Homeschooling With Level 1 Autism

 Homeschool has been something I have done since my oldest was in preschool, she was really smart and bored and it became obvious that homeschool was the best option for her.

So when my 2nd child was right behind her in school, followed by 2 more a couple of years behind the first two it was natural to just teach them together.

I did not know any of my kids would be neuro diverse, let alone all of them. 

Homeschooling a child who does not fit the mold, takes lots of trial and error.  

My child with autism has caused much of a learning curve. She is academically on grade level or above for the most part. She taught herself to read, history and science have always been an interest (especially Egyptian history).  Her only deficits are in math and writing. 

Math I think was caused by a teacher in 3rd grade, she attended a 2 day a week school homeschooling the rest of the week, apparently the teacher and students made fun of her when she got things wrong. I don’t know what happened in that class room, but I know my child lost her confidence in her ability to do school.  It took years of not grading and not telling her when she was wrong to boost her confidence. Then slowly teach her to accept criticism. It was frustrating, and I worried we would never get out of that slump, but with time, patience and lots of work we did. 

Writing is hard because as much as she loves it she will not slow down so physically it is messy, she can not spell to save her life and refuses to write in anything other than first person. This means teaching her to write academic papers has been a chore and not something she is successful at. She took writing classes with our homeschool charter and still could not get it, so it is not just poor teaching on my part. She is very stubborn and does not see the point. We will be working on that this year.

Next year we will be studying algebra 1 and personal finance, yes she will be in 10th grade but she is doing well and will still be able to graduate on time as long as I keep her confidence up and we get her through the math and understanding it. She will focus heavily on writing papers of different kinds next year and we will be doing a mix of on her own and step by step with me. Since it is something her younger siblings really need to work on we will include them at the same time and hopefully they will become good at papers. She will also work on recognizing spelling mistakes and using tech to help with her writing.

Homeschooling an autistic child is not always as easy as what I have. Many times it is harder. My autistic child is not the child I struggle most with when it comes to homeschooling. She wants to homeschool. She loves being home and can not wait for our farm, though she doesn’t want to move.

We will talk about one of those difficult children another time.

Speech and OT and Autism

 Speech and Occupational Therapy for a verbal, child who is functionally is age appropriate, what are the benefits?  

Speech focused not on just how to speak, but understanding others and how people react and respond to things said to the child and things the child says.  They worked on understanding interpersonal relationships.

OT worked on handwriting, which is hardly legible and confidence, they also helped with the social emotional piece.  

It has been an important and useful tool for my child with autism to be able to function with friends and I have seen lots of growth.

These tools have worked right alongside ABA. They all work on similar, but different goals and allowed my daughter to grow. Once we move she wants to take a break from services and see if she can make friends on her own and fit in without having so many appointments. I think this will be good for her. It will show her how she has grown in the last two years. If we start to see struggles again we will work to find her services in the new state.

ABA and Autism

 Ok I am going to start with the harder topic of which I wanted to talk about in regards to my daughter’s Autism.  Accommodations will take me a while. So todays post will be about ABA.

First why it is controversial, many adult Autistic’s had horrible, horrible and traumatic experiences. I will never take from their experience and down play it. ABA when done like it was when it started, and still is done in some places is very traumatic. If someone is making your child meltdown and is not paying attention to their needs then it is wrong. 

ABA for my child has not been traumatic, other than therapists leaving, which has happened many times. I am not in love with the way the companies can not keep therapists and how there was no notice with our previous company.

ABA for my child has been working beside them, encouraging and giving choices. No force and no punishment.  The therapist works with the child not forcing the child to work for them.  

They teach me how to work with my child when they are not there and give me tools in my parenting tool box to help all my children.  I find this useful though many of the things they started with I had already put in place because I needed peace in my home and it worked with the way I was currently parenting.

Our experience is not what everyone has had, but it has been positive. I went in this telling them that I did not want to change my child, I did not want to ever change their stims or ways of dealing with stress unless they are self harming.

Our goal was to help be able to help with social interactions and understanding friends and dealing with stress. She wanted to fit in more so I told them to tell her how, because Mom’s know nothing when it comes to teen girls.

ABA is not for everyone and it is not always done right. Always listen to what your gut is telling you if you are a parent of any child. If something feels wrong it is.

Autism Diagnosis

 When we started I did not know my children were neuro diverse. I did not know Autism was something I would have to work around, or that would impact our lives tremendously.

When we started homeschooling my child who is Autistic was able to mask and any quirks, I just brushed off as oh that is their personality. She talked. She was (and still is) smart. She would watch people when she was a baby. She was really quiet. She was always taking things apart and taking things and hiding them. She also was a perfectionist from a early age. At 2 when I was trying to teach her to clean her room (put toys in the toy box and blankets on the bed) she would cry because she could not make her bed perfectly. I just wanted the blankets on the bed. So I hand over hand taught her to pick up the blankets and throw them on the bed then walked her out of the room. 

She did well until about the age of 5 making friends then I noticed she was the one struggling at the playground and being left out and not being included.

At around the age of 9, my child could not mask at home anymore. There were tantrums, full blown meltdowns and so much self esteem issues that spiraled into more meltdowns. The meltdowns were physical and verbal assaults on whoever was near. We could not have sitters, she could only stay with me. Not even her dad was able to handle what was happening.

We would go to co-op and she would be fine until we got home. We would go to fun events and she would be fine until we got home. One time we did not make it home I had to pull over and pull her siblings out of the car to keep them safe and deal with her meltdown while keeping her in the car so she could not escape.

We looked for help, with councilor’s, doctors, specialists, autism specialist. 

I was told it was my fault, we did not give her enough attention (I homeschool, with my children 24/7, I make time monthly to spend alone with them and they can and always have come to me when they needed attention for hugs, kisses, cuddles and chats).

I was told that the child was looking for attention and could control it.

None of these experts listened, none of them saw the complete loss of control we did.

I had to figure things out on my own because my child does well on school work, can speak and tends to appear to look people in the eye. My husband had taught the child to look at peoples noses when he saw them struggling with looking in other peoples eyes.

It took the child years to get an autism diagnosis. We did not get a diagnosis of Level 1 Autism until she was 13.

But now this child is full of confidence in who they are. They are willing to find accommodations that allow them to fully participate in our family and with friends. They no longer have meltdowns (at least not violent and aggressive ones that cause self esteem issues and more meltdowns).

And we have learned together how to meet needs when it comes to math, or getting something wrong, and adjusting expectations, so that corrections can be made without anxiety and tears and craziness.

Flexibility is key and something I learned from friends with Autism and other disabilities before I learned of my children’s neuro diversities.  

This is not the journey I thought Fairy Princess and I would ever take together, but I would not change her for any reason. She is an amazing kid with the biggest heart and has been since she was a baby. We just needed to figure out how best to help her. 

I will be adding some accommodations I make for my Autistic child in other posts this month and how I plan to get them through high school requirements and since we are moving out of California how I can adjust expectations to meet what is required in our new state.  

I will also talk about how ABA, speech and OT have helped in our journey. Though I do know ABA is considered controversial so I will probably share about that in that post as well

Beginning of our homeschool Journey

 Our homeschool journey started when we moved to Oceanside in 2005. 

Our littlePrincess was 4 almost 5 and preschool was not going well before we moved. She tended to get in trouble at preschool because she would get bored. She knew her alphabet in English and Spanish, all her shapes, colors, and could count to 100 and recognize all her numbers.  

So I did not want to put her in Headstart with Fairy Princess. 

We found a homeschool charter that did early enrollment kindergarten and she got to start in January after she turned 5. 

I was very thankful that the teacher that was assigned to us. She taught me how to homeschool my daughter. 

We finished all kindergarten curriculum in 6 months. 

In the end she knew everything she needed to start first grade.

So when she wanted to go to kindergarten with all the other kids in the neighborhood, I was super nervous to let her.  I figured that they were the experts though and would be able to meet her needs. 

I could not have been more wrong. In the 7 months she attended public school, she punched a student in front of myself and the teacher with the teacher doing nothing about it. She was bored and misbehaving daily, so I had many meetings with the teacher to try to help. I even made a binder I never received back that would give her more work to try to keep her brain engaged and behaving.  I met with the principal and many admin type people who were super concerned that I did not need my daughter tested to see if she was gifted (I knew she was, did not need the test and had no clue I should have been pushing for it). They put her in social skills class after school. And the last straw (I lived 5 minutes walking distance from the school) I went to pick up my child and was early, to find my child outside with a teacher I did not know. She informed me she was a special Ed teacher and had been called from the class next door to restrain my daughter because she would not sit down and be still. I never received a call from the school, or an email from the teacher. This teacher constantly was telling me my child behaved so well in class, while the other moms who helped in class (I had 2 baby’s and a preschool child at home) told he how disrespectful and misbehaved she was in class.

When we left Camp Pendleton, we started homeschooling again. But I was scared I would miss something so I went with K12.  While they have many good points, it is not a homeschool program, more of a school at home type deal. But I learned things, tweaked things and became confident enough that two years later we were back to regular homeschooling.

Back Again, let’s try Blogging Again

 So much has happened since 2018, COVID and homeschooling, I bought a house and am now preparing to move out of California as we sell our home. I now have 2 high schoolers and 2 middle school kids. 

Princess did not end up skipping 7th grade, she is currently in 11th and has really bad ADHD that we can not use meds for so she is having to learn how to handle it naturally. She plans to be a marine biologist now and is working hard toward that goal.

Fairy was diagnosed with Autism and Anxiety and is now in 10th grade. Mainly her struggles are social, emotional and sensory. She is currently talking veterinary medicine or owning her own horse ranch or both.

Buddy is in 8th grade. He did have ADHD big surprise. But I do still believe he has dyslexia though no one will diagnose it because he reads at grade level.

Baby Girl has dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia and anxiety. She is now in 7th grade. She has come a long way from not knowing all her letters in 2nd grade to reading at a 4th grade level fluently. 

I have started started selling books that I love to use in my homeschool journey. And May share from time to time here. Usborne has such great materials for homeschooling and joining while it was $5 just made sense. 

Our animal situation has changed a bit since we are out of the trailer and I will be moving across country with the 4 mentioned kids above, 1 lab, 3 lab mixes, possibly a shepherd husky mix, 2 bearded dragons and 6 hermit crabs. 

If you got this far you are probably wondering what you can expect in the future?

 Am I going to blog more consistently? Yes. I will start posting every Tuesday and Thursday.

Am I going to try to sell you books? Yes and no. You will hear about what I use homeschooling, some of that will inevitably be Usborne books, if I post about a book, I will post a link to my site where you can buy it. But I am mainly just sharing what I use, or have used that works for my kids. I will not feel bad if no one buys from me as long as the information shared is helpful to someone.

I will be sharing my homeschool experience. What I use and small pieces of our crazy life. Hopefully it will be useful for other moms out there or at the very least entertaining.

Mrs. Wordsworth Review

We received the opportunity to try out a cute and fun vocabulary curriculum for the past few months.  All I was asked was to give an honest review of the product. 

The product was for my 8 and 9 year olds to use, However I did use it with my 11 and 12 year old as well.  My 11 and 12 year olds loved the curriculum and asked for the new word of the day as often if not more than my 9 year old.  They loved the cute pictures and figuring out what the word ment as well as trying to make the best sentence using the word pairs.

The only one who had a tough time with the curriculum, though she loved the cute pictures was my 8 year old.  I believe this is because of her many learning issues and it takes her a bit longer to process the new information.  We will be using the curriculum a bit differently with her in the future.  We will be doing a word a week with her while the others will get a word a day.  This will give her more practice and less pressure allowing her to process the word in her own time.


We used Mrs. Wordsworth as suggested each day I would pull out the new word and place it on our stand. 

 

We looked at the picture and discussed what the children thought the word might mean based on that then I uncovered the definition and we discussed how close they were and why the picture would look that way to describe the word.  Then we would flip the worksheet over and discuss synonyms and word pairs finding the word pairs and synonyms for each word.  Since I am using the curriculum for more than one child I chose to discuss instead of writing on the worksheets.  Then each child was given the chance to use their favorite word pair in a sentence.

Throughout the day we would go back over the word and play with the word cards given to us.  We would use the cards to try to figure out new words and to review the words we already learned.

Mrs. Wordsmith has such cute and engaging pictures and is really simple to use.  It has made our day more fun and learning new words really interesting and easy for my kids and low prep and easy to teach for myself.