Needing advice for finding curriculum and learning-joy for my ASD 6 year old boy.

[pehp]

I'm going to try to focus my question and make it as succinct as possible without turning into a rambler here! But it will be a challenge...I'm looking for words of wisdom for anyone who has BTDT/has advice to share.

 

My son, who is 6.5, was diagnosed w/ 'moderate' autism when he was 2.  Now that he has lost his auditory sensitivity issues and his language has soared I think he'd be classified as having mild/high-functioning autism.  He's not 'obviously' autistic; however, he doesn't play typically with peers, he definitely has the laser-focus and obsessive interests of autism, and I think he's probably more prone to meltdowns still (that's part of my question. read on). 

 

We are doing first grade work right now.  Miquon math, phonics, copywork.  His handwriting is beautiful; he's an incredible artist.  We are slowly learning reading--he can read "One Fish Two Fish" without fluency but also without many flaws....he's progressing fine in reading.  We sometimes use Explode the Code to supplement.  Miquon is a good fit. We are using a combo of CHOW/SOTW for history (plus supplemental readings) and a basic Charlotte Mason/Ambleside education (nature study--which he LOVES; poetry; Bible; etc). We don't do science right now (other than our nature study) b/c I haven't found anything I enjoy, although today I ordered a Delta nutshell kit in the hopes that it will help us b/c he told me he LOVES science.  I didn't think he liked history but he also said "I love reading about the Egyptians!" so ...that's good. He likes Life of Fred, which I've slacked on using, but I'll pick it back up again. 

 

He's my oldest, so I just don't know what is 'normal' or typical of a child and what is attributable to his autism.  I was completely unqualified to have children, :) having barely done any babysitting in my past and not having any educational background w/ kids. In other words: I'm kind of clueless about how typical children function.  It seems TO ME that he gets frustrated easily and rapidly progresses to full-on tears. This in turn makes me crazy and I have to go do deep breathing exercises. I hate to admit it but...there you go. For instance: if he doesn't understand something quickly, or if he is copying a word and makes a 'messy' A (and let me tell you, his handwriting is the bomb for a 6 year old boy...!!!  so his 'messy' to me looks great) or for instance tonight when I mentioned Lent and he asked what that was and I tried to describe it....anything that frustrates him or he doesn't 'get' immediately results in his high-pitched wail and a meltdown.  Ouch. I try to be very patient, encouraging, etc and that helps but I still feel like I'm failing him when he does this. I don't want him to be stressed about school. 

 

First question: do neurotypical children do this???  Subquestion: how do you deal with these types of academic-related meltdowns?

 

Second question: what types of curriculum have you found that works well for your ASD child?  I have a BA in philosophy, MA in poetry and JD so I am 200% a wordsmith.  Charlotte Mason appeals to me. Give me Shakespeare;  I am confused by things like machines or mechanical concepts. My son enjoys hearing me read poetry and certain stories (today he was cracking up over Winnie the Pooh)(we all were), and I read him an Aesop's Fable daily which he narrates back to me beautifully.  But sometimes I just feel like we are plodding along without much JOY.  The CM philosophy which seems to assume that immersion in language will help a child's language and vocabulary develop in a rich fashion makes sense to me, but it seems to fall short when the child gets hung up on ONE word he doesn't understand and then the frustration-o-meter starts to escalate. 

 

(If the book has pictures he seems much more engaged.  If there are few or no pictures then we've got glazed eyes and a faraway expression--CHOW is like this and sometimes SOTW.  Today I ordered Jim Weiss' CDs in the hopes that the more engaging readings will help out.  He LOVES listening to Weiss' other CDs!!)

 

Things that I'd planned to do this year and dropped b/c they resulted in so much tearful frustrated melting: This Country of Ours (I was  dying a thousand deaths reading that..much less my poor son); the Velveteen Rabbit (we got through it but I think it went over his head); Just So Stories (he just didn't "get" them at all). 

 

In addition, he is VERY sensitive.  Today for picture study I showed him a Norman Rockwell painting--The Bottom Drawer--where the child finds the Santa suit and has a shocked look on his face.  We don't do Santa and I thought my son would think it was funny.  HE CRIED!!!  I felt like a colossal failure. 

 

I really want our homeschooling experience to be enjoyable. We don't have to have unicorns and rainbows every day but I want my son to really engage with the materials and to love learning.  So far that 'click' of engagement is sort of elusive. And I feel inadequate to guide him because we are such different learners--I was a super early reader, very verbal; he's mechanically-minded...he's brilliant at building things out of k'nex, for instance.  (My husband is a mechanical engineer--there are genes there!) He does his schoolwork, and he is for the most part pretty kind about going along with things, but I can tell it's not the 'lighting of a fire' I value.

 

Much of my life I have spent feeling quite competent and on top of everything I do and I'm humbled to realize that this is not an area where I feel at all competent.  All the ideals I had when I read CHarlotte Mason and TWTM seem hazy now and I want to do what is best for my son but I feel like I'm not sure what to do.

 

So I guess my third question would be: how to get that 'engagement' and that 'click' with a child whose interests are so divergent from my own.  I am more than willing to stretch myself but it is hard to get out of my own mindset which is kind of box-checking. I fear that I will miss something or ruin him. 

 

(I will say that he's a lovely boy and kind, communicative, and engaging to talk to-I do not fault him at all, but I fault myself because I feel like I'm inadequate.)

 

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.  And I see that I have definitely rambled.  :ohmy:

 

 

 

 

 

[MeghanL]

:grouphug: First, take a deep breath. It sounds like your son has made incredible progress in the past few years and that is to be celebrated. 

For your first question about meltdowns, I have found (and this is just my experience) that I need to go into a Zen-Like state when interacting with my oldest. I mean, super calm. All the time. It does get exhausting but I've learned from experience that anything else just makes the problem worse. If he's angry & I get frustrated, we'll never get back to task. If he's angry and I just sit there and calmly tell him the next step to calm down, he can re-focus himself. I know it sounds crazy, but the calmer I am, the better. I don't want you to feel like I'm putting all the responsibility on you. I'm not trying to add to your stress. For me, I would get frustrated out of fear that something so trivial was going to ruin the rest of the day. If I let that fear go and let myself believe this is a momentary hiccup, I can retain that zen-like state much easier. I hope that makes sense.

For your second and third questions, you may not like this, but you may not be able to see the joy your son has for learning for a few more years. It's so hard for some of these kids to understand the depth of feeling they have, nonetheless articulate it! In the example you gave of the picture of Santa, did he say he was disturbed or saddened by it? He may have cried because he felt empathy with the child in the photo. He may have cried because he was expecting to see something else in the picture (especially if he had seen something by that artist before) and was surprised it wasn't exactly what he thought. He may have cried for some other reason totally unrelated to whether or not he was engaged in the lesson. 

So, if I were you, I would start looking to see if your son is expressing all of his strong emotions through crying. He may not be able to properly process them yet. If that's the case, embrace that his tears show he is feeling something that is not necessarily negative. If you approach it with that mindset, do you think it would change how you react to him? 

 

[pehp]

MeghanL--thank you.  You are so right about the zenlike state of non-reaction.  What a struggle--I am a patient person but also passionate!  And I have a hard time covering up my own feelings.  But yes...that is the key.  And will require much training and more self-control on my part, I'm sure!!  He can tell when I'm even a little upset--if I just walk into another room so that I can re-focus, he KNOWS it is b/c I am frustrated.  Man, this is hard!!

 

And: I think it may have been empathy. He has a very hard time 'naming' emotions (of course) but that was the sense I got.  Typically tears mean frustration (when we are doing school) but I do think in the picture case it was empathetic. He shed 'quiet tears' not meltdown tears, too. 

 

 

"you may not like this, but you may not be able to see the joy your son has for learning for a few more years. It's so hard for some of these kids to understand the depth of feeling they have, nonetheless articulate it!"

 

This rings a bell in my mind.  Today when I said "you don't like history much so we may do less of that sometimes" and he said "but I LOVE history! I love the Egyptians!"  Could've knocked me over with a feather. My husband is this way; I joke that he's the master of understatement.  We'll go to a party and he'll say "it was ok" and then weeks later he'll say "wow, it was the best night of my life" or something equally out of sync with his initial expression.  I'd never thought of the fact that my son may be enjoying subjects but not *expressing* that enjoyment.  Wow.  THANK YOU for pointing that out.