Sorry, guys, I've just gotta let this out today - mostly just to organize my thoughts:
Thomas is scheduled to start Kindergarten this summer.
For those who don't know, he is currently in a full-day preschool at a school for children with Autism. He was the only child in his class whose parents didn't apply for the kindergarten there.
We don't know what to do about kindergarten, quite frankly.
I thought that school would be the best situation for him as long as he was happy and had a good setup. They have routines - he loves routines and it's hard to have strict routines at home - stuff WILL come up (case in point: 2008 so far).
I feel a little bad about sending him to school when we don't send Princess and aren't planning on sending Monkey. But as I've said, that is a choice we make individually for each of our children.
I thought that I'd like to keep Thomas home at some point - maybe after he's had a few years of schooling under his belt, hopefully at that point his attention span would be a little better, and he'd know how to read (I'm not scared of teaching him to read - he's starting to - he just doesn't like to sit and work on it with me at home).
I feel entirely different about that now. I stumbled upon this book called Home Educating Our Autistic Spectrum Children on Amazon, and luckily, my library had it. It was quite good. Surprisingly helpful. Set up as the stories of 15 or so families and their experiences and why they started homeschooling their Autistic spectrum (nearly all were Asperger's) children. What was really helpful was that their children were older than mine, and most of them were pulled out of school at some point. You could see the problems the kids had had in school - and so many of them had similar problems - some of which we've already seen with Thomas/his school this year. It really flipped my viewpoint completely. (Side note - one of the homeschooling books that really helped us decide to do it was set up in a similar way - just lots of families stories. All different, none that I related or agreed with completely, no preaching - but very helpful all the same - and I can't remember the title...).
This book made me re-evaluate our decision to keep Thomas in school. All of the kids in the book learned so much better without all the classroom distractions and more one-on-one attention. Also, in our area they teach reading using the whole-language (sight reading) method, which I strongly disagree with (Phonics! Phonics!). Thomas is getting both. At home we work on phonics, but at school they are using the Edmark program, which is sight reading. So why do I want him to learn reading at school? I don't!
Like many of the children in the book (and many children with no delays or diagnoses, actually), many days Thomas has meltdowns after school. He works hard at his behavior and ignoring the overstimulation at school which just takes up all his energy, and when he's home he lets go. This happens nearly every Sunday as well - his behavior at church is getting better and better - but when he gets home he's done. Usually when he's home for a long-weekend or has a school break he's a happier kid overall. Not so many meltdowns.
In our situation, there are three choices for Kindergarten: homeschool, mainstream, or 'diagnostic kindergarten' (a special ed kindergarten class). We've had some issues with Thomas mimicking his lower-functioning classmates. He needs to be around non-delayed peers for social modeling, his teachers and the district agree. So that knocks out option 3. I just had a meeting with the school psychologist at his possibly soon-to-be new school. I walked in thinking 'Well, he may not even go to school, but I'm not going to tell her that - I need to see all the options', and walked out thinking 'Wow, this might work for him.'
And now I have no idea what to do. More and more, as positive as the counselor made the situation seem, I'm thinking that it might not work out. He'd be in a large room divided into two classrooms - each with at least 25 kids. There is one kindergarten aide who divides her time between three classrooms (but supposedly they have a lot of parent volunteers). Right now Thomas is used to a classroom with 10 children and 5 teachers. Yeah. He seems to go in cycles - I've
mentioned this before - but up and down and up and down. Sometimes we
realize what triggers an 'off' time, but usually not. He's going to
have 'off' times in Kindergarten - can they handle that? He's a great kid. He's smart and capable, but he requires a little more direction most of the time.
I've also realized that my expectations for my child in school are simply too high. I didn't think that they were, but this year has been an eye-opener. I want him to be happy and challenged. That's it. But he's not getting it at his school now, and I can't imagine that he'll get what he needs at this public school.
There is some major thinking (and praying) that needs to be done here. I have to admit that it's nice to have some quieter time to spend with the other children when Thomas is at school. I have to admit that I don't know exactly how it's all going to work if he stays home.
But I also have to admit that my heart is just not into sending my boy to school - again - he's been in some kind of early-intervention or preschool class since he was 2.
****
PRO:
only 3 hours a day
less structured and less intense than his preschool
he might like it
social interaction
year-round school means 'off-track' time for breaks
we could pull him out if it's not working
CON:
he might not be able to handle that much stimulation
he might be frustrated by his fine-motor skill issues
his teacher might not be able to handle him
year-round school means 'off-track' time for breaking routines
teasing?
(note to self: go observe the kindergarten class in session!)
