Learning to mix Natural Learning with Healthy Structure in an Autism Family Tapestry

Once again I have a gazillion blog posts swimming around my head! Before I move on to more Fiji shares, I just wanted to post about something that I've been wanting to document as part of our autism journey.

OUR FAMILY

As I mentioned before, we have 2 children officially diagnosed with Autism and other family members with various special needs.
 I find it hard to actually put into words all the feelings and emotions that swim around in my head in regards to this.
Some days we feel like a very 'normal' family and other days we feel completely dysfunctional. I go between being totally ok with the level of special needs that I have to take into consideration on a day to day basis and other days I feel so sad and weep for what I feel was a dream that will never happen.

Yes, I ABSOLUTELY do know that Yah has given us these amazing children and I am INCREDIBLY thankful for that. But that does not diminish just how tough it is some days having to deal with the level of special needs that we do along with dealing with criticism and opinions of others'.

Some may read this and think, "But your kids seem fine to me! What are you whinging about?"
To this I have two things to respectfully share:

1. You have never walked a day in my shoes so please do not presume or cast judgement about the challenges in my life.

2: My kids may 'seem' like that because of the amount of work we've have been doing with them over a number of years. And while they are able to function well most days, it takes ALOT of effort, prayer and encouragement to keep it that way.

I post these things here as a record of OUR family's journey; not as a formula for success for every family who has to deal with similar issues.
I post these things so I remember what we tried and what didn't work for us. I post these things that maybe some other mama out there may be encouraged in helping to connect with their child.
We, by that I mean OUR family, are a work in progress. Broken. Healed. Restored. Changing. Growing. We do what works for us until it no longer works for us or until Yah shows us that we can do something different.

A QUESTION

Recently on a homeschooling forum I am apart of, a question was asked of me and I thought I would share my answer here.

The question was basically,

"I was wondering... you have alot of experiencing with autism and combining it with a natural learning style. I imagine that would have been very challenging finding that balance with where you wanted to head the family and what members of your family needed. How did that journey look for you? How did you know where you had to put more structure in place and how did you implement that given the kids had alot freedom of choice in other areas?  I know this has probably been a very difficult journey".

While it has been a difficult journey in some ways, it has also been a very rich one for us as a family.
We have learnt to weather the stoms together.
We are learning about how to listen more and how to understand better.
We are learning about what humility looks like in a doctor's waiting room with people looking on and a child melting down and having a very hard time.
We are learning about how arrogant we may have been had we not had to deal with special needs' kids and how we don't want to be like that to others.
We are learning to be flexible but that structure is not something to be feared either.

We have and continue to make mistakes along the way.

For instance, putting too much structure into our day in some ways taught me to look at the effect that had on my kids and learn to relax a bit. This also gave me more confidence in my ability to look at the needs of MY family and then put in place what is right for US....not what is right for any other family but what is right for US.

Sometimes I listened to the advice of loving and well meaning friends or aquaintances when I should have politely said, 'Thank you for offering that" instead of thinking I HAD to put that into place.
It wasn't right for US.
 It may have been right for THEM but it wasn't right for US and I should have never tried it.
This has happened with a number of different things and I am learning to just listen to Yah as He leads our family. Some may scoff at that but I can personally attest to the way that Yah has helped us on this amazing journey.

A QUICK STORY

I'll give you a quick-i'm-totally-digressing-from-the-main-story-kind-of-story for a second ;)
We were taking Elijah to an occupational therapist a couple of years ago. He liked going. It was hard work on our part to get him there because it took 50 minutes to get there, the appointment time was 5.20pm and so Liji would always fall asleep on the way there. This meant that by the time I was able to rouse him (he's very tough to awaken!!!) and he adjusted to where he was, he really only had about 10 good workable therapy minutes in him. It also meant that I had to have dinner organised and if we were going down as a family (which we mostly did) that I had dinner and drink bottles etc packed along with a packed picnic basket with clean plates, cutlery and sports equipment for the others who would play at the park while waiting for Liji's session to be over.

{2007 Having dinner (low salicylate cottage pie) together in a park near Liji's therapy clinic}

As I said, taking him there while good, was also ALOT of effort for our family.
On one of our travels down there Brett said to me that he was thinking that we should maybe stop taking Liji to this particular therapist. He wasn't sure it was helping him enough to justify the effort basically. We didn't want to stop it if it was going to have a positive impact on our cracker, but we also didn't want to keep going to something that was really not all that helpful in the long run.
We weren't sure what to do.
Brett just prayed for clarity on the way down.
He asked God aloud that He would show us what to do.
It was a simple, heartfelt prayer from a Dad who wanted to do right by his son.
I went in with Liji to the session while Brett took the other kids to the park.
About 3/4 of the way through, Liji's therapist just out of the blue looked up and said to me very calmly, "Well, I think we've probably taken Elijah as far as we can. He's doing really well and I don't know that you coming here is going to do any more good to be honest".
I was gobsmacked.
It wasn't the last week of term or even close to the end of term.
He hadn't done anything terrible to make her want to terminate the sessions in fact he'd been responding to her more and quite well too.
She wasn't upset at all. She was just very matter-of-factly telling me that they had taken our boy as far as they could.
And there in that moment we VERY CLEARLY had our answer.

See, that's how Yah has worked in our lives.
When we aren't sure what to do, we pray. He often gives us a clear thought on which way we should go although sometimes when he doesn't, we wait and then often an answer comes clear in time.
Perhaps in those times he's teaching us to be patient and content.

Ok digression over.

A REFLECTION

Back to the question on how WE'VE integrated both a natural learning approach to our homeschooling journey AND structure to help our kids.
Once again, this is a reflection on OUR journey not a one-size-fits-all-kind-of-thing ;)

We began our homeschooling journey with ALOT of structure. I kind of felt like I needed that to 'prove' to others that what I was doing was valid.

I've learnt that I don't need to do that.
However, I've also learnt over the past 4 years especially, that my kids (all of them!) actually do thrive and CRAVE a certain level of structure.
Again, that may not work in some families but in ours it DOES!

FINDING OUR RHYTHM

We term this kind of structure our 'rhythm'.

I blogged about our rhythm a little while ago in THIS POST: 'RHYTHMS, RELATIONSHIPS AND RESOURCES'.
This has remained something that works for us.
We have a basic rhythm for our mornings and our afternoons.
This means that in a week we cover our KLA's (key learning areas).
However, we are also quite flexible.
We don't keep to a time schedule.
So we are not sitting down at the table at 9am.
More than likely you'll still find us in our pj's eating slow cooked oats and chatting then!
But it means we DO have a plan for our morning and we more than often actually stick to it in a loose kind of way!
Just as a side note, yesterday my kids were raring to go bright and early and had knocked over chores, maths and spelling by 8.30am! And I LOVE that the flexibiliy of our weeks means some days we have that kind of morning and other mornings are harder and slower and that's ok too.

TOOLS IN OUR TOOL BOX

Let me touch a little on some of the tools we use and give you examples of how using them helps us.
Brett, when teaching the kids about using tools from their tool box, always says to them, "You have to have the right tool for the right job to get the right result".
This is true of our family's approach to using the right tools for our children in order to help them not only have safe and happy learning and living experiences but also aiding them in self regulation, healthy expectations of others, social situations and communication.

A TOOL WE USE: PHOTO BOARDS

Every morning after chores (more on this in a sec!), the kiddos know straight up that they do maths and some spelling. Now in the past we tried not 'making' them do these daily and trusted that they would just learn maths concepts and liteacy as we have a very literature-rich environment.
This is still true; we still trust they will learn every day and in many varied ways however we also help them to COPE in their day by providing rhythm help.
We found that ALL the kids actually struggled with not having things to do each morning even though we made suggestions.
They were ASKING for bookwork and wanted us to give them some structure.
I remember when I put back up the photoboards:



It was like the kids felt secure again and HAPPY!
They all sat down eagerly, pulled out their books INDEPENDENTLY and finished off their 2 pages and were EXCITED about what they had achieved.
I remember thinking, "Man, why have I been fighting this?"
This is what our kids like, it is what they ask for and it is what they need. I now embrace that and will do my best to facilitate those kinds of healthy happy feelings towards their learning!
Liji actually said that on days when he didn't know what learning was going to just 'happen' that he'd felt lost. I'm SO GLAD we found our way with our learning rhythms and that these have worked for us.
Some days when the kids are a bit more 'antsy' and need a bit more of something different, we invite them to use the Ipad app Splash Maths or the Maths games on SHEPPARD MATHS ONLINE. Sometimes they use their 'blue books' (some books we got from Target/KMart that have really helped them) or sometimes they'll use their Math U See books.
Either way, there is flexiblity but there is also predictability and security.


{These are laminated photos of parts of the rhythm of our day including snack and lunch breaks. Predictabilty definitely helps my kids feel secure and much more confident knowing what is to come. These photos have velcro dots and can be moved about when needed}

The photo boards have been a real help to us.

AN EXAMPLE OF HEALTHY RHYTHM
MEETS FLEXIBILTY

Here's a bit of an example for you from a day last week:
Ok so the kids have done chores, maths and some work on either spelling/handwriting/writing...and it's a Monday.
On Mondays we have 'Learn from the Past' (ie history) as our morning rhythm and Crafternoon (art) as our afternoon rhythm.
Last Monday I read to the kids from our Story of the World (Ancient History) book.
Our kiddos LOVE this book and I love the layout of the narratives and maps.
I read aloud to them about the Medes and the Persians in the sun while we snacked on apples.
While I read the kids coloured in a map of the Persian Empire.
Liji immediately identified 'the Boot' (ie Italy) in the map and they had a discussion about which bits of the map were sea and which were land. They also talked amongst themselves about which continent they were looking at and where Israel and Egypt were. The other colouring sheet was of King Cyrus. We realised this was THE same King Cyrus that we read about in the Bible so we grabbed a Bible and read some verses from 2 Chronicles 36 and also from the book of Ezra.
The reading, colouring, identifying, listening and discussing took a hearty hour or so.
By this stage Brett's sis had arrived for a lovely visit
While they chatted with their Sulley (my SIL), I made some lunch and the kiddos enjoyed that outside. They then came in for their 45 minutes of silent reading time.

THE EXAMPLE CONTINUED WITH
ANOTHER ONE OF OUR TOOLS: THE TIMER

Autistic people often need very clearly defined boundaries.
There needs to be little to no grey areas because that unpredictability can be very unsettling.
Believe me, we've tried.
We've tried being very free... 'please just sit where you like' in the lounge room. But when you have a child who has very real personal-space issues and then someone just comes and tries to squish in next to them...i'm telling you now, it aint gonna look pretty!
So we established each person's reading space.
Then we also agreed on a good amount of reading time for everyone.
45 minutes definitely seemed to feel right for us all.
The timer gets used here ALOT.
Timers are predictable.
Timers do not forget how long their kids have reading for and have very concrete parameters...ie you push the button to start it, the noise sounds when it is finished and then you push the button to turn it off. Many people reading this post may not understand what this means but I can tell you from having lived this out, people on the Spectrum definitely DO respond more postively with clear boundaries, expectations and predictability.

Ok, so the timer goes off, silent reading time is finished and then it is normally time for Crafternoon. That particular afternoon it was warm (for a change here!) and so we decided to let the kids have free play in the arvo and instead we'd do something else for Crafternoon later on. They all agreed it would be great to make the most of the sunshine!

Once again, our rhythm was there to guide us but not to dictate to us what should happen without any flexibility.

Before dinner that night, I pulled out a special new book on Leonardo Da Vinci that I'd found in a book sale.
While dinner was finishing off in the slow cooker, I gathered the kids in the loungeroom and invited them to come check out the new book. We'd just watched Ever After (the movie) again and Da Vinci features in it so they were excited to see the cross over and that he was a REAL person!
We read through the book, stopping to talk about the things they noticed in the sketches, taking time to look at details in his works and giving them room to say why they liked his work )or why they didn't like!).
The next day they were still talking about Da Vinci's flying machines and Liji had asked if he could finish off drawing and designing one. He showed it to us over breakfast.
Even though it was a different rhythm day, we decided to fill out our 'Name that Artist' sheet that morning for our handwriting. This still allowed them to write and it was something that I didn't push the day before being the end of the day when they were tired. But starting with fresh eyes that morning (and with chewing gum to help them regulate) really did make a big diffence.

The reason I went into all that boring detail was simply so that you can see that our 'Crafternoon' that day in fact ended up being something we did AT NIGHT AND the NEXT DAY!
The kids' desire to play in the afternoon sunshine was NOT trumped by our need for a schedule, nor was it viewed badly the next day when it was time to sit down and write about Da Vinci.
 Just trying to tweak that balance sometimes is hard but I feel mostly that we are getting there with Yah's help.

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: THE TADPOLES

Tapping into our kids' interests, likes and dislikes is something that we are very passionate about.

We seem our kids as people, not just kids if that makes sense. Therefore, we recognise that they have things they are really keenly interested in and therefore NEED TIME to develop those interests or to let it ride out naturally and seem them develop whole new interests!

All our kiddos love nature and what's there not to love about tadpoles? I know most kids love them but man Liji REALLY loves them!

So one day he kept asking and asking about going to catch some. We organised to take them down to the lake that afternoon and enjoyed watching them get dirty, talk about the different taddies they were catching and how long it would take for them to grow into frogs!
Once home, Liji spontaneously pulled out a Childcraft book which had a beautiful illustration of the life cycle of a tadpole. My not-so-into-reading-yet boy was really enjoying reading up a storm in this book.

Liji then went and gathered some 'clean' paper and pencils and stapled a 'book' together.

You guessed it...he wanted to make his own book on tadpoles.

He formed a sentence, told it to me then asked me to write it for him to copy.

He then illustrated the pages beautifully and then proudly announced that one day it would be printed in the library for all small children to read ;)

I'm sure I don't need to tell you this as to me it is bleedingly obvious; I didn't then say to him, "Now you STILL haven't done your 'spelling work' son. You will need to get that done'.

NO!

He had done a GREAT job writing in his book and had been creative, resourceful and shown initiative all in this one exercise. How wonderful! How fantastic that he had the space to be able to do that!

Now, just in case you were wondering, we have tried letting our kids do that kind of unschooling ALL day EVERY day and while I do know that they were learning (without a shadow of a doubt) as I said a gazillion times earlier, it did not work for our whole family.

And that's why we have had to work at getting a balance between natural and structured kind of stuff.

A COUPLE OF LAST TOOLS:

FUN THINGS TO DO PHOTO CHARTS,

THE CALM DOWN SPACE,

MORNING CHART HELPERS,

THE HELP-YOURSELF BASKETS,

ZIPPI'S DAILY RHYTHM PHOTO CHART,

OUR FAMILY RULES,

OUR CHORE CHARTS

OUR SNACK CHART

Ok, so this post has been epic enough but I thought I'd leave you with a couple of snaps of phot charts and tools we use around here to help one another.

These are not to help us lord it over our kids.

These are used to help each of us love and respect each other.

These are in place only because a need has arisen to have them.
These have been put in place because they help our visual learners, help those who need predictability, help those who don't to still be able to be free enough to grab something, help those who need help with self-reglulation of energy and emotions and help ME (mama!!!) to maintain some sanity!!!

So here are our:

FUN THINGS TO DO PHOTO CHARTS:

{laminated posters of 60 fun things to do -mostly without help - }

OUR CALM DOWN SPACE:

{The calm down Space - a place to come and chill out when 'engines are running too high' ie: too much emotion, energy, whatever the case may be. A box of fidget toys is right there next to the chair filled with chewy necklaces, spinning tops, stress balls to help encourage self regulation}

OUR MORNING CHART HELPERS:

{Attached to the kitchen wall with 3M removeable velcro like tabs, these are something the kids love. We get them down each morning, the kids carry them around like prompts to help them remember to get through their tasks like their morning chores, brushing their teeth, tidying up their floors. They then have the satisfaction of ticking the little box (believe me when I tell you how much my kids LOVE that part!!!!) and then they earn themselves 10 extra minutes up at night. This has been a very motivating incentive for our kiddos. I'll do a whole 'nother post on bedtimes but yep we've done the bedtime where they take themselves off whenever and it just didn't work for our family. Having a set bedtime has worked for ALL of us.}

THE HELP YOURSELF BASKETS:

{These baskets can be also seen in the above link to the post on 'rhythm, relationships and resources'. The kids can help themselves to anything in these baskets. Draw it, read and write it, observe it, join it, create it....are all names for the baskets' contents}

ZIPPI'S DAILY RHYTHM CHART:

{Another interactive laminated photo board on velcro dots. Zip decides what she'd like to do during the day; painting, beading, playing with beanbags, dollhouse play etc. Again, this kind of visual prompt helps her as we try to extend her past some current rigidities. We don't always use this chart and I can really tell when we don't. I just get lazy sometimes and forget to get the photos out with her in the morning. It's something we are working on at the mo a bit more ;) }

 OUR FAMILY RULES:

{Pretty self explanatory but these are the two biggies we try to uphold around here; using gentle words and hands to communicate and listening to each other. We're reminded about this as we look at our fridge!}

OUR CHORE CHARTS:

{The kiddos' chore charts which get swapped over each week. They have a once a week chore on there, plus a section of the dishwasher to do daily along with dinner table chores and a morning chore. We all work at the same time and encourage our kids that working as a team helps our whole family to flow more freely. Gotta say they are really good with their chores because I think they can see how it affects our whole family positively when they are involved and contribute.}

THE SNACK CHART:

{This will probably seem very OTT to some people but I can not tell you the amount of fighting, whinging and bickering this has stopped! It was worth the effort to hand draw at like midnight one night! lol! It lives in a plastic sheet on the inside of one of my pantry doors. It helps our kids to see what they are getting that day (although they also know that sometimes we HAVE to change plans too which is also good for them to learn). This also helps me with the shopping and planning and in a family with 7 needs to consider that is one more help for me! Honestly, again, this has really worked for us.}

Well, not sure anyone will make it through alive to the bottom of this post but if you have, well done! lol!
I honestly hope that sharing some of these things which we have put in place over the past 4+ years will help a child out there somewhere who, like my children, maybe need that little bit more of a mix of both natrual learning freedom + healthy structure and rhythm.
I praise Yah for helping us through and for teaching us about ourselves, our world and Him along the way.
I continue to look forward to the learning journey He may have for us down the track...whether that is how it looks now or COMPLETELY different too!
I trust He will continue to lead our family well.
Is there anything that has helped you achieve a balance of natural learning and healthy structure in your home?
I'd love to hear your ideas!

Love Lusi x

Our Dominant Story

So I suspect that my family is alot like yours and the majority of families in many ways...we are loving but we are incredibly flawed.
We get too angry.
We are too impatient with each other.
We say awful things that we don't mean.
We have this background current of Autism which currently colours our life and language more than we would like it too.
We take each other for granted and miss seeing the big picture because we are trying to control the silly, unimportant issues far too often.

And I lie awake wondering sometimes, if we are 'good' enough as parents.

I know that most of you in Blogland don't know me in real life.
You see our 'highlights' reel on here but you don't see the pain and trauma of the behind the scenes stuff that sometimes feels like it is taking over.

I was talking to a lovely friend of mine recently about these heart issues and she was saying that there is power in repeating our Dominant Story. What did she mean by that? Well, story telling about, showing photos of and reminding ourselves about the very things we want to be our dominant story when we look back on our lives 10, 20, 30 years from now.

I want the dominant story of our children's childhoods to be about indoor picnics when it rained, about snuggling under blankets reading rich, thought-provoking stories, about backyard cricket on warm summer evenings and baking choc chip cookies and licking the bowl clean. I want their dominant story to be one of feelings of belonging and traditions that made their hearts feel whole; remembering how we ate pumpkin soup from our special bowls that look like pumpkins, how we always have a special Shabbat meal together and of birthday dinners where loving words are shared around a communal table. I pray that our children will want to tell their children about the time that we went horseriding and the horse scratched its bum against the tree and we all laughed ourselves silly, about trips to Bonnyvale beach and playing Pani in the backyard. I hope their dominant story is filled with memories of planting and harvesting in our vegie garden, of prayers shared, of learning and exploring on bushwalks together, of dressing up, dancing + celebrating the Biblical Feasts and of many cuddles and 'i love you's' whispered into little ears before bedtime each night.

I guess I've realised that part of why I blog is so that I can remind myself of what I want our dominant story to be.
We are not perfect.
Life here is hard.
Often.
But it's also wonderful and fun, beautiful and comforting too.

{Thanks Michelle btw for sharing with me.}

So in light of that, I wanted to share about one day last week.
We'd done some maths bookwork in the morning, our afternoon rhythm and some reading together.
We'd had several days of rain {and hail!} and we wanted to make the most of a sun-shiny afternoon.
Liji asked if we could pleeeeeeeeeeeeease go catch some tadpoles!
So off we went.

{When we got to the first place, there was still hail left in HUGE chunks TWO days after it had fallen!!!!!! We couldn't get over it!}

{I love watching our kiddos go off on adventures like this!}

{The water at the first place we went was running a little too quickly so there were no tadpoles around so we decided to go somewhere else}

{Love my Ergo!}

{Zippi loved sloshing about in her boots in the 'muddy puddles' - which of course must be said in your best Peppa Pig voice! lol!}

{Enjoying a short trip to the second spot. By the time we got there the mozzies were out in full force}

{Eagerly they show Brett their 'catch'!}

{You can see the little guy Liji caught in the bottom corner of the bag!}

 

{Ethi asked that a photo of his be taken before being released back into the water}

Now please don't get me wrong.
I'm not sharing this to gain pity or a pat on the back or anything at all like that.
I'm not sharing these things for any other reason than to remind myself, when I look back in years to come, that this was a bit of a pivotal moment for me.
I know that just by talking about our Dominant Story that I am not excused for my poor attitudes or sinful nature.
I constantly ask that Yah would make us more like his son, Yeshua, whom through the Scriptures we see as a perfect example of our Father's nature.
I want to be pruned and become the best parent to our children that I can be.
And so does Brett.

But I guess that while we are working on that, it is a comforting thought that as I remind myself and my family about the positives in our life, I can be leaving us all with happy memories of a dominant story that was full of us being real, learning how to work through life's challenges and loving well.

With love,
Lusi x