VERY/OVERLY clear expectations ????

[DawnM]

I realize I am not structured enough for my Aspie. I have known it for a long time. I just haven't gotten my act together.

 

The therapist yesterday strongly suggested I have a rigid schedule and time frame for school work to be done and clear rules.

 

Do you have/keep to a rigid schedule for those of you with children who just can't cope well on a more fluid schedule?

 

He fights/argues with me at every turn and I am positive in the long run this would help.

 

But the therapist isn't a homeschooler and her suggestion of time slots seemed too much like "creating school at home" to me.

 

Would you list the rules, chores and work to be complete or would you actually do time slots with "classes?"

 

Dawn

[Dmmetler]

Would a checklist and a set order work? My DD (supposedly not Aspie, but I really wonder....) does very well as long as we follow a set order and she can tick the box that she's done it. It doesn't matter what or how involved the assignment is-cutting an assignment to 1 math problem if it's a day that we're going somewhere is fine-but keeping the routine seems to get her mind set for the day, and then she can handle more variation later on.

[dtsmamtj]

For me it helped, but I didn't use "time" as much as here is what we need to get accomplished today. If you complete A, B & C you can take a 15 min. break and do . . . . .. . Then after he returned from the break I would tell him if you D, E & F you can have a snack or eat lunch. By then we usually only had a few things left and then he would be finihsed with his studies for the day. I always got him outside rain or shire for about 15 - 20 min each morning and afternoon also. To date he pretty much runs his day like that - accomplishing A-E then lunch. F-H then he is finished - he is now an 8th grader and we started this when he was in grade K. For us it made my son a happier boy - he knew what was expected in small chuncks.

 

HTH

 

T

[DawnM]

He has a real problem taking breaks and getting back to work. I am not sure how to remedy that. He gets overly involved in a card game or in a drawing or whatever and getting him to refocus or transition is very hard. Many times we just never finish.

 

Dawn

[ClassicMom]

This is where workboxes have helped us tremendously. I have each of the subjects in a tray as well as his breaks with an activity or some type of physical exercise for that break. My son knows exactly what to expect for each subject, when he is going to get a break and when his school day will be done.

 

Some of the breaks that I give him include:

jumping on the trampoline

riding his scooter or bike

playing Legos

working in his scrapbook

playing a board game

playing his Leapster

some sort of sensory exercise: pushing/pulling, blowing bubbles, playing in the sand, etc.

chess

we have more but this is just a sample

 

I have seen such an improvement in his day by using the workboxes. Also, by using the pictures of the subjects and activities, he can see at a glance what he has left.

 

[Laurie4b]

This is where workboxes have helped us tremendously. I have each of the subjects in a tray as well as his breaks with an activity or some type of physical exercise for that break. My son knows exactly what to expect for each subject, when he is going to get a break and when his school day will be done.

 

Some of the breaks that I give him include:

jumping on the trampoline

riding his scooter or bike

playing Legos

working in his scrapbook

playing a board game

playing his Leapster

some sort of sensory exercise: pushing/pulling, blowing bubbles, playing in the sand, etc.

chess

we have more but this is just a sample

 

I have seen such an improvement in his day by using the workboxes. Also, by using the pictures of the subjects and activities, he can see at a glance what he has left.

 

[ATTACH]6353[/ATTACH]

 

I agree--the workbox system can suit this need. However, your therapist is more right than ignorant about homeschool. You'll need to adopt who you are to suit what your kid needs, which is more structure. Homeschools look very different --usually dependent on the personality of the mom--but in your case, you'll have to work to make what isn't natural for you happen to suit the needs of your child. Just the way it is. It's hard.

[LaughingCat]

Would it help to set a timer for those activities/breaks where he has trouble stopping? Especially one with a little beep at the 1 minute mark?

 

DD1 is not aspie but can/does meltdown on transition from activities she's enjoying/loves that don't have an obvious stopping point (i.e. go up to this page) especially if it means "getting back to work". The timer has worked wonders for us but as I said she's not aspie so take that for what it's worth.

 

LL

[elise1mds]

We used one of the Time Trackers for a while when taking breaks was difficult for DS. It really helped. Now I just use an agenda and fill in the blanks with everything that has to be done each day. I might get a child who is frustrated with his ability to not complete an assignment to his own satisfaction, but I don't have a child who gets mad because he doesn't know what's coming next. I don't have room for workboxes, so this is what works for us. I have to be quite rigid, or the whole day flies out the window.

[Mom22ns]

I have a pretty rigid schedule for ds. It used to be completely rigid when he was younger. Now his schedule looks like this:

 

6:00 Math w/mom

7:00 breakfast

7:30 History/RA w/mom

8:30 to do list

9:30 Biology w/mom

10:30 to do list

11:30 Lunch

12:00 PE/Health

1:00 finish to do list items and get ready to leave

2:00 leave for band

 

a typical to do list would look like:

Lesson 6 OYAN 1 hour

Lesson 6 part 1 Irasshai 1 hour

SL reader 30 min

Wordly Wise 15 min

 

The times are estimates and he gives me actuals (in Mo we track hours). He knows when he will be with me and what he will be doing and how to fill the time in between. I used to assign the to do list items to specific times when he wasn't with me, but he can make those decisions himself now. We have weekly meetings on Friday where he turns in the weeks to do list items and we discuss them.

 

For him, having a schedule with exact times is very helpful. When I homeschooled only him, I was a lot more fluid with the schedule. He enjoyed that, but didn't get work done nearly as well as he does now.

[PeterPan]

We got the "needs more structure" line too, and I felt guilty about that for quite a while. Where we're at now is sort of the inverse. I leave her entirely alone to do whatever it is she has fixated on from her lists, but she has outside accountability and deadlines. Reality is, structure requires you to make it accountable. And for us the other part has been removing distractions entirely. So I keep the toddler far away from her when I want her to work, etc. I can't bend her to make her fit into some consistent schedule. This freedom with accountability thing is working better.

 

Oh, she's not aspie. I'm just saying we got the "structure" line and that's how it has turned out for us. Like you say, it's a bit different when we're not getting paid to make things happen and have a lot more we're trying to get done.

[DawnM]

Thanks all.

 

Workboxes were a huge bust here. They begged to get rid of them and thought they were too "Elementary" school for them. I didn't even have cute/bright colored boxes....but they didn't like them.

 

Aspie would MUCH prefer to have a list than a drawer to open, and particularly no surprises in the drawers.

 

I will be working on a more specific listing and times. I think that will help tremendously. I would LIKE a checkbox type thing. I have been looking for an online/computer thing with boxes for the Apple.

 

Dawn

[PeterPan]

Just thinking out loud here. If you have an apple, can you set him up his own account, which means he'd have his own ical? Then within that you could put all the assignments and let it ding for the times. Guess that only works if he's on or near that computer. Didn't someone else talk about creating that kind of structure or timer system with their iphone or something?

[DawnM]

Oh, I can?

 

Can I integrate icals? In other words, can I put it on my ical and sync it with only his stuff onto his, or would I need to do it on only his?

 

I feel like I am just beginning to learn the Apple even though I have had a laptop for over a year. I now have a desktop and a laptop and the boys are learning it better as well.

 

I did see that in Pages I can use checkboxes. I am playing around with that more. It would be nice if Pages synced with ical.

 

I also downloaded Things but I don't think that will work for my purposes.....I only got the 14 day free download and it just ended. If anyone uses Things or Evernote for homeschool scheduling let me know.....I don't see how Evernote can sync with a calendar, but I know I am not savvy in these matters either.

 

Dawn

 

Just thinking out loud here. If you have an apple, can you set him up his own account, which means he'd have his own ical? Then within that you could put all the assignments and let it ding for the times. Guess that only works if he's on or near that computer. Didn't someone else talk about creating that kind of structure or timer system with their iphone or something?

[PeterPan]

Well you have a couple ways to do it. In ical on the left side you see a menu called "on my mac" that has checkboxes. You can make as many of these as you want and change the colors. Ticking them makes them appear or disappear from your calendar. So for instance I put my cleaning on there to give me reminders, but I don't necessarily have it *showing* on the calendar all the time. It just dings to tell me when to do what.

 

So you could use that feature and create difference colors for different kids. When you create the event in ical, you'll be able to chose which category/color it uses. You'll see the option beside "Calendar" in the new event box thing that pops up. Look at it and see if it makes more sense.

 

So that's one way, by putting all the different categories of your life onto one calendar and grouping them by categories to keep it neat. The other way would be to give him his own user account (Go to System Preferences and snoop around). Then it would be his own calendar. He might actually like this. I know my dd does. There's also a stickies app you can download for your mac. (Or maybe it was already on there? I forget.) Anyways, she figured out that the stickies can have different colors. (Again, just snoop around to figure this stuff out.) So she keeps different colored stickies for each aspect of her life (shopping list, to-do list, this or that).

 

By giving them their own account, they can also have their own address book, own calendar with things that are important to them, own desktop, etc. And, frankly, it makes it SUPER DUPER easy to see what they're up to when they're on the computer. At that point everything in the history is their surfing, and if they erase it you know they're covering their tracks. I thought it would be harder to keep track of her with a separate account, but it's actually easier. And it wasn't much of a hassle. Once I got her account set up (making sure I limited things I wanted limited, etc.), she pretty much took care of finding and customizing the rest. I think they like that bit of freedom. She really enjoys having her own calendar and her own world. And she understands that I can squash her world like a BUG, if she does anything bad. And she knows I'm checking it.

 

So that's what is working for us. If he uses the imac and you use the laptop, then you might set his account up just on the imac.

 

BTW, I don't know if you've had issues with typing or not or already have that under control, but the mac can do the dvorak keyboard. It was an incredibly easy thing to do. I set her account up that way and my account regular. To go back and forth you need passwords, so I'm able to control and force her to use the new keyboard layout. She's not happy about that, but I think it's going to help over the long haul. She had hit a wall, which I think was due to the poor ergonomics, etc. of the regular keyboard layout, and she had taken to pecking. This was my grand attempt to stop it.

 

If you have the new Lion (which I haven't done yet, my bad), then do your computers automatically sync? I don't know much about that, but I thought that was part of the point, to do something like that. Aren't they doing away with Mobile Me which was the paid service for that? I don't know. We only have one apple, sniff, so it's not an issue for us. What I've described though would get you started, in one fashion or another. Using ical is super duper easy. I like the way you can drag things to change events. I like the colors. There are even cool subscriptions you can find online like for your ds's favorite sporting events or the moon phases. Way fun. :)

[DawnM]

Thank you.

 

I have Lion on the new iMac and Snow Leopard on the laptop,.

 

I "think" they will sync when Cloud comes out, which I intend to get the day it comes out!

 

I will play with the calendar this weekend and hopefully have something set up by the time the new school week starts.

 

Dawn

[Joyofsixreboot]

My guy has a strict schedule he sets for himself. You can set a clock by him. The problem with that is he can't cope when things go awry. You don't want to create another problem by solving one.