melmichigan Posted November 16, 2009 Share Posted November 16, 2009 (edited) I posted this here because it does deal in many ways with curriculum and have seen many here with this is their siggy. I am trying to decide if I should bring my DD10 home full time. She has been attending PS for LA and speech therapy under a dual enrollment. She could continue speech but there aren't any group activities to work on social skills. The school district of course insists that she needs that interaction with peers and should stay in school. Compounded she is a very accelerated learner in all but writing which has been age appropriate, and I suspect is now beginning to catch up somewhat. She does have some trouble with infered meaning in fiction. Her reading and comprehension are very very high. (She reminds me a lot of myself as a child.) What have your experiences been, good and bad with teaching an aspie at home, full time ? What are you using for LA? What else would be helpful for me to keep in mind? I am really struggling with this... Edited November 17, 2009 by melmichigan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamaSheep Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 I'm interested in responses about this too. Language arts is our absolute WORST subject with Aspie ds and always has been. Up until last year he went over to the public school around the corner for speech therapy and social skills. A lot of what they did with him there was well below his actual skill level because they wanted him to be in with other kids his AGE rather than other kids at his skill level. I understand their position with regards to that, but I also don't feel that he made a great deal of progress in either language skills or social skills as a result of his experiences at school. He has a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder to go along with his Asperger's diagnosis, and for him school is by far the most anxiety triggering environment that exists on the face of the earth. Last year was the first year in his entire career (we didn't pull him out of school until the end of 3rd grade) that he went to his class willingly and without any panic attacks (most days). It was a small, well behaved class and he was only there for half an hour a day. This year, he would have moved down to the junior high, and after a lot of thought and evaluating we decided that the hassle and anxiety levels that would entail would greatly outweigh the (minimal) benefits we were seeing from his participation at the school. We're only a few months into this project of managing all that at home by ourselves, but we have seen improvements in those areas already. He goes to boy scouts once a week and we've noticed that without the stress of "social skills class" at school, his interactions with the boy scout group have improved, and he is also enjoying it a lot more. He also is more willing to participate in church activities on Sunday and during the week, and is more cheerful during these activities as well. He is more interested in having friends over, invites them more frequently, and plays with them longer and in more varied ways. I think that he feels that he is able to address social "issues" on his own terms rather than being forced into artificial scenarios at school, and for him this seems to be a positive thing. We do talk (mostly informally), before he participates in these kinds of activities, about social skills kinds of things he can observe or practice while he's there, and then report on when he gets home. This seems to be helping a LOT more than the social skills classes he was going to before. Maybe it's the real-world application as opposed to theoretical discussion or something, I'm not sure. We've also had better results discussing non-literal language in little "asides" during real life circumstances than from his classes/therapies on the subject at the school. For example, if he looks confused I might whisper to him, "Do you think Dad is serious, or might he be using sarcasm?" Or I might explain the play on words that makes a joke funny. For example, "Two goldfish are in a tank. One says to the other, 'Do you know how to drive this thing?'" I'd tell him, "The word tank has more than one meaning, and this is one of those jokes where the humor comes from suddenly realizing that the other meaning is intended. It's not a fish tank, it's an army tank. He finds this sort of thing vastly amusing, and by pondering jokes like this (which, of course, takes all the humor out of it for ME...lol) he has actually gotten pretty good at remembering to look for other, sometimes non-literal, meanings for words or phrases in a sentence, especially when it doesn't make sense in the context as it is written or said. Anyway, a lot of our most effective "therapy" has been on the fly stuff we just do with him ourselves. Our "school" language arts, though, has always been a problem area. His handwriting is still quite immature for his age, largely because he HATES to practice. I, the ogre mom, make him do it anyway. We do a lot of the "written" work orally--I ask him questions, he answers them, or I ask him to summarize what he read, and he tells me briefly what it was about. Translating that into writing is a BIG deal for him. It works better if I let him type it than if I expect it to be handwritten. His vocabulary is amazing, and his grammar is excellent when he speaks. His spelling is pretty good, as far as I can tell, though as I say it's hard to get him to write much. He'll sit for an hour trying to figure out a way to say something in three words instead of four--literally--so he doesn't have to write as much. Honestly I have not been pushing much on the writing front in past years because I have been putting priority on learning to learn without the panic attacks and violent melt-downs which became his "normal" behavior at school. It took us a couple of years to get to (mostly) calm and compliant, so this year I'm beginning to introduce more language arts kinds of skills. I'm trying to do it in a non-threatening way, though, so a lot of it is fairly informal. We talk about parts of speech by watching a Schoolhouse Rock video on the topic and then play a game using that part of speech. For example, we recently "did" adverbs and after watching the video and talking about what an adverb was we played a charades game where we wrote adverbs on one pile of pieces of paper, and then actions on another pile of pieces of paper and put them in two bowls. The kids and I took turns choosing an action and an adverb and acting it out while the rest tried to guess. For example, we acted out playing a computer game slowly, going to the store sleepily, making lunch angrily, etc. But I'm kind of winging it a lot right now, and trying to do things that both kids can do more or less together and make it fun. Next year I plan on getting more serious and probably using something like Analytical Grammar, which is structured and introduces rules in a methodical, logical manner. (Structure, rules, and logic are elements that work well for ds.) This year I also am using a bunch of the language arts related "Centers" from Evan-Moor with both kids. I bought several of the books for a fairly wide range of grade levels and lopped them all up and put them in folders as recommended. Now I have a file drawer full of them and I can sort of judge what "level" ds is operating on during any given day and pull out one I think is appropriate to his attitude, patience level, and whatnot. I have also had some success having him help his little sister with some of the "younger" centers, which has meant that they both learn some of the concepts he's missed, but he doesn't feel like he's doing baby activities because he's "teaching" her. We did an analogies activity today that was at about a 4th grade level, and they both had fun with it. I'm interested to see what other people are doing that is working. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamaSheep Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 I got to thinking a little more about social interaction with peers, and school personnell recommendations on the subject. Our school psychologist (the one on our IEP committee) is currently disgusted with me. She doesn't say so, but it is easy to tell from the patronizing tone she takes with me when we discuss these things. We have very different points of view on the subject of peer interaction. From her perspective, ds needs as much peer interaction as he can possibly get, because he is lagging in social skills development and the only way to get better at it or "catch up" is to do it as much as humanly possible and then some. Exposure, exposure, exposure. Now, I totally bought into this philosophy for the first few years of ds's schooling, and he got to be more and more and more of a mess socially and emotionally. I was told he just needed more of it. Eventually, though, it dawned on me that maybe this was like throwing a child who couldn't swim into the deep end of the swimming pool. Dumping more water on him is not going to help him learn to swim. The thing to do would be to take him down to the shallow end where he can splash around safely and learn about water, and holding his breath, and kicking, and whatnot, and then get a little deeper as his skills improve. So that's when we took him out of school. (What we were doing was obviously not working, and we felt we HAD to try SOMETHING different.) We had some detox time to get through while he learned we really would keep him "safe", but after that he really started branching out and growing socially and emotionally, rather than pulling more and more into himself and growing increasingly hostile. We have found that this "shallow end" approach has been MUCH better for him than the "dump more water on the drowning kid" approach recommended by the school psychologist. The improvement has been noticed and commented on by many friends and neighbors as well as a number of school personnel who have interacted with him but who are not the school psychologist. I do not know whether this is the case for other children, but I do know that it has been a VERY GOOD thing for our son. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SilverMoon Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 (edited) Quote Edited September 23, 2023 by SilverMoon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JennW in SoCal Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 I just graduated my Aspie last spring. We started homeschooling mid way through 2nd grade and never looked back. He tested as gifted in LA, but had the worst spelling and writing and literary analysis skills. The Worst!! The literary analysis was clearly an issue due to his Asperger's, and provided us with some really funny discussions over the years. What worked for him... Spelling: AVKO Sequential Spelling, and ultimately spell check when he started writing e-mails and using word processing programs. He still is a fairly dreadful speller, but knows to have anything important proof read. Grammar: well....he did a bit of Easy Grammar, did some diagramming, but he seemed to come with an inbuilt understanding of grammar. I'd say diagramming was the best route for him because it was visual. Reading: I read aloud for years, let him read what he wanted, which for him was generally non-fiction. His text book reading skills are still not terrific -- he has a hard time reducing a dense text into bit sized chunks, and with previewing a page, looking for headings. His analysis skills did improve with maturity. He loved theater, so it was our route into literature, symbolism and other literary devises. His vocabulary was never a problem and we never did any vocabulary program. Writing: We did the slow but steady route, not bothering with narrations until almost middle school. Really. Before that we did some dictation and copy work, and we always talked about everything we read and did -- oral narrations really. But the real work in writing started in 6th or 7th grade, and after a slow and painful period his writing took off. I used the editing process to work on grammar, spelling and punctuation issues -- really application of rules stuck better with him than worksheets. The best socialization for him came through his interests. He did theater, choir at church, and in his teens started working the tech side of things with some wonderful adult mentors. I'm glad he isn't the typical teen -- he is much more polite and more of an adult in his conversation that many other 17 year olds. My other piece of advice for home educating an Aspie is to put those strong interests to good use. Almost every subject of interest can be studied through the lens of an interest. With my theater geek son, I had him read plays, biographies of playwrights and producers. He did science projects on theater special effects. I had him adapt chapters from novels into scripts, complete with lighting cues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verity Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 My oldest is an undiagnosed Aspie - officially he has ADHD and social skills delays along with fine motor delays, sensory processing disorder and alot of problems organizing himself, i.e. executive skills. Along with that he is highly intelligent, a natural speller and reads (fiction) at an 8th grade level or better. I pulled him out of ps last fall due to a combination of teasing and his inability to function and follow directions in the way his teacher was giving them. He was coming home with hours of homework every night because he just couldn't keep up with her, mostly along the lines of he didn't know what she wanted exactly and so would get stuck and not do anything. He would get in trouble for not paying attention when he asked for help. After I spoke with her (repeatedly) about his issues she had another student be his "helper" - you can imagine how well that worked. Because he previously was doing so well in school (due to natural reading ability and high IQ) he never qualified for an IEP and the teacher didn't have to do anything extra for him. After weeks of regular phone calls from school and notes of concern from the teacher I also realized that he was getting angrier and more frustrated and wasn't the sweet child that he had always been. I felt like his spirit was being crushed. Since that day he hasn't been back to public school. This year we are using WWE3 and FLL4, along with a unit of IEW (ancient history based to go along with the history we are doing). For us this combination has been good. He struggles with narrations and giving a short summary of anything (he tends to ramble on and on) but through practice is doing much better. The summarizing skill is not natural for an Aspie and I'm so glad to have this tool to work on that with him. Dictation is also hard for him, he tends to insert lots of descriptive, colorful words into dictations that I have to point out - thinking about it he is a natural for the IEW method. lol I enjoy doing a lesson of IEW every few weeks because it's so different from WWE and I like that it gives a structured way of outlining (the KWO). He isn't crazy about it, he gets overwhelmed, but when I really break it down into steps and sometimes have him dictate to me what he wants to say (so he isn't having to deal with the physical act of writing himself) he does very well. He isn't good at sorting out information on his own. For his history (we are using SotW and History Odyssey 2) he really needs me to sit with him, discuss the question then prompt him on what we should underline in our Kingfisher to use as answers for the questions. I have to model alot and encourage alot but I'm really proud of how well he works for me most days. I have to add in that I mix up his lessons and encourage jumping on the indoor trampoline, playing with playdoh and various other things to help with his sensory issues (so common with Aspies). I make a weekly schedule that I print out for both boys (my middle son has ADHD and is dyslexic as well) that breaks down their daily assignments per subject. At a glance he can see what he has to do each day and checks it off as he goes. I have had to build in a lot of that kind of structure because he doesn't have any on his own. As a note, we tried Classical Writing at the beginning of the year and it just wasn't for us. I loved the idea of following the progymnasta but I think the wide range of skill deficits and areas of giftedness made that program a tough fit for my oldest. I may try it again with my middle son. Good luck with finding the right fit for your Aspie! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Verity Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 We had some detox time to get through while he learned we really would keep him "safe", but after that he really started branching out and growing socially and emotionally, rather than pulling more and more into himself and growing increasingly hostile. We have found that this "shallow end" approach has been MUCH better for him than the "dump more water on the drowning kid" approach recommended by the school psychologist. The improvement has been noticed and commented on by many friends and neighbors as well as a number of school personnel who have interacted with him but who are not the school psychologist. I do not know whether this is the case for other children, but I do know that it has been a VERY GOOD thing for our son. :iagree: I feel like my son has been blossoming at home. He now volunteers to go out shopping with my partially disabled mother because he wants to help her. He doesn't insist on staying home when the family goes out. My in-laws took him out to dinner for his birthday and just raved on how polite he was to the waitress and what great manners he had. Just this fall (about a year since he left ps) I found a social skills group at a local center. The first group was a disaster, older boys who liked sports and he had nothing in common with. He was concerned about being picked on and bullied (though that wouldn't have been allowed - this is a very controlled setting). We talked with the counselor and decided to try a group where he is the oldest child. He seems to fit in very well (especially emotionally) with these kids and after the first class told me that it was "like heaven". This is only once a week and again in a small and controlled setting. He didn't ever do well in Cub Scouts and martial arts - he was always overwhelmed and unsure of what to do with himself, just lost. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamaSheep Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 :iagree: I feel like my son has been blossoming at home. He now volunteers to go out shopping with my partially disabled mother because he wants to help her. He doesn't insist on staying home when the family goes out. My in-laws took him out to dinner for his birthday and just raved on how polite he was to the waitress and what great manners he had. Just this fall (about a year since he left ps) I found a social skills group at a local center. The first group was a disaster, older boys who liked sports and he had nothing in common with. He was concerned about being picked on and bullied (though that wouldn't have been allowed - this is a very controlled setting). We talked with the counselor and decided to try a group where he is the oldest child. He seems to fit in very well (especially emotionally) with these kids and after the first class told me that it was "like heaven". This is only once a week and again in a small and controlled setting. He didn't ever do well in Cub Scouts and martial arts - he was always overwhelmed and unsure of what to do with himself, just lost. That's great! Scouts has been a bit challenging for us too, and it's been kind of an on again, off again thing. He's not doing much in the way of merit badges or rank advancement, but he has understanding leaders at the moment who let him just have fun with the other boys without a lot of pressure (and are willing to modify the activity for him as needed--for example, he doesn't swim (has been too anxious to learn), so when the other boys were working on a swimming badge they let him be the "drowning victim", and he had fun hamming it up and splashing them all). But I think it really depends a LOT on the specific leaders and boys in the group. Ds does well at restaurants now as well. He loves going to museums as long as they're not too crowded, which is generally not a problem early in the day in the middle of the week. He enjoys shopping and will volunteer to come along. He asks to push the cart, checks prices, and helps me carry the bags, all quite cheerfully. He enjoys going to "Farm Country", which has animals to feed, pony and wagon rides, etc., and will stand in line with the other kids to have a turn milking the cow if we're there at milking time (a few years ago that would have been a social and sensory nightmare). He enjoys going to the park, and the pool, and lots of other large, social settings. He'll even tolerate a movie theater long enough to watch a movie with the family. He likes to try new things and go new places, and has an adventurous spirit that is finally able to come out and play. Before we took him out of school all of those would have been problem locations. He lived at such a high level of general stress, sort of "ambient" stress, that any little thing would push him over the top. Now, his general stress level is much, much lower, so he has a lot more working room before he reaches the limit and loses it. He's also been able to learn to recognize when his stress level is increasing and to calmly do something about it before it takes over and he melts down. He's a whole different kid. Seriously. The speech pathologist at the elementary school called me last spring to tell me that she was getting his records together to transfer him over to the junior high. She had worked with him for only a year, since it's a new school and we were at a different one before it was built and they redrew the boundaries. She said she'd gone back into his records from the other school (which evidently she didn't do much of before she started working with him ((??!!)) ), and she needed to verify that there wasn't a mix-up with the records because this didn't even sound like the same kid she'd been working with. She mentioned a few "incidents" to make sure it was the right file. It was. He had been homeschooled for 2 years before she met him. It really has made that much difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElizabethB Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 Eventually, though, it dawned on me that maybe this was like throwing a child who couldn't swim into the deep end of the swimming pool. Dumping more water on him is not going to help him learn to swim. The thing to do would be to take him down to the shallow end where he can splash around safely and learn about water, and holding his breath, and kicking, and whatnot, and then get a little deeper as his skills improve. Great description. And, that also applies to the way reading and writing are commonly taught in schools--balanced literacy, reading to and with the children without teaching much about sounding out words; writing without learning how to write, a lot of output without training. Incremental training with smaller quantities is the answer that actually works in all 3 of these cases. It sounds like your winging it is working great, what a great way for him to learn, it sounds enjoyable and effective, there are a lot of great ideas for teaching any student in your explanation! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melmichigan Posted November 17, 2009 Author Share Posted November 17, 2009 You ladies are an inspiration to me. Thank you for all the replies! I have a lot to consider. I do think a lot of it is my own self doubt and I need to work through that. :) It's so hard with all the "experts" telling you what you should do, when it is the opposite of what you feel you need to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElizabethB Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 You ladies are an inspiration to me. Thank you for all the replies! I have a lot to consider. I do think a lot of it is my own self doubt and I need to work through that. :) It's so hard with all the "experts" telling you what you should do, when it is the opposite of what you feel you need to do. If it makes you feel any better, many "experts" also like balanced literacy, invented spelling, tons of unedited, untaught creative writing, reform math... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jennefer@SSA Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 Educating our Aspie at home is the best thing we could ever do for him. I love, love, love the analogy given above about throwing a child into the deep end and when seeing they can't swim just throwing more water at them! This is exactly what ps would be for ds8. I taught ps for 7 years and once my little guy turned 4 I knew that ps wouldn't be a fit for him, especially with him being a boy. Boys don't have a place for a quirky kiddo like my ds in their world and they can be quite cruel. At home where he is adored by his two younger brothers has been perfect (not easy though I should add) for us. You have gotten great advice so far but the only thing I can really add is that if you decide to bring him home you will face at the least confusion and questions and at the most straight out opposition. Just be prepared and don't be shocked by it. Homeschooling is really swimming against the flow and people.just.don't.get.it. All the time I get comments alluding to the fact that ds8 is immature and behind socially b/c he is not with his peers in school. The reality is that we homeschool b/c he is so far behind socially and NOT that he is so far behind socially b/c we homeschool. I have learned to not let it bother me one bit. Someone has in their signature line here something to the effect of "I'm a duck. It just all slides right off my back!" That comment literally runs through my mind when I have these conversations. :) No one else is accountable for what you do with your children but you and no one else knows what they need better than you.Trust yourself and do what you feel is best. Good luck and blessings!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melmichigan Posted November 17, 2009 Author Share Posted November 17, 2009 My fears only grow as we approach middle school, for her in public that would be next year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MamaSheep Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 Educating our Aspie at home is the best thing we could ever do for him. I love, love, love the analogy given above about throwing a child into the deep end and when seeing they can't swim just throwing more water at them! This is exactly what ps would be for ds8. I taught ps for 7 years and once my little guy turned 4 I knew that ps wouldn't be a fit for him, especially with him being a boy. Boys don't have a place for a quirky kiddo like my ds in their world and they can be quite cruel. At home where he is adored by his two younger brothers has been perfect (not easy though I should add) for us. You have gotten great advice so far but the only thing I can really add is that if you decide to bring him home you will face at the least confusion and questions and at the most straight out opposition. Just be prepared and don't be shocked by it. Homeschooling is really swimming against the flow and people.just.don't.get.it. All the time I get comments alluding to the fact that ds8 is immature and behind socially b/c he is not with his peers in school. The reality is that we homeschool b/c he is so far behind socially and NOT that he is so far behind socially b/c we homeschool. I have learned to not let it bother me one bit. Someone has in their signature line here something to the effect of "I'm a duck. It just all slides right off my back!" That comment literally runs through my mind when I have these conversations. :) No one else is accountable for what you do with your children but you and no one else knows what they need better than you.Trust yourself and do what you feel is best. Good luck and blessings!!! Hear hear! My usual response when people comment on his social awkwardness is something along the lines of, "Yes, we know he's behind socially. He's autistic. He's never going to be socially 'normal' no matter where he goes to school." Or alternately, "I know, weird huh. The REALLY strange thing is that this is such a vast improvement over the social skills he developed while in public school." They don't usually have much of a response to those. As for experts, I sympathize. When we pulled ds from school he had a whole team of experts working with him, and at the time they were all very genuinely concerned, sympathetic, and helpful people. He had a hand-picked long-time professional classroom teacher who had some kind of certification in teaching kids on the autism spectrum (meaning she took a couple of professional development classes on the subject and had taught one other Aspie in her career but that's a lot better than a 20 year old first year teacher), two one-on-one technicians (one for morning, one for afternoon because he was too intense for one person all day, he wore them out), a speech pathologist who loved him and did a lot of studying up on AS just for him, an occupational therapist, friendly office ladies who knew and loved him (he spent a lot of time in the "time out room"), a school psychologist who seemed to know what she was doing, and a wonderful principal who just really bent over backwards to make accommodations for him. I was TERRIFIED that I would not be able to provide enough at home, all by myself, to even come close to the support he was getting at the school. Not even CLOSE. But I could also see that even with all that help he was getting worse and worse, not better. And it got bad enough that it just pushed me over the edge. Something had to change. He needed to feel safe. I don't think he ever felt safe, not even at home because I made him do his homework and he knew I'd just make him go back there again tomorrow. It was always hanging over his head. Nobody should have to live in fear like that. So what we did was try it out over the summer to see how it went doing school at home. I needed to see whether I could really handle it. I figured if it turned out that I really could not handle it on my own, we could just put him back in public school in the fall without any fuss or bother. From Christmas until school ended in the spring I crammed. I read everything I could get my hands on that talked about homeschooling, I developed a plan, I purchased materials I thought would work with him. And after a short break in the spring we just jumped in. He was not happy about summer school, and he was not a well-adjusted, cheerful, cooperative child by the end of the summer by any stretch of the imagination (he is now, though, for the most part), but he was enough better that we could really see the difference, and he seemed to be headed in a much healthier direction. We knew that putting him back in school would change the direction back the other way again, because that is what happened at the end of every summer, and we'd have to watch helplessly again while he disintegrated before our eyes. Again. But I was still intimidated about cutting him off from his team of experts so I went down to the school and talked the situation over with the principal, told her about the results we'd seen with our summer experiment, and asked if we could still bring him in for appointments with the various therapists if we decided to homeschool him that year. She said she'd like to help us out with special ed services but didn't think she could do that unless he was enrolled at least half a day. But she gave me the name of the guy over special education down at the district and I gathered my courage and made an appointment with him. He was fairly leery about my proposal at first and I got the impression that he'd dealt with some fairly militant, demanding homeschoolers in the past. I explained our situation in detail, describing specific problems and improvements we'd seen over the summer in our homeschool experiment. He was sympathetic to our situation, but still a little hesitant. Then he asked whether I would be willing to have our son go through some evaluations and whatnot, and when my response was that I'd be happy to do whatever we thought might help him, and I was a big fan of evaluations, he caved. (Did the other homeschoolers want services without evaluations? I don't know, but that's the impression I got.) So they invented some new paperwork (we can't do anything without paperwork...lol), and got it all set up for us. So I was lucky enough to be able to homeschool AND take advantage of the experts for a while. That helped me work up the confidence to give it a try. It's only been in the years since then that I've slowly (but surely)realized how small the impact of the "experts" has been in his life, really. Their knowledge is useful (and can be gained by me if I find a good book on the topic), but the school setting is still one in which ds can. not. learn. Whether the topic is English grammar or the social value of friendly greetings, he just does not learn in an institutional setting. Further, even the most well-intentioned, genuinely involved experts can only do so much in an hour a week (or whatever it turns out to be) as compared to 24/7 with Mom, and no expert is as committed as I am to making sure the therapy has the desired result. Too often the experts are providing the specified service for the specified time allotment, and if the service has been provided on schedule, they consider it a success and check it off their list, regardless of whether it has resulted in any change whatsoever. Their job is to provide X service. And something else to be aware of is that experts who provide services through the school are only legally required to help the child until the child meets a MINIMUM level of functionality. If they get them up to the point where they can function at a D- level, that's good enough for them and they cut off the services, even if the child is capable of A+ work with a little more assistance. They're only required to help your child to function--not to succeed, not to excel, not to be healthy, not to reach their full potential, just to be able to participate in the system without disrupting it too much. I have been told this by several "experts" who have worked with ds and have been frustrated at having to discontinue services because the tests said he was done and they weren't allowed to keep kids beyond that point. They have limited funding, and blah blah blah. Anyway, the point being that experts are wonderful people and can be very useful, but don't be overawed by their education (you know more about YOUR child than they ever will, and you CARE more about your child than they ever can). Don't overestimate what they can really do for you--even experts are not magicians, they're just people like you. And don't assume that homeschooling means you can't still get help from the experts. Some states are better than others about letting homeschoolers access services, but it doesn't hurt to ask. And don't underestimate yourself. You will be surprised what you can do if you give it a good try. A final word about experts. I once heard a funny word derivation on the word "expert" that has helped me keep perspective. "Expert" is made up of two words, "ex" and "spurt". An "ex" is a has-been, and a "spurt" is a drip under pressure. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melmichigan Posted November 18, 2009 Author Share Posted November 18, 2009 Well...I enrolled my DD in an online interactive class for LA today. I have heard really good things and emailed the director back and forth a little. She will be taking Grammar Town/Ceasar's English I (by MCT) beginning Spring semester. We will continue our own Lit. for the rest of this year. The class is specifically geared toward younger students who have the capabilities but might struggle with the writing, so that portion isn't done online, but left to the parent if they wish to have the student do that outside of class. I think that it will be good for her to still have to answer to another teacher. (The teacher is very interested in working on whatever individualization she might need.) There will only be 15 children per class. Since they only meet once a week it is still real Mom intensive.:) I will look at the option to add Lit. online next year (in additon to what we are already planning) so that she can maintain that interaction and discussion with other kids, but in her own way and at her own choosing. I'm not going to tell her for a while yet and won't tell the school until we are closer. They won't be happy. They will still be obligated to give her speech services, and she can take nonessentials. I also still have a meeting with the middle school next month in case there is anything of interest for her there, maybe band or choir at some point, I'm leaving that door open yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jennefer@SSA Posted November 19, 2009 Share Posted November 19, 2009 I'm not going to tell her for a while yet and won't tell the school until we are closer. They won't be happy. They will still be obligated to give her speech services, and she can take nonessentials. I also still have a meeting with the middle school next month in case there is anything of interest for her there, maybe band or choir at some point, I'm leaving that door open yet. I am so glad that you have come to a decision that you feel comfortable with. I highlighted 2 parts of your above post that I very much wish were an option for us. Our school district is very unfriendly toward homeschoolers unfortunately. Things like this are just not an option. I plan on going to the school board in a few years to start discussions about this but boy and I am not looking forward to that. ;) Best of luck to you on this journey and keep us posted!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
butterfly113 Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 Thank you so much ladies for this thread. It has been a huge help and inspiration as we embark on this new journey of Aspergers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brownie Posted December 29, 2009 Share Posted December 29, 2009 I didn't have time to read all of the other responses, but we brought our ds 3rd grade (Asp) and ds 1st grade home this year. I think ds9 gets more social time now because playdates can last 3-4 hrs and the other bright boys tend to be a little quirky as well, although not as lacking in social skills; they are more tolerant. He is also building his relationships with his brothers, which equates better to future family life than does school. The best thing is that our relationship is much better. I'm the one person he connects with emotionally and we were losing that when we were always at odds, trying to keep up with the expectations of the ps world. Brownie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mama2cntrykids Posted December 30, 2009 Share Posted December 30, 2009 This is a great thread! I do however need to ask a couple of questions and I don't want to "crash" this thread, lol...off to start a new thread! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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