Over the last weeks I've had the thought, "I wonder what curriculum other parents use with their ASD kids?", so many times that I decided to act and open a dialogue. I'm on numerous homeschooling email lists and a couple of autism email lists and sadly haven't been able to find anyone who's homeschooling an eighth grade boy. I gave up hope of finding anyone nearby early last year.
My son was diagnosed between kindergarten and first grade and has been to four different doctors/facilities and had three different diagnoses. Like so many kids on the Spectrum, he's not easy to label, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing. He attended public school through sixth grade and things were pretty good through fifth grade, but sixth grade was a disaster. If someone had told me that my curious, bright son would go from wanting to earn two PHD's to believing that he's two stupid to attend community college over the course of one school year I'd have said they were crazy, but that's exactly what happened. In one year his curiosity was snuffed out and replaced by raging self-doubt and a healthy dose of apathy. I didn't even send him to school the last week of sixth grade because most of it was 'fun' activities, which were torture for my poor boy. I could list all of the reasons and I'm sure that I'll share them all over the course of this blog, but tonight I just want to focus on how we got where we are and where we're headed.
Last year I used online curricula for the main subjects and supplemented with Words and Their Stories and various other snippets from the small library of homeschool books I have from homeschooling my older son through middle school. He's neurotypical and had a rocky schooling road of his own for different reasons, but I kept all of the materials from his schooling so I have a selection of books from the Critical Thinking Press and other resources. It's hard to describe how disturbing it was to see how twisted my son's experience of learning had become over sixth grade and I found myself focused much more on helping him regain some pleasure from learning than on academic achievement for at least the first half of the academic year. He'd always been curious and happy to learn, but all of the pressure and teasing and bullying turned learning into something stressful and knowledge into something to be ashamed of, so it took a lot of undoing. I say that as if it's completely undone and it's not, in all honesty I worry that there's damage that can't be repaired. He's still convinced he's unintelligent after a successful year of homeschooling and earning good grades, which breaks my heart every time I see the signs.
I'm writing this blog to share our story, to hold myself accountable, and to offer support to others who are walking this same path, because I know that I could surely use some resources! Feel free to join me, I'm happy for any constructive criticism or shared experiences. Comments are moderated because I'm not interested in dealing with negativity and trolling, but rest assured anything that's constructive will be approved, whether it's positive or negative. I hope to start a conversation and offer support for others who are finding their way through homeschooling a child on the Autism Spectrum.
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