Would you homeschool this kid?

[lavender's green]

I know a lot of people who do the choice thing (our ped is a big proponent of it), but DS often doesn't care much.

 

We do a lot of sensory stuff, especially tactile, to help with transitions. Koosh balls and fidget toys in the car, and wiki stix or play doh inside (especially around dinner time, which is when DH comes home too. That's a lot of transitions for the kids to handle at once!) The latter two can also help head off a meltdown if I catch the signs in time. My kids find those so calming.

[Zinnia]

Showers are really good for one of my sons.  It often works as a natural transition--he is 10, and he plays hard.  So, he'll come home from practice or inside from playing, and the shower will help.  He went to school for first grade, which was a hard year.  We framed it that year as, "we've been sick a lot this year, and one of the things we're going to do is to try to reduce our germs.  You'll take a shower and change clothes right when you get home to help that."  He did.  And you know?  From less germs or from reduced stress, we did end up getting sick less.  So win/win.

[PeterPan]

My Aspie child has the vocabulary of a grad student and has since she was at least seven.  Like, tested on the Peabody Vocabulary Test.  Being with kids a grade ahead wouldn't make that much difference in terms of the fact that she knows and uses words they don't know.  But she still does better with the slightly younger kids.  Is it enough?  No.  She's still different.  She's still the weird kid.  But it gives her a bit of breathing space, more in terms of the expectations of adults than anything, but also with there being LESS of a delay (and really it's more of a difference than a delay, in her case) between her and the other kids.  It is the difference between hiding under the desk and actually being a leader behaviorally and just kind of out of sync on the playground.  That's a pretty big difference. 

 

Especially when we're talking about not just where to slide in but whether to make kindergarten or first grade be the entry point.  Academics are really the least important thing with six year olds.  Kindergarten is the natural entry point.  I bet most of the kids from the preschool class are going into a kindergarten class next year.  Kindergarten will still work on social skills.  It will be long and hard and demanding, but there will also be a lot more tolerance for a kid whose having a hard time coping with it.  Kindergarten is focusing on school skills.  It just doesn't make sense to me to skip that one.  I'd skip first grade before I'd skip kindergarten. 

 

I think Elizabeth has an exceptional YMCA.  We didn't have a lot of success with our Y swim lessons.  The teachers just didn't know what they were doing enough.  Cat didn't require private lessons, but she did do a lot better with very small (no more than four kids) and a teacher who was VERY experienced.  We found that privately.  Just wanted to throw out there that just because your Y swim lessons didn't work out well doesn't mean swimming can't.  Our Y just didn't have the training and support for the instructors that my kid required. 

 

The bolded is SO spot on. And yes, we have an exceptional Y. Not so much that it's swanky, but just the convergence of staff. Yes, he was in a class with (typically) only 2-3 other kids for most of that time and the teacher had been teaching 30+ years. But I totally agree, it's all about the people and finding that setting. My point was that sometimes,with enough support and enough time, our kids CAN make progress. If you saw how much my ds struggled during that time, you NEVER would have anticipated he would be as successful as he is now. But I totally agree, it might take private, and like Terabith we had super small groups with a veteran, uber patient teacher.

[PeterPan]

Traditional private music lessons wouldn't have been in reach for my ds and a class would leave him behind because he can't sing, etc. For him, music therapy with a licensed music therapist at the autism charter school was the clinic. If you have an autism school near you, you could see what they offer. Or find a music therapist and see if they can work with him. 

 

Our music therapist specialized in autism, so she had all the lingo, could handle behaviors, and knew lots of little tricks like how to turn the chairs, how to contain him with environmental controls, how to use sensory, etc. Like I wouldn't assume just ANY random therapist will be up to it. But for us, it was really good!

 

Music therapy, as things go, isn't terribly expensive, and he had an amazing time. It built his ability to sing a small amount, be expressive with music and motion, etc. It's good stuff!

[TravelingChris]

None of my kids are autistic or have Aspergers/  My kids are ADHD.  I only had oldest in both preschool and first grade (he skipped kindergarten).  Preschool was mostly okay and he did seem to enjoy it.  First grade was frequent meltdowns after school because he didn't have enough time to run around or get up and move around.  Went to homeschooling and never looked back. 

 

In your case, I would consider how good the school was and how likely was it that he would be bullied.  I think the risk is less so in 1st grade and so I think option A or option B are both valid options. To help you determine, can you visit the school and also visit with the special ed teacher(s) that would be teaching your son?

[luuknam]

Everyone, what does a structured day look like for you at this age? At the very least I need to brainstorm how to survive the summer. My kids will be 6, 3, and 1 then.

 

:lol:

 

I don't do structured days. He's got a time before which he can't bug me in the morning, and then he gets half an hour (sometimes a bit longer) of electronics time (because if it gets scheduled later in the day he's paranoid about not getting it), and then breakfast, and that's it wrt structure. Okay, there's obviously some structure wrt things outside the house, like when he has speech, or swim&gym, but I don't do "structured days". I don't like to be held hostage to my kid's idea of routines. When he was 3yo he'd throw a tantrum if after putting Nutella on his bread I put the knife in the wrong spot. So, I'd put the knife wherever the hell I felt like putting it. Lather, rinse, repeat. Somehow, he got over it. Of course, all autistic kids are different, and this is not the recommended thing to do, so YMMV.

 

Our local ps says flat out that they don't give IEPs to kids with ASD1, only ASD2 or 3.

 

Your school labels kids ASD1, 2, or 3? Can they do that? I thought those were medical labels and they can't do medical diagnoses I thought. Our school simply put an "educational autism" label on him.

 

To whomever said redshirting is rampant - that really varies per school. In some schools, almost nobody redshirts. It also depends on the cut-off. Not many people here red-shirt, and the cut-off is Dec 1st, so my August boy was not the youngest in his class. He was definitely one of the youngest, but there were 2 or 3 or so kids younger than him and I'm pretty sure only 1 kid who was more than 365 days older than him (she'd transferred in from a different school district right after the start of 1st grade - ironically, she was one of his best friends in 1st grade that year).

 

Being the youngest can also have the advantage that people expect less mature behavior, whereas if you're the oldest and are still less mature than all the others, that stands out (mine is also short for his age, making him look even younger, which helps with people not expecting much maturity from him). But, again, all kids are different, all schools are different, so YMMV. It's quite possible K might be the best option for OP's son. I just don't think it's possible to make a blanket statement and say it's best for all autistic boys with summer birthdays at all schools always. Or other situations either. In a moment of temporary insanity I signed him up for sleepaway camp  the summer before 2nd grade, which is the youngest the Y here will take kids (they have to be 7yo/entering 2nd grade). So, he was 6 years 11 months, and loved camp - camp staff said he's definitely different, but that he did great. He's been every summer since (and one winter weekend to boot).

[lavender's green]

:lol:

 

I don't do structured days. He's got a time before which he can't bug me in the morning, and then he gets half an hour (sometimes a bit longer) of electronics time (because if it gets scheduled later in the day he's paranoid about not getting it), and then breakfast, and that's it wrt structure. Okay, there's obviously some structure wrt things outside the house, like when he has speech, or swim&gym, but I don't do "structured days". I don't like to be held hostage to my kid's idea of routines. When he was 3yo he'd throw a tantrum if after putting Nutella on his bread I put the knife in the wrong spot. So, I'd put the knife wherever the hell I felt like putting it. Lather, rinse, repeat. Somehow, he got over it. Of course, all autistic kids are different, and this is not the recommended thing to do, so YMMV.

 

 

 

That's a lot like we do now (except I try to have a few things up my sleeve for the afternoon, or he'll start needling at me). But for this particular kid, I think we need more. Especially seeing how well he does with highly structured school days.

 

But thanks for sharing; hearing a variety of experiences is helping me think through our family's needs.

[luuknam]

That's a lot like we do now (except I try to have a few things up my sleeve for the afternoon, or he'll start needling at me). But for this particular kid, I think we need more. Especially seeing how well he does with highly structured school days.

 

Btw, I don't mean that he runs wild all day (there is some free play, but not all day every day) - we do things, but, there isn't a routine/structure/schedule.

[PeterPan]

Lavender, what I have done the last couple summers really successfully with my ds is use classes at the Y and then local, community-based summer classes. It gives us lots of structure, and then we just know we'll hit the pool in the afternoon when our stuff is done. For us, it makes a nice flow. I'm a really good minivan mom! :D I don't own a mini-van, but I'm just saying that shuttling thing is really good with us. The transitions are hard, but it gives us structure, a sense of getting stuff done.

 

So the summer before he turned 6, we did swim lessons every day and gymnastics 3-4 days a week, mostly evenings. The summer before 7, same gig. Summer before 8 (this past summer) we had some ABA under our belts and enough behavioral improvement to do classes. So we typically did a class in the morning and swam in the afternoon, something like that. And classes would be a week long and rotate, so it might be soccer one week, art camp the next, that kind of thing. Sometimes we did two classes in a day. And always gymnastics or swim team in the evenings. So that's actually a LOT of structure, when you think about it. And we did alternating weeks of that and ABA.

 

I don't know how this summer will roll. We get more ABA now. We'll probably try to work our ABA so that we get ABA *and* can do some camps and things. See what resources you have in your community. The Y classes worked for us because we had a particular teacher, a perfect match. 

 

ABA is a pretty stellar thing to make happen if you can. If you did 3 hours a day of that, then you'd have the afternoons to go to the park or hit the pool. Makes for a nice flow.