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Sebsmommy
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Hi everyone.  :seeya:

Not sure where to start, so I'll give the basics! I'm from Ohio, I'm an author and am autistic, and I have one son, he will be 6 on June 4th. He just finished his K year in public school; he's NT, is at a 3rd grade level in Math & Reading, but considered "too immature" by the school standards to advance any further than 1st grade. I came across tWTM while looking for homeschool curriculum, started reading the book and knew this is going to be how I teach my son. I always planned to HS, am in a position to do so, and the fact he will need individualized learning plans makes it imperative to do it now.

 

Although I graduated HS and have 3 years of college, I never finished although I attempted to 6 times (I didn't know I was autistic until I was 27 and by then it was too late financially to change paths and finish). Even though I knew I wasn't well prepared in many ways (public school where I was too smart and bored, abused, etc.) I never knew how much I didn't know until I was looking through the things my son will learn about and realized how much I DON'T know even with all my "smarts"...so this will be a learning experience for him...and me in some ways.

 

I'm still learning, but I'm going to start next week (he just finished K yesterday) with everything, and have started gathering stuff. I'm excited, and so is he! We've already begun learning French and ASL together (although I have a small knowledge of French already and he knows some ASL from K), as we started before I found WTM, and already he tries to 'show off' his skills with what he's learned. I think Latin will come a bit later at this point, although I'm thinking of switching after learning Level 1 French to Latin, and perhaps doing small amounts of Latin with him in addition to the French after that.

Cassandra

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Thanks everyone! :)

 

Welcome! I'd love to hear the story of how you learned you were autistic if you ever want to share.

 

Sure! :) In short, it wasn't easy. I had a very bad childhood where I was abused, so a lot of my history was blocked out in my mind. All I recalled was how different I was in school, at home, everything. I never felt like I belonged in and couldn't understand anything social to save my life. I used to freak out, thinking they were panic attacks; I'd end up rocking, covering my ears, twirling, etc. I took everything so literally, (ex: I thought "Dead Man's Curve" in Cleveland truly had dead men lying on the curve!) and pretty much began to flee every time something upset me.

 

When I was 26, I was chatting with someone for a while, and out of the blue one day, he asked me "Are you autistic?" because he had a sibling who was...and he said I was just like her. I had never even considered it, but psych's could never land on a diagnosis with me that would stick; nothing fit for long even when they did. I read this book, Aspergirls, and after that, I read more and more things about it...and that's when I brought it up to my clinical counselor. With info from my family about me as a child, among testing, I was formally diagnosed. At the time, Aspergers was still a diagnosis, so that's technically mine (as it's now just called 'mild autism').  I was so glad. It made my whole life make so much sense!

 

Since finding out, I've come a long way, however. My counselor said when he first met me, he had me around age 4 to 5 emotionally (stunted due to abuse and trauma); at this point, I'm considered about age 15 or 16 emotionally. However, this seems to be something I've discovered is quite similar in many people with Aspergers. Apparently, we're always about half our age emotionally, which is probably why people think of us as childish in many ways! :)

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