Learning to Learn

Posted on October 28, 2012 by B's Dad

This post is now available in the ‘Life with an Autistic Son’ ebook available to download from Amazon.

This entry was posted in asd, aspergers, autism and tagged asd, aspergers, autism, disability, parenting, special needs. Bookmark the permalink.

5 Responses to Learning to Learn

Beyond the Masquerade says:

October 28, 2012 at 9:18 am

Ah yes, then there is the time when your child is sent home with work they should have completed in class, only for you to spend all evening trying to get it done and handed back the next day.
We didn’t get very far with the sentences in yr one, we just concentrated on the words, however, now in yr 4 we split them out into days and although extremely messy, they do get done. There’s improvement, gradually, and it’s encouraging to see how much they progress. 🙂

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thebear says:

October 28, 2012 at 10:09 am

mmmmm the sentences await us too after the halloween break . could be interesting .however our small boy loves maltesers too.

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StephsTwoGirls says:

October 28, 2012 at 10:12 am

So true. And scarily similar to my experiences with my Year 1 girl. Although to be honest, I’m lucky if I can get her to agree to sit down and attempt to write a spelling – the teachers certainly can’t. They have resorted to doing it on the class ipad with her. Anything that helps her learn is fine by me. Our numeracy meeting is coming up soon, but think I’ve crossed it off my calendar. I was a bit disheartened by the literacy meeting where they told me the words they were giving out were easy at the stage. Easy for the masses maybe, but not my ASD girl. Ho hum. At least she likes numbers 🙂 Sounds like B is getting along fine at the moment, and you’re doing a great job! p.s. laughed out loud at the fat and toothless.. my daughter will soon look like a chip I’m sure!

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Mark says:

October 30, 2012 at 9:55 am

Our 4 year old son C is in reception class and has been getting homework for the past 6 weeks. What we find hard with the homework for C is that he is so tired after school he is unable to concentrate to do the reading ( picture book Chip and Kip) and we have refusals more often than not to do the homework, It is also hard for C twin brother B because if we try to do his homework C needs to be involved in a destructive rather than helpful way. The daily challenge my wife has with C class teacher is something I am grateful I do not have to deal with I think we would have had a full blown argument as the teacher seems to think that Autism does not exist or she just nods and just says what we want her to say without actually following up on this. I take B and C to school with my wife on a Tuesday and find this very annoying every week. C is lucky though that his Teaching Assistant is a treasure and the other teacher in the class has a Older Autistic Son and the school on the whole do everything they can. My older son with Autism 12 years old has not had 1 piece of Homework but is doing so much better last term so next week after the break to challenge them on his Homework.

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Donna M says:

May 4, 2013 at 12:00 pm

I’m catching up on your wonderful blog. Our son started in a special needs school this September and its been absolutely wonderful. He is so happy and relaxed. He’s academically very able, and is now actually learning to that ability now the autism needs are being catered for. It’s worked for us. He’s the normal child in the playground there. This is wonderful for him. His anxiety has diminished so much, as, of course, has ours. It took 3 years to get him in there and we had all the same concerns that being with “more disabled” children would somehow make him worse, or that if he stayed in mainstream the “normality” would somehow rub off on him. As if that would ever happen with an autistic child. He is much, MUCH more “normal” now, because he is happier and spends all day somewhere that makes sense to him. I’ve got my boy back. I no longer want to kill myself rather than pick him up from school. The other parents don’t hate us. And our son is looking after and showing empathy and compassion for the children less able than he is – what a lesson for him. And how wonderful to be one of the more able children in the school (although behaviour wise this is not the case, years of one-to-one and opting out of difficult and group activities in mainstream rather than helping him find ways to deal with those activities have built up a lot of anger and other rproblems). I personally can’t see how mainstream schooling is helpful for children with the social difficulties of autism, but this is clearly based on our families very painful experiences. Also, it is so very very hard to get them into a special school. Our sons increasing violence made him so unwelcome in school that they went all out to support our arguments, which helped. I know parents of more placid and inward looking autistic children who are less disruptive to the rest of the class who have not been so lucky. O is in a class of 9 now, all with autism and similar to him. He’s in year 3.

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