Fight or Flight

After the positivity of my last post the last week or so has been a real struggle! I have been totally distracted by things going on in life out with home school and have to admit that my mind simply isn't on the job! With a child like S this isn't a recipe for success! He needs direction, structure and routine. If I am not on the ball then he makes the most of that and disappears off quite happy to be escaping any sort of formal work. My resilience is very low just now to deal with any lack of co-operation and instead of fight my flight instinct is well and truly in operation just now. My house badly needs some attention, I have a list of chore building up and I have lost any motivation just now. Not so positive then!

I've decided therefore to chuck out the lesson plans for the remainder of the term and radically rethink what we will do. We are potentially going to adopt a tortoise so I'm thinking a wee project on tortoises could be in order. I think we might do 4 wee mini projects for the remainder of the term. It doesn't really sit right with me not to neatly finish off the workbooks that we could do but something needs to happen to kick start us both into action.

So - not a very inspiring blog today but this is the nitty gritty of home ed, in the midst of a busy family life. We are both longing for the holidays and a wee break and by the end of the summer I'm really hopeful that some of the distractions in my head might be a thing of the past and my fight instinct will be back!

Getting goosebumps!

Today was a such a fab day! Well, when I talk about day I'm really talking about a very special 10 minutes!

Our morning was very normal getting through our normal tasks of mental maths, spelling, reading and grammar work. S also then attempted a maths assessment which I guessed he would do badly at! I knew fine well he wouldn't bother trying to work out any of the questions properly and indeed that's what happened. I told him this at the end and he'll be repeating it again properly on Monday! Tough love hasn't given up yet ;)

Our reading book just now is one of the Oxford Reading Tree books, "The Will of the People" and is set in Ancient Greece in 454BC so has introduced the whole topic of Greek Myths and Legends. I had to study this when I was 12 when part of our curriculum was to learn Greek (quite incredible to think that now!) and actually really enjoyed it. To start off looking further into it I got a DVD on Odysseus which introduces some of the more famous stories in cartoon form.

So, this afternoon we started to watch. We have in other work been looking at the old and new covenants in the Bible and looking at the tabernacle and the temple so I was a little concerned introducing gods and goddesses would have confused S. As we watched I gave small commentaries to help S to follow who was who. After a couple of the mini stories S asked to pause the DVD so that he could speak to me. So I did. Then completely out of the blue S asked me, "What happened to all the people who died before Jesus died on the cross?" This was then followed by a conversation including questions from him such as, "Why did God make us so that we could sin?", "Why did God not just stop us from sinning?", "Why did God not just kill us?", "So, if Adam and Eve hadn't sinned then would we not have pain?", "Why do we die?" and then some more... What a conversation! It was amazing! What makes it even more amazing is the fact that for the last few weeks I have been asking some of these very questions myself! I have been a Christian for about 25 years, I have studied theology at uni and read many many books but some of these questions I have never found answers for and recently they have come back to really intrigue me! Various life experiences recently have led me to really want to delve deeper into my faith and try to understand the God I love more. For some, I think they think I'm never going to find answers and that to ask some of these questions is futile and that I should be satisfied to accept I will never find answers but I just can't do that! Of course there are some questions I will never know answers to such as, "when will Jesus return" or "what will I be doing in heaven?" But I really do think that we have been given minds that can grasp some of the other questions if we are willing to look.

So, I've been reading lots, listening to podcasts, discussing with friends and compiling a list of more questions as they come up! I've been really enjoying a book by Norman Geisler called, "If God, Why Evil?". It has been fantastic and has totally scratched where I itch! It has answered so many of my questions and has made me think. Then today S's questions came! If he had asked me these questions even one week ago I would have been stumped and would have had to say, "I don't know" over and over again! Please don't get me wrong, I don't at all think its wrong to say I don't know to any questions a child asks and I don't for one minute think I have worked everything out! My understanding of these things is totally in its infancy but it was so so exciting to share with S that I had been asking these very same questions and to explain some of the answers. So we chatted about free will and what that means and how we are free to love but free to reject God too. We discussed a Father's love for his children and how that works out in allowing us freedom. We discussed original sin and whether or not we would have done the same. We discussed so much even to the level of would there be electricity in heaven so that we wouldn't have to charge the tablet to keep playing minecraft!!! (That was a reminder it was a child I was discussing with!!!) what a chat! For me it immediately gave me the assurance that I hadn't been wasting my time looking at all these questions! For a child on the autistic spectrum it was more than amazing. Here we were speaking about things unseen and his eye contact was amazing! When we talked about meeting God for the first time he gave the smile he gives only when he is genuinely excited and happy about something. That's when we talked about goosebumps! Admittedly explaining goosebumps to somebody with sensory perception disorder is maybe not ideal - he maybe thinks that's torture!!! But I have goosebumps even thinking about our chat. To see the penny drop when learning about a maths concept or an English concept is one thing but to share the moment when spiritual eyes are opened with my child is just amazing! What a gift!

So, a long post but for me a very special post and one I wanted to share. Next week might be grim and moments like this don't come along everyday so I thought it was worth recording and sharing.

Tough Love

This week may well have been a watershed for us. Let me explain. Alongside Aspergers S has elements of something known in shorthand as "PDA". This is Pathological Demand Avoidance and explained very crudely means that S has a strong reaction to any demand at all being placed on him. In reality it's like having a child stuck at the three year old temper tantrum stage where if the child doesn't want to do something he certainly makes that very plain for all to see and hear about. With S this is mixed up with his Aspergers and then on top of that is the fact that he is a 9 year old boy with firm ideas in his head! With PDA you quickly realise how many demands can be made in any one day. From getting dressed, to keeping hygienic at the very basic level all the way through the day to brushing teeth at the end of the day and going to bed. You can imagine therefore the fun and games that persist when it comes to home school time. I've had enough! To have a constant running battle with the child you love is very exhausting. I love my son dearly and to be constantly battled with is soul destroying. Often after a morning of moans and groans (and that is putting it politely!) I'm often ready for a dark room. S forgets all about it immediately. That is a gift in itself! Yesterday, as usual the time came for home school. We rarely start first thing. I always need a little time to sort things out after the chaos of getting the other 3 kids out to school and know fine well that to start S straight away without any time on his own would be counter productive. So, we started just after 10 with mental maths as usual. You would think I was asking S to do 300 sums in 2 minutes! We struggled through that and then moved onto spelling. That's when I really had had enough! The moaning wasn't anything out of the ordinary but the dripping tap effect was grating on my nerves so much!! I've felt so challenged about how I come across to my children in the house. As a Christian family we feel its important to love each other just as much inside the house as we would want to love other people outside of the house. In the house with moaning and whining children can be one of the first places to lose the rag and forget all about love, patience, peace, kindness, gentleness or self control! I am trying hard! I certainly am a work in progress and teaching S day by day certainly keeps my feet firmly on the ground - if not feeling stuck in the mud!! With all this in mind I explained to S that I could feel myself getting very angry and frustrated and that I didn't want to shout as that did neither him nor I any good. I told him that he would now have to complete the task on his own as I was not willing to sit and work with him whilst his attitude was so negative. (I did know that this task was straight forward!) This task should have taken him 5 minutes, 10 at the most. An hour later he finished! It honestly was like pulling teeth!! He was not a happy chap! It was murder to listen to and several times I could have stepped in and helped him. But you know what? He finished it all by himself! I was amazed! The rest of the day went well. We worked through our other tasks quickly and without problems (which to be fair normally does happen once he gets the moaning out of his system). I did wonder whether yesterday would have made a difference at all. We can go through huge dramas one day that he forgets and have to repeat all over again the next. Well what a shock I got today. When I said it was time for home school he came, sat down and completed his mental maths with not one word of complaint. He then worked through his spelling and his maths workbook without moaning! He even pointed out to me that he has noticed that if he doesn't moan he gets through the work faster! I kid you not that is the first day in 19.5 months of home school that he hasn't moaned! It was bliss!! I'm not naive enough to think that he will never moan again and this tough love is going to be here to stay otherwise home school will have to end. But if today is the start of something new I would not only be so happy but so so so relieved!