A lot of people ask me how it’s possible to homeschool a child with autism and other special needs. People can see that my kid is smart and well-educated, so they know I must be teaching him something, somehow, but they’re still often curious what it is exactly that we do. So I have decided to do a series of posts discussing what and how I teach Shorty the three R’s and beyond.

My main goal in our homeschool is that everything we do should be fun, gentle, child-accessible and working consistently toward a generously broad liberal arts education, with an eye on academic excellence. To achieve this as a homeschooler requires a lot of thinking about the child as an individual – how he learns best, what his learning weaknesses are, what he enjoys doing, when the child is most attentive and able to focus, in what environment the child is most comfortable, etc. Homeschooling provides the opportunity for the parent to tailor the educational experience precisely to the child.

This isn’t something that can happen right away – it is the outgrowth of the process of getting to know your child as a person so that you can best help him reach his fullest potential. Much like Charlotte Mason, to whose pedagogical ideals I closely ascribe, I do not see myself as a teacher, but as an educational facilitator. I hope to give Shorty the tools and foundations he needs to learn to cherish self-education and rigorous intellectualism as lifelong values.

However, Shorty has some challenges. He has a 138 IQ at last testing, but in addition to autism, he has dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADD, large and fine motor delays, and sensory integration problems. This has made some subjects extremely challenging over the years.

Today I’m going to talk about how we approach language arts, but I’ll get to all the other academic disciplines over the next few posts, and the last one will be general resources and tips that have helped us. This isn’t meant to imply that what I do will work for everyone, but maybe it’ll give some people some ideas (homeschoolers, moms, teachers and anyone else who works with kids) some new ideas; maybe some people can give me new ideas, too! Feedback is always appreciated.

READ MORE: How We Do Language Arts

I recently was confronted with a question by a first-time homeschooling mom, who just pulled her son out of public school and intends to begin homeschooling him in the fall. The question is one that, as an experienced homeschooler, I think is almost too broad to answer, but at the same time, is intuitive for first-time homeschoolers who don’t necessarily know where to start: “What’s the best curriculum to buy for my child?”

Since there are folks reading this journal who are either curious about homeschooling or leaning towards doing so themselves, I am going to repost my response. It is linktastic. Hopefully someone can find it helpful.

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If you’re like me and you tend to second-guess yourself, I really recommend HomeschoolReviews as a good reference. It is an online forum where hundreds of homeschoolers have posted their reviews of pretty much any curriculum out there. I thought it was tremendously helpful in choosing what we picked for my son.

Last year, we went with WinterPromise – http://www.winterpromise.com – for science, art and history, and Rod and Staff – http://www.rodandstaffbooks.com – for language arts and math – and we couldn’t be happier, but this will be our sixth year homeschooling, and it will be the first time that we’ve used the same curriculum two years in a row, so that should tell you something.

There is no one-size-fits-all response. The truth is, the best homeschool curriculum is the one that your child enjoys, is best suited to his learning style (I recommend the book Discovering Your Child’s Learning Style – it has been invaluable in this regard) and also what is best suited to your TEACHING style. If you hate doing it day after day, your child won’t love learning it either. To some degree, it is a bit of trial and error, but sites like HomeschoolReviews help you to at least rule out what you would definitely hate.

Unlike traditional classrooms, there are a bunch of different ways to homeschool. This list is in no way meant to be exhaustive, but here are just a few of the more widely used approaches and some useful links off the top of my head.

Links and Resources This Way!

Tonight I got a phone call from Miami-Dade County. I have been chosen to work the voter polls for the 2008 presidential elections in November. My training course is this Saturday and it’s for three hours and paid. I will also need to work the entire day of the elections, and the day before help with setting up the polls.

The total pay for this is nearly $300. Not bad at all!

I am so excited. Shorty is just now learning about the US Constitution, the electoral process, and how the government works in his American history studies, so I expect there to be a lot of learning tie-ins. I’ve never done anything like that before! The pay is good, but really, I just wanted a chance to be a part of the elections in a meaningful way as a citizen.

And I promise, Florida voters, that I will do my best to make sure the polls I work at are not royally messed up on a level requiring national media attention and long-term running gag status. My expectations are so high, right?
I mean, I’m not making any promises here, but I will at the very least try to pay attention the whole 3 hours this Saturday.

Now if I could only figure out who the heck I’m actually voting for…

Here is an article about Sears’ new fall back-to-school campaign for “tweens and teens” featuring the sometimes-clothed star of High School Musical, Vanessa Hudgens. Is it me or is this really infuriating? It advises kids to “not just go back – arrive!” and buy a lot of clothes to “really get noticed” at school and “change up their styles and make a fashion statement.”

Um… so… is this what people mean when they go on about all the “socialization” opportunities my kid is missing out on by being homeschooled? Should I be encouraging him to worry more about clothes, appearance and peer approval, and less about tomorrow’s new episode of Mythbusters and the moldy bread he’s currently gleefully cultivating as a self-assigned science experiment? (Ewwww.) My kid hardly cares if what he puts on is clean, it has taken him 5 years to comprehend the concept of “it is important to somewhat, vaguely, at least inoffensively match,” much less if what he has on is fashionable. Is this maladaptive, or does that describe the kids who experience anxiety about “not arriving in style?”

All the homeschooled children I have met are totally different from each other, but the one thing I have noticed is a lack of reliance on peer approval, and a greater reliance on their own judgment, tastes and preferences. Even the little fashionista girls at our park date – there are three of them who are totally adorable clothes hounds, two 10-year-olds and a 12-year-old – quite clearly dress for themselves and just like sharing the clothes that make THEM happy with their friends. But then, the park playdate IS an appropriate venue for socializing- school is not. It’s not supposed to be, anyway. How many times did we all hear “We are not here to socialize, young lady!” in school? (Well… okay, maybe that was just me. I WAS EXTROVERTED, ALL RIGHT?? *g* ) Yet supposedly a lot of people think my kid will grow up warped and deprived if he misses out on that. And prom. Prom is apparently very important, from what I can gather…

Maybe it’s easier for me to see the strangeness of the normatization of appearance and peer approval because it is in such sharp contrast to my own experiences. I was in the theater and music crowd in high school, so I think I was rather fortunate in that my peer group was a) mostly working-class and b) not that concerned with appearances because it was an atmosphere where creativity and individualism were relatively valued. Frankly, the fashion-conscious kids stuck out. The people who knew me in high school who are reading this (*waves*) can testify that I wore some INTERESTING Molly-Ringwald-circa-Pretty-in-Pink outfits and I really didn’t care and neither did anyone else, that I could tell.

I did go to the prom. I still have my prom dress somewhere, I think. I STILL FIT INTO IT. (Huzzah.) It was pretty. I looked cute. I’m still friends with my prom date, who also looked cute and who may be reading this too (*waves again*). We had seafood for dinner and I had an allergic reaction to the scallops and we had to go home early. Though he has kindly assured me for 15 years otherwise, I’m pretty sure I was the worst prom date in the history of life itself, but y’know, it was a really nice party. Or… crucial formative experience and rite of passage. I guess it depends on who you ask.

I honestly can’t wrap my head around the emphasis on how important school social experiences are. I’m possibly rare among homeschooling parents in that I do not think they’re necessarily uniformly bad. On the contrary – I had mostly good ones, some bad ones, nothing traumatic. I am still friends with many of my friends from elementary school, junior high and high school and they’re all adults I admire and respect now. I had a very positive and encouraging peer group. So I don’t think everything that happens in schools is terrible, but what I do think is that those social experiences are neither inherently ideal nor irreplaceable. For me, it’s pretty easy to dismiss strangers’ concerns about my child’s “socialization,” because it’s just a matter of thinking outside the box and accepting that there’s more than one way to do things.

Besides, aren’t they supposed to be there to, you know, learn? And not “arrive” and judge each other by how much cool stuff they bought over the summer? I am not at all being patronizing when I say that Sears campaign made me genuinely sad. It’s supposed to be an academic institution first and foremost. Why isn’t getting excited about learning ever emphasized in back-to-school marketing campaigns?

Oh, right, right – no one can make a profit off that.

(Side note: Shorty was evaluated by a public school psychologist last fall in order to see if he qualified for speech therapy. He had been a public school psychologist for 30 years and was, hmm, homeschool-neutral before meeting Shorty, but he was also a very kind man. An older, affable Cuban gentleman. One of those people whose heart for children you could just see on their faces. He had met many homeschooled children, and many children with autism, but never a homeschooled autistic child until he met Shorty. After the evaluation, he declared, with great astonishment, that Shorty was “the most well-socialized” child with autism he had ever met, and that he related “extraordinarily well” to others and showed a “very high self-esteem,” which he noted, with some chagrin, was rare in public-schooled autistic kids. He added that after meeting us, he was going to give more thought to how homeschooling could benefit children on the autism spectrum, and asked me what “techniques” I had used to get him to that point. That? Was a really good day. Bragbragbrag. )