Homeschooling Autism - Part 1

This post has a bold title and I am afraid I will invite criticism for "generalizing" homeschooling based on just my personal situation and my sons's specific autistic disorder. But I see a few other families with autism with similar issues so I am going to go ahead and write this article anyway.

Once upon a time, I thought I could home school my son with autism without too many difficulties. Just find some other families and homeschooling groups to hang out with, put him in some community programs with support and keep going with the home therapy program and there you have it. My version of no-public-schooling and hence "homeschooling".

Let me break it down for families considering homeschooling a child with autism. Not just special needs, but AUTISM. Because those of us with an autistic person in the home, know that often the real frustration is not of lower intelligence, less understanding, lack of motivation to be with others, but rather the inability to express through the body what is happening in the mind.

Introduction: A little about the student and the teacher.


The student

Imagine for one instance, having thoughts, needs, ideas, high intelligence and desire to share them with others, but a body that is so disobedient. The words are not forming themselves in to conversations. When they are uttered they don't make sense, and you know it but you have little control over it. People cannot read your mind and so you are stuck in an endless cycle of miscommunication and being misunderstood.

So you either behave negatively knowing you will get in to trouble, because it is the only thing that you know is predictable; Or you don't really make an effort convinced that you will fail anyway. Later you sulk and punish yourself. Slowly this makes you lonelier, more frustrated, angrier, more depressed and erodes your self esteem.

No matter what new communication trick you take months to learn, you find that by the time you have acquired it, your peers are light years ahead of you. You do not understand or speak their language. When they come up to you, it is like an avalanche of information. You are still trying to figure out their body language, when they start uttering words. You are trying to figure out their words, they change their tones. You try to learn the tone and the context has changed. You try to pick up contexts but turns out they weren't really saying what they mean anyway, you were supposed to read between the lines.

Unless everyone who meets you quietens down, limits their channels of communication, and makes painstaking effort to get to know you and your nuances on a very personal level, there is no hope for any successful communication. Every encounter is a series of downhill tumbles in to inevitable breakdown.

Your disobedient body, will not comply with your cognitive abilities and your desire to communicate.

Perhaps not all autistic individuals experience physical dysregulation (or what I like to call body disobedience) quite to the extent that K does, but many will experience this phenomenon to some extent.

Now imagine being a lot smarter, determined, sensitive, receptive and motivated than the average person and being at the far end of the physical dysregulation scale as you can possibly imagine. That is K. Unfortunately.

He is the student of this home school.

The teacher

I get to watch and observe this phenomenon 24 hours a day.

It is hard to even type and put it in to words. Separating emotion from this complicated science of behavior is near impossible for me as his mother. Factor in my own ignorance, lack of resources and imperfections as a human being and you have the equivalent of a mind being slowly compressed in a G-clamp.

I am the principal, primary teacher and administrator of this home school.

I have no formal training and there is no system in existence that trains or supports this kind of teacher.

Stay tuned for more in this series. In future posts I intend to talk about curriculum, socialization, community resources, alternatives to homeschooling and other exciting stuff.

It's Summer and the Belly Buttons are out

I hope everyone has been enjoying the continuous beautiful weather. One advantage of not being part of the school and work going machine is that you get to enjoy these days without the usual weekend or after school crowds.

However despite our best efforts we do run in to the odd character at popular locations like the beach.

Show K an animal, and he will immediately find a way to rub himself all over it with affection. I usually try to restrain him to buy enough time to ask the owner if they mind, or if the dog is used to children. But sometimes K, with his gazelle-like running skills, will beat me to the animal that his dog-radar has picked up, and my typical-person slow reflexes just cannot keep up.

Most people are lovely about having their dog hugged, kissed and rubbed by a jumping boy. Today as I scrambled to run after K at the beach, I was a little late as he had already jumped over a sitting dog. Dog seemed unperturbed, but owner was found shaking her head and we got the classic, "Does he not understanding English or what?" statement.

Now before you go judging such a person for making this remark, please be advised that we do go out in public looking like this:



So it is perfectly natural for a person to wonder if we speak English. I mean we don't even look alike for goodness sakes! He is blue and I am green. We have square heads. Its just weird.

Laughing it off, apologizing and explaining the disability part will almost always soften even the most annoyed, but today we got, " Well then you should keep an eye on him, shouldn't you?"

I don't understand? Maybe disabled aliens should be kept on a leash.

So that second one made me a bit sour I have to admit. But we walked away and found a quiet beach area.

The sun disappeared leaving a warm breeze, baby fell asleep, and K threw giant rocks in the lake to his heart's content.

I tried not to think about the challenges of growing K , raising baby Poi to be strong and confident enough to deal with embarrassment and self-consciousness, running away migrating to another country and perfected my rock-skipping instead. I did not know I could skip rocks, seriously, because a few years ago, before kids, I remember being totally rubbish at it. Now I am good.

Some things I heard myself saying today that cracked me up:

K I don't want you walking around doing absolutely nothing.

K walk away from the belly button. NOW!

(As he walks, grinning, towards giant flabby shirtless man)

K I know you really want to touch that man, but please try really hard. I know you can do it.

(Giant naked flabby man just wouldn't go away).

OK you had to be there.

Later That Evening...

Remember yesterday's post about the epic kite flying fail?

Well, such was the determination that we went back in the evening, with reinforcements.







Normally I would be too embarrassed to post this photo of myself, but I thought I'd do it anyway because it kind of shows how clearly all this kite flying fuss was all about me and everyone else is just along for the ride! Lol! Dork-fest.



Poor moaning Poi still didn't get why she had to put up with all that sunlight, wind and screaming people running around her.


Maybe I can't do everything, but with a little help, I can definitely fly a kite :D

Oh and K had a ball. His idea of flying a kite however is to let it go (and he can live his Curious George fantasy in his head). Anyway, lots of referencing and shared enjoyment.

Life is like a kite

It is a beautiful, bright, clear, day with a little wind. It is perfect for staying outside, enjoying a picnic and maybe flying a kite.

We set out to do exactly that this afternoon, but as I am finding out, nothing is that straight forward with two children who are so vastly different than each other in age and needs.

We got our kites, snack, I changed and fed the baby. It was her nap time, so I thought she would nap for a bit in her stroller which I parked at the edge of our football field and I would fly our kite with K (who loves flying kites).

5 minutes later, baby was wailing like someone was killing her and I realized I did not know how to fly a kite.

Not one to give up so easily, I spent the next hour trying, and the baby crying!

K shifted his attention between the kite (every time it would fly and go really high) and a bag of chips (when it crashed down a few seconds later).

Trying to, fly a kite, ignore a wailing baby, keep an eye on K and yelling to get his attention every time I got the kite up in the air, was so stressful, that I did not realize other people might be watching us.

Nothing more frustrating than, "concerned" middle-aged lady out for a walk or whatever, glaring at you failing to do pretty much everything, from across the field. (Why is this woman yelling at her child, while her baby cries like a tortured wolf cub). I eventually gave up, picked up the baby, and K resumed his bag of chips. She decided to leave. I am so glad she did not walk up to me and say anything, because I am not sure if I could have stopped myself from stabbing her aorta with my kite spine.

Anyway. The moral of the story is, no matter how much I try to convince myself I can do everything, I cannot.

After giving up, I made the 5 minute drive back home and of course the baby had decided to now go in to a deep sleep. K was in a great mood today though and I couldn't help drawing lots of depressing parallels between my kite flying skills and my life in general. (My life is like a kite that never really took off or this worldly life is like a kite that soars for a bit and then comes crashing down and so on and so forth).

So we are back home each of us in front of our respective computers. I am typing this post, while K plays his ABC game.

I did however teach myself how to fly a kite.

It is a really nice day outside.