While I started homeschooling primarily because the ps wouldn't take bullying seriously, I am glad I did so for academic reasons. When my DS was in 6th grade, he could barely handle 3rd grade math. Now I can teach each class at the level he's ready for. He's all over the place, so it works out well.

That's probably more common than people realize. Our pediatrician has me give both my sons 2,000IU of D3 daily. She was shocked that her family spend lots of times outdoors and came up deficient. And we live in North Carolina. My husband and I are definitely deficient; it took almost 18 months of heavy supplementation to get me into normal range.

We're using trazodone too. Melatonin worked for a couple of years, but eventually stopped helping. (He's even had a sleep study, which turned up nothing.) Good sleep hygiene is really important. Things like keeping a regular schedule, even on the weekends. My DS had very low iron levels. The sleep doctor tested him for that, and he takes iron supplements now. One big thing is to try to get exercise into the daily routine. Everyone who spoke at the local conference for Autism & Aspergers (Temple Grandin and Dr. Attwood included) stressed how important regular exercise is for our kids. We don't do anything organized. It's mostly just riding his bike around the neighborhood. That helps with concentration and sleep.

I agree with OhElizabeth that getting a diagnosis is valuable. My son was already diagnosed with ADD and Aspergers, but we didn't know about his LDs, his high IQ, his low working memory. We learned lots of worthwhile information. We got our referral from our pediatrician. Since it is expensive, you do want to check around and make sure you're getting someone good. Ours cost about $1,500, and this group of practitioners is not known for being inexpensive. So I question $4,000 if you're talking U.S. We opted out of going through the public school because the waiting list was so long. But that is worth a try if you can't work out anything else. I didn't consider it a matter of getting labels, but it's priceless for understanding what your child's strengths and weaknesses are. Otherwise, you just have to guess.

I hope your decision to go to MUS works as well for you as it did for us. My son not only understands math better; he actually likes it now. Before MUS, math was his most hated class.

I took a break from this forum a few months ago; I think it can be good for various things. I was stressing myself out trying to figure out the best ways to help my 2E DS. I also take breaks from the news if it starts depressing me too much. I don't like being uninformed, but it's easy to take in too much information in this day and age. And personally, I have only the vaguest notion of what an average kid might look like. I taught some public school and some Sunday school, so I got some exposure to a cross section of kids. But at home, my other son is straight up gifted. This thread was a good reminder how we can help one another and to be mindful of the limitations of our experience.

I have a copy of Lial's but I haven't taught out of it yet. I started my 7th grader in the Alpha level of MUS this fall. I don't think the two would mix well. I took such a drastic step because his grasp of math was so bad; he had so many holes in his knowledge that starting over made sense. For a child with fewer holes in his math knowledge, there's probably a better way to do it and a better curriculum to use.

Not that I found. I had to order from their website. I agree that the shipping rates are ridiculous.

:iagree: I'm so happy that my DS is finally learning math that I don't need to read people's posts complaining that MUS is not rigorous enough. I visit most of the boards, but I had to get comfortable with my son's abilities. I think I'm getting better at not getting sucked into a spiral of self-doubt and a need to push my son inappropriately. It's reassuring to know that I'm not the only one who struggles with that.

:iagree: Another reason to see a specialist is that the infections can move into the bone behind the ear. This is not common, but it's likely that younger pediatricians won't recognize the condition. I hate to bring up something new and scary, but this happened to my nephew. He was fortunate to have a different doctor see him on a sick visit. The doctor was older than his regular pediatrician and said it'd been a long time since he'd seen the problem. (Sorry I can't remember what it's called.) After a stay in the hospital and lots of IV antibiotics, my nephew came through with only a slight amount of permanent hearing loss. Many people (I'm not saying this applies to anyone on this board) take ear tubes as a minor, routine inconvenience that many kids have. So I feel the urge to point out that it's not always so simple.

One more thing to keep an eye on with Aleks - a kid who likes to guess can get pretty far with that program. We only started homeschooling last year, half way through 6th grade. My DS had lots of holes in his knowledge, especially in math and grammar. The few months we did Aleks were a waste. He loved it, but he did lots of guessing and learned very little. However, the pie charts on Aleks looked great.

My Aspie loves to perform. He snuck on stage with his older brother for a children's choir event at church once, and he knew the song better than any of the older kids. He has low working memory and generally doesn't like to study anything, but he has always known his lines since he "debuted" on stage in second grade. When we started homeschooling, the one thing he asked for was the chance to continue to do theater. He's doing great in it and continues to love it. So for interested kids, I think it's worth a try. I know it's not something typically associated with Aspies, but that doesn't mean some Aspies don't love it.

I know it's popular to say that Aspies don't need to be able to write by hand, but the skill isn't dead yet. I don't want my kid embarrassed about writing a simple note to tell the family he's gone out. (Just think how awkward that'll be once it's a roommate instead of family.) I'm trying to achieve confidence and legibility with my son. In addition to the typing instruction, we've been working on cursive with HWT. At minimum, our children need to sign their names without difficulty. I think that learning print versus cursive is a personal preference, beyond the need to sign one's name. I think print is fine, but my DS has preferred cursive. I think it's because he's had no bad experiences with it. For the copywork, I'd go with the journal idea or passages from literature that he enjoys.

:iagree: While we haven't tried gluten free yet because my husband doesn't want to, we stumbled onto something accidentally. My son responds very poorly to sugar. The less sugar he eats, the better he is. Fewer migraines, better sleep, and fewer problems with his ADD. I can't say it changes anything with his Aspergers. The improvements are significant enough that it's worth the trouble to keep him away from sugars and simple carbohydrates.

:iagree: I was disappointed too. It was hardly an ideal magazine for me, but it was the best I've seen. I won't be renewing. HEM does have a very strong bent towards unschooling. That's totally inappropriate for my family. My son would never work on anything. I would adore this; that's what I've been looking for.

Exercise is also very helpful. He needs to be getting some daily. One of the hardest things for my sons in elementary public school (including the one who doesn't have ADHD) was sitting for long periods of time with only a tiny recess. In their minds, one of the worst things that could happen at school was not having recess; it was the only time they could move around.

Some time off is probably a good thing. My only hesitation about skipping levels or switching curriculum is that you don't want to be in my shoes. I started my 7th grader in Alpha this year. We only started homeschooling a year ago, and I found so many holes in his knowledge. After a lot of researching, I decided to switch to MUS and start at the beginning. So if your child does have a poor understanding of place value, you want to fix that now rather than later. You're going to have to find a way to figure out if he's just goofing off on the tests or doesn't understand the concepts. Have you tried having him teach you any of the lessons? My son enjoys doing that (he likes being good at math rather than guessing), and it helps me know that he's really getting it.

I think a diagnosis can be helpful in several areas. First, it can help him understand himself better. Second, it may help with accommodation issues as others have mentioned. Incidentally, the evaluation to make my son's diagnosis official also turned up 3 LDs. So you may learn other valuable bits of information. As for social skills, early intervention is best. That's another good reason to find out. I used to work in the insurance industry, so I understand the concerns about adding diagnoses to your child's medical history. Even without reform, it's going to be more of a problem if he's trying to buy an individual policy, or, sometimes, in a small group. While there is some risk (though who knows what the rules will be when he's an adult), I think the payoffs are worth it.

Thanks for this information. I read conversations on yahoo groups all the time from confused parents trying to figure out the difference between autism and Aspergers. It's interesting to hear of specialists having trouble describing a definite line. In one regard, the label is extremely important. One reason advanced for eliminating Aspergers as a separate diagnosis is to address problems in California and Texas. Both of these large states provide more services for autistic children than for Aspies. While I consider that to be a backwards way of fixing the problem, my family isn't affected by this issue.

I have to try to get my hands on this. This has always been a problem for my older son. He's not as profoundly gifted as Santiago, but he has spent countless hours bored out of his mind even in advanced classes. What a waste of human potential for all the gifted kids sitting around, wasting their time while the class covers material they already know. Sadly public schools have no incentive to maximize potential in their brightest students.

I can't find anything specific, and I looked through all my books from a seminar I took on Alexander in college. Since Alexander did ask the Greeks (the Corinthian League in particular) to refer to him as a god, he may well have acquired the appellation while still alive. And he did defeat Darius, whose titles included that of "Great King." The early histories tend to refer to him simply as Alexander, possibly because he needed no further introduction. It should be noted that the earliest extant history is by Diodorus and was written a few hundred years after Alexander's death. Most of the titles of these extant works do not include "the Great" although Quintus Curtius Rufus did, writing in the 9th century A.D. I scanned parts of Arrian since his history is supposed to be the most reliable but couldn't find references to Alexander as Alexander the Great. As to his death, it is unlikely it was directly the result of drinking too much. The existing histories had first person accounts to draw from, and Alexander apparently didn't drink much immediately before his illness. He, along with his men, did often drink to great excess. He had been severely wounded in a siege after the ladder collapsed and he was left without companions on the ramparts. That would be in addition to the many injuries he suffered during his campaigns. We tend to think of someone 33 years old as fairly young, but he had lived a very rough life with much physical hardship and many injuries. In his final days, he suffered from a fever of unknown origin. Some modern historians have suggested malaria. The likelihood of poison is remote. Whatever caused the fever, the numerous stresses he had put on his body would have only hastened his death. Your son's question was really interesting, and I'm sorry I couldn't come up with a better answer.

Walking is the absolute worst thing she can do right now; it's only going to make her condition worse. And she'll be better able to help her family by staying off her feet while you're home so she'll be more functional once you have to travel. If she won't do it for herself, ask her to do it for anyone who'll need her help when you're not there. I developed this around the time of my first pregnancy. The medicine prescribed was downright dangerous for the baby, so I never took it. I accidentally found a chiropractor who specialized in the appendages. The manipulation and stretching she helped me with worked wonders. I was pain free before the baby arrived. Has anyone mentioned gel heel inserts? My doctor gave me some heavy duty ones that helped. These won't cure the condition, but can make light walking easier while you work on curing the problem with gentle stretching, etc.

It is a difficult decision. Bankruptcy and/or foreclosure shouldn't be entered into lightly, though you don't seem to be doing that. I should mention that it's much more difficult to get Chapter 7 bankruptcy these days which totally discharges most debt. (Educational loans can't be discharged and home and car loans can't be unless you're willing to relinquish that asset.) I know less about the other type of personal bankruptcy since our situation was so bad that we qualified for Chapter 7. We went through bankruptcy in 2009, after I had been totally disabled for four years. The decision wasn't made because of homeschooling; both of our children were still in ps then. But after years of vastly reduced income (I had been the primary breadwinner) and soaring medical bills, I finally realized that we couldn't ever get out of the hole we were in. When my illness started, the only debt we had was our mortgage payment and one car payment, no credit card debt. And we had a good deal of money in savings. Unfortunately, things can get bad enough that all of our conservative planning just wasn't enough. During this recessions, I've read letters to the editor stating that people should be able to save enough money to cover their periods of unemployment. How many of us honestly have enough savings for a year or two of unemployment? As for anyone who wants to look at my situation and declare me immoral for not repaying my debts, I honestly don't care. It was a painful decision to reach but the best one for my family. And my post is already long enough without listing the many steps we took and budget items we cut to try to avoid bankruptcy. We held onto our house because we had bought something much smaller and less expensive than we could have financed back when we were working. But just so long as I could keep any roof over my children's heads, I would have been satisfied. I doubt I would have gone through all that "just" to homeschool. Though I would probably let an underwater house go into foreclosure if I didn't need it for sheltering my family. I owe my family more than I owe any creditor.

Thanks for the update. I rarely do this, but I posted comments on his site.

I remember reading about this when my sons were younger. My older son, who is not on the spectrum, had an awful time with ear infections. The adjustments did help. My younger son is on the spectrum but has always been the healthier of the two.