By the time I reached this step we were starting a new school year. The local school system offered to send a homebound teacher for 2 hours a week and an occupation therapist for a half an hour a week. The homebound teacher was also a speech therapist so that would be covered. I decided to give it a try.
First I found a free pre-K curriculum online that I could expand on. Then I looked up my state's mandatory goals. Then I sat down and made a detailed IEP that blended both. I was under no illusion that 2 and a half hours a week was enough education time so I was going to homeschool as well. I made sure that we were all functioning on the same page.
To be honest, it was an abysmal failure. Not on the part of the teacher, who tried very hard. Or on my part because I provided whatever she needed, including helping with the lessons. But because she had to meet those mandatory goals and the information she was getting on how to do so was extremely counter productive. Up to and including being told not to use his communicator, and if he did, not to report it! And this wasn't really an issue at the local level either. It was an issue at the state level. And many things just made no sense.
But there were several silver linings. First was that since she was a speech therapist, she confirmed that the adaptations on materials were good and workable. She used many of those and she took some ideas to use in her school. She shared ideas that I continue to use. She also confirmed my assessments about his actual skill levels in his subjects.
The occupational therapist confirmed that I had very effectively woven his OT therapies into his school work and gave me what I considered to be the highest praise. She wished that the schools could do as well in combining the therapies into everyday lessons. And it was always amusing, for all of us, when I would find new toys or activities that would help with his therapies yet be "play".
But that was the school involved stuff. On the home side, things went okay.
I took the free curriculum and I made communication boards for him to use. I found extra activities that would provide him with different ways to learn the material. We explored some more. He started experimenting with spelling. And struggled hard with math. He also learned some basic self care skills.
Yet we still had issues. He loves videos and they provide him with the best way of learning. I found a lot of good videos but at the same time a lot of them had the same issue. They were too long. They covered too much. And in doing so, they caused him to lose focus on what we were working on. And there were almost no math videos that focused purely on quantities, not counting.
So I adventured into learning new skills. I took his favorite educational DVDs and made them mp4s. Then I learned to edit them into segments that only focused on what we were working on. For the alphabet, this turned out to be wonderful and he loved it. I no longer had to wonder, at all, whether he comprehended his letters. For math, well, while I can edit videos, I'm not so good at making them from scratch so we continued to struggle. But we did seem to be making some progress there just not as much. I started to involve him in counting whenever possible and sometimes he would have breakthroughs.
By the end of the year we were still working on pre-K in some areas but were at first grade on others. We just moved slowly through the curriculum and I would add in additional activities until he displayed a good grasp of whatever we were reviewing. Hence the reason why an IEP didn't work. I used the curriculum as our goals with the sole intent of getting as far as we could without focusing on having it all done by X time. It's worked and helped both of us stay sane.
This is the way we did things for two years. And I'll admit that while we've slowly progressed further than the schools had, his core subjects are slow moving. But there have been other amazing breakthroughs that have more than balanced that issue.
The unintentional "lessons" that my Munchkin learned because of homeschooling are plentiful. First, he learned to use the few words he had. And he added more! He learned the give and take of conversing. And he does it very well with his limited vocabulary. He went from one, occasionally two, word phrases to sentences! And just recently he surprised me with a whole sentence that included the proper pronouns and all! Even better, he started doing it with other people. One of my friends and her husband were the first to hear him say "Thank you." I missed it! Basically my Munchkin has proven that the expressive language skills are there in his brain. His speech problem is almost purely getting the words from his brain and out through his mouth.
He has more than proved that his receptive language skills are excellent. And when there are issues it is typically because he is either ill or because I used a new word. So we're working on expanding the vocabulary. And if there are issues on a day, I watch to see what is going on with him body wise.
He has learned that it okay to express his needs and wants. He has also learned how to do some of those things himself. He can get his own drink now. He can help himself to servings of food. He can also put his dishes in the sink. He can tell me what he does and doesn't like. He's learning to tell me when, and where, he hurts at. And he's learning to do all these things in a calm manner, not with tantrums or meltdowns.
He has learned that things have "homes". He has learned how to do basic clean up. And yet, like a typical teenager, those skills never seem to apply to our DVDs.
He has also learned that he wants friends. He has changed behaviors in order to not upset people (on his own). But on the painful flip side, he is very much aware of when he is excluded. His desire to be able to communicate is never more obvious than in those moments. Yet, he also observes the other kids around him and experiments with new things afterwards. He recently spent a day with a very talkative child and spent the next couple of days experimenting with sounds and sentences. And came out with a few!
And I've learned. I've learned to listen for him trying to "talk". I've learned to help him learn to do it himself. I've learned not to assist but instead to teach it a different way. And if I wasn't patient before, I learned to be patient again. I learned what tools, from simple to complex, to use in different situations to enable him to be "present" in the regular world and not overload. I even have a wheelchair that we use when an environment is likely to be difficult for him, or otherwise unattendable.
But perhaps the most treasured lesson, I learned to see the normal boy that was suffering from autism. For most of his life every one of his behaviors was seen, judged, and treated through the lens of his autism. I learned, through great friends and family, what was typical behavior for his age. And from there I could see what the autism affects. It has caused a drastic shift in our world. And it has brought great joy for both of us, once Munchkin got past the knowledge that some of his manipulation no longer worked. :-) It's more than obvious that he enjoys the respect he gets now.
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