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How Does Homeschooling Work For Parents Of Asperger Children? Where Do You Get Your Curriculum From?From Our Forum a Reader Asks: I have a 10 yr old son with Asperger's Syndrome, and have had several years of nothing but problems with the public school system. I have thought about homeschooling him for quite some time now, and I was wondering what experiences people have.  February 13th, 2010 | Tags: Asperger, Children, Curriculum Reviews, Does, From, Homeschooling: All Things, Parents, Where, Work, Your | Category: FORUM, Homeschooling: All Things 5 comments to How Does Homeschooling Work For Parents Of Asperger Children? Where Do You Get Your Curriculum From?Leave a Reply |
There is a lot of information available on homeschooling and Asperger’s. Homeschooling is highly recommended because it #1 puts parents in control of the social instruction these kids need, which is very different from the “throw them in the pool and see if they can float” socialization the kids get on the playground; and #2 it takes the performance pressure on a child down a step so that they can actually learn.
In a classroom, an Aspie tends to excel only in the few narrow subjects that interest him and he becomes a behavioral distraction to the rest of the class for subjects that he sees no value in. That does not help socialize these kids at all and often further isolates them unless they are lucky enough to get a very understanding teacher.
If your child is one who is sensitive to light and sound levels, a classroom will not be able to accommodate his needs. There are some wonderful social training materials that have become available in the past few years to help aspies learn to identify social cues. But these are most efficiently taught in a home living situation or in a small group of other kids with similar struggles. They don’t get taught in a classroom because the social cues are things 90% of the kids will know intuitively, so the Asperger’s child falls through the crack.
In most cases, you do not need special curriculum although some kids benefit by eliminating bright, highly colored texts in favor of more black and white. It is an individual thing and you’d have to try to see if that is true for your child. Routine assignments that follow established procedures are often better that wildly creative things that change the “rules.” Oftentimes a computer-based program works well for this reason, it is consistent..
Yes, go research what is out there because you will find things that help!
I have heard a number of success stories regarding teaching children with Asperger’s Syndrome at home. I would recommend that you post your question at the homeschool forum at Home School Reviews.com. It’s a very active discussion board which many homeschooling parents frequent.
Editing to add: There is specific information about teaching children with Asperger’s Syndrome at HSLDA’s website — I’m posting just one link below. If you type “asperger’s syndrome” into the Search Window at HSLDA’s website, you’ll also get more pages.
Hope this helps!
Here’s a great site to get you started. Follow the linkhttp://www.homeschooldiner.com/specials/…
A few other helpful siteshttp://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/webl…http://www.associatedcontent.com/article…
And here’s a book you might wish to purchasehttp://www.amazon.com/Homeschooling-Chil…
Good luck. I don’t envy your task.
To begin with, this is a good site you have right here. I stumbled upon your web site while doing a search on search engine. Great blog post, I will bookmark it for future reading.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I really enjoy homeschooling and just trying to helps others understand it as well as get curriculum reviews out there for current homeschoolers. Are you a homeschooler too?