Teaching Valerie math.

Valerie does not like math at all. Or at least she didn't until I started her on the kumon workbooks. I bought her the addition, counting coins and telling time ones. After months of frustration on her part we are finally making progress. I found a free online game that she loves that has made a big difference.It is called Rainforest Maths and is by Jenny Eager. Saxon math is great for normal kids, but not for Valerie.I stated her off in the Kindergarten level math since she is so far behind academically speaking. With Saxon Math, the lessons are all scripted. I gave up on it when we were midway through the book.She seems much more relaxed with Kumon workbooks.She is even doing much better with the worksheets that I print up for her.

For those who do not know,Valerie has severe autism and is still pretty much nonverbal.I have been homechooling her for a year now.

Dick and Jane.

One of the first things her therapists did was start her reading. They have some of the old Dick and Jane readers and they began to teach her sight words straight out of them. "See Spot Run" and "Oh Oh Oh" (that one makes her laugh for some silly reason).

I took it from there and proceeded to buy her as many of the reprinted books as I could. I also scored several vintage readers from ebay like Alice and Jerry and Betts Basic Readers. She enjoys them now and will read them on her own. Today she is at about a first to second grade level in reading and we work on it daily. I do not use a box curriculum for her. My approach is much more like unschooling since we do not have set times for lessons and there are no grades, tests or homework. We are always looking for new material to use for her. I was using Saxon Math K, but found myself correcting her behavior more than I was teaching. We use vintage science and social studies readers. She is going to have a small garden this year, since she likes to read about seeds. Her Dad wants her to grow watermelon but I suspect that he has an ulterior motive for that.

"We've Been to Seminars"

Valerie is still working on toilet training. At eleven , it is a work in progress for her. We have tried everything. We were almost there when the toilet we trained her on broke resulting in some major plumbing repairs that we are saving up to fix. We do have another bathroom, but with her autism it has been nearly impossible to get her to change to that one. At school she was fairly well trained and they wanted us to send her to school on the bus in uderwear. We refused, because it would mean a long bus ride without access to a bathroom. This would almost certainly result in an accident and an unhappy bus driver who would then have to clean it up.We told the teacher and the principal this to no avail. We had a meeting with them both and basically were told that they had had extensive training on teaching autistic children to use the toilet and kept repeating "We've been to seminars". The end result of all this was that the school won out and we had to start sending her to school in panties. However that was not the end off our troubles with them, as we were to find out.

We were not being heard. It seemed like everything Dan or I said to these professionals went in one ear and out the other. Our concerns were disregarded. They wanted us to stop using pull ups at home and have her wear underwear all the time. Our experience was that this would result in her having "accidents" frequently and ruin our carpets and furniture, which would then have to be replaced . We also explained that we had three other kids who should not have to live in a place that smells like urine. Our objections and concerns were dismissed. "That won't happen" they said. Well it did.

Problems start.

Valerie started her public school career at age three in a special ed preschool program.When she had to go to kindergarten she had to start riding the bus forty-five minutes to school every morning. School went well (or so we thought),for quite a while. Then the problems started. Every other month it seemed that there was a new isssue to deal with. The teacher would not even call us back when I wrote notes or called. We got accused of sending her to school in dirty clothes,poor personal hygiene ect. It turns out that the school bus had no air conditioning, so that explained the hygiene issue.She also has been known to change clothes several times a day out of need. People with developemental disabilities like autism do tend to get messy more than neuro-typical folks. All we knew was that I was sending her out the door clean and smelling good in the mornings.

Our Journey Begins

Hello, my name is Krista. I have four children who are currently ages eleven, thirteen, almost seventeen and eighteen. My youngest daughter Valerie is eleven and is what most would consider to be severely autistic. She is verbal, but her language is about equal to that of a three year old. She has echolalia, which means she repeats what other people say. Most of her non-schooling time is spent playing with ropes, shoelaces, string ect. That is what is calming to her. She will occasionally slap, hit , pinch or even cut herself when she feels that she is under stress. In fact, it was this self destructive behavior of hers that led my husband and I to remove her from the public schools and begin home educating her.

I had mentioned the possibility of homeschooling her a few times to my husband over the years. He had some incorrect information about the homeschool laws in Florida, but a call to the Home School Legal Defense Association cleared that up. He still had some concerns though .

Valerie also has sensory issues. She cannot tolerate loud noises and now wears rifle range earmuffs to help her filter through the sounds she hears. Her sensory issues were not a noticeable problem until last school year when she simply could not board the school bus. Dan (My husband and the kids father)and I did not know what was wrong. She began panicking and screaming when I tried to put her on the bus in the morning. We live near a small town and the school she attended was forty-five minutes away. I drove her to school for two weeks while the folks at school tried to work with her about the bus issue. They did eventually get her to board the school bus for about six weeks, then Valerie refused again.

The school system sent out behavioral specialists to our home to attempt to get her to board the school bus. More screaming and panicking occured. Frankly, I was surprised that no one called the police on us. Her screams were that bad. Dan and I voiced our observations that Valerie reacts to stress by injuring herself and we were not afraid to tell the behavior specialists when enough was enough. We never did it in a rude way, just "She has had enough", or something like that. They did not like that ,but did as we requested. None of their ideas worked for Valerie .To be honest, they had not tried anything that I had not tried already.

Several weeks later we conferred with several school officials in a meeting that we are still upset about to this day. We were basically told that they believed that our autistic daughter was just trying to "get her way"and not go to school. Again , we shared our observations about Valeries self injurous behavior when placed under stress, and were completely disregarded. In short, they let us know that they were prepared to "force the issue"with her and that if we did not cooperate then any absenses from then on would be considered unexcused.Needless to say Dan and I were very unhappy at this point. After the fatefull meeting we decided to pull her out of school right away and begin homeschooling her.