Sabrina Sumsion

This school year brought a huge amount of frustration and stress for us.  After many unfortunate occurrences, I switched to homeschooling my oldest son, Spencer.  Spencer is diagnosed on the Autism spectrum so without training in descalation techniques, knowledge of stress indicators, understanding the difference between positive and negative reinforcers etc, adults tend to make matters worse and label him a problem child oblivious to the fact THEY are the root cause of many confrontations.

Without getting into the messy details, the situation deteriorated to the point where Spencer refused to write anything.  He would cry, refuse to hold the pen/pencil, rip papers and workbooks, and even threw a chair.  When I finally had him legally in homeschool, I had no other choice but take Spencer back to square one and rebuild his love of learning. 

I started by asking him to sit with me while I read for 15 minutes.  That's it.  Anything else caused him to tense his whole body, clench his fists and dig in his heels. 

Let me tell you, I worried.  I worried that I wasn't doing enough.  I worried that my son would fall behind.  I worried that I might get in trouble.  I worried until a friend who told me about the recent study which showed that 15 minutes of homeschool is about the same amount of new information children receive at regular school all day.  YIKES!  (I'm looking for the link to that study so if anyone can direct me to it, I'd sure appreciate it!)

We are now around 2 months into the process of relearning how to love learning.  It's been a long road of creating structure, letting him find what interests him and slowly bringing writing back without adding stress.  Finally, today, he asked me to print off a worksheet so he could practice multiplication!  No arguing, no bribes from me, no tears.  I printed off the worksheet, handed it to him then he sat down and finished it immediately!  Do I expect every day to go as smoothly?  Nope.  Am I thrilled to have a calm homeschool day?  You bet your sweet bippy!  I'd love to hear other education victories you have whether you school at home or in a different setting.

On the subject, I found the worksheet on www.education.com.  I like the website and I'll definitely visit it again.  Do any of you have suggestions for other great sources of materials?  Let me know in the comments!

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