Aspie homeschooling Auties

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Hi there, caregivers.

I want to connect with other parents who may have similar experiences to me. I have two kids 5 and 6, who have had some services (enough to be ongoing) since they were each 1 1/2 years old. The youngest is considered to be on the severe end of the spectrum, meanwhile his brother is much milder, but can slide down as well quite easily. I do mostly child-led activities, and want to connect with any other high-energy naturalistic types if there are any like me lol

I would highly recommend social interaction. Isolating them will only make understanding appropriate social behavior among their peers harder than it already is. Find a school that will have understanding and patience with their diagnosis. Good luck!

I have an HFA/Aspie son (depending on how you look at it --he has aspects of both) I will be homeschooling starting the fall. It will be my first time doing so, so I have no advice anyone would want at this point.

clf2: For some of us, this is our best option, if the interaction is not positive, or if the school has no clue/opts out of assisting with it.

My oldest is diagnosed HFA (very passive and compliant, biggest problem is executive functioning at about a 5 year old level at age 13), the middle is ADHD/ODD (my most consistent trouble maker and bad attitude producer), and the youngest is being tested (I strongly suspect ASD, but whatever it is it involves social skills delays and extreme and frequent tantrums/meltdowns). We've been homeschooling since January 2008. The two oldest are in 7th grade, the youngest is going to be doing a formal preschool program, because with his behavior issues, I don't think we can handle a formal Kindergarten program this year.

I'm not a high energy person. We've gone through several years of not handling diy curriculum planning very well. I just don't have the ability to organize that much on my own. We are moving to a full curriculum with lesson plans from a single provider. (I am going to gush about how happy I am with this provider now)

I've used some of their materials for the last few years, and they now offer full packages for Pre-K to 7th, with 8-12 being added as soon as possible. They have the most amazing customer service, including a forum where people that write the curriculum will answer (and generally very promptly) any question you have about their materials or how to implement them, or even just give encouragement for a bad day.

They have a section of the board dedicated to special needs kids, and their representative that answers things on that section has adopted twins with multiple severe special needs including ASD, CP, schizophrenia, LD, MR, and several other physical and neurological issues, so she has a pretty good background for understanding where a parent of a special needs kid is coming from. They are working on designing a full package curriculum just for special needs kids, but for now, they will gladly let you customize your package (without charging you extra so long as the swaps are straight as in 3rd grade grammar instead of 7th grade grammar or 5th grade spelling instead of 6th), if you email or phone in your request. They will also help you device a package that best fits your children if you ask on the forum.

The company is called Memoria Press. It is a Classical Christian based company, but it is non-denominational (enough so that protestants and Catholics are both represented on the forums, as well as secular homeschoolers). The Classical part means that it has a lot of emphasis on the classic liberal education--grammar, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and music. There are a lot of books chosen for the beauty of the language. Shakespeare, The Illiad and The Odyssey will all show up in later years. Latin is begun in second grade and Greek later on. With their regular curriculum, the kids are reading Cicero, Virgil, and Caesar in Latin by 10th-12th grades (my two oldest definitely won't be, but they have some very convincing articles about why teach Latin on their website.) They offer DVD's of teachers going through the lectures for many of their subjects, so it takes some of the difficulty out of teaching something like Latin or Traditional Logic that someone like me has never learned.

The lady who covers their special needs section has written a book, that'd I'd recommend to anyone homeschooling a special needs child, even if they aren't interested at all in Classical Christian education. It is inspirational and full of practical ideas for dealing with various things that come up in the course of teaching. http://www.amazon.com/Simply-Classical- ... eryl+swope It is called Simply Classical A Beautiful Education for Any Child.


Anyway, I am not really what you described as wanting to connect with, but you haven't gotten much response, so I thought I'd share that there are more homeschoolers here. I'd be happy to try to answer any specific questions you have, at the very least I can tell you how I messed that type of situation up.

Hi Phielya

I concur with some of the other posters here. I have a 8yr old HFA daughter and deliberately put her in a mainstream school so that she can socialise, Despite the fact she has no friends, she now talks about kids in her class so I know she is getting more socially interested.

My advice is trial a hybrid system where you homeschool them 2-3 days a week and put them in a classroom sertting with other children for at least 2-3 days. It's better to expose them to other children for their social development as it will be much more difficult when they are older.

Hi Phielya,
First, my heart goes out to you in your adventure w/homeshooling.
My son is an aspie and my daughter has dysgraphia/hand motor skills issues. They've both been in theatre and other art classes through parks n recs for years and our experience w/homeschooling (from the get-go/1st grade) was actually very beneficial in providing tailored social activities. We even tried an on campus school at one point because I'd been quite ill one year, but the kids ended up back to homeschooling and parks n recs and church activities (and happily so, I might add).

There are so many opportunities and flexibility with homeschooling and it allowed us to help our kids manage some of the social anxiety by having breaks between activities. Homeschoolers in our area have reg. park days and meet-ups, email loops through yahoo for certain areas for outings, and there are quite a few people who have aspies and other special needs situations who homeschool.
I'd recommend a few things...maybe check out yahoo homeschool groups online, check out your state's homeschool organizations (ex: California has HSC/Homeschool Association of California, and homeschooling(dot)gomilpitas(dot)com will have many resources).
Child led learning, sometimes referred to as "unschooling" because of it's less-than-traditional approach, is also an opportunity to tailor to your child's needs but can also be used as a method to build confidence in your child's independence and initiative with learning. There are also homeschool meet-ups and groups/park days that cater to that approach.

I've noticed that regardless of how we've schooled our kids over the years, they have their own quirky approaches to handling social settings. Our kids are well behaved, polite, and socially interactive-not isolated, as some popular myths of homeschooling imply.
We're in the teen years now and there are new challenges we're dealing with because of changes in routine and puberty but there will always be challenges-life is full of them. We've also had a licensed family therapist (who specializes in helping homeschooling families) involved to help us navigate the bumps along the road.
It's been my experience that having positive support (both for the kids and ourselves) regardless of the route we chose with schooling, was so very important. Life can be tough all on it's own but having people who've been through it or going through it can definitely lighten the load and provide a safe place to fall, so to speak.

Feel free to email/message me here on WP and I'd be happy to help you find some resources and pass along ones that I know of. There are also many facebook homeschool groups that can be found through FB's search bar, some of which might have meet-ups in your area.

kind regards,
Mj

We're not exactly living in an isolation bubble here. They go to music class and band with one organization. Park days, PE classes, other classes, and field trips with the homeschool group. Church on Sundays and another group we belong to that meets once a month. Plus one we are considering joining that will meet once a week. We personally aren't all that active, but there are also community sports teams (and if I could drive it all the time a special needs sports group 45 miles from here, if you aren't in a rural area the opportunities are better), gymnastics and dance classes held during the day to attract homeschoolers, nursing home visits, neighborhood kids (can't keep them from knocking on my door to socialize!) We also visit family pretty frequently, and participate about once a month (though we could much more often) with group work projects with the Mennonites (there are a lot of kids in that group). They also go to various therapies. They are learning how to interact with people of all age ranges, over many levels of functioning, and from cultures different from ours.

In my opinion, school is an extremely artificial social environment. The only thing in the adult world that comes close is the cubicle style office building, and I can live my life content in the knowledge that I am not raising my kids to be happy in a place like that. My oldest right now wants to be an archivist or librarian. The middle wants to be an artist in blacksmithing (at the moment). With their particular neurological deficits, neither of them are ever going to be able to or be happy about functioning in a soulless hive-like work environment, so I'm not wasting my time or theirs trying to conform them to one as kids. We have too many more important things to focus on.

EXACTLY the same for my homeschoolers. My son has friends of many abilities and disabilities, public schooled, homeschooled, etc.... he has so many social opportunities thru the day that he would never have if he were in a classroom setting. For a kid like my son, who learns something in one setting and has issues generalizing, homeschooling is the best. we get to work on all his skills thru the day in all different settings, with different people and activities. We use the community so much more then we ever could if he were in school all day.

I don't consider myself overly social, but thru homeschooling I have become increasingly more social myself! We are starting our 4th year homeschooling in Sept and loving it!

You don't need to enroll kids in school to get them interacting. Just go out of your house - interaction opportunities abound.

Homeschooled kids actually get a better education in social interaction, because instead of being stuck in a classroom interacting only with teachers and kids the exact same age, they are out in the community interacting with all ages in varied contexts.

This is ok if you have an extensive network of family and friends with kids the same age as yours. For those of us living away from family and few or no friends with kids then it;s quite difficult,

not my case at all. Our friends and family don't homeschool and don't have kids my kids ages, or have no kids at all. We have expanded our friends base THRU homeschooling, and keeping in touch with the pre school friends DS made when he was in pre school, neighbors kids (who attend public school) and thru his many activities like bowling, karate, swimming, theatre, library, social skills group, etc....There are many ways to make and keep friends. Public school isn't the only way to make friends, my son just made a list for his birthday which included over 15 friends. TRUE friends, not just kids he sits next to in class. Friends that he gets together with regularly, has play dates with and does many activities with. Friends who call and ask for my son to play with. And that list was cut short cause we are having the party in our home. He could have easily gotten over 20 FRIENDS. For an almost 8yo with AS, not too bad if I don't say so myself!

All you need to do is go to the nearest library or park to find social contacts for your kids. It really isn't very difficult at all. Unless you live in a very remote area, social contacts are literally all around you.