A true warrior mama, Lisa Sell in Pennsylvania with her son.
Lisa wrote the following to me and permitted me to share with the readers of OJTA:
Some days I think my kid could lose his ability to qualify for his diagnosis. I’ve heard the older they regress the longer it takes to heal. I feel like you – a lot of work ahead, but so many gains already behind us. I’d have given my right hand for this much improvement 2 yrs ago!
My son attends a cyber charter school in PA. It is an online school (considered public, so it is FREE). It is a “charter” school because it was set up not as a ‘district’. I am my son’s “learning coach” – I actually teach him. He also has all the benefits of public school: an IEP, I consult with a teacher for his grade, a special ed teacher, he gets speech therapy that the school provides (the speech therapist is the BEST we’ve ever had and comes to MY HOME, saving me time and money), and best of all THEY provide all the curriculum materials, and I mean everything. When school started I was shipped about 17 boxes of stuff! Textbooks, boxes of literature, all the workbooks and worksheets, teacher guides for teaching, a small slate, white boards, an inflatable globe, many CD’s for music class and history/culture, DVD’s, small musical instruments like tambourine, recorder, etc. Art supplies like a variety of brushes, a whole set of paints, oil pastels, a portfolio of fine art prints, science tools like thermometer, magnets, weights, magnifying glass, etc. tons of math manipulatives like counting blocks, shapes, geometry figures, etc.
Oh! And best of all they include the Handwriting Without Tears program! I can’t even name it all. So much that we were planning on moving before, but now that we have the freedom to go to anywhere, regardless of school district, we picked our favorite area with a new neighborhood within walking distance to a park, and our favorite builder and we’re building a house with a room for a first floor “classroom”. The curriculum used is K-12 and we are really enjoying it.
We work at my son’s pace. Somethings he breezes through and so he does the worksheet and it takes all of 10 minutes. Other subjects he really gets into and he just runs with it, and next thing I know we are in a local museum (he really enjoyed the lesson on Faith Ringgold’s quilts and my town has a quilt museum (Lancaster, PA). I can go as deep into a subject as I want, and put our own spin on it. My son is all about squares right now and asked what “square foot” meant. So I taught him. Now he measures rooms and tables, and closets to find our how many square feet. He is making up stories, writing them down, and illustrating them. His karate and therapeutic swimming count as Physical Education credits, and when we learned about observations for science in the fall, we spent 2 hours one afternoon at a wooded park bird watching/listening. We then got books about birds, and CD’s to learn their songs. That wasn’t in the lessons – but all that counts towards our state’s mandated hours. I have no trouble fitting his hours in. I have trouble getting him to STOP over holiday breaks and weekends so I can do something else!
His Kindergarten teacher works with him through the computer (she calls on speaker phone while working with him online) once a month, his special education teacher works with him once a month the same way. Once a month he has a group online with his special education teacher and some other kids for role playing/practicing social skills. They use microphones and an online whiteboard. The school provides the computer and printer and everything. And reimburses us for internet service!
The lesson plans are on my K-12 cyber school account. I go in each day, go to the plan, print out what I need, or work from the computer. There are pictures, online stories, videos, referrals to websites, and really fantastic interactives that my son will do, and then do again and again – to show is dad, grandparents, etc.
If your child finishes 1st grade math in December, then he just starts 2nd grade math. If it takes him 2 yrs to master it, then it does. Kids may be in 3rd grade but be 5th grade math and 2nd grade reading. It is completely individual.
My son told me recently that he did not WANT to overcome his “challenges”. I’m thinking “WHAT???!!” I’m busting my hump on biomed/therapies for nothing? Instead of freaking out I used my momtuition and oh so casually asked “why not?”. He said he was worried that if he did I would send him to regular school, and he LOVES homeschool – no other children to distract him from learning, when he wants to play, we set up playdates. And he has enough left in him at the end of the school day from learning in a supportive environment that he doesn’t curl up into a ball and check out. He goes to karate, or swimming, or the park, or the kid’s museum, or even to the store with me, now! He is so proud and sure of himself now. He was so down on himself in public preschool. He would meltdown at pick up, rage the whole way home, and then weep in a ball on the floor, telling me he wanted to be “any other boy”. Those days are just a bad, horrible memory now. Thank God.
RDI is Relationship Development Intervention. RDI is about learning proper human interaction, friendships, empathy, etc. Much more higher functioning stuff than ABA Therapy. The stuff that “they” say Aspies and HFA’s just don’t have and can’t ever have. We’ll see about that. My kid now has an amazing imagination and sense of humor that he had completely lost, and isn’t supposed to have either.
I feel so much more energized, empowered, and hopeful since educating my son at home. It ISN’T all about how he doesn’t fit into the box anymore. His intellect and curiosity is the focus instead, and he is valued for those things. Our local school district is VERY highly regarded – we bought a tiny little townhouse JUST to get to live in this district as the home values are so much higher. Anyway, they refused to even consider a gifted IEP for my son. His IQ tested at 139 – and he didn’t even finish the test. The school flat out told us they had absolutely no idea what to do with him. They thought he belonged in at least 3rd grade, but that he should probably have an aide and maybe have autistic support for his sensory issues. So they decided to put him in the autistic class. Where it is all grades, no kid is even close to verbal, and they are teaching the kids to point to letters that are named. Yes, my kid hid under the table after he completed his testing – fluorescent lights are just hell for him and the room had no windows – but he’s reading 5th grade material with full comprehension, for heaven’s sake! My child will never get what he needs from our local, or any public school, I would bet. So I’m committed unless some miracle school opens up near me that would happen to be affordable on top of it all. I had a generous relative offer to help out with private school tuition which around here starts in the mid $20,000 range – but we couldn’t find one that would work with/for him and no one seriously wanted to take him, some made noises that it would be considered, if we privately hired a fulltime aid to be with him, out of pocket as well. The autism schools don’t have the academic resources for him, and are either geared to get him back into public school’s “box” ASAP or they are intensely ABA based for severe kids.
Things work out the way they are supposed to, it seems, and not the way we think they are going to be!
Empowering huh? Makes you want to homeschool, doesn’t it? Lisa’s experiences are similar to mine, however her son is a bit older and Lisa can offer incredible insight that I have yet to experience, like RDI on her own! A true warrior mom, I am proud to have her on board as a guest blogger. Stay tuned for Lisa’s post next month!
About Tiffani Lawton, R.N.
Share Your Thoughts...