Planning for a New Homeschool Year

It's August, and time to plan for a new homeschooling year for Tom, our now-14-year-old with autism (actually PDD-NOS, or high functioning autism). This will be our fourth year of homeschooling, and chronologically Tom will be entering 8th grade. We're hoping that, after this year, he'll be ready to enter what we understand is a wonderful charter high school - and with that in mind, we plan to focus much more on basic academic and social skills than on content acquisition (even though he'll be immersed in all kinds of content whether he "aquires" it or not!).

Tom as Pharoah!

Being a slightly compulsive planner, I already have most of Tom's program laid out. Like last year, he'll be taking part in two days of small group classes taught by an ex-homeschooling mom who also happens to have a teaching degree and experience in special education. These aren't "special" classes or kids, but the small size of the group combined with the expertise of the teacher make it a good opportunity for Tom. Truth is, I personally wouldn't have chosen the topics for Tom (The American Presidency, for example) since he does poorly with abstractions; in general he does much better with topics that are more limited in scope (like Ancient Egypt or Greek Myths, for example).

Jessica, the homeschool teacher, has offered to work with us on helping Tom reach specific goals. Now "all" I have to do is figure out what the goals are, break them down into objectives, and select objectives that really make sense given the setting, the other kids, and Tom's real capabilities (which are always hard to grab hold of!).

In addition to these Tues/Thurs classes which run from 9-1, here are some of my plans for the year:

• Continue with our genius of a math tutor who works with Tom on Sundays (we barter for his time, but have to travel over an hour each way!)
• Continue with our genius of a clarinet teacher, who is a whole lot closer (he's a professor at a conservatory, and an absolute jewel of a person)
• Continue with the after-school jazz band at the middle school (nervous since the wonderful and experienced band director has retired!)
• Continue with our genius of a speech/social skills therapist, who is now helping Tom to interact socially with other kids at about his age and level
• Restart tennis at a local tennis school (for reasons I can't understand, Tom seems to love and be reasonably good at tennis)

We're also working on ideas for building Tom's independence and academic skills.  With that in mind, we're thinking about -

• buying a small laptop and teaching him to take notes using a keyboard (he's been learning to type on Mavis Beacon software, and he's a decent typist)
• tapping into Universally Designed software programs intended to prompt learners with LDs and other issues (much more on that soon)
• purchasing a "visual clock" that actually counts down so you can see how much time is available (Tom is still really unable to understand the concept of hours and minutes fully, though he's fine with days, weeks, months and years)

Whew!  Sound like I'm biting off an awful lot, but since the vast majority of what we're doing is NOT being done by us (mom and dad), the biggest challenges are organization and, of course, cash money to PAY for all this wonderful equipment and programming.  Of course some is free, and some we barter for...  but with all that, getting a child with autism out of the house and into typical settings with appropriate programs and support isn't the all-time cheapest or easiest road to take!

More coming very soon...  meanwhile, any thoughts or questions are welcome!

A Running Race - Ups and Downs

Each year, our new hometown runs a major road race. 10,000 people from around the world compete, and many more watch. The town runs a kids' fun run, and Tom took part (Sara did too).

Prior to the race, I took the kids for a loooong walk, and we wound up at the tidal marsh across from our nearby beach. Sara was hot, and I gave her permission to take a swim in her clothes. Tom literally fell apart: Sara should NOT swim in her clothes, it was NOT all right, and he was going to sit himself down several hundred yards from the swimming and NOT BUDGE as a protest.

As we walked back, with a soaking Sara and a growling Tom, I asked what the problem really was. Was it that a rule had been broken? Tom said it was, and we talked about rules and breaking rules at length. Only later, when I talked with Peter about it, did I get another perspective: Peter's insight was that Tom simply couldn't abide the idea of wet clothes! Typically, Tom will change his pants if even the smallest drop of water hits them... Not sure which was true, but in the long run he sucked it up, ate an ice cream, and walked the mile and a half home with no complaints.

Later, we went to the race. This was a much bigger deal than I'd expected - with hundreds of people, loud music, hot sun, new foods.... naturally it was much harder for me than it was for Tom (who drank Gatorade for the first time and liked it - blech!) We met up (unexpectedly) with friends, which was great... But Tom's age group wound up having to RUN about 2/3 of a mile - much farther than he's ever run. He was up for it, but we weren't so sure.

Peter decided to jog along with Tommy, and together they finished the race - to great cheers from the audience (they came in half a length behind everyone but one other child). Tom was in tears - he had developed a stitch in his side - but at the very end he put on speed to cross the finish line.

Tom was proud; Dad was thrilled; Sara was supportive. Tom and Sara even got special pictures taken to commemorate the event.

I have to admit, though, that I had some strange feelings about this: the whole idea of a crowd cheering the "special" little boy was in such sharp contrast to his very real success at the concert the prior day. It just seemed so strange that the same boy who could play "The Barber of Seville" and "Take Five" on one of the toughest instruments out there - with MUCH older players - needed so much support just to finish a fun run, just didn't compute to me.

Maybe it's being 12 and on the verge of puberty, or maybe it's my own issues, but somehow Tom seems right now to be two different people. On the one hand, he's a bright and accomplished (and handsome!) kid who can do almost anything he chooses.

On the other hand, he's a special needs child who needs significant support to succeed in the most basic activities of life (carrying on conversations, managing simple changes in rules or routines, asking for help when it's needed).

Perhaps he's on the cusp of a big change - and it's up to us to be sure the change is in the right direction... eep.

Aut-2B-Home
Power By Ringsurf

A Blogger Award from Canvas Grey!

How neat to get a prize from The Canvas Grey! Thanks so very much - this blogosphere thing is a ton of fun!

I got another similar award earlier this year from Harold Doherty of Facing Autism in New Brunswick - but hadn't started this blog and couldn't make an "official" announcement on autism.about.com. Here's what Harold had to say about the About.com Autism site:

Notwithstanding her affinity for the neurodiversity perspective and my aversion to that socio-political movement we were able to exchange views rationally on such topics as curing autism, autism realities etc. I give Ms. Rudy most of the credit for that. She has also taken the generous step of referencing my perspective and this blog site on About Autism.com actions which I genuinely appreciate. I thank Ms. Rudy for her calm rational discussion of autism issues with someone from outside the neurodiversity perspective. Ms. Rudy's words about a spectrum of autism perspectives are worth remembering.

Thanks to you, too, Harold!

One of the most complex aspects of the "autism world" is its diversity - and I'm very proud to say that I have friends in all its corners.

Cheers!

Alter Egos

When Tom was in kindergarten and first grade, his teacher used a "token economy" to encourage positive behavior. This is common in most elementary classes: you earn smilies, stones, stickers, check marks, and so forth to earn individual or group rewards. This particular teacher had a treasure chest of little toys and candies from which a child could choose at the end of a successful day or week. Tommy consistently chose little plastic skeletons, which he carried with him everywhere.

When he graduated first grade, the skeletons started disappearing (into the wash, down the tub drain, and so on). Worried, we scoured the web for replacements, and found them at Oriental Trading. They seemed a bit pricey (about $5) - but we needed them. I ordered four.

Little did I know the price was per gross.

For several years, we kept four gross of little skeletons hidden in the basement, handing out replacements and "cousins" from time to time. Tom named his skeleton pals; his best skeleton buddy became "Sid" (named for the sloth in the movie Ice Age).

Sid became Tom's alter ego. He had a separate voice and personality, and would often talk for Tom. If Tom wouldn't answer a question, you could ask Sid - and he often knew the answer. Over time, Sid became a force for justice, much like Superman. He could rally Darth Vader and his minions to become good guys in the cause of justice. He built himself a castle (Sara painted the picture) with hundreds of rooms and turrets. There, the skeleton armies munched on bones, watched TV, and prepared to do battle with evil.

Sid became fiercer and fiercer, finally becoming almost a good-guy thug who would be called to knock heads together. He was especially active in Tom's version of the story of James and the Giant Peach - in which James' two aunts (who are satisfyingly smooshed by the peach in the Roald Dahl version) are instead attached by skeleton armies!

In the past year or so, Sid's star has started to set in favor of a much gentler, more creative spirit - lizard. Lizard, like Sid, can talk for Tom - but is far more social, and seems much more ingenious about managing difficult situations. Rather than calling forth the forces of darkness, lizard is more inclined to use his special magic (which seems to be mostly focused on managing others' behaviors and moods) to make bad people good, angry people happy, and so forth.

What's especially wonderful about lizard is that he is ready, willing and able to create special places in his own world (apparently he has unlimited cash and resources!) where others can be comfortable and at home. He created a wet, sandy place where a mother sea turtle could lay her eggs safely (so long as she didn't make a mess) - and then treated her little ones to a restaurant meal of seaweed. He build a beautiful, glass, egg-shaped house with a stone porch and metal railings for a whole collection of big cats (lions, tigers and leopards).

I'm hopeful that we can find a way to help Tommy find himself in Lizard. Clearly, he KNOWS that it's possible to do for and think about others and their needs - and to come to the rescue for those in need. He understands the joy of sharing - but only through his imagination.

How to pull Tommy out of Lizard - that's the puzzle.

Math: What School Did Wrong!

One of our biggest public school frustrations had been in the area of math. We were absolutely certain that Tom could and should be moving forward much more quickly - but the teachers either wouldn't or couldn't do so. TouchMath had been a helpful tool for teaching some calculation (especially basic addition and subtraction), becaue it had him count "touchpoints" on each number and thus add and subtract without having to use his fingers.

But he had been doing double digit adding and subracting with and without carrying/borrowing for two solid years!

Finally, at the very end of fourth grade, his teacher started using our Touchmath materials with the whole class to work on "skip counting" (counting by 2s, 3s, etc.) as a prelude to multiplication. TouchMath also using skip counting by 5s and 10s to teach money and time concepts, so he had those sets of numbers pretty well memorized. But why wasn't he doing multiplication? Fractions? Measurement? Decimals? I was determined to push him forward.

I started out using some math sheets I generated and/or printed from sites like softschools.com and enchanted learning - and they worked well for certain types of problems. I quickly saw that he could do simple word problems (Joe has 6 apples. He gets two more. How many does he have in all?) without any prompting or visual tools (though he never had come home with word problems from school). And basic fractions were no problem at all: he could identify and even create representations of 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, etc.

But he was still having terrible problems with basic addition subtraction - because he'd forget all about carrying/borrowing. He didn't seem to grasp bigger/smaller beyond the number 10. And when I asked him to count by two's, he could do so only up to number 26. Then he pooped out.

Within a few weeks, I figured out the problem.

It seems that, in teaching Tom skip counting, his teachers used a chart and had him memorize 2, 4, 6, 8, etc. But they neglected to TELL him about the pattern he was forming. As a result, he could count by twos to 26 - but had no idea what came next. I used a number chart and a pencil, and we went through saying skip, 2 (put an X on the 2), skip, 4 (put an X on the four). We did the same thing for threes and fours and fives. He has NO trouble using the charts to multiply up to 100!

I ran into the same problem with bigger/smaller. He seemed to be guessing about bigger/smaller when the numbers got bigger than 10 - and I finally realized that no one had given him rules for deciding relative size of symbolic numbers (as opposed to piles of objects). I explained more digits means a higher number. If there are the same number of digits, compare the digits on the left. If they are the same, go on to the next pair. When you find a pair that don't match, compare them. The number with the highest digit is the biggest number.

He got it.

In short: being autistic, he didn't "see" patterns just because they were repeated. He needed to have the patterns explained. But once they were explained, he whizzed forward!

The down side of all this is that I am having to create my own worksheets at odd hours to let him practice all of this. But I'm hoping that, within the next couple of months, I'll be able to return to computer-generated worksheets - and even get online with Tom (so far he's not really very excited about computer games, but I think I can get him going...).

In Search of Help for a Homeschooler-to-Be

One of the most frustrating aspects of being a parent with a child on the autism spectrum is that there is NO ONE out there who can really coach you, one on one. Virtually every practitioner worth their salt (that is, one who is not peddling snake oil!) seems to say "well, you just go out there and do the research. Figure out what you think works best for you and your child."

Uh huh. Sounds so easy, doesn't it? After all, there are only... what... five or six million autism websites... two thousand autism books... and fifty or sixty possible treatment options. No sweat.

But this time, I thought, there MUST be someone out there who I can turn to. Someone who knows special needs education AND has a handle on curricula. Someone who can tell me, based on some evaluation of Tommy, which curricula would be ideal. For example - he learns well by ear as well as by eye, but has a tough time focusing. So the right math curriculum for him would be...??

I looked around in Philadelphia but couldn't find anyone who seemed to put the pieces together. They could test him and tell me his deficits and strengths, but knew nothing about curricula. Or they'd be happy to tutor him for $100 an hour, but had no materials to share (or even sell). Or they knew lots about social skills training but nothing about academics.

Then I came across a book by social skills guru Rick LaVoie. I read the back cover, and it turned out he lived in Cape Cod. I sent him an email, and he sent me to an organization that specifically worked with homeschooling families of kids with LDs (learning disabilities) - right on the Cape! I contacted them, and set up a meeting.

We arrived on the Cape in mid-July, and before the end of the month I had Tommy in their offices. After a couple of hours of conversation and testing, I had my answers. In essence, they were "he's certainly a bright boy, with a lot of strengths. I'm sure you'll do well homeschooling him." Which curricula should I use? They didn't know. But I should do some research, and figure out... blah blah blah.

On the up side, they did recommend a terrific "speech and language" therapist right near our new home. I put "speech and language" in quotes because our therapist, like so many really good therapists, is interested more in communication and thinking skills than simply in the skill of putting words together correctly.

Building Confidence and Connections for Homeschooling

Since we'd been thinking on and off about homeschool for years, we'd gotten an earful of anxiety from well-meaning relatives and friends. How could you give up your personal life? How could you make a living? How could you find the patience? Aren't homeschoolers mostly religious nuts? and, of course, How would you provide social opportunities for your son?!

For years, I'd listened closely to all these concerns, and taken them very seriously. But as I learned more about homeschooling, I realized that many of these well-meaning friends were either working from outdated information or flat out ignorant about homeschooling in the 21st century. Perhaps homeschooling really was a fringe way of life twenty years ago - but today things have changed.

I was still worried about my personal life and making a living. But as we came to terms with the idea that we WERE going to homeschool, we started "practicing" on weekends and afterschool. And it was a whole lot more fun than we'd imagined. We took family nature hikes and brought along binoculars and field guides. We pulled out the maps and spent time explaining just exactly where we were going. We tried a few science experiments in the creek and the back yard.

We even got involved with a local homeschool "resource center" built on the theories of "unschooler" John Holt. It was an educational experience - but not much of a fit for us. Not only are we not unschoolers by nature - but we couldn't imagine "unschooling" Tommy. A child with autism may be bright, creative, and even willing to try something new. But he's highly unlikely to just "unschool" himself into communication skills, social relationships, or much outside his comfort zone!

In November we stuffed a storage locker full of our "unnecessaries," and decluttered the house. In February our house went on the market. By April we were back on Cape Cod, house hunting. Now, I had a point of contact: a local homeschooler who I had discovered through a listserve, who was willing to drop by our one-week rental to say hello.

Picking Up the Pieces

One of our biggest gripes with the public school system has been their low level of expectation for our son.

If he could read at all... add at all... write a few words... that seemed sufficient to them. They refused point blank to include any academics outside of the three "R's" in his IEP - even those skills which WOULD be tested when it came time to take the state-mandated tests.

By age ten, with NO reading disabilities, he had never read a chapter book. Never completed a proper book report. Never done a library search for a secondary source. Never built a diorama. Never read a map. Never read about local, national or international history (except on a single worksheet).

He had "learned" basic time telling, change counting, and double digit adding and subtracting - but he didn't seem to really get much of what he'd learned. And he had barely touched measurement, graphing, geometry, fractions, multiplication or any kind of logic puzzle.

In theory, this was perfectly reasonable because... Tommy was autistic. He didn't do well in a typical classroom.

For three years, he had been in a county-managed "autism support" class in a typical elementary school.

It was a nice class of kids at about his level of development (most with Asperger syndrome). Some had "hehaviors." All had social/communications issues. It was a nice school, too - in a very nice district. The class had 1 adult for every three children. In theory - the perfect place!

And in his nice class in his nice school, Tom had been learning "social skills;" taking "adaptive gym;" and generally working at about 50% of his competency level. While his typical peers were off to museums and historic sites, his so-called field trips were to the grocery store and McDonald's. Evidently he was to learn "life skills" in his "high functioning autism" class.

Did we fight for better options? We did. We tried to get supported inclusion, but Tom didn't really cooperate - and of course the general ed teacher was not expected to adapt to Tom - so that was that. We tried to get reverse inclusion groups at recess and lunch. But schedules - apparently - made such groups impossible. We worked for more academic content, coming to IEP meetings armed with state guidelines and legal materials. We created our own feedback form, so we could be sure to know what was going on from day to day. We even provided our own 1:1 support so that our son, an accomplished clarinetist, could be included in band (which met before school once a week).

All along the way, we met with marshmallow-like resistance: we rarely heard the word "no." Instead, we'd hear "we'll look into it;" "we'll give it a try;" "Let's see how it goes." Then we'd hear nothing. We'd ask for meetings. They'd get postponed. We'd ask whether Tom had been escorted to his once-a-week clarinet lesson at school, and would learn that the class had been "too busy."

At no point was the resistance - or the problem - concrete enough to warrant legal action. At no point could we show "no progress." In no way could we suggest that Tom was not grouped with his peers.

All we knew was that Tom was not learning at anything like his real potential - and at the rate he was going, he could expect to make it to about 6th grade by the time he left high school.

Teaching Tommy: The Journey Begins

We moved from Philadelphia to Cape Cod this summer. We wanted to move; we wanted to live near the sea; we wanted a different life. But the central reason for the move was this: a better place to homeschool our older child, our son, Tom.

Tom is now 11 years old. When he was three, he was diagnosed with "pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified" (PDD-NOS). Otherwise known as high functioning autism. So from the time he was three (actually younger), Tom has been labelled, slotted, pigeon-holed and "specially educated."

Now, Tom is being homeschooled.

Up until now, school has been a bit of a disaster for Tommy. Booted from daycare, kicked out of preschool, and required to have a 1:1 aide just to be included with "typical" 5 year olds at a private preschool (our third, and NOT our first choice), you'd think he was a walking disaster area.

He's not. In fact, he's a delightful kid - bright, verbal, funny, creative. But from his "public record," you'd never know it.

His first "boot" out the door was for standing in front of a mirror with objects in his two hands- and saying too little. The second was for throwing a sweater at a teacher (at age 3). By the time he entered kindergarten, we had already been through two IEP's - as well as several 1:1 aides and a slew of therapists. By the time he finished third grade, he was already more than a year behind his peers - which everyone seemed to think was perfectly reasonable.

It was then we decided to homeschool.

Now, two years later, we've finally worked out the details and gotten started. It's October, and already we know we made the right choice! But what will work - what won't - and why - will be the subject of this blog.