A question for home edders

[KarenT]

J was deregistered just before half term and is emotionally very

unstable as a result of what went on before. I'm not fully 'de-

schooling' because obviously he needs routine and

structure, so I'm having to be very careful about how much activity

and interaction with others I give him at present - his ability to

cope varies greatly day to day and I need to judge him cautiously.

At present I'm giving him a lot of downtime but also giving him

regular KS2 workbooks (a page at a time) to keep him in the habit of

routine schoolwork.

 

But I've noticed that his work is of a much poorer standard than it

used to be. J was always a long way ahead of his peers at his

previous school, quite gifted at Maths especially and being taught in

the higher group of the year above, and achieving well. When marking

the workbooks I'm finding that he's making lots of careless mistakes

and getting rather simple calculations wrong. I don't know if this

is a) because the emotional stress he's still clearly suffering from

is affecting his thinking ability, his academic standard has

dropped during his time at this school, or c) this is a normal

initial response to home education. Or is it a combination of all

three? And what can I do to help him get through this difficult time?

 

I'd really like to hear what other Aspie home edders have

experienced in the early days of teaching their children.

 

Thanks for listening!

 

Karen

x

[stressedmum]

My son has ASD as well as various other difficulties and was very behind academically when I took him out of school.

For a long time after he came out of school he had such low confidence in his abilities that he would either do things half heartedly or refuse to try at all saying that he couldn't do whatever I was asking of him. I think a lot of it was down to a) the school had certain ways of doing things that ALL children had to fit in with and comments from his teachers, within his earshot, such as "It will always be an uphill struggle with J and he will never really get anywhere".

I struggled on with workbooks with him for quite some time (looking back, mainly to keep the LA happy) then just gave up and gave him things like Argos catalogues, toy sale leaflets etc. where he would have to work out how how much everything he wanted would amount to, work out how many weeks he'd have to save his pocket money for to get the things he wanted etc. Then in the sale leaflets there were things like 3 for 2 offers where I'd get him to work out how much it reduced the cost of each thing by etc. After doing this for a while, I pointed out to him that all of this working out of money he was doing was actually maths and told him that it showed he was pretty good at maths. From there he went on to doing things online (so no pressure with writing etc.) then we've only recently gone back onto using workbooks. I also got him a little trophy made a couple of weeks ago for his maths efforts and this has really given him a boost.

I hope our experience has given you some ideas and hope you find a way that works for you

Sharon