Homeschooling: Is That Good for Autism? Autism Awareness week 3

I believe homeschooling a child with autism might benefit him/her more for many reasons. I'm not suggesting that you should prefer this over traditional school, but to at least see my perspective on it with an open heart. This also isn't in any way to pressure you into believing that homeschooling is best for your child, but to make it an option to think about.

Now I've never been homeschooled, but sometimes I think about how much smarter I would have been if that were the case. Would I have done better in college? Would I have learned to be more prepared and organized with what I would have to accomplish in the future? Would I have been more successful? Would I have been less distracted?

I don't think there is a rational answer to these questions. I am where I am now due to looking back at my mistakes and my flaws, and using them as motivators to make myself a better person.  It wasn't an easy journey, but it was worth it.

To be honest, this blog post isn't supposed to make you or your autistic child's life easier, but to help find meaning. The blog series is to help you think of other options in order to benefit your child's mental growth.

There are three primary reasons why I believe homeschooling might be beneficial to your child. One is because it gives your child more time to learn a certain subject; the other is because it gives the child more direct attention; the last is because it will help them learn to think more clearly and independently.

Gives The Child More Time

In a traditional school setting, students are required to learn something different each day. That could be very overwhelming within itself since the autistic student tends to forget things that don't seem to make sense to him/her. Sometimes it's even hard for the student to pay attention to things very easily.

I've been there.

Whenever my mom would ask what I learned at school this particular day, I felt embarrassed. I wouldn't even answer. The teacher would talk too much, or would make us write notes based on what he/she says rather than showing us what he/she presents on the projector. That doesn't make him/her a bad teacher, but this mechanism is very confusing to me because I felt I'd get more information from a presentation. I'd even have a hard time memorizing the definition of extended vocabulary words I never heard before. The day after that, I'd have to learn something else without any recollection of what he/she taught me the previous day.

Now that was high school and college. Before that, I wasn't taught that teachers can be that way to students. That's why I think early homeschooling can be beneficial for an autistic student.

It's certainly helpful because there is no specified law concerning how early you should start homeschooling your child. As I said in a previous blog post, as soon as you begin seeing any delayed progression on your child, it is best to start working on the child immediately rather than waiting until you receive a proper diagnosis.

What's so great about it is that as soon as you start teaching the child, you can repeat the same lesson over and over again until the child understands what he/she is learning.

The same goes with my student. As a Personal Care Aide, it is my responsibility to take him to his speech lessons every other day during the week of school. During each speech lesson, we would present three different pictures on his desk, and would ask him to pick the correct one based on what we ask him to pick up. For a teenager, you'd expect him to immediately pick the right pictures - but in the case of my student, he doesn't. He couldn't even talk. We repeated that mechanism for weeks until we found some significant progress. His answers aren't 100% correct, but he did make a surprising improvement based on teaching the same lesson over and over.

Not only will this help your child remember, but it will also help him/her learn more. It might even prepare your autistic child for traditional schooling, where he/she would have a higher chance of getting good grades and be more motivated to learn.

More Direct Attention

One thing we can all agree with concerning an autistic child is that they need more direct attention. In fact, my mother would often hold my hand because I often forgot to look both ways before crossing the road, lasting until I was at least twelve or thirteen years old (which is a much later age than many typical children) when I understood the concept.

This wouldn't be the case for most traditional schools. Teachers can't always pay attention to one individual student because he/she has to keep watch of other students as well. That is a very challenging job for the teacher because he/she needs to make sure all students are being respectful towards the teacher. That is especially challenging in today's world since the autistic student could roam out of the room without the teacher noticing. It would be hard for the teacher to notice that he/she is distracted or daydreaming.

That's not the case for homeschool.

When being homeschooled, the autistic student receives more direct, individual attention. Not only could it cause less of a drift between teacher and student, but also keeps the child less distracted. It will help the teacher (or parent, who could also be a homeschool teacher) become more aware of whether or not the child is paying attention. He/she could even tell if the child is daydreaming or is about to leave unexpectedly.

It can also help the autistic child hear things more clearly, since not only is he/she in the comfort of his/her home, but also in close proximity of the mentor in general based on the size of the room. The traditional teacher may place the autistic student in the back if uneducated of the issues of the student's disability. That is, being in the back of the room can easily distract the student if not watched properly.

That way, if you homeschool the child, he/she will learn how to pay attention more properly. It also boosts their confidence and improve with eye contact (since many kids with autism are afraid of looking at people directly in the eye).

Nevertheless, it helps them learn to be more open-minded! That's when you know your autistic child will remember to look both ways when crossing the road.

More Open, Independent Thoughts

Back when I was in school, I wouldn't raise my hand if the teacher asked the students a question. Not only because I didn't know the answer, but also because it was embarrassing. I would get so easily distracted with what is going on in my head that I wouldn't hear a single thing the teacher said. As a result, I would see most students' hands go up, while mine stayed in place, fearing humiliation.

I think many autistic students feel the same way.

I mostly depended on what the teacher wrote on the wall or projector screen than what I read in my textbooks. In fact, I barely ever read the textbooks because the extensive vocabulary was so overwhelming to me that I didn't know how to react. So my best reaction would be to close the textbook, just as I would slam my book of thoughts closed. What I could've done was reread the chapter so I could get a better point of view, but I didn't.

That doesn't mean it's too late to teach your child that. When homeschooling the autistic child, you can ask him/her to read a chapter of the book. If the child didn't understand the concept of the chapter, you would often ask him/her to read the chapter again and again until it all gets processed into the brain. That would also give the child more confidence to ask for assistance in what the words mean in the chapter.

Asking for help may sound like a weakness, but it is actually one step ahead of open, independent thoughts. At some point, everybody needs help with something in life. Asking for help is how you learn more things. I wished I did the same thing when I was in high school and college, but I was so much in denial of my disability as well as fearing to be a burden on my teachers, college professors, classmates, and loved ones.

Furthermore, this would teach your autistic child how to work more freely and see the answers more clearly. When I finally asked for help on my final year of college, this was exactly how I felt. It gave me more awareness and raised my chin up. I was less afraid to ask for help and my struggles began to mellow.

I'm sure the same will go for your child.

Conclusion

I want to make it clear that I'm aware that homeschooling is hard. I know most of you need to work in order to support your child, and I'm not saying you shouldn't send your child to a traditional school. That part is completely up to you. My agenda for these blog posts is that someone may be able to see this in the future and that these situations will eventually change in order to make the world a better place.

Also, I'm not suggesting your autistic child to be homeschooled forever, but to help prepare him/her for the obstacles of a traditional school so they can adapt better and learn the process as soon as possible. Everybody's brains are wired differently and it is important to spread the awareness of autism throughout the globe so they can be prepared for the world.

If you have any other learning mechanisms for an autistic child - or have any suggestions in particular - feel free to comment below. Thank you for reading, and God bless you!