Shana Tova! Happy Jewish new year to you all. I’ve been doing a bit of vlogging on Facebook, and decided to do my next post in this style too. We’re homeschooling our son who has Asperger’s and I’ve been getting a lot of questions about that. So here I explain. It was easier to do verbally than in writing. One thing I forgot to mention in the video that the scholarship we use for homeschooling here in Ohio is called the Autism Scholarship, and is available to kids who don’t attend public school. Enjoy! You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel and get notified whenever I post a video.
Kol hakavod for finding what works and making it happen. Shana tova!
I don't mean to trivialize a very important video, Ruchi, but now I've heard you say your name I realize I've been saying it wrong – I was thinking of it as 'Roo-shee' this whole time.
I realized at some point along the way that people who see my name online only are definitely going to get it wrong! So you're in good company.
finally made time to watch. amazing! Questions because I'm curious and love your family and if anything is none of our beezwax just forget I asked! 🙂
1) what are you doing for social skills? I find the biggest challenge for spectrum kids is the practice of social skills in a facilitated environment. How does he practice his social goals with a group of kids (assuming social goals are part of the IEP)?
2) Does he have the same tutor for 30 hours each week, or a few different ones? What curriculum is being used—- do YOU plan the lessons, or do the tutors? Are the tutors Jewish and teach limudei kodesh, or do you and your husband do that outside of the 30 hours? Is the tutor trained by Building Blocks as a behavior aide, but has the knack for teaching? Or is it someone who is an ex teacher who is a newer behavior aide? I think you have to be super lucky to get someone who can do typical ABA tutoring **and** homeschooling. You're amazing that you've found that person (or group of people).
3) You have an insurance that pays for some ABA? Here in Ohio? How did you luck into that? Did you get your insurance through the marketplace? We're using Building Blocks too and the only way we can pay for it is a waiver for which we sat on a wait list and only one kid has it— the other kiddo is still waiting for a way for us to get it (we can't use ASP because they're in public school).
4) For IEP progress reports and homeschooling paperwork with the district, etc— is that all on you, or on Building Blocks?
This is fascinating. So far, we're happy with public school (aside from the lack of limudei kodesh) but I'm so intrigued by this. Kudos for making the best plan with and for your son!
Thank you! Once I blogged about it I sort of made it everyone's business 🙂
The socialization piece is probably the most commonly asked question I get. You have to consider that he wasn't getting any proper socialization at school because everything was either too overwhelming or negative. There were small pockets of time here and there where he was able to socialize with his peers but it was still under the facilitation of a therapist at school and he couldn't do it on his own.
What we are trying to focus on is the kind of socialization that will be necessary as a grown up adult as opposed to things that only children have to deal with in an unnatural environment where only extroverts are primed to succeed. And there are many kids who are neurologically typical who find the socialization aspect at school overwhelming. We are creating situations for socialization through homeschooling by having him go on trips to libraries and museums where he has to communicate with other people.
He has to go into stores and ask for things and pay for things. These are the kinds of socializing that he is going to have to do one day in the real world. We are also using the dog (off school time) to have kids over and this is a huge piece of his socialization.
He has two different tutors, 1 in the morning for regular studies and one in the afternoon for Judaics. The academic plan is created by the therapy program with input from me. The Judaic segment is taught by a rabbi. He has been trained by building blocks. We first chose who we wanted as his rabbi and then had him trained through building blocks. Our hope is that if this person works out he can move on with our son for each year of school and become his person and hopefully mentor.
Insurance. That is a very long story but basically we were kicked off of our insurance and there were four months that our kids were uninsured due to a government snafu. Because of this we had to buy new insurance which covered a lot of the autism services!
The progress reports and homeschooling paperwork is mostly on building blocks with a little input from us.