Severe autism, a day in the life homeschooling?

[JJSam]

I have 3 children, a 6yo with autism (but 'higher functioning' these days) who I am already homeschooling, a 4yo with severe autism who is mostly nonverbal and what words he does speak tend to be him echoing us, and a 19 month old who is being evaluated for autism on Tuesday. My 4yo currently goes to a public developmental pre-k but we really want to have him at home with us, I'm just worried that I'll "mess up" somehow and he won't make as much progress as he might in public school. Can anyone who is homeschooling a child like him kind of walk me through what your day is like, curriculum choices, and anything else you think I should know?

[PeterPan]

There are some people here who's kids were diagnosed ASD3, but we'll see if they notice the thread. My ds is diagnosed ASD2. He is one of those who slid along, with each eval saying more, till we finally ended up where we are. Some people go the other direction, from ASD3 down to ASD2. You never know.

I can tell you that for my ds the biggest deal has been language. It affects every single thing. You're describing a lot of language issues. This series (well actually just the free videos and free samples because I never bought it) radically changed how I understood my ds' language issues.                                       #e82 Natural Language Acquisition In Autism: Echolalia To Self-Generated Language, Level 1 by Marge Blanc, MA, CCC-SLP                               There's a book and two video courses. 

There are no guarantees, like oh put him in a school and the outcome is amazing. What is your insurance going to cover and what will you have access to if you homeschool? If you keep them in the ps system, you have guaranteed therapies. Like I said, my ds is ASD2, and I can't imagine not having a team of people. I also live at the edge of constant burnout. Does your state have some kind of disability scholarship system or will the schools still provide therapies if you homeschool? If you enroll them, can you get alternative placements in an autism school? 

For us, homeschooling looks nothing like traditional homeschooling. I already have a dd I taught through high school, so I've btdt. This is totally different. Everything we do is constantly going back to the language deficits, because they're so significant. When I got him reading, then he was hyperlexic. Now he can read with comprehension, but it's not ENOUGH for him to do grade-leveled work with ease. 

The plus of homeschooling is that it's relational, it's real. You're going to be able to live in love, grow together, bring in life skills, and be very custom.

The down side will be you don't know what you don't know. If you don't have access to services, almost undoubtedly you're going to get down the road and have serious challenges that have crept up. They could be compliance or language or social thinking, but you're going to get swamped with the enormity of the task very, very quickly.

My advice is find out what services you can get so you're not doing it ALONE. If you can get services (ABA, speech therapy, OT, social skills groups, etc.) and homeschool, then yes you can find a path forward. If you CAN'T get access to services, then that's a much harder path. I cannot fathom doing ASD2 or 3 without access to services.

So age 6? Compliance, routines, in-home ABA. Same for age 7, 8, 9... Actually he was closer to 7 when we finally started ABA. I forget. Now we're in a pretty good groove. Are your dc very easy to work with or more challenging? That really matters. Some kids wake up with a smile on their face and are pretty chilled. Then there's my ds. He might wake up happy and turn sour or he might wake up sour and turn very dour. He's pretty intense with a lot of power dynamics and just this need for me to be very on the ball. So I have to wake up and be done with my gig and READY when he wakes up. But he's always been this way, so it wasn't like some shock. 

So I think there's a sense in which the child you think you have is who you'll have. If you try to read to them and say hey let's make cookies together, or if you make small demands like having them do a puzzle or pick up something they spilled, are they pretty compliant and chilled? Do they have behaviors like leaving the house or other things that are going to get complicated? This stuff wears people out, or at least it wears me out. But not every kid is like that. 

There is no curriculum that fits my ds. Zero. He didn't have the language to understand read alouds, and he was memorizing, completely memorizing and scripting, everything he listened to on audio. So like to do Sonlight or some other curriculum, pointless. But not all kids are like that. Just depends on their mix. 

Does your ds have something he likes? He's probably going to do more of that. Like does he like apps or puzzles or have a thing he's good at? That may be a channel where you'll bring in things. Honestly, my ds has always been behind on things and not liked a lot of the things other kids on the spectrum seem to like. Like some will memorize lists or do intricate puzzles or have these academic pursuits. Not my ds, lol. He couldn't operate a tv remote. He's having a challenging time now with a calculator and he's 10 1/2! He's plenty bright, just things fluster him. So none of the things you think will work work. 

The *closest* I've gotten to curriculum with him is the fun stuff from Timberdoodle. Like their doodling books, art kits, things like that have usually been a good fit. He has always liked books that have you look for things, so we do a lot of that. We're reading some art up close books that have you look for things in the picture. We've done a lot of those over the years. He's FINALLY understanding Jean Fritz books like                                             Can't You Make Them Behave, King George?                                       but that's at 10 1/2 after doing 3 hours a day of language work for months on end. I kid you not. We had to go all the way back, like to articles and adjectives and attributes. 

We play charades every day, doing maybe 3 cards per person, because they're really hard for him. He has to figure out what important attributes or parts of the thing are or what the steps are in order to act it out. That's really challenging for him. And we're playing describing games like Telepath, where he has to describe the object pictured and see if I can guess it. Goes back to those Verbalizing/Visualizing skills and they're a challenge for him. 

We're working on narrative language and being able to tell what happened in a story. 

Math has been wicked crunchy. He has the SLD, so the number sense is a mess. He has a hard time operating a calculator. And the language of word problems is super, super flummoxing. Like if he's used to hearing something one way and it's written another, he has no clue what it means.

I do use a variety of worksheets from various publishers, because I can select them very carefully and back up to fit him. They're also really good for compliance, because it's one page at a time, sit down and work.

We do a LOT of relational stuff. I have a ping pong table, air hockey, a single line swing, etc. He needs a lot of support like that, just pairing, to keep life happy and together and on-track. We do a lot of life skills, like the steps to put away your laundry, how to cook, how to wipe a spill, how to warm something in the toaster oven.

He couldn't remember a phone number, any phone number. He now knows one btw, so that's really good. But that's new, like in the last year. You can imagine that typically homeschool things like Classical Conversations are just a total bust when your language disabilities are such that you can't repeat anything. Awana at church was a flop, utter flop.

So in a sea of things that aren't working, we have things that work. We have a good life. But it doesn't really look like homeschooling. It's more like we live together and do things together because we like being together. And there are good things and bad things about it. He's given me two concussions, and I have bruises on my arm right now from where he got really dysregulated during this growth spurt. We use our state disability scholarship and get services. 

I would have to drive 40 minutes (more in traffic) each way to take him to a school that could meet his needs, so really that amount of time on the road equals the time to work with him. I don't regret what I do, but if I had an adequate school placement closer I'd probably just do that. I also have a background in linguistics and get kicks out of buying speech therapy materials and working on language with him.

I'm sorry to paint such a negative picture. It's a lot of work and I would just be realistic about the amount of work that needs to be done, the amount of support that needs to be given, your ability to do the therapy level work and the intervention work, and your resources to make things happen so you don't burn to an utter crisp. If you succeed on say academics but fail on language or social skills, you can end up with a brilliant kid who's unemployable. So it takes a lot of thought to admit your weaknesses and build a team and cover all the bases. If you can do it alone, well I wish you all the best. That's probably going to depend on the kid and how his mix presents behaviorally.

[DawnM]

I work in public education, and worked in it before I took my Aspie out of school to homeschool him.  The PS frustrated me to no end.  If you are severe and need a self contained classroom, you are golden, and if you are neuro-typical, you are golden, but high functioning autism gets little support.  This is still the case.  It stinks.

Did I do everything right in HSing him?  NOPE!  But he has done pretty well despite my failures.  Really.

[Rosie_0801]

I didn't get to homeschool my non-verbal son, but home-preschooling meant he was allowed to be a happy, healthy person who could operate at his personal best.