Guest Author - Doreen Farrar
There I was, quitting my job and taking on the task of teaching my young son. The professionals were politely skeptical. They had all given up on him when he had become a living dynamo, completely unable to produce "seat work" on command. He had begun to bite, kick, or scratch anyone who came near him. Besides, they asked, what could I teach him? My degree was only in engineering, not something practical, like Educational Theory!
On that day in 1997, our path up the Curriculum Mountain looked impossibly difficult. We'd homeschooled with a prepackaged curriculum two years before, but I had no idea what I should plan to teach my son now. We could afford only the most basic materials--no computers or manipulatives. And, there was no one I could ask for help. Every other homeschooling family in our "circle" had bright, healthy, and attentive children who had no special needs. They were all following a different path than the exotic one that we would have to take.
We had three points in our favor. First, I was stubborn--too stubborn to accept failure. Second, I had seventeen years of "education" and thirty years of voracious reading to mine for lesson material. Third, my son was willing to do anything to stay home. This was crucial; we still use it to motivate ourselves.
If my son had shown any interest in returning to public school during the first year, I would have sent him. The doctors had given him the wrong diagnosis (ADHD instead of autism), and nothing I tried seemed to penetrate the barrier between us. Also, his health had begun to worsen and required constant monitoring. He'd been able to monitor himself during the day, but he'd lost that ability when he regressed. Until he could recover it, I would have to be alert to his condition at all times, no matter what else was happening around us. Can you say "nerve-wracking"?
Fortunately, choosing poverty in a culture that deified financial success simplified our social calendar dramatically. We didn't have to allow time for gymnastics, horseback riding, or martial arts. We didn't need to plan around homeschooling conventions, seminars, class schedules, or birthday parties. We wouldn't even have to schedule "opportunities" for vacation travel, restaurant meals, or the many social and cultural events that so excited our "normal" homeschooling friends.
This simplification of our lives was much more valuable to our program than we realized at the time. With all the opportunities homeschoolers have, it's easy to become over-stimulated. With autism, though, an over-stimulated child will either refuse further input ("shut down") or provide intense input of his own ("melt down"). Outsiders might see these as "willfulness" or "tantrumming", but each is a cry of pain from a child with nothing else left to give. Even with daily contact, it took me several years to see the difference. If we had followed a "normal" homeschooling schedule, our program would have been doomed.
As our homeschooling philosophy developed, our path up the mountain became more navigable. Now, we needed to create our academic program, to add substance and legitimacy to our journey. That part of the story will be covered in Part 3.
