special education
- autism, Education, helps, high school, home strategies, learning strategies, math, sensory processing, special education, strategies
Two Incredible Surprises that Emerged from Finals Week
Like all things autism, the strategies for finals week were thought out long in advance. Back in December, J’s teachers sent home various forms of “study guides” the last few days before break so we could get a head start on studying for January finals, and we took FULL advantage of that. Over the break, J and I read all the short stories again. I made DOZENS of flash cards for English vocab, Foods vocab. I made picture cards for the short stories and we worked on those every single day of the break. No rest for the wicked, I guess. When J returned after the break, J’s special ed…
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The Sound of Music
After the choir concert Thursday night, it was J’s special education teacher that reminded us how far J has come. I needed that reminder, because I came out of that auditorium with a knot of embarrassment in my stomach. I wanted to pull J aside, scold for chewing his mouth raw while standing on stage while the rest of his peers sang all the songs he’d practiced at home and sang with such gusto. I wanted to scold him on the way home in the car for suddenly getting obsessed with his hair onstage, picking at it and combing it with his fingers while the rest of the group stood…
- autism, Education, handwriting, helps, high school, home strategies, learning strategies, math, modifications, special education, study skills
When You’re Not a Hermione Granger Student
The fact that one of my kids needs accommodations or modifications for homework and tests is still a hard concept for me. I was the Hermione Granger student. I sat in the front of the class. I did all the questions on every assignment. I got uber nervous–sick to my stomach sometimes–over getting tests back because I needed at least a 90% to feel good about myself. Not that I always got an “A” on everything. But if I didn’t, I felt like I had to do some major re-evaluations about my life. And then I have J. J is a kid that needs all of the accommodations and modifications.…
- autism, Education, home strategies, learning strategies, middle school, modifications, special education, strategies, study skills
Golden moments
Living with the autism experience is a day to day, moment to moment event. There are moments of really hard, heart crushing experiences. Days where you feel like no one understands your child or your circumstances. And then there are the days where there’s a leap of understanding—your child finally understands something you’ve been working months on, or someone reaches out to your child—those golden moments. When I’m having those crappy days, I try to remember that this experience changes so drastically from day to day, that really, anything is possible. One thing that’s been hard for me to figure out in this whole middle school experience is how to…
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Where do we go from here?
J can’t handle the load he’s got right now. He comes home with hours of homework. He gets home at 6pm after XC and we plug at the homework until 9:30, sometimes even close to 10pm at night. A quick supper. No breaks. No downtime. He’s defiant. He cries. His attention span is shot (remember, the kid already has ADHD). He is beyond exhausted (and I am too). His internal clock gets him up at 6:00 am no matter what time he got to bed. Then he goes to school and refuses to work. The past few weeks have been full of rough, defiant behavior. Then he comes home with…
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Concussions, autism, and processing
Thursday morning threatened rain. Not just a light drizzle, but a big Midwest rain. The cross country team runs no matter what the weather is and so as we ran out the door that morning for practice, I pulled J’s windbreaker out of the closet along with a baseball cap. I’ve been trying to get J to be okay with running in the rain. He absolutely hates running in the rain. In the rain he runs like the walking dead, arms locked by his side, his shoulders up to his ears. He has sensory issues with wet clothes. He hates rain in his eyes. I thought the wind breaker might keep him drier…
