IEP meeting next week

GL's IEP meeting is next week. Mama Bear won't be able to make it, so we need to discuss our concerns together, so I can make sure they're addressed. High school has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for him. Despite a major setback when his meds stopped working, he has adjusted rather well. I like this school's SpEd department's emphasis on independence, living skills, and functioning in the community skills. I will be focusing on getting him the services that were in his IEP this year that he never got. Things like PT and OT, which his insurance cut off because the school was supposed to provide them, which the school wrote into his IEP, but then never provided because he was on a limited school day because, well, because the school didn't want to deal with him.

He is now up to a full day two days a week, and three-fourths of a day each of the other three days. I plan to insist on a full day, five days a week for next year. He hasn't had any academic work at this school yet. From what I've seen, none of the SpEd kids get much academically unless they're mainstreamed part of the day; then they get whatever's offered in the classes they're mainstreamed for. The other SpEd kids only get one academic period per day, and it seems pretty lightweight, not to mention aiming for the middle of the class (there's only one SpEd class at this school) and missing most of them. The academic period is the one he's still missing. The two days he's there all day, he has gym that period.

I was not disappointed in the academic offerings for SpEd, mainly because my expectations were so low. There were three main reasons we home schooled him as long as we did:

1. Middle schoolers can be remarkably cruel to anyone who's different.

2. He was learning well at home. I didn't expect the school to teach him much of anything other than how to function in a classroom, which might help with his transition to employment. Whenever we talked with other special needs parents, they were spending more time fighting the school to get their kids' needs met than we were spending home schooling. We did not enroll him in public school until I felt he had learned all he was capable of learning. This came about the end of seventh grade.

3. Since transitions are difficult for him, I did not see the point of transitioning him to public school in eighth grade and then changing schools for high school the following year.

As for behavior management, although we spent hours detailing his behaviors, their antecedents, what works, and what doesn't, they seem to insist on learning by trial and error. It feels a little like when a stranger wants to give you advice about your spectrum kid because they saw Rain Man, but it's worse, because they really think they know more about your kid than you do, because they spent years in school getting book learning about the stereotypical textbook kid with autism. It's enough to make me want to send them this graphic, which I stole from Tom at  Adventures in Aspergers:

That said, I've had to be diplomatic in my approach. This is a small school in a small town. There is only one SpEd classroom and only one SpEd teacher. The PT, OT, and SDPE teacher are shared among the elementary, middle, and high school and, I think, several other schools in the district. When I pass GL's guidance counselor or the school psychologist, or the school social worker or any other of the thirteen people on his IEP team in the hallway, they recognize me, call me by name, and ask about him by name. If I alienate anyone, that's the person I have to go through to get that particular service. I can't replace anyone on his team without transferring him to a different school. At this point, his teacher and all the classroom aides like him and think he is doing an excellent job. He fits in reasonably well with his classmates. Enough mainstream students volunteer in his classroom that he can't walk down the hall, or even around town without meeting one or more of them, and they greet him by name and take an interest in what he is doing. He considers them his friends. Without exception, the staff and student body have been friendly and kind. So when GL isn't getting everything he needs, not even certain things that are in his IEP, I have to intervene, advocating for services, but in such a way that the other party thinks it was her idea.

Why we home schooled our autistic son

Year after year, we faced skepticism at every turn about our decision to home school GL. First we would get a halfhearted defense of the idea that only a professional can teach a child, especially an autistic child, to read and write. (When we had him tested for public school enrollment, those very professionals were amazed to find his reading, vocabulary, and verbal skills far beyond what they would expect, given his cognitive abilities. His math skills are much more in line with what they would expect. His handwriting is messy, which is not surprising, given his poor fine motor skills. They are providing PT and OT. And he can't spell worth a darn.) His skills are all over the map, but patient teaching and individual attention day after day, year after year, from someone who knows him very well, and with no change of teachers in ten years, have allowed him to make the most of the abilities he has.

When they see that line will fail, everyone throws down what they believe to be the trump card: "But what about socialization?" It has apparently become an article of faith in America that:

1. Social skills are the sine qua non, the ne plus ultra, the raison d'être, the 42, and the e pluribus unum, of not only education, but employment, life, the universe, and everything,

2. Public school is the only place social skills can be learned, 

AND

3. Unstructured social situations (the playground, the locker room) with little to no adult supervision, where the kids are encouraged to "work things out for themselves" and adults don't generally intervene until there is bloodshed, a broken bone, or severe bruising, and then more likely than not will take the side of the aggressor, are the best places to learn social skills.  (Bullying and not getting caught are social skills, after all.) 

Call me a heretic. I believe the purpose of education is academic learning. I've met plenty of socially well-adjusted home schoolers. I've met plenty of socially inept people who still earn a good living. There is more to life than socializing, which I believe is overrated. The happiest and most productive members of any group are those who first know themselves well as individuals. God is more concerned with your treating people ethically, morally, and kindly than with your making them like you. 

People on the autism spectrum don't just lack certain social skills their peers take for granted, they often also lack the ability to read the social cues by which their peers typically learn these skills. If they can't absorb these skills by osmosis, they must be explicitly taught, which most public schools are slow to do. Expecting a child with autism to just pick up social skills along with academics, and without being taught is like expecting a child with extremely poor vision to learn to read without glasses. Expecting him to learn social skills on the playground or in the locker room is like teaching him to swim by nicking an artery and throwing him to the sharks.

I've seen situations like this one happen far too often. To a bully, an autistic kid is the perfect victim: www.helpinghandschildren.com/zform/Bullying.pptx

(He also has OCD.)

These facts, coupled with the facts that GL will do anything other kids tell him to, and confess to anything he is accused of, whether he did it or not, led us to keep him out of public school until now, even if it meant giving up services he would otherwise qualify for. Looking beyond high school, his options are to sit around watching TV all day, while someone else pays the bills, or enter some type of vocational program. He may or may not be self-supporting, but he needs useful work. (I suspect he will make some money, but not enough to live on.) He's gone about as far as he is likely to go academically, but at this point, the public school looks like our best connection and transition to vocational programs. We have enrolled him with fear and trembling.

When we made this decision, we waited a year to enroll him so he would be entering high school. The cruelest people I've met are middle schoolers and adults who never progressed emotionally beyond middle school or high school. We had him tested and got an IEP written during spring semester. He starts high school next week. So far, everything looks encouraging. School staff have all been friendly, helpful, and understanding. They've been supportive of our making the best choices for GL, whether we chose to enroll him or not. They've had only good things to say about his accomplishments while home schooled. They listened when we told them about our observations and experience. They put everything in his IEP that we asked for. He visited his class a few times last year, and both Sp.Ed. and regular students recognized him and greeted him in the hallway.

But the most important thing we've learned from other autism parents' stories is: Don't. Trust. Anyone. Or prehaps, Trust, but verify.

Hodgepodge

It's hard to find enough time to blog lately. GL's IEP is signed, sealed, and delivered. BB is getting better at mowing, but I still have to check his work. Baseball season is underway. After last season, when nearly every game was rained out, partly due to a lot of rainy Saturdays, and partly due to the low-lying location of the park, which seems to flood every time there's a sprinkle, and the Parks Department giving us a hassle about rescheduling games, (they won't let us play if the grass is wet, but they don't want to let us schedule a makeup game either) we (or I should say the league president) got us moved to the main baseball park, where all the regular Little League teams play, instead of the old park, where they had been sticking us because, even though we are also members of Little League International, in the city's eyes, Challenger Division is apparently the read-headed stepchild. We play at 9 a.m., and have to be off the field at 10 a.m., when the regular Little League teams arrive.

The first game of the season, the the weather was sunny, with a temperature in the upper 90's. And the city had locked us out of the dugouts. I'd never heard of dugouts that could be locked before, but these have a chain link fence from the ground to the roof, and a padlocked gate at the entrance. The head of the Parks Department had decided that the new dugouts "didn't look nice enough," and his solution was to lock the kids out. Some of these kids have difficulty thermoregulating. This is, after all, a league for children with disabilites. At the old park, they could have at least found shade under one of many large trees. The new park was built only two or three years ago. There are six diamonds, and I don't think there's a tree within a half mile of home plate on any of them. The Parks Department did provide two Easy-Up shelters, each about a third the size of a dugout, as the only shade for six teams. Besides being rather small for the size of the group, they were secured to the ground behind two of the dugouts. If your child were playing on that field, he or she could stand in the shade or watch the game, but not both. And only two dugouts (out of 12) even had a shade nearby. Not to mention these shelters don't provide much shade between 9 and 10 a.m. The good news is that the other Little League teams were locked out, too, and their complaints get taken much more seriously. Their complaints made the news on TV.

GL's strength and coordination got worse, while his tremors increased, he started sleeping more, (12-15 hrs a day) and occasionally drooling. His psychiatrist reduced one of his meds, and we're starting to see some improvement. His pediatrician referred him to a neurologist, who is starting with an EEG, to see if there is anything else going on.

We had bought tickets to the high school's end-of-the-year talent show, but when we arrived, everyone was standing outside on the sidewalk or in the parking lot. There were a fire truck, and ambulance, and several police cars in front of the building. We heard sirens, and a fire truck and an ambulance arrived from a neighboring town. The school psychologist recognized us from the IEP process, flagged us down, and filled us in. One of the lights in the auditorium had "popped", releasing a large cloud of smoke, which had set of the fire alarm. The fire department is right across the street, so they arrived right away. The building was quickly evacuated, but they had to wait for the smoke to clear (and clean up the broken glass, I imagine) before they could let people back in. Since we live less than a mile from the school, we went home to wait. We checked back several times, but they eventually canceled the show for the night. They rescheduled the show for a couple weeks later, and we attended. GL enjoyed the show, and several people recognized and greeted him in the hallway during intermission. The special ed class put on a substantial portion of the show, (about half of the first act) and it was good to see how well it was received by the other students and parents.

It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood!

GL's IEP meeting was Tuesday. There are 13 people on his IEP team, (not counting us) and they were all there except the school OT, who was out having a baby. She called ahead to say she would send her report with the PT, which she did. After each team member went over her report, and gave us the chance to ask questions or make suggestions, we went through the draft version of his IEP. Everything we asked for was in it, and several things we thought of and discussed during the meeting were noted for inclusion in the final IEP.

One thing we insisted on was starting him with one class period per day (this school's class periods are 90 minutes) and working up to a full day. He has been allowed to visit and participate for one class period at a time (twice, so far, with more planned before the end of the school year) and both times, he did well, he enjoyed it, the staff said he was wonderful, but it took so much out of him, he came straight home and slept the rest of the day.

One woman (there were so many people in the room, I had a hard time keeping straight who was who) kept pointing out problems with everyone's ideas. I was beginning to  wonder if she were the school attorney. Then I realized she was the district director of special education. She did bring up some valid concerns, like how are we going to accomplish everything in GL's IEP in 90 minutes a day? She also suggested some workable solutions to these problems, so she wasn't just shooting down everyone's ideas. I think his IEP will be more workable now that we have some of these wrinkles ironed out. His IEP looks very good on paper. I know these things don't always work out as well in practice as they do on paper, but I'm glad we got so many good things written into it.

The meeting lasted three hours. GL offered suggestions when he could, and otherwise sat quietly, listening and doodling on a sheet of paper. He lasted two hours before he needed a break. We all took a five minute break, then a support teacher took him for a walk while we finished the meeting. We were all exhausted when it was done. We went out for lunch. (GL requested Chinese, because he wanted "cranberry goons".) Then we went home and he slept the rest of the day.

BB has been planning to mow lawns this summer to earn money for his CAP activities. (And those incidental expenses, like meals out.) We bought him a lawn mower for his birthday. A rather expensive present, but if it works out, it should save us money in the long run. I assembled the lawnmower Tuesday afternoon, (more complicated, time-consuming and frustrating than it sounds) gave him a quick tutorial, and he practiced mowing our lawn under close supervision. He'd never mowed before. He did pretty well for his first time, but I thought he needed a little more practice before hiring himself out to strangers, so he's mowing for PBP tomorrow.

Wednesday was therapy, and GL's OT commented that he seemed unusually tired. He has a med to be given PRN for anxiety and aggression, but we try not to give it on Wednesdays, because it makes him  tired, decreases his muscle strength, and leads to intention tremors, so his OT can't get any productive work out of him. She wondered if we'd given it. We hadn't. He was still that tired from the day before. She also mentioned that once he starts getting OT from the school, his insurance may stop paying for private therapy.

We've been looking for an outside peer activity with weekly meetings to get him used to interacting with his peers, and hopefully build some social stamina for school. Even when everything is going well, the social aspects of the classroom are harder for him than the academic subjects, assuming those are at a level he can understand. If he'd been in a school classroom up until now, I doubt he would have learned anything. Why enroll him now? Well, he continues to progress, however slowly, in reading and writing, but in other subjects, he appears to have learned all he is capable of learning. If the school can teach him some math, great, but I'm not holding my breath. For him, home was the best environment for academics, and those take priority. Now that those are mostly done, and we feel he is more able to handle the "hidden curriculum" that most students pick up unconsciously, but he has to be explicitly taught, we'll let the school work on socialization, vocational skills, ADLs, recreation, community involvement, safety, and hundreds of others. Not that we have ignored these, but we felt home and the neighborhood, i.e., the real world, were the best place to begin teaching them. Yes, there are a portions of each skill the school can teach best, and now they'll have the chance, but looking back, it's remarkable how small those portions are, and how unimportant they were to his earlier development. Now that he's come so far, they are among the remaining hurdles between now and his post-high school life.

Back to an outside peer activity: there is a Scout troop for people with disabilities forming, and we thought it might fill the need. We attended a meeting tonight. There were five other youth there with their parents. Four of them were far below GL's functional level. The fifth was somewhat above his level, and trying to be the center of attention by being the expert on everything. GL spent most of the meeting acting about half his functional age.

They were working on their first merit badge: Nutrition. The teacher gave a lecture on portion sizes, then passed out crayons and worksheets and pictures of food to color. Then she went around and helped the students color their pictures and do their worksheets. No one but Mr. Expert-on-Everything (who colors perfectly within the lines) was much interested in the lecture or worksheets or coloring. GL did a little paperwork, then got bored and spent the rest of the meeting talking baby talk, intentionally giving wrong answers, and spinning in his swivel chair like it was Disney's latest attraction. He said he had fun, but when I asked him what he enjoyed, he said, "The chair." I did not drive an hour each way so he could spin in a swivel chair. There are plenty of office supply stores closer to home. And the socialization was definitely having a negative effect. Maybe we'll find another activity closer to home that's a better fit. Or maybe we'll just wait for Little League season to start.

Friday night the high school is putting on a program, and the special ed students have a part. We bought tickets. Saturday is a transition seminar. Sunday morning is church, and Sunday afternoon is a community youth theater production of Robin Hood. Several youth from our church are in it, and we are planning to attend. I've thought several times that I must have lost my mind to schedule so many events in one week, but for most of them I didn't have a choice of "when". They were already scheduled, and I had to choose "yes" or "no". I wish I had said "no" to a few more things but, other than Scouts, I'm not sure which ones.

IEP Meeting

I haven't blogged much lately, not for a lack of things to blog about, but for a lack of time. Among other things, we've been preparing to enroll GL in high school in September. This is not only a transition from middle school to high school, but also from home school, which we've done from the beginning, to public school. You know how difficult transitions can be for kids on the spectrum, and how hard it can be to figure out what services they need and how to get them. So far, everyone seems to be going out of their way to help him (and us) so I am cautiously optimistic. But I know that not everything needed or recommended always ends up in a student's IEP, and have heard plenty of stories about schools writing great IEPs and then ignoring them.

His IEP meeting is Tuesday. We'd appreciate any prayers, best wishes, and good thoughts you can send our way.

Question of the Week returns

I participate in several Yahoo groups related to homeschooling, disabilites, and other topics. One of the group moderators had started posting a "Question of the Week" as a discussion starter. I enjoyed reading the questions, responding, and reading the responses, but it took time away from blogging. Since the topics were generally related to the topics I blog about, I decided to post some of my responses here. Shortly after,   the moderator found herself busy with other obligations, and the Question of the Week fell by the wayside. She's back, and has given the Question of the Week its own Yahoo group.

Usually the question is a single sentence, but this week we have some background story:

I am having a day where I would like to scream, yell, and cry all at the same
time. My kids are fighting non-stop--actually escalated into a fist fight and
school is completely unproductive today.

I have older teens, so I run into great difficulty when it comes to coming up
with disciplinary measures. My kids have activities almost every day and
evening--and I would love to remove them--but other people depend on my kids to
participate in them, such as being Cub Scout Den Chiefs. So I feel that taking
those things away would really be more of a penalty to the others that depend on
them. I have thought about removing computer, cell phone, electronic games, but
I am not sure how effective that would be.

I don't take the approach that "boys will be boys"--and I do generally
discipline them; but apparently what I have done in the past is not working; and
I am really frustrated today with my kids.

I don't know if they just need a break from each other as they do spend so much
time together and do nearly all of the same stuff. I can't figure it out; I
just know that I feel like a parental failure today.

I need some creative ideas.

What do you all do for disciplinary measures in your home?

You can read the responses there. Here's mine:

My boys are 14 and 12, and they excel at annoying each other. When one of them wants attention or is just bored, he finds his brother and tries his most effective annoyance techniques, one after the other, until he gets a response. Despite hundreds, perhaps thousands, of repetitions, he is still surprised when his brother finally gets mad and yells at him. It just never seems to occur to either boy that:

1. Although these behaviors get attention, it may not be the kind of attention he wants.

2. If he annoys his brother enough, his brother will get mad.

3. When his brother gets mad, he will yell at him, and possibly hit him.

4. This will make Mom and Dad unhappy.

5. Mom and Dad are already unhappy with him, because his brother is supposed to be doing schoolwork, and even if his brother has kept his temper so far, he is distracting him.

6. If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

7. He started this whole process, and could have avoided it by leaving his brother alone. 

The brother who started it thinks the other brother started it by hitting him. To him, bringing up what he did is only changing the subject. If we keep bringing the conversation back to what he did, he will finally admit that he did something, but minimize it: "All I did was tickle his neck."

Neglecting to mention (even refusing to admit, if it's pointed out) that:

1. Brother hates having his neck tickled.

2. He knew this, and did it anyway.

3. He had already done 47 other things specifically designed to annoy his brother.

Punishment has not been effective, since each boy believes he is entirely innocent, and we are punishing him for his brother's actions. We do point out the above-mentioned facts, and maybe, with time, repetition, and maturity, they may begin to sink in. Perhaps the boys will someday allow the possibility that we might be right on one or more points.

In the mean time, they have work that needs done. If they are both working, I put them in separate rooms where I can keep an eye on them, but they can't see or hear each other. If one of them finishes before the other, he is allowed, and on most days required, to find a quiet activity in a place where he can't bother his brother, and his brother can't bother him. 14 yos usually goes to his room to watch a DVD (with headphones). 12 yos usually goes to the basement to play LEGO. We've recently discovered (with his concentration issues, who'd have thought?) that 12 yos can take his schoolwork to the public library (two blocks away) and actually be focused and productive. 

Once they have both finished their schoolwork for the day, they usually get along better. If they don't we separate them.

Pinky, We're Going to Take Over the World!

Today's post is reprinted with permission from Boarding in Bedlam. I tried to find the original comment Arby quoted, but decided I had better things to do. I assume it's buried somewhere in the 777 (and counting) comments.

Arby is a stay-at-home, homeschooling, father of General Mayhem, Major Havoc, and Captain Chaos. He is happily married to The Boss. They live in Apathy, Kansas, with The Big Fuzzy Dog, several chickens, a few fish, and Reggie the Rent-a-Dog.


Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Pinky, We're Going to Take Over the World!
Well, it’s almost time to begin the new day. In a few minutes I will gather my hand-picked students, chosen for their unique gifts and abilities, and start them on their daily lessons. That is the position of Tracy, a teacher writing on a Wall Street Journal community forum. In her post, Tracy wrote:

Homeschooling - I have no problem with homeschooling, but please don't compare that with my job. There are VERY FEW similarities. If I had only 3-4 self-selected students to educate in the comfort of my own home with any bathroom/food/physical activity/food break and could set my own hours and discipline appropriately, etc. etc. etc ------ I could get even better results than those parents. If you don't believe me, then please fund that study and I will be happy to participate. I will even take 10 students.

She discovered our secret. Homeschoolers self-select only the best students. This self-selection process skews the results of home education unnaturally higher than those of our public school counter-parts. Tracy is such an incredibly talented teacher that if she would do the same, her homeschooling performance would be better than the rest of us teacher-wannabes. I’m stepping up today to raise my hand and admit, “Guilty as charged!”

I self-selected only the best students for my homeschool. I did not simply accept the children that God gave me. I self-selected a girl with a congenital heart defect. She’s a stroke victim with learning delays that caused us to hold her back one year in school to better prepare her to complete the first grade. It gave us time to help her gain the ability to hold and manipulate a pencil. Nothing screams “academic success” like repeating kindergarten! I self-selected OCD Boy. He’s the child that must ask the same question three times in a row before hesitantly accepting the same answer given three times in a row and gingerly moving forward through his exercises. If he had his way, I would be holding his hand through every question on every task that he completes. His ability is high. His self-confidence is low. I even self-selected Walter Mitty, my teenager whose hold on reality is tenuous on his best days. I wanted him to possess a genuine talent for mathematics coupled with a genuine loathing for the subject that allows him to stretch even the simplest math assignment into a five hour marathon.

I’m a bit of a sadist that way.

I’m fairly certain that if I asked my homeschooling friend Daniel, he’d admit that he self-selected autism for his oldest boy. Teaching a non-autistic child would be so…mundane. I’m quite certain that most of the thousands of the parents who homeschool their special needs children would agree. And those homeschooling parents who chose “normal” students? Selfish bastards. All of ‘em. They could have self-selected special needs children, but nope, they opted for normal. And we all know that normal homeschooling children never act up, disobey, sass, fail to complete their work, fail subjects, miss deadlines, lose assignments, daydream, lollygag or repeatedly make the same mistake that their parent-teachers have explained to them over and over and over again until they are banging their heads on the refrigerator in frustration. It never happens because those traits have been self-selected out of normal homeschooled children.

It’s time to let the world in on a little secret. Homeschoolers hold all the secrets to manipulating DNA in order to produce only the best possible students.

Pinky, we’re going to take over the world!

Or maybe…just possibly…Tracy has no idea what she is writing about.
Posted by Arby at 10:15 AM

http://boardinginbedlam.blogspot.com/2011/02/pinky-were-going-to-take-over-world.html

Papa Bear said...

I thought you must have a hidden camera in my house. Did I mention that, along with autism, GL has OCD? And after he asks the same question 20 times, I ask, "What did I say?" He repeats my answer verbatim, then asks the same question again.

And your "Walter Mitty" describes BB to a T!

I must have forgotten to fill out the girl with a heart condition page. Either that, or they're so popular, they're backordered. I seem to remember requesting twelve little blessings who were all candidates for Mensa, Mr. / Miss Congeniality, Most Diligent, Most Likely to Succeed, and sainthood. Ability to run a 4 minute mile while still in high school optional. Instead, I got my kids. I wouldn't trade them.

Whose Job is it, Anyway?

I love it when blogging turns into a conversation between people with similar goals, but varied experience. I've been discussing curriculum planning both here and in various online forums. I've had a number of helpful answers to various questions, usually about what I expected: I was looking for a way to teach x, and people replied that a, b, or c worked for them. Rebecca Miller surprised me with a blog post of her own in response to one of my more general questions,  What is not working in our homeschooling?

While her post was about her family's experience, it led me to consider some related questions we're dealing with. Every year as I prepare to select the materials we will use, I look over the past year and ask, "What worked? What didn't? and Where do we go from here?" The "What worked?" is obvious; let's build on our successes. The "What didn't?" can mean a variety of things. Maybe a book just didn't live up to its reviews. Maybe it just wasn't a good fit for my child's learning style. Maybe it was just too much to try to cram into our already overstuffed schedule. But there is always the possibility that, much as I'd like to, I can't blame the book. Sometimes my kid didn't put in the effort he should have, or I didn't.

That last one has been a struggle lately. Since my older son has autism, if he isn't putting in the effort, it's up to me to figure out a way to get him to do the work. But my younger son is twelve now, and needs to start learning how to take responsibility for his own work. Yes, it's a gradual process, but he usually doesn't see a need to focus because he has no idea what should be expected of a sixth grader. If it doesn't come naturally, if he has to work at it, he thinks it's too hard, and doesn't see the point of trying.

He has a vague idea that he is ahead in some subjects and behind in others (true), but no clear idea of where he should be in any given subject. We talked about it today, and I asked if he would like a chart of what needs to be done at each grade level between where he is and high school graduation. He said he would. I typed one up this afternoon. It's only a rough outline, listing the subjects he needs to study, and which books we have used / are using / are planning to use, and is subject to revision: As I see his effort and progress, I get a clearer picture of his abilities and what I can reasonably expect of him. I plan to go over it with him tomorrow. We can check off what he's already done, and I hope it will give him a more accurate picture of what he still needs to do. Then we can look at both the knowledge he needs to acquire and the skills he needs to develop, and strategize what to do when.

But I also need to observe him carefully and evaluate when to coax, support, and lead him along and when to let him stand or fall on his own. The ultimate goal is for him to take complete responsibility for his education, labor, and vocation, but what is the best method to foster this independence, and what does it look like at any given moment? How can I best model the ethic I'm trying to teach? As he learns to work more independently, what should I be doing while he's working? Folding laundry?  Reading a worthwhile book? Building model rockets? (educational, but he'd feel I was having all the fun!) Researching curriculum? Randomly browsing the Internet?

And I, too, had found something I could do a few hours a week that brought in a little money to help stretch the family budget, and even cover the costs of some CAP activities. It was only a few hours a week, but it did cut into school time. That opportunity ended, so I'm looking for a replacement. But how to fit it in without school suffering? I'd like BB to start earning some money to pay for his activities, too, and more than I could pay him, but how best to fit it in?

Most teens like to sleep late. Conventional wisdom says they should go to bed earlier. Our boys go to bed early almost every night, and they still sleep late. I don't think many teens or preteens are getting all the sleep they need, but how much is too much? Our school day runs well into the evening. I could get them up earlier, but would they finish earlier, or just be less productive due to a lack of sleep? What is the ideal amount of sleep for these boys, and at what time? How can we find time for the physical exercise they and I need? And what subjects do I cut back on, and how much, when we need to focus in another area?

Don't be discouraged by my having more questions than answers. We are making good progress in many areas. It's balance that's difficult. And I welcome your stories of what worked well for you in a particular area, or how you keep up in one thing without falling behind somewhere else. Because with so many things that need doing, it's hard to know how much of what to do when.

Where do We Go from Here?

First, I forgot to list one thing that is working very well: FlashMaster. BB is quick to pick up math concepts, but he struggled with memorizing his math facts. (Kind of like his dad, heh, heh.) We used Addition Songs, Subtraction Songs, Multiplication Songs, and Division Songs, all from Audio Memory, to teach math facts, and FlashMaster to practice them. Even once he had them all memorized and didn't need to count on his fingers or refer to a table any more, he was still slow on the draw. While doing long division, for example, he would sit staring into space, waiting for a needed division or multiplication fact to magically pop into his head. Naturally, the waiting usually turned to daydreaming, his thoughts never returned to math until I got his attention, and this always made him angry because he insisted he hadn't been daydreaming. He would make thirty review problems, all of which he already knew how to do, take three to four hours.

We have been working on focus and, while his mind still wanders, he is getting better at noticing, and bringing it back. What helped? First, I let him use a multiplication table. He could answer most of the problems on the table quickly without looking, but those he had to think about took longer to remember than to look up. And looking them up seemed to reinforce the right answers in his memory. He hasn't needed the multiplication table in over a year now. Second, we have him set a 1 minute timer for each problem. Some problems take more than one minute and some take less.  If the timer beeps before he is finished, or he finishes the problem before it beeps, he resets it for another minute. If he starts to daydream, it's less than a minute before the timer brings him back to reality. Third, I have him practice every day with FlashMaster. When he gets enough problems right in the time allotted, he moves to the next level. Once he completes all the levels, he starts over, but we reduce the time limit. So we will continue with the per-problem timer and FlashMaster.

MathTacular: The boys both loved MathTacular 1-3, and last year when I ordered curriculum, MathTacular 4 was "Coming Soon". I kept delaying my order, waiting for it to come out, but after several months, it never did, so I gave up on it. It's out now. 

I mentioned that GL will be attending the local high school in the fall. Since he continues to make progress in reading, I will continue working with him in that area. We're still waiting for his placement assessment at the school. After that, we'll see what the school has for him.

For BB, reading, spelling, grammar, writing, and math will remain priorities.  Since what we've been doing in these areas seems to be working, we'll keep at it, with a focus on bringing him up to grade level. The subjects that tend to get crowded out, we will focus on, one at a time, until he is where he needs to be in each. 

For science, I'm still not sure what direction to take. I'm open to suggestions. For History, I'm still looking for a good follow-up to The Story of the World. We'll definitely be reading books about various people, places, and civilizations, but I'd like something to help tie it all together. I think BB is ready for  Rod and Staff Grade 5 Bible Workbook. We enjoyed What's in the Bible Vol. 1: In the Beginning. We'll be adding the other DVDs in the series as a fun supplement. I think we'll follow up Classical Kids: Collection with The Music Masters: The Stories Of Vivaldi And Corelli, The Story of Bach, The Story Of Handel, etc.

I think the biggest surprise to me as I plan for the coming year has been how few surprises there are. Most things we've been using are working. We'll keep using them. A handful aren't. We've already found replacements for most. I'll let you know what we come up with, and how they work out. We knew which subjects were getting crowded out. It's time to prioritize them. 

Home Schooling: What Hasn't worked over the past year?

You can have almost anything you want. You just can't have everything you want. There are plenty of wonderful resources I'd love to use with my kids, but there simply aren't enough hours in the day to try them all, let alone put in the time and energy to get the maximum benefit from each. Life is a series of choices. Not always between good and evil, but sometimes between good, better and best. Sometimes the good is the enemy of the best—you settle for "good enough" when you could have had the "best". Other times, the best is the enemy of the good—you could have had "good enough", but you hold out for the "best" and get nothing. And what's best for one person isn't always best for another. So as parents, we try to decide what's best or reasonable or attainable for our kids. It's hard enough sometimes to make good choices for ourselves, given the myriad of options, and it's even harder to know another person, especially a child, whose personality and abilities are still unfolding and developing. Is it any wonder we second-guess ourselves?

Years ago, I spent time on a home schooling forum that had frequent flame wars. What was the hottest topic? Creationism vs. evolution? Religion? Politics? Racial bias in history books? No. The longest, hottest flame wars were over math curricula. Math is a challenging subject, and one that many children (and adults) struggle with. So when a child just isn't getting it, despite the expenditure of blood, sweat, and tears (both his and his parents') desperate parents will try anything. When the child makes a breakthrough, it seems like a miracle. The parents are likely to regard the book they were using at the time with a reverence bordering on worship. And some just can't sit idly by when someone disses their Holy Math Book.

Remarkably often, Parent X starts firstborn with book A, which fails miserably, tries book B, meets with weeping and gnashing of teeth and, nearing despair, tries book C. The child has an epiphany, and math becomes a delight (or at least a tolerable burden). Parent X begins preaching the gospel of book C. Meanwhile, Parent Y starts firstborn with book C, which goes swimmingly, until firstborn hits a wall and can go no further. Parent Y tries book B, but to no avail. In desperation, she tries book A, and meets with near-instant success. Parent Z has six children (or more). They all use book B, and none of them ever have the slightest difficulty with math. One of them gets a math scholarship to Harvard. Then along comes child seven or eight, who can't make heads or tails of book B. Parent Z tries book A (or C) because, while both come highly recommended, the arguments for one of them sound more convincing. Child seven (or eight) doesn't do much better with book A (or C), and Parent Z even finds it confusing. In desperation, she tries book D and meets with success at last!

There is a common theory in home schooling circles that the best math book for your child is the third one you try. The disagreement is on whether this is because it generally takes three tries to find your child's learning style or because after having a concept presented three different ways, the child finally gets it through sheer repetition. That said, if your child is doing fine with the math book he is presently using, don't switch just because the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. I've heard from too many parents whose children were doing well in one book until their parents switched to a "better" book, which the child didn't understand. Often the child was so confused, he continued to struggle even after returning to the original book.

Some things have worked, but we haven't had the time to pursue them as far as we'd like. Other things came highly recommended, perhaps because of the theory or research behind them, but preferably because they worked really well for someone else's child. Some of these worked wonderfully for one or the other or both of my kids, while others fell flat. That doesn't mean they're useless; that just means they didn't work for us. So if I list something here as not working for us that worked wonders for your child, please don't take offense. I'm not doubting it worked for you; it just wasn't a good fit for us. And some books are good at the right time, but a particular child might not be ready at the same age as others.

Now hold on to your hats. I recently contacted our local public school about enrolling GL. It's not that home schooling hasn't worked well for him. I'm convinced he would not have come this far without it. And I intend to continue working with him at home. But one of the difficulties we've encountered due to home schooling is getting him the services, especially therapies, he needs. When you home school, it's amazing how many service providers don't even want to talk to  you. If a service is even theoretically available through the public school, any other provider expected us to get it there. When we asked how non-PS children were supposed to get these services, they had no answer, other than that we should enroll him. Now I have heard of a few special-needs kids getting services through the PS in some districts without enrolling, but that's rare. What's far more common (I mean nation-wide, not necessarily in our district) is for kids to be promised services through the schools and not get them. We felt home schooling was the best choice for him, but we knew he needed certain services. So we did the legwork. Sometimes we had to pay out of pocket for services that he should have been entitled to for free. Often, we had to buy the books and materials and learn how to do various therapies ourselves. It hasn't been easy, but it's been worth it.

So why change now? We're looking at what we want for him after high school: a job where he can feel useful, and the most independence he is capable of. At this point, that looks like a vocational program and living with some kind of supports. Whether that means a sheltered workshop or a job in the community with a job coach, a group home, or independent living with someone to check up on him to some extent, it's too early to say. But with any program, it's easier to make contact through the schools. He's fourteen, and will be starting high school in the fall. We want him to have the maximum time available to make the transition to adulthood. Socially, elementary and middle school would have been a disaster for him. We think he's finally developed to the point where is is capable of learning to function in a classroom, but he'll still need a lot of help.

Academically, in math, I think he's gone about as far as he will go. I'll be thankful if I'm wrong, but I've taught him as much as I can. His handwriting is by no means beautiful, but it is usually readable. He can write his name. He can copy words, phrases, and even short sentences. But about age thirteen, he decided he didn't need my help any more, and absolutely refuses to take any instruction. Sometimes he'll listen to his OT, but no one else. Maybe his teachers will have more luck. After being stalled at the same reading level for several years, he's made phenomenal progress in reading this year. He's gotten to the point where he'll sometimes pick up a book out of interest or curiosity and start reading it without prompting. He still needs help with the occasional word, but that's all. All I have to do is continue providing him with books of the appropriate reading level.

Where do we go from here? We've requested his records. The next step will be setting up testing and evaluation for placement. We should have all our ducks in a row by the end of this school year to enroll him in the fall. He's excited about going to high school. He has absolutely no idea what high school is like. Some people have expressed surprise that we would send GL to PS and not BB. They seem to feel that home schooling is okay for a kid who doesn't have much potential anyway, but not for average-to-bright kids. Actually, I understand their concern. I've seen home schoolers who only do the minimum they can get by with, and graduate barely-literate kids. I've also seen brilliant kids frustrated by schools that hold them back to the pace of the class. Most of them have dropped out of school mentally by seventh or eighth grade. He's also behind in several subjects, not because of a lack of ability, but a lack of focus. I've seen too many kids who were smart enough, but worked slowly or daydreamed too much to keep up with the class. They were put with the kids who were slow because they couldn't handle the material. After drifting with that group long enough, they lost whatever spark they had.

I mentioned several books that worked well, but got crowded out. Scheduling has been a problem. I start GL's lessons first. If he starts school first thing, he's motivated to finish, so he can watch his DVDs. If school is delayed, he accomplishes nothing. BB needs ten, preferably twelve hours of sleep to be at his best. No way he'd get that on a PS schedule! He goes to bed at eight, but it usually takes him until nine to get to sleep. That means he gets up about nine most mornings. If I wake him earlier, he is a grouch, and school is a battle. When he's been up later the night before, for Civil Air Patrol, for example, he sleeps even later. So while we try to start school by 9:30, it's not uncommon for him to sleep until ten or later, and start school at eleven or twelve. The problem is, he works very slowly, with frequent daydreaming. We're working on it, but sometimes he works from the time he gets up until time to go to bed, and does nothing but one lesson each in math and grammar!

What's been frequently crowded out this year? Logic, science, art (both drawing and appreciation), map skills, and music. I divide subjects into content, where there are facts and ideas to be learned, and skills, like reading, writing, and math. Yes, there is some overlap, for example, in reading a book about history, you practice reading (a skill) while learning facts about history (content). While both need to be learned, and I would not postpone all content until every skill was mastered, I tend to emphasize skills. Once you can read fluently and with understanding, you can fill in missing content. So science has been temporarily set aside.

I've yet to find an elementary or middle school science text I like. They seem to contain a random assortment of topical chapters, with little or no emphasis on underlying principles. The Well-Trained Mind recommends using a book like The Usborne Illustrated Encyclopedia the Natural World as a "spine" for studying biology at the elementary level, for example, and reading books about various types of plants and animals as you come to them in the "spine".  I think that's an improvement, and works well at that level if your kids are fluent, voracious, and independent readers (like I was at that age) or will sit for long periods while you read to them. GL would sit and listen to me read for hours from birth to age 7, and then abruptly lost interest. After that, getting him to listen was a battle. BB never had GL's appetite for read-alouds, but he would listen for shorter stretches throughout the day. He still enjoys the occasional read-aloud, but only if it's an exciting story, and taken in short sessions.

I'm also undecided on how to do science at the high school level. High school texts tend to be better-organized, and take one branch of science (biology, chemistry, physics) per year. They read like junior versions of college texts. The problem is, except for biology and geology, most high school students don't have the math background to do much science yet. The Well-Trained Mind takes a different approach. Since the whole book heavily emphasizes the humanities, especially history, at the expense of the sciences, high school science becomes a history of science. Not a bad approach if your student is set on a degree in one of the humanities, but a major setback if he decides (now or later) to pursue a career in the sciences.

What hasn't worked?

We tried Spelling Power because it claims to be based on actual research and is designed for people who struggle with spelling. I do like the idea of only studying the words you misspell, testing on them until you get them right, and periodically reviewing them to make sure you can still spell them. The exercises did seem to help him learn the words he was misspelling, and after a few days, he would get them right on the test and move on. But the correct spellings he learned never transfered to his other written work, and there was absolutely no long-term recall. When a word came back for review, he would misspell it. Every. single. time. And it would take just as many days of study to re-learn it as it had taken to learn it the first time. Next time it came up, he would misspell it again.

What weren't the boys ready for? With GL, there weren't many surprises. He mostly continued at his usual pace. He became more stubborn about handwriting, but reading finally seemed to click. Except on the days when it doesn't. BB started the year with Rod and Staff Grade 5 Bible Workbook, but his reading and writing skills weren't up to it yet. I think he's ready for it now. I had hoped to start Latin with him during the past year, but again, he needed more practice reading English. Maybe some time this year. 

Home Schooling: What's working?

As I've said before, this is not an Autism Blog. It is a blog about our family's life together. Autism is a big part of our life, but it is not our whole life. Another big part of our life is home schooling. And that is one reason I haven't posted much lately. This is the time of year when I do our taxes and plan the curriculum for the coming year. If that doesn't interest you, skip this post. I'll return to autism and my other favorite topics shortly. The planning usually consists of three parts: What's working? What's not working? and Where do we go from here? So I'll start by listing what's working.

Since we school year-round, and they start a new book in each subject whenever they finish the old book, and since neither boy is necessarily in the same grade level in all subjects, there's no sharp and arbitrary division between school years.

For GL:
Reading: We continue with reading real books, mostly from the lists in the Sonlight catalog. He's made great strides in reading over the last few months. He's working through the Readers 2 Intermediate list, which means basically done with second grade, but not quite ready for third grade.

Handwriting: Handwriting Without Tears. Because of his fine motor delays, handwriting has always been a huge struggle for him. He's about halfway through My Printing Book. He needs more practice than the book provides, so I scan a few pages, print them, and have him practice them every day for a week before completing them in the workbook.

Math: After trying several different books, none of which worked for him, I ended up designing my own program. I had him listen to Addition Songs-CD (Audio Memory) every day. I would quiz him with flash cards, not holding them up, but laying them on the table a few at a time and having him match them with answer cards, since handwriting is such a struggle for him. If he didn't know the answer, he would work it out with Numicons. On the Numicons page, I went to Home > Free Resources > Display Resources > Numicon Shapes, printed out the largest size on card stock, cut them out, and laminated them.

When we first began addition facts, he would give a right answer, then several wildly wrong answers to the same problem. After about four months, he said, "Oh, you mean it's the same answer every time?" He apparently thought that since we kept asking the same questions, we must want different answers. He also had a good deal of difficulty counting objects because he tended to scatter them randomly rather than line them up (unlike his toys) and tended to count them in random order. He kept losing his place, forgetting which items he had counted, and getting different answers. I'm not sure we've entirely convinced him that the same group of objects contains the same number of objects every time you count it. After all, he seems to get a different number every time!

Numicons reduced, but did not eliminate, this difficulty. After a year of working with them, he had memorized 1+0 through 1+9, but could not see the pattern. After another year's work, he had memorized 2+0 through 2+9. He still does not see a pattern.

For BB: He started the year behind in reading, handwriting, spelling, and grammar, so we have focused on those areas this year.

Logic: Building Thinking Skills, Book 2 This worked pretty well when we used it, but this was one subject that tended to get crowded out, so he didn't get very far. I need to decide whether to skip to the next book, continue this book and order the next so we have it when we need it, or wait until we finish this book to order the next.

Math: Finished Saxon Math 7/6. We alternate Singapore and Saxon. BB started Singapore Primary Mathematics 6A in December; I expect he will finish 6B in May or June, and then proceed to Saxon Algebra 1/2.

Grammar: Building Christian English Series Grade 5, Following the Plan

BB was two years behind in grammar. This series has been working well for him, and he is catching up.

Reading: BB was also behind in reading. We're using the lists from  Sonlight, and he is making good progress. He is currently working through the Readers 4 list.

Handwriting and Spelling: Ever since he heard that Toy Story 3 was coming out, he has been working on a script for it. Once he found out how the movie turned out, he decided to continue writing his version, which eventually evolved into a Toy Story 4. I decided to offer him the choice between copying a paragraph from a book I choose or half a page of his script. He usually chooses to work on his script. When he's done, I correct the spelling, and he copies the misspelled words five times each. When he is not sure of the spelling of a word, he asks me how to spell it, and I spell it in the phonetic alphabet, which he needs to learn anyway for Civil Air Patrol. He has a long way to go in spelling, but is starting to correctly spell the words he uses most often in writing more consistently.

Science: Since we've focused on reading, writing, grammar, and math this year, science has been on the back burner. We read the occasional book and watch the occasional DVD about science, and listen to recordings like Space Songs, Lyrical Life Science, and Nature Corner. As an aside, I am tired of people who equate scientific literacy with acceptance of the current evolutionary dogma without considering actual knowledge of biology, chemistry and physics. The same people equate religious belief in a Creator with scientific illiteracy, again ignoring actual knowledge of science. Then they accuse religious schools and parents of substituting indoctrination for science. That's hypocritical. Why bring this up here? "Uncle Bob", the host of Nature Corner is a young-earth creationist. Get over it.

Art: Drawing with Children.

Typing: Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing

Map Skills: Map Skills for Today, Grade 6: All around the World Map Skills has often been crowded out this year, too.

Both Boys:

History: Story of the World Audiobook CD The link is to Volume 1. Both boys have listened to all four volumes several times through. They love these CDs, which tell history as a series of interwoven stories. Be sure to get the version read by Jim Weiss. The first two volumes were originally read by another reader who wasn't as good. Jim Weiss read volumes three and four, and his reading was so popular, the publisher had him go back and record volumes one and two.

Music: Home Discipleship Hymnbook.

Music Appreciation:
Classical Kids: Collection For each composer, there are two CDs: one with his most notable works (or excerpts from his longer works) and one with a dramatized story (historical fiction) about a child living in his time, built around actual events in his life. The last track on the music cd is always a teaser for the story. I have them listen to the music cd each day for several days, and by then they are begging for the story.
Masters of Classical Music (Box Set)

Art Appreciation: How to Use Child-size Masterpieces for Art Appreciation The boys enjoy this, but it usually gets crowded out by other subjects.

Grammar: Grammar Rock (Remember Schoolhouse Rock? These are all the grammar songs.) Conjunction Junction, what's your function?

Bible: The Daily Office podcast is a daily Bible reading you can download from iTunes or www.davidpeet.com

Catechism: Westminster Shorter Catechism Songs

Next: What's not working.

Brother Bear

Brother Bear is not an eager reader. He'll read what I assign him, and he won't complain, but he won't read any more than he has to. Other than occasionally guessing at a word rather than sounding it out, (if it has more than four letters, it must be "too hard" so why try?) he decodes the words competently. Once he started reading silently (his reading is painfully slow to listen to) I would ask him what the day's reading was about when he finished. For short stories, read in a single sitting, he could name the characters and tell me or two things that happened, but couldn't pick out the main points. He seemed completely unable to tell what was important to the story and what wasn't.

When he started chapter books, it got worse. He could read a ten page chapter, and when I asked what happened, he would answer something like, "They had dinner."

"Who had dinner?"
"The people in the book."
"What did they have for dinner?"
"I don't know. It didn't say."
"Did anything else happen in the chapter?"
"No."

I simply could not pull any more detail out of him. But it wasn't his fault. The fact that he read ten pages and absorbed nothing but the information that dinner had been eaten had to be because the book was boring. It couldn't possibly be that he had missed something.

Last week, after he finished a chapter, I asked what had happened. He pulled out one spectacularly dull detail. "Did anything else happen?" I asked.

He wrinkled his face in annoyance. "Yes. This author likes to put in a lot more details."

Yes, I do.

Brother Bear is not quite old enough to be a Civil Air Patrol cadet, but he has been coming to meetings with me for a while now. The cadets have been working on radio procedures, including the ICAO spelling alphabet, more commonly known in radio and aviation as the phonetic alphabet. (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.) He had some trouble remembering the code words, so when he is doing his schoolwork and asks me how to spell something, I spell it in the phonetic alphabet, pausing between codewords so he can keep up. Yesterday, he asked me, "How do you spell India?"
Using the correct proword from the regulation, (100-3, Attachment 1, if anybody cares) I answered, "I SPELL India: India..." (pause)
He laughed. "Do you really?"
"AFFIRMATIVE. I SPELL India: India November Delta India Alpha."

Fall Cleaning Update

For those of you following our Fall Cleaning, here's an update: We took a week off school to clean house. Since we school all through summer, we can afford to do this. We were making excellent progress, but the job was bigger than I had estimated. As the end of the week approached, I thought if we took a second week and pushed through, we could make it.

Thursday night, I felt like I had something caught in my throat. I had a drink of water. The feeling remained. I tried eating and drinking various things, but couldn't get rid of it. By Friday morning, I had a sore throat. Over the next several days, I had a sore throat, body aches, and chills, but no fever. We continued at a reduced pace. It took all week to finish the kitchen. I still haven't cleaned inside or behind the refrigerator, nor inside the oven. Those jobs never did get done last year because just as I was nearing the end of Fall Cleaning, we all came down with the flu. Not H1N1, but a garden variety respiratory influenza that lasted on and off all winter.

I'm feeling better now, but I couldn't see taking a third week off school. The house is looking much better, but if we don't finish the job, the remaining mess will quickly retake the house. So we decided to start back to school, but continue with Fall Cleaning, devoting an hour a day to the project until it's done.  Today we did the living room. Beyond the usual picking stuff up off the floor, that meant moving the furniture, cleaning up all the stuff that accumulates under and behind it, and giving the room a thorough vacuuming. We did not, however, move the piano. That sucker's heavy!

How did we come to own a piano when none of us play? When we were packing to move here, some friends had a piano that was only played by their daughter, who was going off to college. Our boys were just about the right age for starting piano lessons, which we thought would do them a world of good. There was room on the moving truck. The catch: we couldn't find a piano teacher willing to attempt to teach a child with autism. At that point, GL was not far behind developmentally, and his behaviors were well-controlled by medication. I think he would not have been that different than students a year or two younger. But no one would try. They wouldn't even return our phone calls. BB was not that interested in lessons. And it would have been a financial stretch for us to afford lessons for one boy, let alone two. Since then, we have tried to offer the piano to anyone who would haul it away and play it. No takers.

All that remain to be cleaned upstairs are one closet, the fridge, and the oven. Then the basement, which promises to be as big a project as the rest of the house put together.

Fall Cleaning

October is here, so it's once again time for Fall Cleaning. 

"Don't you mean Spring Cleaning?" you ask, "and isn't this the wrong season?" No, I mean Fall Cleaning. After you've been cooped up in the house all winter and are beyond cabin fever, ready to go stir crazy if you have to spend one more minute within these four walls with these impossible people, can you think of a stupider way to use the first warm, sunny spring day than inside, cleaning house? And who's going to notice, anyway? As the weather improves, everyone wants to spend more time outdoors. By the time you're back inside for any appreciable time, the house is already dirty again.

Now on cold, rainy days in October and November, when you just had all summer, and usually some good weather in September to be outside, you don't miss being out there; you've had your fill. It's not that cold out yet, but it's wet and windy. Your domestic environment is showing signs of months of lick and a promise housekeeping. You have summer clothing and equipment for summer activities to put in storage. You have stuff that has somehow multiplied when you weren't looking and is beginning to crowd you out of the house. The look of the place has gone from lived-in to depressing. And you'll be spending the majority of your time indoors for the next few months. 

 One of the advantages of doing school all summer is that we can afford to take time off when we need it. We're taking a week off school to clean house. Before we made this decision, BB had to agree that if he was going to get the time off, he was going to have to help clean. And Mama Bear made me promise that I would spend the week cleaning and not just blogging about it. That goes for reading blogs, too. So I've been trying to catch up on my blogs this week, and linking some good stuff. (Don't tell Mama, but I'll try to sneak back and report on our progress, too.)

Why Homeschool?

Over at The Homeschool Apologist, Arby, of Boarding in Bedlam fame, posted a link to an article that asks, "Why Homeschool?" and comes up with an answer that you don't hear too often, but one that reflects a reason very important to our family. Most families these days, and even many homeschooling families, are careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful.

A Dead Bird in Lake Wobegon

The boys slept late Tuesday morning. Monday nights are Civil Air Patrol nights, and they usually sleep late on Tuesday mornings. But they had been up for a while before I finally dragged myself out of bed. They had already eaten, so I set BB to work on loading the dishwasher and GL on reading while I made my breakfast and coffee. When BB was done, I sent him to take a shower so GL could finish his handwriting before BB needed the table. That's when I discovered GL had colored on my laptop with a permanent marker. Papa Bear was not a happy camper!

Don Aslett's Stainbuster's Bible, which has saved my bacon many, many times, and paid for itself many times over in items it has rescued, wasn't much help at first. It began by saying not to get your hopes up. There's a reason these markers are called permanent. The treatment for felt-tip markers is to start by hoping you were mistaken, and it was only a washable marker. So you start with the treatment for washable marker. The first step is "dry spotter". That's any spray-on stain remover that says it's for greasy stains. That lightened it ever-so-slightly, but wasn't taking out any more no matter how much I applied or how long I scrubbed. So I read the next step: laundry pretreat plus a few drops of ammonia then machine launder in warm water. On my laptop? Not going to happen.

Let's see the next step: treat it as permanent marker. Okaaaay, and that would mean? "Don't get your hopes up, but... rub in Cutter Insect Repellent lotion, wait a few minutes, then rinse with water. Pretest first, and don't use Cutter on Spandex, rayon, acetate, plastic, vinyl, or paint." Great. Just great. My laptop, which I bought this summer, is going to spend the rest of its life looking like it belongs to a twelve-year-old. Why don't I just cover up that marker with some nice skateboarding stickers?

But wait. Don always gives a last-ditch "if that doesn't work" treatment. Usually, if you get that far, the stain isn't coming out anyway. But if it's partly gone this may lighten it some. Or destroy the garment. And for markers, this step was... Sponge with alcohol. Easy enough. Shouldn't damage the plastic. Worth a try, but don't bet the farm. I tried it, and most of the marker wiped right off! A second application removed all but a faint trace--a tiny smudge on the bottom. Don Aslett saves the day again!

GL finished up his work relatively quickly and painlessly, and BB got right down to business, so I had high hopes that despite our late start, we'd have a fairly productive day. We needed one because this was one of only two days this week that we don't have to go somewhere. Even if it's after school hours, leaving the house always puts a damper on productivity for the day. Even a short trip, if it's in the middle of the day, can blow a gaping hole through the middle of our most productive hours.

BB wasn't especially fast, but he was plugging along steadily. While not exactly enjoyable, that's better than his slow days, which are more like beating one's head against a wall, only with less opportunity for short-term reward. GL spent most of the day in his room, watching a Sesame Street DVD.

Then the neighbor kids got home. The younger kids GL befriended this summer. They're not usually here during the week; they come about two weekends a month. GL had to go out and play with them. Fine. But they wanted BB to come out, too. They sent GL to ask him. To his credit, BB said no, he wasn't done with school. When you're in sixth grade, and you don't get started until 10:30, you'll probably still have some work left at 3:00. But  how do you explain that to a six year old who doesn't know anything but public school, and is used to getting his way by nagging? They kept sending GL back in to ask again. Since he doesn't understand who's in charge most of the time, he'll usually do anything anybody asks him, however unreasonable. He saves his rebellion for the reasonable demands of people who actually are in charge. I told GL he could explain that BB had to do his "homework" first, but they weren't buying it. By this time, BB was so frustrated with them, he wouldn't have played with them anyway.

Then they found the bird. They thought it was dead. They poked it with a stick and told (dared?) GL to touch it. MB heard them, and told them and GL to leave it alone. I looked out the window. It was a woodpecker. Probably a Downy or a Hairy. Those are the two we get most often, and I tend to forget which  is bigger. I offered to go out and bury it. I got a spade from the shed and started to dig. "Do you always bury birds?"the older kid, a girl, maybe seven or eight years old, wanted  to know.

"When they're dead, I do." I answered, not mentioning that I'd never found a dead bird since we've lived here. Local animals usually find it first, and don't leave anything to bury. Then I stopped. What if the bird wasn't dead? Birds sometimes crash into our windows. Most of them, and practically all the smaller birds, bounce off the glass, recover in midair, and fly away. Occasionally one will fall to the ground and lie there for a moment, stunned. Since the neighbor with a cat moved out, they generally recover. Was that a breeze stirring its downy feathers, or a slight movement? It was still warm. "Maybe it's not dead. Let's put it over here and if it wakes up, it can fly away later." I found a place off the ground where it could fly away easily if it did in fact wake up, but relatively safe from predators.

The wildlife has been way too bold around here lately. Rabbits let you walk right up to them. They just sit there staring at you and don't run away until you're within three feet of them. Numerous sightings of foxes in town. Not out on the farms and country roads served by our post office, but right in town, where the houses and stores are right next to each other. There's a badger living under the neighbors' shed, and we live right in the middle of town.

Mama Bear left for work. I went inside, washed my hands, and sat down to check my blogs. Near the window, so I could keep an eye on the kids. They decided to hit GL with sticks. He decided to stand there and take it. Since they are about six and eight, and he's thirteen, and they had very small sticks, there wasn't any actual harm, but it was a bad precedent, so I went out and told them, "No hitting people with sticks." They stopped. I went back inside. A few minutes later, GL was chasing them with a stick. Just chasing, not hitting, and they were all having a good time, but you know that's the part someone would see and report. And GL has just enough social skills to dig himself a deeper hole. So I went back out and repeated: "No hitting people with sticks!"

I decided maybe now would be a good time to clean the shed. I'd been meaning to do it anyway, the weather was good, and who knows how much more good weather we'll get this year? And I could keep an eye on things. I decided to start by taking down the tent from the boy's campout  last weekend. I had the poles out and had just started to fold it when BB came out. He had finished his schoolwork, and wanted me to put on a DVD. He's not allowed to change discs because if he does, GL thinks he can, too.

When I came back from changing the DVD, the neighbor kids had gone back in for supper.*

*At least some families still eat supper together. Pre-Autism, we were religious about it. But as GL's sensory sensitivities appeared, there were fewer and fewer foods he could tolerate. So we usually ended up cooking a separate meal for him, which he often didn't eat anyway. With his weight generally low, almost unhealthy, we tried anything we could think of to get him to eat, and offered food any time he might possibly eat it. He still has a limited selection of foods, but he can prepare most of them himself, and maintaining enough weight is no longer a problem. Have you ever sat with a group of people when they're all eating, and you're not? When you're eating, you don't notice it, but when you're not, watching other people eat is really kinda gross. He hasn't sat down and eaten a meal with the rest of us more than a dozen times in the last five years.

Then when Mama Bear went to work, she was on a different schedule than the rest of us, and always eating at a different time. We tried adjusting to her schedule, but it never worked. Then BB started learning to prepare a few of his favorites. So I'm usually cooking for one or at most, two. When it happens that we all eat at the same time, it feels strange. Once recently, we all happened to sit down at the same time and eat the same thing. It was enjoyable, but doubly strange.

 After supper, the neighbor kids got in the car and went somewhere with their dad. They didn't come back until after the boys were in bed. Once the boys were in bed, I went and checked on the woodpecker. It was keepin' on it's back. To quote Mr. Praline: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!! er, woodpecker. Its neck was broken.

Since it was still lying on it's back, I figured I'd get my bird book and have a closer look for a positive ID. It had the long bill of a Hairy Woodpecker, but it was less than 6 inches long--more the size of a Downy Woodpecker. It looked like it was molting. Maybe a juvenile Hairy? But it had a red patch on its throat. The only similar bird I could find with a red throat was the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker. Yes, that's the actual name of a real bird. But this bird had no yellow on it that I could see. Looking at the bird book again today, that yellow is rather subtle. I got the spade out again and set to digging.

Our yard has about an inch of topsoil over clay hardpan. Even the flower beds, after years of working, have only an inch and a half to two inches. How do I grow vegetables? Compost. But I wasn't too keen on burying the bird in my vegetable garden or compost pile.

You know what dry weather does to clay. You can tell how much rain we've had lately by how busy our birdbath is. I keep clean water in the birdbath. I've had to fill the birdbath or change the water every day this week. This was going to be a lot more work than I thought. And if I didn't bury deep enough, some animal would dig it up. I ended up throwing it in the dumpster. I didn't feel right about that, either, but I figured it was better than having something dig it up and possibly leave parts of it for GL to find. There's no telling how he'd react. He might be hysterical with grief. Or he might want to carry around some ex-woodpecker parts in his pockets for a souvenir.

I got cleaned up and did some laundry. It's harder to keep up on now because our dryer doesn't work right. It dries just fine, but it doesn't shut off, so you can't throw a load in before you leave the house or when you go to bed. You have to set a timer, and make sure you're there to shut it off. MB got home and wanted to work on her jewelry for a while. It's a relaxing outlet for her, and she makes some beautiful stuff. She's been selling it on and off for about three years. On and off because she doesn't get enough time to make it and keep up with demand. She started with rolling and baking clay beads, but is slowly moving toward more fine jewelry. At least, I think that's what it's called. It's mostly metal and shiny stones. If you haven't seen it recently, you should take a look. I finally got to look at my blogs. We got to bed around midnight, which is not good when she leaves for work at 6:30.

When we finally got to bed, I asked, "Why do I feel like I've been running from the moment I woke up until now, but I can't remember what I did?"

She said, "When I was the stay-at-home parent, I felt that way every day."

And that's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.