I have started several blog entries now which have never made it to the blog! So much to say! I thought though that on the eve of our 2nd anniversary of starting home school it seemed like an appropriate milestone to mark.
I can't actually believe we've been working together for 2 years! That time has been marked with fairly major life events and yet we've carried on throughout them all. Even just now life is very uncertain for our family but home school carries on...
Today was actually a great reminder of where we have gone. Our days start very erratically. I'm sure I've described this before but S has PDD and Aspergers. PDD is a hard thing to live with for both S and us and explained very crudely means that if absolutely any 'demand' is made of the child it is met with massive resistance. It's a bit like being stuck at the toddler stage with no glimmer of growing out of it! Ideally, in a perfect world, I as mum would have learnt as much as I could about this condition and have learnt how to manage it well. Apparently negotiation is key and giving "choices" is crucial so as to make it appear that there are no demands. In reality though when living with this day in day out I get tired. Tired of second guessing absolutely every demand from the simplest demand of getting dressed all the way through to go to bed. I'm tired of juggling the needs of 4 important little human beings and failing to meet sufficiently the needs of any of them - or so it seems! To keep things in some sort of perspective it has struck me recently that actually what goes on in my head often doesn't come out! I'm not sure how much of a good thing this is but it is of some comfort that I think the majority of my moans and groans are kept to my own internal audience. Whilst not so self esteem boosting it hopefully means I am not showing my kids just how frustrated I am!
Anyway, I have totally digressed... Because of the PDD I have given up making a rod for my own back and enforcing a start time for the day. As long as we get through the work I'd like to achieve with a little time at the end of the day to breathe before the other come home then I'm happy. I have started this year to have a bit of time to myself to read before we even start. That time is so precious! It is the only time in the day that is peaceful! After that we make our way to "work". We are in a good routine now of S working through his "independent learning" tasks. Each day this consists of 50-60 mental maths sums followed by a spelling task or 2. That's all. This functions really well as a warm up. If we skip it he really struggles to focus. He is never given anything too taxing at this point so there is no feeling of failure. After this we move onto to maths. This has been a struggle but this week I think we have turned a corner. After a teaching friend spent a while with me earlier this week helping me to see the progression through a topic I realised to my shame once again that I'm pushing S far beyond where he really needs to be. No wonder he's been difficult! So, I've dropped the level a bit and am filling in the gaps and maths has been a breeze this week! We normally complete a couple of maths activities. Today we used the education city programme which he loves.
After that we move onto English which generally involves reading and grammar and sometimes comprehension work or story writing. We are not very prescriptive with this. Just now we are reading together Michael Morpurgo's book, "Billy the Kid". I'm reading it to S as I want him to enjoy the story which he does lose when he reads it himself. It has been fascinating. I picked the book because (to my shame) it was short and had a picture of a footballer on the front!! I thought S might enjoy the football element of the story. What I didn't realise is that it is all about the 2nd World War. S has been fascinated! We have had the most amazing full conversations this week about the war, the ethics of war, prisoners of war and all sorts. S has listened so well and asked really intelligent questions. He has heard details in the story and we have discussed idioms like "pushing up the daisies" which for autistic children can be really tricky. It has been so satisfying to do!
His learning I think has progressed a lot. On Sunday we had friends for lunch who he had never met before. At night time we drove up to church taking one of these new friends with us. S talked ALL the way for 30mins. I was go smacked. What's more, later on he told me that he had remembered me telling him that part of his education was to make an effort to make conversation with peopl he didn't know so well and so he had decided that he should really try! I was so proud of him! Not only had he actually listened to me but to see him apply some of the things I have chatted to him about is quite amazing! He continued on Sunday to amaze me by really trying hard in the sermon to note down several points. We are presently looking for a church so on Sunday it was a friend who is the minister at a church in Glasgow and not his dad who he is used to hearing. S normally finds it really quite hard to keep up with the language demands of a sermon but on Sunday tried extra hard. After an initial mix up he got into the stride of the style of preaching and was getting quite excited as he pre-empted the following sermon point and got it right! To see the delight on his face was so precious!
These things might sound really minor to many but they are huge milestones for us and S. Socially we need to be equipping him to fit into the world or at least cope in the world. Recently I have been doubting if we are making any progress at all. Last term was a very difficult home school term which I didn't really enjoy at all. What is lovely is at the beginning of this 3rd year to be able to see that we are actually making a difference and we are actually making progress! He is learning academically but more importantly he is becoming a more confident wee boy and becoming more secure in his own skin! Now we just need mum to become more confident in hers!
So as we embark on a 3rd year who knows what the future holds. It would be great to think that S would be confident and happy enough to go back to school and to make some friends. I am resting in the knowledge that God is preparing somewhere for the whole family to go that will be suitable for the whole family in every way! Until we know where that will be though and what will happen we will plod on!
