Home educating your Autistic child.

Home educating your Autistic child.

Posted by: Emma Dalmayne

More and more parents are withdrawing their children from school be it specialist or mainstream and choosing to educate them otherwise, ie home education.

This path is being chosen as many children are being let down by the schooling system. Adequate support is not put in place, sensory breaks IEP’s and ECHP’s are not being honoured or followed. Children are floundering in a socially hostile environment, suffering sensory overload from noise and overcrowding with no sensory breaks or 1.1 support.

Sadly children are also suffering bullying to the extreme of having self injurious thoughts and extreme anxiety.

If your child is refusing to go to school, crying, melting down and attacking you when you pick them up they are trying to communicate something. That something is that they are unhappy and overwhelmed.

Obsessive lining up when they get home, more then they would normally do or scattering then becoming distressed when these are moved are signs that your child is controlling their environment as to them everything else is out of control.

Likewise of obsessing over a particular object then getting overly distressed if it’s not there or their sandwich being cut in the ‘wrong’ way. It’s all loss of control, the last thing they thought they could control had been take and they are devastated by it. This is a build up of anxiety and expectation that crashes around them causing a meltdown of epic proportions.

They have held in everything that has set them off during the day be it sensory overload from the lighting in the dinner hall mixed with the smell of the dinners and the jostling they received in the queue to the fact they cannot control their environment.

They may be being bullied and not have the language to explain it and this still relates even if your child is fully verbal.

They may even assume you know. To them you take them there and pick them up and in their mind they know, why wouldn’t you?

Being able to vocalise does not automatically mean they can communicate.

A school that provides this support if your child attends one should be treasured and a good supportive teacher is worth their weight in gold, sadly it’s rare to find this.

If you are having these problems, getting threatening letters from the school boards for non attendance and have a child that’s vomiting and having attacks of running to the toilet or alternatively holding their bowel or urine. After ruling out all medical possibilities you may find this is due to anxiety.

You may be having to literally drag your child to school with them begging not to go, and you may well be going home an emotional wreck.

You don’t have to do this.

I am advising from the UK so can only go by our educational system, and here you can de register your child to home educate them.

Under section 7 8.6 of the Education Rights Act you are allowed to educate your child otherwise. It’s the parents responsibility to educate the child, most parents think this automatically means you must place your child into a school to do so. This is not the case. You are not required to follow the National Curriculum though if you wish to you can purchase the packs. Most of the contents can be bought separately in bookshops.

To deregister you write a letter to the school and/or email them this:

Dear (headteacher),

As from this date (chosen date) please  remove (child’s name) from the school roll.

They will now be educated otherwise.

Yours sincerely

Some parents choose unschooling which is allowing the child to learn from their environment with little to no parental direction. Games on the computer are encouraged for promotion and cause and effect, reflex and if online social network interaction. Strategising and maths are learnt in this way. Screwing is a common practice where the parent leaves books, puzzles and work for the child to do of their own accord.

Some children require a period of unschooling , the damage done by the school enviroment may take some time to recover from.

I unschooled for six months such was the damage done to my sons psychological wellbeing.

Others choose the more typical route of workbooks, printed worked sheets (try Twinkle, beautiful sheets for free), Khan Academy online tutorials and Reading Eggs/Math Seeds tutorial. The beauty of home education is your child works at their own pace, learning can be done anywhere be it  in the front room or on a blanket in the garden.

Learning can be done anywhere at any time. Libraries and museums are free, documentaries  are great for learning.

Reading stories and writing them is literacy, a play on the radio is drama.

Playing with cars, little figures and tracks is small world play, messy creative time is sensory play.

Painting and drawing is Art, running and jumping in the woods or swimming and cycling are physical education.

Walking to the shops with a list with you be it visual or written and help nt pay is life skills with budgeting.

Home education meets and play at the park is socialisation.

You do so much more then you realise.

You don’t need to drag your child to school and cry walking home. Not all education in a school will suit every child.