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A Whole New Perspective! (LONG)
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 191673" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>Christy, I'm sorry he's still having trouble at school but I'm glad you've been able to lift things at home.</p><p></p><p>Sharon/WO, you said, "...when difficult child has an out of school suspension-then we consequence at home for the day he is suspended-it we act like it's a school day-he does all school stuff and some home chores."</p><p>For us, that wasn't a consequence. We brought in the rule, "School work during school hours" because difficult child 3 was often "sick" and I never knew if it was real or not. He wasn't faking, but he also wasn't sick with a bug, either. It's just that his anxiety was so extreme.</p><p>When I look back and think - how bad the poor kid must have been feeling, for his anxiety to be so extreme that not only was he feeling nauseous at just the MENTION of school in the holidays, but he would throw up several times a day at school and he was also running low-grade fevers from the anxiety.</p><p></p><p>So even though difficult child 3 wasn't faking, and sometimes he DID have a bug of sorts, I couldn't take the chance of a Pavlovian reaction to being home and also permitted to just lie around. Autistic kids can learn fast and get into patterns of behaviour really fast - sometimes from one occurrence - so I had to lay down the rules and stick to them. The result is, he's a really good independent worker at home now. </p><p>But when he was home and feeling sick, or if he was suspended, or even if he wasn't suspended but his teacher had said he should stay home for a few days because of big, challenging changes at school for a few days - then difficult child 3 had to work. The first thing would be to complete any homework and assessments. Next would be any worksheets I'd begged from his teacher (including schoolwork not completed) and after that would be whatever work I could put together for him myself, including educational computer games. If he was running a high fever and really feeling sick (even with tonsillitis) then he could go to bed and sleep. But if he was feeling well enough to be out of bed, then it was school. There were times when he really was sick with a high fever and tonsillitis, and he still got schoolwork done - the rule couldn't be modified even when I knew he was really physically ill.</p><p></p><p>It wasn't punishment - if I'd made it punishment then he would have associated schoolwork with punishment. It was simply - his job. Like my job as Mum was to look after him, get him some lunch, keep the household running, etc.</p><p></p><p>Christy, you listed a number of things that your son was never able to do, despite strong motivation and good reminders. That tells me that he simply was incapable of giving you what you wanted. He was highly motivated, he did know, he just wasn't able to do it. To discipline for something a person just cannot do, is to not only set up for failure but it also lowers self-esteem and they feel increasingly like failures. It also can lead to them giving up - why try, if I can never succeed?</p><p></p><p>Christy, he's doing much better at home - would he continue to do so if you gave him, say, a month of home schooling? If you took the same approach you currently have at home? It would be putting him in an environment where he is not so overstimulated, plus he would be able to have some control over which worksheet he did and how long he spent on it before changing to something else. I've found this made a very big difference to difficult child 3 - he still does this. </p><p>Example: difficult child 3 was working on his History assessment task on Thursday and went over and over the notes, read through the scaffold guidelines several times, looked at the question repeatedly - for several hours. Normally he will stick at one subject until he's made more progress than that. But by lunchtime he had got nowhere and I was worrying about him. Of course, he won't let me help, because in his mind, that is cheating. But the next thing I saw was difficult child 3 putting his History away and getting out his Maths. For difficult child 3, Maths is easy and calms him down. His History task had been making him increasingly anxious so he organised himself to do SOMETHING productive and to also choose something that would help him get back into his work effectively. I thought it was a very mature choice for him, to recognise that he had reached a brick wall and needed to stop beating his head against it.</p><p></p><p>A woman I was talking to about her son (classmate of difficult child 3 at the correspondence school) told me what a problem her son had been, so argumentative with his teachers (mainstream) and getting into fights constantly. I've seen this kid - prickly, extremely. But closer observation has told me that he's prickly because he's got poor social skills (doesn't read other kids well) plus once he got a reputation for being in trouble, other kids would deliberately try to push his buttons (it was fun to watch the explosions) and over time, this only made him worse. Since switching to correspondence, his mother has seen a huge difference in him. I've also seen a lot of that change in him as well, since he did spend some time in a day school for kids with behaviour problems (these schools also use the correspondence curriculum material). His mother finally pulled him out of there to supervise him at home, and found it has improved him further.</p><p></p><p>Laurensmyprincess, while your daughter's teacher shouldn't have been so unprofessional as to ring you in tears, I've seen the effect my kids have on teachers and I know they're only human. Both my boys had teachers reduced to quivering wrecks at times, and I did relax a fair bit on my expectations of teacher behaviour (at least when talking to me). A teacher who is not coping with a difficult child will sometimes stop trying to push the child as much as is needed. That certainly happened with both my boys - they just stopped learning. Or in difficult child 3's case, never started. At least, not in school.</p><p></p><p>As a result, they often don't do as well in mainstream.</p><p></p><p>No positive peer role model in school - that flies in the face of beliefs that "kids need to be in school because they need the social interaction." I was fobbed off with that one for years and I'm very angry with myself. The truth is - where the child is miserable, is often excluded, is not learning (or due to frequent suspensions etc is not getting access to learning) then school is perhaps NOT the right place. </p><p></p><p>I've found that difficult child 3 can learn, at home, as much in a day as he could in a month in mainstream. Probably more. Because the work he completes at home sticks in his mind, whereas what he completed in mainstream would be forgotten. And when ALL the schoolwork gets done at home in less time than it used to take to complete 10&#37; of the schoolwork at school, then there is no need for homework (it's ALL homework) and for social interaction, difficult child 3 is free to go play with neighbours when they are getting home from school. Before, he would get home form school and have to then sit down and complete homework as well as any incomplete class work. difficult child 1 especially - same story. He was getting NOTHING done at school, so that at home he would be working every night until 10 pm. Once I pulled him out of mainstream into correspondence, difficult child 1 worked well at home all the school day until an hour after the school day finished, at which point his friends were getting home on the school bus and would get off early to knock on our door and invite difficult child 1 over for a game. And because he had gotten so much work done - he could go play with a clear conscience!</p><p></p><p>The outcome - he was more relaxed, happier, more self-esteem - and NOW he was getting much more social interaction (positive social interaction at that) than he had been getting as a mainstream student. He also was getting social contact in smaller numbers, more controllable and less confrontational. He could walk away from bullies and come home, instead of having to stay at school with the bullies not leaving him alone.</p><p></p><p>Same findings with difficult child 3 - as a student at home, he is free to play at the end of the school day. He comes shopping with me and interacts with the people in the shops (and thereby learns valuable social skills).</p><p></p><p>Someone emailed a link to me a few days ago, about a correspondence school in the US, if anyone is interested.</p><p></p><p>Not that it's for everyone - some kids do fine in mainstream, better than they could if they were at home. But we need to know that there are alternatives and that some of the stories we hear about them to discourage us - are myths.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 191673, member: 1991"] Christy, I'm sorry he's still having trouble at school but I'm glad you've been able to lift things at home. Sharon/WO, you said, "...when difficult child has an out of school suspension-then we consequence at home for the day he is suspended-it we act like it's a school day-he does all school stuff and some home chores." For us, that wasn't a consequence. We brought in the rule, "School work during school hours" because difficult child 3 was often "sick" and I never knew if it was real or not. He wasn't faking, but he also wasn't sick with a bug, either. It's just that his anxiety was so extreme. When I look back and think - how bad the poor kid must have been feeling, for his anxiety to be so extreme that not only was he feeling nauseous at just the MENTION of school in the holidays, but he would throw up several times a day at school and he was also running low-grade fevers from the anxiety. So even though difficult child 3 wasn't faking, and sometimes he DID have a bug of sorts, I couldn't take the chance of a Pavlovian reaction to being home and also permitted to just lie around. Autistic kids can learn fast and get into patterns of behaviour really fast - sometimes from one occurrence - so I had to lay down the rules and stick to them. The result is, he's a really good independent worker at home now. But when he was home and feeling sick, or if he was suspended, or even if he wasn't suspended but his teacher had said he should stay home for a few days because of big, challenging changes at school for a few days - then difficult child 3 had to work. The first thing would be to complete any homework and assessments. Next would be any worksheets I'd begged from his teacher (including schoolwork not completed) and after that would be whatever work I could put together for him myself, including educational computer games. If he was running a high fever and really feeling sick (even with tonsillitis) then he could go to bed and sleep. But if he was feeling well enough to be out of bed, then it was school. There were times when he really was sick with a high fever and tonsillitis, and he still got schoolwork done - the rule couldn't be modified even when I knew he was really physically ill. It wasn't punishment - if I'd made it punishment then he would have associated schoolwork with punishment. It was simply - his job. Like my job as Mum was to look after him, get him some lunch, keep the household running, etc. Christy, you listed a number of things that your son was never able to do, despite strong motivation and good reminders. That tells me that he simply was incapable of giving you what you wanted. He was highly motivated, he did know, he just wasn't able to do it. To discipline for something a person just cannot do, is to not only set up for failure but it also lowers self-esteem and they feel increasingly like failures. It also can lead to them giving up - why try, if I can never succeed? Christy, he's doing much better at home - would he continue to do so if you gave him, say, a month of home schooling? If you took the same approach you currently have at home? It would be putting him in an environment where he is not so overstimulated, plus he would be able to have some control over which worksheet he did and how long he spent on it before changing to something else. I've found this made a very big difference to difficult child 3 - he still does this. Example: difficult child 3 was working on his History assessment task on Thursday and went over and over the notes, read through the scaffold guidelines several times, looked at the question repeatedly - for several hours. Normally he will stick at one subject until he's made more progress than that. But by lunchtime he had got nowhere and I was worrying about him. Of course, he won't let me help, because in his mind, that is cheating. But the next thing I saw was difficult child 3 putting his History away and getting out his Maths. For difficult child 3, Maths is easy and calms him down. His History task had been making him increasingly anxious so he organised himself to do SOMETHING productive and to also choose something that would help him get back into his work effectively. I thought it was a very mature choice for him, to recognise that he had reached a brick wall and needed to stop beating his head against it. A woman I was talking to about her son (classmate of difficult child 3 at the correspondence school) told me what a problem her son had been, so argumentative with his teachers (mainstream) and getting into fights constantly. I've seen this kid - prickly, extremely. But closer observation has told me that he's prickly because he's got poor social skills (doesn't read other kids well) plus once he got a reputation for being in trouble, other kids would deliberately try to push his buttons (it was fun to watch the explosions) and over time, this only made him worse. Since switching to correspondence, his mother has seen a huge difference in him. I've also seen a lot of that change in him as well, since he did spend some time in a day school for kids with behaviour problems (these schools also use the correspondence curriculum material). His mother finally pulled him out of there to supervise him at home, and found it has improved him further. Laurensmyprincess, while your daughter's teacher shouldn't have been so unprofessional as to ring you in tears, I've seen the effect my kids have on teachers and I know they're only human. Both my boys had teachers reduced to quivering wrecks at times, and I did relax a fair bit on my expectations of teacher behaviour (at least when talking to me). A teacher who is not coping with a difficult child will sometimes stop trying to push the child as much as is needed. That certainly happened with both my boys - they just stopped learning. Or in difficult child 3's case, never started. At least, not in school. As a result, they often don't do as well in mainstream. No positive peer role model in school - that flies in the face of beliefs that "kids need to be in school because they need the social interaction." I was fobbed off with that one for years and I'm very angry with myself. The truth is - where the child is miserable, is often excluded, is not learning (or due to frequent suspensions etc is not getting access to learning) then school is perhaps NOT the right place. I've found that difficult child 3 can learn, at home, as much in a day as he could in a month in mainstream. Probably more. Because the work he completes at home sticks in his mind, whereas what he completed in mainstream would be forgotten. And when ALL the schoolwork gets done at home in less time than it used to take to complete 10% of the schoolwork at school, then there is no need for homework (it's ALL homework) and for social interaction, difficult child 3 is free to go play with neighbours when they are getting home from school. Before, he would get home form school and have to then sit down and complete homework as well as any incomplete class work. difficult child 1 especially - same story. He was getting NOTHING done at school, so that at home he would be working every night until 10 pm. Once I pulled him out of mainstream into correspondence, difficult child 1 worked well at home all the school day until an hour after the school day finished, at which point his friends were getting home on the school bus and would get off early to knock on our door and invite difficult child 1 over for a game. And because he had gotten so much work done - he could go play with a clear conscience! The outcome - he was more relaxed, happier, more self-esteem - and NOW he was getting much more social interaction (positive social interaction at that) than he had been getting as a mainstream student. He also was getting social contact in smaller numbers, more controllable and less confrontational. He could walk away from bullies and come home, instead of having to stay at school with the bullies not leaving him alone. Same findings with difficult child 3 - as a student at home, he is free to play at the end of the school day. He comes shopping with me and interacts with the people in the shops (and thereby learns valuable social skills). Someone emailed a link to me a few days ago, about a correspondence school in the US, if anyone is interested. Not that it's for everyone - some kids do fine in mainstream, better than they could if they were at home. But we need to know that there are alternatives and that some of the stories we hear about them to discourage us - are myths. Marg [/QUOTE]
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