My middle child (son) has just been "diagnosed" with Asperger's Syndrome which is in addition to his previous diagnoses of ADHD with ODD. He is 10. I am already homeschooling which turns out to be a very good thing for Aspergers. Anyway, I have a question for those who have an AS child/children: What (if anything) do you do "different" with your child's education? Like is there anything you have found that seems to work for you? TIA for any tips/tricks/suggestions!
Hi I don't have a child with AS, but I did want to tell you about another homeschool message board that discusses homeschooling methods that seem to work with children with AS, LD's, gifted, ADHD and such. On this particular message board they seem to refer to the children as creative learners and sometimes Right Brained, so the homeschool environment needs to be creative also. It's a Yahoo group called homeschoolingcreatively I'm pretty sure there are some other posters on this message board that could help give you ideas as well. I hope this helps in some way.
i have a ds, 7, on the spectrum, and i do a few things different. i do small chunks of time, and many physical breaks, with running, push ups, rolling across the room, riding bike, sit ups.lots of sensory input is good for my ds. i do expect a little diff out of him, he has a hard time see things that arent black and white, so i have a little leway for him. he is also highly distractable, so i try to minimize all distracting when im teaching and when he has seat work. i dont require he sit super still, he can even stand up while he works, but he must do so quietly and i must be able to read his writing. i have a super book on homeschooling kids with special needs like these, i will try to find it. it has lots of helpful advice, especially a ton of sensory issue advice that really i never would have thought of.
I have a question... what are the characteristics of Aspergers and do those of you with kids with it and the other things mentioned notice if puberty brings out the symptoms moreso? I am noticing a flex in some of the kids I work with and around at church who are in the areas you are mentioning... I will watch this thread too as one mom asks me things all the time knowing I homeschool but I am not an expert in this stuff just know a LOT of kids who seem to be diagnosed this way during the 10-14 years... so I was wondering if its hormonal?
My son is also 10. We don't have an official dx, but from what I have seen and read, he is a textbook case of AS. Some of what we do: We have to set a schedule to follow, because rules and lists and a regular routine are good for him, but we have to be careful about how we write the schedule. We don't set specific times for things, because if we try to start something 5 minutes early or 2 minutes late, all chaos ensues. Frequent breaks are a good thing, but we have to limit them time-wise. We set a timer. Sound is a big distraction, and so I've begun sending him to his room to do work. When we first started this, I had to check on him frequently to be certain that he stayed on-task with his work, but he does fine with it now. (One thing that helped is that I designated each subject to take a certain amount of time, say an hour. Then whenever he finishes the work, he gets the rest of the hour as a break. So if his work only took him 25 minutes, he gets a 35 minute break before he has to go on to the next subject. This has worked wonders for staying on-task!) Also for sound issues, we got him some headphones to keep excess sound out; his brothers are 5 and 6 and so this is an issue in our house. :lol: Reading is a biggy, as we deal with some language processing stuff. We read a lot together, and we've practiced narration. This whole process took a good deal of concentration and breaking down of steps, and we really worked on this for a while. If this is an issue for you, PM me and I'll share exactly what we did. We also purposefully participate in just a few activities, and we participate in them to the fullest. We do three things: AWANA is once weekly through the school year, and as such is the only reason I feel comfortable adding a third activity. Karate adds an element of physical education and of discipline, and is helpful to him in more ways than one. I'm thankful for the small class of the school we've chosen. Cub Scouting is our third and main activity. We participate so heavily in this one that you might call it a lifestyle; it's definately a PART of our lifestyle in general. Scouts work specifically on some of the things that are important to us and important for ds to learn, and we find that (when the program is run as it should be) it is a fantastic environment for our socially awkward kiddo. He has the chance to interact, and to experiment with interaction, and still be free of much of the ridicule and hardships he might encounter in another setting. It's awesome. (And, to help be certain that the program IS run as intended and is a good environment for our son and everyone else's, we help RUN it.) I'm sure there's more, but lunch is almost ready!
I was told that for some children they are so high up on the scale that they don't seem to manifest some key symptoms until around puberty because that is a key time in the "social interaction" area. Example: a boy has quirks that his parents notice at around age 4 and when taken to the doctor he is diagnosed with ADD/ADHD. Parents continue to see quirky, non-ADD/ADHD characteristics but in social settings the child may be so shy they do not see the social interaction problems or they aren't around others enough to notice or he is labeled a "trouble maker" in school. Around 10/11 years old these "quirks & social issues" become more predominant because a child of that age is expected to have a certain level of understanding while in a social setting. Thus ... the late diagnosis - it was always there so not caused by hormones, just late recognition. (Does that make sense?? I think I am confusing myself right now - lol) Thanks for the tips. I ordered a couple of books from Amazon - one that is more for my husband and myself and one that is for him (and his siblings).
Shorter lessons and less stress is needed. The outside activities have to be carefully picked. The curriculum has to be less stressful. I have to carefully monitor things as he wants the computer all day long. I try to give a sensory rich day too.
My younger brother was diagnosed with Asperger's around the same age. One of the thing common to these kids is they tend to become really obsessed with one thing for a period of time. If you could figure out what that is and then base your lessons around it, kind of unit-study like, it would probably help him concentrate a lot. Good luck!
My son was diagnosed with high-functioning autism at 6, PDD-NOS at 10, and Asperger's at 18. Diagnosis seemed to depend on the doctor. I think autism spectrum is a better term. We didn't notice any difference around puberty. What I would do differently: Start homeschooling a lot sooner! What worked for us: - Completely customized curriculum - whatever he responded to best - We struggled with reading and math at first, but then Shakespeare, poetry and calculus were surprise hits - Portfolio projects rather than tests or quizzes - Do any tests verbally rather than written - Don't grade anything to minimize stress - Lots of time for the main interest, which in his case was computers - Break complex tasks like writing an essay into small steps like writing sentences, then paragraphs - Sit next to him and read to him - Custom project related to main interest- he set up a message board just like this one for homeschooled teenagers My son went on to take a single computer class at a community college. He tutored another student who was also taking the course, changing his grades from F's to A's, and even taught the instructor some new things. Unfortunately the stress was too much for him. He also has a rare painful joint disease, and his autism is still disabling. He now volunteers for Gift from God Computer Foundation and spends all his spare time learning about computers. He writes free computer courses for my website.
My son , Noah, is 12 and was diagnosed around age 9. He was in public school until 3rd grade and then we started homeschooling. Long story short- best thing that ever happened to my son. Every Aspie is different and we've gone through a lot of trial and error with our homeschooling and what works best for us. Just when I think I have something figured out and believe my son will enjoy something...guess what? He doesn't! For my son things that work are a list of things we are going to do that day - I don't put time limits or timeframes because that will either make him anxious or bored. But I do say we are doing Chapter 6 in science and he knows exactly what is expected and he will do Chapter 6. My son hates, hates (I think many spectrum kids do) to handwrite -in my son's case it's because he thinks it needs to look perfect so more time is spent on how it looks than the content. Typing saved us from that - I let him type whenever possible. Our 2nd year of homeschooling we did a free online typing program so he is now a pretty quick typist. We do have outside activities but I know my son's limits and he doesn't enjoy most loud, chaotic events where there are tons of kids. So we find activities suited to his need for not too much sensory or social overload. One thing I don't let my son do is "get out of" doing difficult things. He has a tendency to meltdown because he is hard on himself and gives up on some things easily. I am drawing a blank right now because I know there are things I do a little differently because of AS but I guess generally I try not to make things to easy for him but do take into account how he learns, what he likes to learn and his sensory and social issues. Feel free to PM me if you have other questions Good Luck! Jane
Great post, Jane, and I whole-heartedly second the typing suggestion. Best thing we did here. We do still work on handwriting, purposefully, but I'm really feeling like it is pulling teeth. I plan to move him quickly through the italic books we have and get him to doing cursive. I hear that helps some with legibility. We shall see. His legibility DID drastically increase when we switched to Italic (or D'Nealian, whichever, also "modern manuscript" - they all look pretty similar). Typing though, when writing a paragraph or - heaven help us - a story or essay, has been a life saver.
