This week I am discouraged. This post is as much for me as it is for you.
It has been a week of–wait—today’s only Tuesday. It’s been TWO weeks of side-by-side, question-by-question schoolwork. It has been Sit Down and Do Your Math and Where Did Your Brother Go?
*forehead hits kitchen table*
Days like these, when all I want to do is be DONE with school and be DONE with all of this, looking at the yellow bus drive by and thinking Hmmm….
But no.
Just NO.
That isn’t a good alternative. It is not a healthy alternative for him. For either of them. We will not deal with Special Ed again. Does any of this sound familiar to you?
You are homeschooling your Autistic child for very good reasons.
You are avoiding some potentially very harmful situations for him. You are choosing healthy socialization.
You are preventing his being forced to conform to the status quo by neither holding him back nor shoving him forward. You are meeting his academic needs by tailoring to right where he is.
You are there. Now. You see his state of mind and you can head off a potentially bad outcome because you are aware and can prepare him.
You can choose just which situations to bring him into, when he’s ready, to help him develop skills at his own pace. With you he can practice things like making eye contact for more than 1 second, or taking a breath and slowing down before he speaks so he doesn’t stutter.
With you he is safe.
No so with the world. The world won’t see an Autistic child and take that into account when it has expectations of him. The world won’t see his quirks and then look past them, like you do.
The world doesn’t understand him and he doesn’t understand it, with all the noise and body language and sarcasm and everything that looks one way but means something entirely different. It is confusing for him. He needs a navigator.
So these days, the hard ones, when he spent five hours completing 13 math problems because he just couldn’t stay focused for more than 2 minutes at a time, they still have a purpose. They still make progress. It may be baby steps, but it’s progress. Make yourself some tea (or coffee, with almond milk please), sit back down and have him go over problem number 5. Again.
And take heart.
[dropcap]Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9
Has homeschooling been a struggle for you lately?
This post is part of a series. Please go to my landing page to read all of them.
This post is linked up with TWO #31Days challenges!
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