The Lesgaux School

I just heard a sound coming from the purple bathroom. (Yes, we actually have a purple bathroom.) It was the sound of the toilet flushing. What’s so notable about that, you say? Well, my just turned 4 year old has a hard time remembering to do this. All day long, he screams "I have to go potty". I reply that the bathroom is down the hall. Minutes later, he returns and I say "Please flush." This happens over, and over, and over again, ALL DAY LONG! Just now I heard the toilet flush. I never knew he was even in the potty. I only heard the blissful sound of the flush. Good boy, R!

T woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. It was not even 10 am and he was growling at everyone. When I asked him to narrate his first reading, the tears came quickly. Normally, I would work with him on the material until he was able to give an acceptable narration. Often, his stubbornness and my demands for perfection would drive both of us to tears.

Today, though, I tried a different tack. Today, I was able to stop viewing his tears and refusals as a behavior issue. This is something that I know intellectually that one shouldn’t do with someone on the autistic spectrum. Try as I may, I always fall into that authoritarian parenting style.

Today, I did a few things differently. First, I backed off. I acknowledged that he was feeling down today, and that , like  Alexander, "Some days are like that…even in Australia." We talked about whether it was the schoolwork that was making him sad, or whether it was something else. Turns out, it was both. The something else was just a sadness that he was unable to pinpoint. When he said that he couldn’t do any school work today, I said that that was OK.

Secondly, I encouraged him to find something to lift his mood. I gave him some examples of things I do when I’m in a bad mood. I knit, read, take a bath, do yoga, etc. I suggested that he wrap his brother’s birthday present, to which he readily agreed. Wrapping gifts is not his forte, and he needed help, but he was willing to give it a try.

After that, I gently encouraged him to look over his school schedule and decide what things he thought he could accomplish. In the end, he read a chapter from Little Pilgrim’s Progress, completed two pages of Greek, and practiced piano. This is not anywhere near a full day’s work for T. However, his mood was improved FOR THE REST OF THE DAY! Folks, this is big. T’s bad moods can last decades.

I hope I can remember what I did today so I can repeat it. We’ll try that reading again another day.

On another note, my baby turned 4 today! Happy Birthday, R!

Not much happening here. School’s on schedule, nothing earth-shattering.

I’ve decided that Tuesday afternoons will be our errand days. Today we went to the post office and to the fabric store. One cushion of our sofa is wearing out, and since there is no $$ to fix it, a patch will have to do. I bought some, hopefully, matching denim fabric and some fusible cloth to patch where the tapestry is falling apart. I really love the tapestry, a scene of an English fox hunt, but it’s not possible to match it. Instead, I’m matching the fabric with the rest of the couch.

We just made a batch of brownies, the kids are settled in to watch a bit of PBS, and I’m off for a teeny, tiny nap before I have to make supper. We’re watching NOVA tonight, so dinner needs to be over by 7. 

Tomorrow, we hope to try homeschool chess club. Details on that later.

I frequent a number of blogs, mostly in the categories of homeschooling, autism, housekeeping/organization, life hacks, and personal finance. Occasionally, a post crosses from area of interest to another.  One blog I read regularly is The Simple Dollar. On it, Trent recently wrote a very good article on cultural literacy.

Wikipedia defines Cultural Literacy as

"… the ability to converse fluently in the idioms, allusions and informal content which creates and constitutes a dominant culture. From being familiar with street signs to knowing historical reference to understanding the most recent slang, literacy demands interaction with the culture and reflection of it. A knowledge of a canonical set of literature is not valuable when engaging with others in a society if the knowledge stops at the end of the text – as life is interwoven with art, expression, history and experience, cultural literacy requires the broad range of trivia and the use of that trivia in the creation of a communal language and a collective knowledge. Cultural literacy stresses the knowledge of those pieces of information which content creators will assume the audience already possesses."

This is an invaluable life skill that we as homeschoolers must not neglect. In many ways, we, as homeschool educators have more chances to teach Cultural Literacy than do public educators, who have to keep their numbers, meaning test scores, up. We have all day, every day to point out items that are worthy of being known to our children, as well as modeling the skill by engaging in a little research ourselves. Check out Trent’s blog and this post in particular.

Happy Reading!

They say that one way to help a person keep a New Year’s resolution is to write it down and tell others. I only have two:

1. Yoga/exercise on my yoga mat daily for up to 1 hour. I’ll work up to a full hour. For now, I’m focusing on just forming the habit of doing it.
2. Writing at least 1 sentence on my blog or in my journal every day.

That’s it. Nothing fancy. Maybe that way they’ll actually become part of my life.

I haven’t posted much lately on T and his struggles. Sometimes, it seems that our day to day struggles are just too private. We have to deal with T’s difficulties daily and often in public. I constantly find myself defending T’s behaviors or our family’s choices, which are often based upon T’s needs. For instance, our family doesn’t go to big city festivals; we spend July 4th at home, watching fireworks on TV. We don’t frequent malls. We never go to the movies as a family. In fact, none of the boys has even sat through more than the first preview; we had to leave because it was intolerably loud. After more than 2 years at our church, T still won’t sit with us in the sanctuary, preferring instead to stand against the back wall. Only in the last month has he been comfortable going to his religious education classes at church without me sitting in or just outside the classroom. So, you see, by the time I post here, my emotions are raw. I would prefer to post about other things.

Last year, we tried several "interventions" to help T. He attended weekly counseling for a year. He attended summer classes to improve his social communication skills. We tried some new supplemental curricula to help him in his weak areas. Finally, we enrolled him in one-on-one speech therapy sessions to continue the work that we had begun in the summer.

As time went on, T’s behavior plummeted. We pulled him out of counselling at his request. We also pulled him from his speech therapy because he had dug his heels in and refused to participate. His Daddy and I felt that he was only going to profit from the sessions if he actually participated. Plus, with money being tight, we could not justify the high copays if he wasn’t improving or at least trying. Upon discontinuing the speech therapy and counseling, his behavior improved  dramatically. He smiled more. He acted responsibly, completing his chores and school without a fuss. He became more outgoing at church, actually looking people in the eye, shaking their hands and engaging in small talk. He no longer scowled all day. Last night, he enjoyed fireworks at a friends house for New Year’s Eve. He really enjoyed them!

Now the initial effects are fading somewhat. His main problem is that he seems to totally lack respect for others and their feelings. Don’t get me wrong, most of the time he is a delight to be around. But when he chooses to be ugly, he is very ugly. He speaks disrespectfully to me and his Daddy and treats his brothers worse than slime. I want to squash the disagreeable behaviors without losing the great strides he has made. I’m not very consistent when it comes to charts, stickers, allowances and the like, and so don’t use those methods much. I’ve been trying to give him more chances to try activities that take more responsibility. He has recently learned how to scramble and fry eggs, and has made two cakes from scratch (with supervision, of course).

I don’t know what to do. I want to help him become an adult, but sometimes, I just don’t know how. I really wish there were a manual, or a help file at the very least.  Sigh…