End of an Era

Well, tomorrow my baby girl goes off to College for her Taster Day, preparation for when she starts her Painting & Decorating Course in September.

This is a huge step for B. She has been out of mainstream education for 6 years now so there are lots of challenges ahead for her.

For the most part, she has so far handled it all pretty well. We've had the drama of not being able to find workwear small enough for her size 6 frame but we did eventually find a boilersuit that fits her about 95%! As anyone reading this, whose child suffers with the dreaded oversensitivity to clothing, knows only too well, not only did we have to find something that fit but something that wouldn't send her into Sensory Overload. For the last 6 years we haven't had much issue with clothing, mostly because on those days when it was an issue, she simply stayed home in her pj's!

She has to be there for 9am sharp tomorrow morning and this is another huge challenge! I know some of you will be smiling here too, knowing how Time and SPD are not the best of friends!

College is a big deal for most of our teenagers. A new environment where they are encouraged to make their own decisions instead of being told what to do and when to do it, can be a daunting prospect. Add SPD into the mix and it can be an incredibly stressful prospect.

She even said to me the other day, that she wondered what she was thinking, could she really pull this off, could she actually do the Course? My reply? You don't know until you try and if you don't try, you'll only regret it later. Just think, if you can pull it off... the world is your oyster! And if you can't... well at least you gave it a damn good try and we'll just sit down and have a rethink, it's not the end of the world.

Wish us luck
Till next time
B's Mum

Don’t you know it’s important to have an education?

Don’t you know it’s important to have an education?

You are ruining your chances of getting a job.

Why don’t you have lessons?

It’s important to go to school.

You are ruining your life…

I swear if I hear these phrases one more time I will scream!

‘B’ belongs to several websites, some of which she plays on, others she chats on, like most kids her age. She has made friends with a few people but she has become very hesistant to mention that she is home-educated when they ask what she did at school, why she is up so late on a school night etc. etc. Why? Because as soon as she mentions it, she is bombarded with these types of questions or negative comments.

They simply won’t respect that everyone has a choice and this is our choice (note I said OUR choice). She has to justify why and how and what she is doing. Most seem to think she is ruining her life. They simply don’t get it…

Initially I pulled ‘B’ out of school because they clearly had no idea how to help children on the spectrum survive the school system, their so-called experts not having a clue about the intracacies of our children’s lives, trying with all their might to tick those precious boxes they love so much. But to be honest, the deeper I dug the more disillusioned I became with the whole education system, most of it based on targets and budgets. I wanted my child to be able to have her own opinion, I wanted her to feel she has some value to add to society instead of constantly being compared to her peers in terms of what they deemed as successful. I wanted her to be able to solve problems, to think outside the box, to learn through investigation and experience, to be able to understand the true function or importance of something in relation to the real world. I wanted her to be… well quite simply… herself!

These people get very angry with her because she doesn’t have traditional lessons. Her learning is embedded into activities, we have no need for lessons. They condemn her because she isn’t taking exams. She finds it all overwhelming… we never ask them to justify why they feel the need to go to school, doubtless if we did ask them, the reply would be something along the lines of ‘Because that’s what I’m told to do, that’s what we are meant to do.’ Some of them have turned quite nasty and been very unkind to her… she is neither stupid or idle!

As the saying goes, there’s more than one way to skin a cat and that’s the premise we are working on… we didn’t go into this blindly, we know what we are doing. For example, she is only 12 but we have already put the wheels in motion for long-term work experience once she is 14 (health and safety rules). She has many ideas of her own how to secure self-employment, even at this age. I have faith in her, she isn’t going to rot on the heap, she knows it takes hard work and she’s willing to do it too. She also knows that to be successful isn’t dependent on how much you earn or what kind of house you live in or car you drive, it’s much more than that.

And to be honest, if you ask around, alot of home-educators, like myself, are teachers anyway. What does that say about the education system?

HOME-EDUCATING AND PROUD TO BE DOING SO!

Till next time

‘B’s Mum

Rome wasn’t built in a day

OK, so although school started this week, we haven’t started home-ed yet…

‘B’ needs time… time to adjust. Remember we’ve only just decided to home-ed. I think the reality of it kicked in (for both us) on Tuesday. We were getting ready to drop ‘B’s dad off to do a Mind Body Spirit Fayre, we were loading up the car and I think it was then that ‘B’ noticed everyone going to school (and it hit home). Me, I had to shake the feeling that she wasn’t ‘skiving’, I know it sounds silly, but I did have to remind myself that I don’t have to run around in the shadows, I can stand tall and proud and say ‘we home-ed’ if anyone challenges us.

It was then that I realised how much conditioning has been going on, for all of us. We need time to get our heads out of the traditional educational pattern and get ourselves into our pattern, and that our pattern is going to be ‘B’-shaped! What does ’B’-shape look like? Mmm, kinda random and certainly unusual!!!!

At the end of last week I was convinced I needed to be more organised and get some sort of semblance of order if this was going to work. Today I’m thinking, why on earth did I think that? We don’t have to follow any timetable or curriculum, we can literally just go with the flow…

We’ve already experienced a certain amount of liberation from our previous constraints, in the form of ‘B’s newly opened willingness to try new things and her new found ability to be able to get into the car and actually go somewhere without having a panic attack or not being able to get out of the bathroom until she’d been to the toilet 20 times (and then if she lost count we would have to start again or in most cases just give up and stay home). We went to Southwold’s Maize Maze and had a wonderful time, it’s been sooo long since we’ve been able to go anywhere further than 20 minutes away, in fact, that outing has turned into one of our first home-ed projects, she took loads of photos and asked loads of questions… this is a way she enjoys learning…

’B’ was also a stickler for routine, as with most children with any type of Autistic tendencies. Again this hit me out of the blue, a new word for us… spontaneity. Yes, we have achieved this a few times already. I think I’m beginning to see the full impact of the stress she’s been under, I knew she struggled with school, but I’m seeing a whole new ‘B’ emerging already, things can only get better right? I’d rather have a happy laid-back ’B’ than the little girl that was around this time last year!

As my title says, Rome wasn’t built in a day… we just need a little time.

I’ve a feeling we’re going to be OK.

Till next time
‘B’s Mum