Autism & Homeschooling?

Question

Over the summer, one of my friends moved to a different town, and therefore had to transfer her children to a different school. Her middle son has been diagnosed as autistic, and had a wonderful school program in their last town, but the new town has little to no resources for helping special needs children. He has been placed back into preschool, and she was told that they could only school him for 4 hours a week. In their last town, he was in school half days 4 days a week, so only going 4 hours a week is a HUGE step backwards, and she is considering homeschooling him in addition to what the school can do for him to kind of fill in the gaps. I was wondering if any of you knew of some good hard copy books or resources that she could use? Thanks in advance for any help :)

Answer 1

you might check your local library they can help and if your interested in a program check out www.k12.com my son has crohns awesome program good luck to your friend

Answer 2

I home school my two kids, one with aspergers and one with autism, on the spectrum. It is really amazing how well they learn that way.

So much depends on what level of autism he has, and grade and academic level.

For math, a good program is Math U See, because it's very visual. I think Frontline phonics for reading. For behavior, look at "Work in Progress". At preschool level, those are the basics and the rest if developmental stuff. A good homeschool group could really make or break that program as well, we have two wonderful groups that my kids fit into very well, and the social stuff just works.

As someone else mentioned, it's illegal for a school to say that they only offer X program, according to IDEA, they have to provide what is APPROPRIATE to the child, and there is no way that four hours a week is good prep for school for an autistic child. Thirty hours of school and therapy is appropriate, and what is been proven to work on children with autism. However, she has a fight in front of her for that, we fought for five years before I finally said, i could more effectively homeschool my kids and not have to undo all the stress and mismanagement from our relatively good school.

A bad school, i don't know how horrible that would be.

Answer 3

There are lots of books available for homeschooling, however since I have no idea what academic level he functions at I don't know what to recommend.

Try http://www.rainbowresource.com and request their print catalog, you find a lot in there that seem difficult to locate on the website.

There is also an organization dedicated to homeschooling special needs children, contact them at:

http://www.nathhan.com  

Also check out,

http://www.hslda.org/hs/specialneeds/def...

http://www.brightword.com/homeschooling-...

http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17312...

Answer 4

We homeschool our son who has Asperger's.  It's been a wonderful experience.  

Linguisystems has a lot of fantastic material that is used for Autism.  I highly recommend it!!

www.linguisystems.com

Answer 5

keep him is school for kids with autism need to learn how to work with others and school will do that, but i do think she is on the right track in wanting him to learn at home. People with autism need to be taught in and out of school

Answer 6

Here are some links that may be helpful for homeschooling an autistic child:

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/webl...

http://www.nhen.org/specneed/default.asp...

http://www.thelaboroflove.com/articles/a...

http://www.homeschoolzone.com/add/autism...

http://www.themorningstaracademy.org/art...

Some have links to support groups. Those support groups would undoubtedly be able to recommend resources much better than the general population in Yahoo Answers can.

Answer 7

in my opinion shed get alot more learning from him if shes teaching.i don't know if this is true in your state,but here,parents have the right to choose which program they would like,and the school board provides transportation or pay you so much a mile to drive him yourself(only for special classes)maybe you should check that out or call your school board and let them know you think he is being held up,and he is way to advanced for preschool....the point is to help,not hold back,and school must provide classes for all who qualify......good luck

Answer 8

I am glad to hear she is considering homeschooling as a way to supplement the services from the school and not removing him completely.  As an advocate, and a parent of a child with autism, I generally tell parents to save homeschooling as a last resort.  In most states, if the child is completely disenrolled from the public school system, the child looses access to all services including speech, OT and PT.  As most insurance companies cover very little of these services, removing a child completely from school can leave the family in a tough spot.  However, if she is indeed planning to supplement what he gets at school with additional work at home, that is doable.  The best thing for her to do is look at what he was working on previously and the methods used at his previous school.  From there, she can adapt them to do at home.

I would like to recommend that your friend also insist on an immediate IEP meeting (she should be having one anyway since moving to a new district requires the IEP to be redone in the method specific to that district) and file a formal grievance about this placement.  Her son is loosing way too many hours to simply let it go.  Soon, he will be needing a full time placement and she should start working with the school now.  Many districts like the one she seems to be in have contracts with other districts and even private schools..she needs to find out what happens to kids who require more than the current district has and begin working to get that for her child.

Answer 9

We homeschool our child with Autism (Aspergers). We left the school system when we came to the conclusion that time spent trying to get them to implement the excellent IEP was time spent away from helping our child progress in life. With homeschooling, we can cater the social experiences to help him grow, and prepare for adult life. Our child is around other people every day, and is not isolated at home. There are a lot of people who successfully homeschool their children within the entire range of autism. I've spent  a lot of time advocating for my child, and other people's children, and am very aware of the law. Unfortunately, my child didn't have time for me to continually go through the process of making sure he was getting what he needed when he was at school, and continually having to work at it, yet never have it remotely close to where it needed to be. The pleasant surprise we've had since we started homeschooling is that WE LOVE THE LIFESTYLE, and now homeschool all of our kids. We vacation during the off season, have tons more time for a social life, more time for extracurriculars, and can cater the academics to where our kids are. I highly encourage your friend to explore the lifestyle of homeschooling.

  For resources, order a catalog from Rainbow Resources, they have a ton of stuff from many different curriculum providers.

Answer 10

Homeschooling

1. National Home Education Network

2. Help Your Child Explore Science

3. Natural Child Project

4. Family Unschoolers Network

5. Homeschool Groups

6. The Highschool Homeschooling Page

7. Homeschool Headlines

8. Home School Teachers Lounge

9. The Home School Zone

http://www.fi.edu/tfi/hotlists/education...

HOME SCHOOLING.

http://www.homeschool.com/

http://www.hslda.org

http://homeschooling.about.com/od/curric...

http://www.homefires.com/

Homeschool.com also has the following information available free of charge:

http://homeschooling.gomilpitas.com/inde...

http://www.thehomeschoolmom.com/

http://www.home-schooling-advice.net/

http://www.canteach.ca/links/linkhomesch...

http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/p...

http://www.teachnlearn.org/index.htm