home. We homeschool and home therapy. :001_smile: I will say, for our children, it was the best thing we ever did. I was terrified and have been paid back in buckets for doing it. We do it very, very inexpensively. I paid great attention to what they were doing in therapy and then duplicated it at home. I didn't have one of those expensive tunnels, but had an Amazon gift card that I bought a basic child's tunnel with. I don't have expensive swings, but I do have a park with swings, slides, and merry-go-rounds. I didn't have the expensive puzzles, but found the cheap ones did the exact same thing. I found a TON of things online. Just to give you an example, my now 29 month old that was still on a bottle (due to SPD and hypotonia), eating medical food (severe allergies on top of everything else) and unable to speak a single word is now table food only, no medical food, and a regular cup or sippy for all his normal drinks. I fully give credit to God for all of it. He just allowed me the opportunity to take part in the work. His old therapists are jaw dropping shocked. I chalk it up to his being so comfortable at home, my having more dedicated time for him, and being able to realize "this is a horrible time to try this" and being able to cater to the time that worked for them. If this happens, know you can do it. It's hard. It's a lot of work, research, and planning. But it doesn't have to be a lot of money, or even any money. Be creative, be resourceful, and be dependant on Him.

I just bought tickets to the local homeschool conference (I go every year so I can see the products, put my hands on them, check them out on a deeper level). What we did last year didn't work, it was a headache and I ended up moving away from it midyear and doing my own thing. (Math-U-See - which I would use with an NT child beause I really like it and we will use the manipulatives, things like that) So, my question is, what curriculum do you use with your child with Autism? What do you like about it? Find challenging about it? I would love input from those who have been there and done that before I head to the conference to try and decide what will work for us.