An Education in Humor: Keep it SOFT

My younger son (now 11) is working on telling jokes. He’s working on being funny overall, but specifically, he’s creating his own jokes. I’d like to report they are hilarious, appropriate works of humor art, but they aren’t. Yes, he says some hilarious stuff. Some of that is even intended to be funny. He has an odd sense of humor based on obscure historical references, plays on words, politics, and body humor, sometimes all in the same joke.

After a few months of watching his joke telling in horror and fascination, I decided it was time to take action and help the boy along with this budding desire to be intentionally funny. Together, we created a screening tool for jokes, which, with a bit of creativity, lent itself to a memorable acronym:  SOFT. Each humor intent is screened for SOFT criteria, with input from any impartial observers who are in on the system welcome.

S: Does the joke make sense? So many jokes fail this first test. Like most of us, my younger’s mind wanders to odd places that make sense to him but not to others. Like a few less of us, he fails to see that what makes sense to him might not make sense to someone else. That’s a hard skill to teach, and while he is growing in his understanding that different people think different thoughts, his sense of humor has yet to reflect that new knowledge. Now, I’m okay with not fully understanding the sense of humor of an eleven year old boy. I also understand that sometimes I’m missing something, so I ask my older son, 15, if the joke makes sense to him. If it fails both of us, no dice.

O: Is the joke offensive? Oh, this is a minefield. There are two questions here: Is the joke potentially offensive in content to anyone anywhere? If so, the second question is asked. Is the joke potentially offensive to anyone in listening range? When you assume everyone around you shares your political views and it’s election season, one can make frequent mistakes with the second question. I’ve leaned toward giving very specific feedback on this point, such as, “This is a joke you can tell around your brother and I at home when no one else is in the house.” Before we have house guests, we’ll often review what passes and what doesn’t by genre: body humor (not with Grandma), politics (yes, I give names), religion (similar list, but with additions) and current events (generally the same set of names as politics). He’s made strides in this area but tends to err on the side that everyone he knows shares his opinion on the above issues unless he’s been expressly told they don’t. Let me just apologize now.

F: Is the joke funny? Sometimes they just aren’t. Often the ones that aren’t funny also don’t make sense, but there are many that meet one criteria but not the other. This is definitely subjective and not a terribly big deal, as long as the lack of funniness isn’t because someone found the joke offensive. This is a minor criteria, given getting a blank look from his audience doesn’t really faze him. Score one for underdeveloped facial expression reading. Unless he’s told, he’s pretty sure he was funny, no matter how people respond.

T: Does the joke have good timing? A joke told about a conversation that ended five minutes earlier (or even two minutes earlier) falls flat, and given his rather reflective thinking style, this happens quite a bit. That timing faux pas isn’t a big deal but is worth gentle guidance. (Late jokes are an interruption in the conversation at hand. We’re working on interrupting, too.) Timing matters in other ways. A joke told in the middle of class may be funny, make sense, and not be offensive, but it doesn’t belong in the middle of class.  Along a similar vein, some (okay, most) body humor jokes just don’t have a place at the dinner table.

These four easy-to-remember criteria aren’t a miracle cure for all humor errors, but they are providing guidance. When he’s on the verge of a joke, I’ll sometimes interrupt and ask, “Is it SOFT?” That can sometimes be enough to avoid serious social discomfort for the mother of the teller and the recipient. Is this a selfish system, designed to protect me from embarrassment? A bit, perhaps. But it also informs him of the very social norms that elude him so often. It’s another reminder that all of our minds work differently as well as a gentle nudge to a more gentle, considerate way of being in the world. Asperger’s or not, it’s likely helpful for plenty of kids and some adults who might want to make sure a joke is appropriate before launching it. Try it with your own kids or someone else in your life in need of guidance, and let me know how it goes.

Preliminary Planning for 2012/13: My Younger

It’s that time of year. May. The time of year when I can’t stand one more minute of homeschooling and just want to be done. It’s the point when we’re almost done with most of the books and classes we started the semester with and have even moved on to new material in some, vamping a bit for the last few months of the school year. (This always seems to happen with math.) It’s also the time to set the fall schedule for the classes and events that happen outside of our walls, and given that’s going on, I might as well make some selections for home, too. Here’s what I have so far.

A.B. (11, 6th grade)

Math: After a fair amount of angst, we settled on continuing with Singapore Math for secondary mathematics study.  We’re a few chapters into Discovering Mathematics 1A, which contains a fair amount of review for him on subjects covered in The Algebra Survival Guide but with far more depth and extensions. Our pace is a lesson a day, with a day at the end of each chapter to play with the more challenging problems in the workbook and a day for the end of chapter test.  Taking tests is new for him, and he’s still pretty anxious about that process, but since that’s the only hiccup thus far, I’m giving DM a thumbs up.  We’re still plugging away at Singapore Challenging Word Problems 6 as well, and I keep a stack of alternative math options on the shelf for his more anxious days when “regular” math just isn’t doable.

Language Arts:  A.B. will continue with Michael Clay Thompson’s Word Within the Word and Magic Lens series via Online G3, this year studying the second level. This program of study (both the books and online class) work wonderfully for him. For literature, he’ll pick one the Hewitt Lightning Literature classes Online G3 offers, most likely Mid to Late 19th Century American Literature.  That course’s reading selections seem accessible given his age (and I’m fairly sure some of the selections in British Lit, like Jane Eyre, would not be enjoyable reads for him). He’s determined to participate in NaNoWriMo 2012 and plans to continue to write on his blog. I’ll likely try to broaden his writing beyond these forums, but he’s a strong enough writer that I’m willing to largely follow his lead and work my agenda into his.  I’m considering signing him up for WriteGuide for the second half of the school year with the aim of strengthening his fiction writing.  Finally, since he enjoys Steck Vaughn Spelling, he’ll proceed to level six in that series.

History: In fall, he’ll take the last of the American History classes from Online G3 this fall. This course covers the Civil War and the rest of the last half of the 19th century using Joy Hakim’s History of US books.  He has his eyes on her Government class for the following spring. The first semester, he’ll also take Coursera’s A History of the World Since 1300, a free online class from Princeton University.  History is his favorite subject and one of his career aspirations (historian and college professor vs lawyer), so plenty of new ideas in this area are key to his happiness.

Science: This year is physical science with a focus on physics. Middle School Chemistry provided a sound base in that portion of the physical sciences, so I’d like not to belabor that end of the subject. He’ll be studying with a friend, although what text or supports we’ll use are to be determined. Any suggestions for a text are welcome!

The Rest: He’ll continue piano lessons and daily practice, and at this point, he’d like to attend Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp in the summer of 2013 for further piano study. We’ll see where that drive goes come the new year. For physical education, he’ll continue to fence, a sport that replaces karate for him as of the last five months. Lessons are twice a week, and eventually, he should be ready for a few tournaments. He’s interested in becoming a fencing director (think ref), which is a path open to him as well. He loves rules and the enforcement of them, so this seems a reasonable pursuit. We’re still discussing foreign language options. He’s interested in German. I know none and have no desire to learn it. He might play with it via Rosetta Stone this summer and see if that mode of learning works for him. It was not a good match with my older son, but these boys are wired completely differently, so I’m willing to give it a try.

As always, we’re working on communication and social skills. I’m not using any formal materials for this but rather continually discussing the nuances of the conversation, friendships, and general relations between people. We have a few resources on the shelves for this purpose, but they just seem to sit. We do post-mortems on situations, with a mix of trouble-shooting and celebration of successes and will continue this process.

As always, ideas are welcome. What are your plans for fall?

Studying War

We watch a fair number of documentaries. Since my older was three, we’ve taken in shows about birds, oceans, presidents, volcanoes, Gandhi, the brain, quantum physics, archeological finds, and much more. For the last several years, however, most of our watching is history related. Humans being what they are, this much of this fare includes war. From ancient Roman warfare to Britain’s battles with everyone, from Troy to World War II, we’ve seen an astounding amount of footage, recreated and actual, depicting humans at their most violent.

It’s enough to make a peace-loving mom turn off the TV and stop paying the Netflix bill.

My younger son, well on his way to eleven, is my historian. I’ve written before about his methods of self-studying history. He is a master at integrating information from books, internet resources, and videos and then processing it with solitary re-enactment, writing (check out his blog), and long discussions/monologues with anyone willing to listen (read: generally mom, who is searching for others to help carry this rather heavy load). As he ages, I allow him to self-select his reading but do strew potentially useful books in his path and often read aloud historical fiction he’d be less likely to pick up on his own. But unless I know the video he’s about to view, I watch it with him or at least remain in earshot.

When watching, he seats himself on the love seat (aka “war seat”) in front of a table with either Risk board or Axis and Allies board atop it.  Sometimes he’s playing himself, but often he’s either reenacting a battle or just trying out strategies. History reruns play as background noise for his internal thoughts and external game playing. He’ll pick a specific episode of The Revolution, for example, and watch and play for 45 minutes. Often his seat contains favorite history books on the subject before him, just in case more information is required.

New videos require the same seating arrangement but are generally watched more closely, although I suspect his boards and pieces offer some escape from what is either dull or a bit too graphic. As his understanding of history has deepened, we’ve progressed to some video choices that are, frankly, disturbing at times. Ken Burns’ recent offering, The War, consists of 900 minutes of riveting but intense coverage of the effects of World War II in Europe, Asia, and in the US. No, it’s not children’s fare. Yes, I watched every minute, monitoring his face and verbally checking in as we went along. Sometimes I found him watching his board, but generally his head was up. Many times I considered hitting the fast forward button, but I instead let a fine documentary carry its message. To break the tension I often felt, we watched in smaller bites, often taking in only 30 minutes at a time. I don’t know about him, but I needed the breaks to digest what I’d seen and heard.

After we watched, we’d talk, my younger, my older and I. My younger’s knowledge of the war was already broad and deep, but the video’s focus on segregation in Mobile, Alabama, internment camps in the Philippines and in the US, and more took him from a battle-focused understanding to a greater appreciation of the world at that time. We talked about fairness and hard choices, about absolute rights and wrongs. He expressed dismay at the civilian deaths in Germany and Japan caused by ally forces and was utterly silenced at the images of the liberation of the camps in Germany and Poland. We talked and talked. Genocide. Just war. Nuclear bombs. Choices, justice, and human rights. There was simply so much to discuss.

When we received an invitation to watch a series on the Vietnam War at a friend’s house, I thought hard before offering the opportunity to my younger son. For years, we watched only documentaries with rather tame reenactment of times long before video cameras went to the battlefield. The War was our first foray into more graphic coverage, but most was still in black and white, which did little to blunt the gore. Vietnam footage would be in color and likely of higher quality, bringing grisly images into even sharper focus.  He’d read fairly extensively about Vietnam, however, and I would be there if needed. I offered, and he eagerly accepted. For a few days, he waited impatiently for the first of the three two-hour gatherings.

So last night we joined three other families who make up part of my older son’s homeschooling high school cohorts to watch the first two episodes of Vietnam in HD.  It was new viewing for all of us, saved from fall for when those in a US History class reached this point of time. By ten minutes in, I knew we were not settling down to a balanced, full account of the Vietnam war. Instead, we witnessed two hours of choppily-cut, full-color (but grainy) battle footage interspersed with cuts to men who had fought discussing their experience. There was almost no historical content in those hours,  but there was a total disregard for the citizens of Vietnam then and now. Only 30 seconds of footage of the growing unrest in the US about the war made it to these hours, and the discontent was brushed off as a failure to understand the greater good of the war. Ken Burns this was not.

In addition to being hawkish and painfully unbalanced, the film was boring. I don’t care for war documentaries overall. What makes them palatable for me is the treatment of the war in context, with attention to both sides to the conflict that acknowledges the horror that always accompanies any violent conflict. Vietnam in HD lacked all that. I’m fairly certain that its intended purpose was not to offer that view and understanding but rather to project an image of success, somehow sanctifying the deaths of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians.

Near the end, someone asked about the ending. “We won!” announced one child. Moms collectively shook their heads, a few saying, “No one won.” I was silent, bothered that I’d not vetted the film ahead of time and deeply disturbed by the message the film was sending.

My younger spoke out, “They won.” He voice was soon drowned out by others, some repeating that there had been no winner.  I carved a verbal path for him and encouraged him to explain: “North Vietnam won.  Within a year, the whole country of Vietnam was communist.”  The pause after his announcement was brief and no comments were made. A moment later, we were donning coats and heading out into the night. On the short ride home, we talked about winning. From a political standpoint, my younger was correct. He’s also aware that the human price of a war like that is so high that everyone loses — humanity takes a hit. Both boys were disturbed by the bias of the movie and general lack of history of anything other than details of specific battles. We agreed that we’d not attend the next two portions and search out some other materials for this area of study.

Today, we searched for other resources that might better explain that decade of war and what we can learn from it. We looked for information that remembers that more than American teens and young men were casualties, sources that remind us that the scar on Vietnam from that war remains today. We compared Vietnam in HD to the other documentaries on war we’ve watched, including our current viewing of Ken Burns’ The War. And we talked and talked, considering humanity, war, and those who die along the way.

Peace.

Heroic Homeschooling

(Thanks to Kirsten Lesko, author of quirky and laughing, for helping me out of my funk.)

A reader and fellow blogger recently commented that my homeschooling was a heroic act. I protested, but she pressed, giving me a hurrah for following my instincts.  I thought that through for a moment, then resumed my doubting. Many days, I find myself questioning where I am and why I’m here homeschooling my kids. I spend too much time worrying that I’m not doing enough for one child, or perhaps I’m doing too much for another. Either tact I take confirms my worst fears:  that I’m failing my kids.

Yes, I know that’s unlikely, but I often find myself caught in the “what’s going wrong” loop. I’m an optimistic person by nature, but I also have an exasperating tendency to look for fault. I can temper much of that tendency in public, but when my eye turns to my life, the fault-finder runs full-strength. Lately, my focus has been on what’s going wrong on the homeschooling front. I don’t expect it to all run smoothly all the time, but lately I’m seeing  holes in their homeschooling experience, and I’m panicking.

My older is 14, and if he were in school, he’d be in ninth grade.  Ninth grade.  That’s high school.  That’s transcript time. He doesn’t have one of those. In a fit of panic at the start of the year, I solicited my homeschooling high school mom-friends for templates of their transcripts.  While waiting for replies, I scoured the internet, searching of the perfect form on which to lodge his pertinent data. It’s not really the form that matters: it’s what goes on the form. I feel myself in mental free-fall, wondering if we’ve been doing anything in these last seven years.

So what’s the big deal about the transcript? First, I haven’t graded much of their work.  Sure, my older’s taken math tests and received grades for them since he started Algebra, several years back. And I graded his high school biology and chemistry tests (4 for each class).  But the rest of his work has gone ungraded, although hardly unevaluated.  Papers, lab reports, and problem sets are returned with places needing corrections marked. I look for improvement and mastery of the material at hand, not perfection. This means some papers go through two or three edits while others stop at one.  When the learning goal is reached, the assignment is done.

Sometimes we mutually agree when enough is enough. Sometimes neither of us can look at an assignment one more time without suffering all sorts of ills, and at that point, we’ll generally call it done. Those events often indicate that we have a gap between what I thought he could do and what he can do. If I view that gap constructively, I can structure the next assignment and intervening learning events to take steps to close that gap. But if I’m in a panicky state, I just, well, panic. And then go online to look for more transcript forms.

Given this method of evaluating our homeschooling, it’s hard to make a meaningful transcript template.  I’m too aware that “Mommy grades” aren’t helpful to future colleges — I don’t imagine too many homeschooling parents grant a “C” or lower, and I’d bet that the B’s are few and far between as well. I can’t see just pulling a grade out of the air, besides, with my tendency to see what’s not working, I’d likely seriously run my son’s GPA right into the ground.

Likely, that won’t matter.  Next fall, he’ll take a class or two at local university, a place where they’ll grade him without bias and with an organized plan. That’s my other panic point.  I’m a fairly organized homeschooler, but I retain a flexibility that defies the confines of the four-quarter school year that makes transcript-making easy. Ever since we started homeschooling, I’ve made mid-course directions with my older, leaving behind what wasn’t working for us and adjusting repeatedly to his rather hard-to-define learning challenges and nebulous learning style. When I don’t think about transcripts and college applications, this ever-shifting style works for me. The optimist in me is always sure that this shift or change will make the difference. And often, it does, at least for a while.

But ninth grade is here.  Try as I might, I can’t figure out how to explain much less evaluate with a single number or letter what he’s done this year. And my focus keeps centering on what’s missing. While some of our subject studies stand alone, many others merge together, with “English” wandering across the curriculum and “History” being a conglomeration of experiences that taught him much but defy grading. When I start to write it all down, all I see are the holes — the class left mid-year (for good reasons), the books unfinished, the continued lack of a foreign language despite honest attempts to find a way for that subject to work for him. My brain floods with the implications of my neglect.

A few days back, a day that benevolent commenter bestowed me with the title “heroic,” a forum I frequent carried a thread asking for what was going well for homeschooling families. As I read through the replies, I felt a bit of confidence and, dare I say it, hope. What is going well?  With that, my thoughts shifted.

For my older, piano is going well. He managed to successfully negotiate a new approach to his piano education, one that respects his desire to play more of the romantics and her concerns about him learning the technique to play a greater repertoire than his current fascination. His joy for the instrument returned, which is reflected in his practice, and he furthered his self-advocacy skills as well. He’s also taken an interest in politics, spurred somewhat by the election season and well-supported by a history class on American history and Middle-East/US relations he takes.  Somewhere in the past few months, he went from giving me a rather brief reporting of class topics to a longer discourse on a host of issues, illustrating an understanding that allows him to apply the events of the past to the present. And somewhere along the line, he became quite useful in solving my computer woes, a skill that happened completely without me.

My younger, whose struggles with the social dynamics life requires seems to be increasing lately, has written and published his first novel and continues to take in history in large gulps, filling much of his spare time with books, videos, and writing centered around history. By all measures, he’s academically thriving.  However, my attention often moves to what is not working, the ways his struggling emotionally and socially.  It took a stranger’s question to refocus me on what was going well.

I’m no hero.  I’m just a parent working hard to meet the needs of her kids. I am fallible and occasionally fatalistic while remaining generally optimistic. I see my children as imperfect and yet totally amazing creatures, realistic views, I think. Perhaps the heroic, or at least brave,  moments come when we allow ourselves to see the whole picture of our children and ourselves, the good and the bad, and still continue to try, not letting one overwhelm the other. It’s the balance of lessons from the past and vision for the future, with a huge dose of staying in the crazy, wonderful, terrible moments we are in now.

Revolutions: Self-Taught History

My younger, now ten,  is in the midst of a Revolutionary War (the American kind) binge.  He’s been not so patiently waiting to start his third semester of American History courses via Online G3 — the course that covers the bulk of that war and covers Joy Hakim’s History of US (second half of volume 3 – 5). His excitement started to build when his fall US History class covered the French and Indian War, and he’s spent much of the last month and a half devouring everything he can on that time period.

History has been my younger’s primary interest since he was five, when he fell in love with all things Ancient Greek and Roman.  From there, he moved to the Middle Ages,

NaNoWriMo Part III: The Final Product

(Part I recalls the start of his writing process, moving from reluctant writer to willing novelist.  Part II discusses the editing process.  Part III.V covers e-book publication.)

He’s published.  My ten-year-old son self-published his NaNoWriMo novel through CreateSpace just a month and a half after finishing is 12,000 word book.  It took an intense month of writing followed by a challenging month of rewriting and editing, but Grand River Hotel is available in paperback at Amazon.

I’m obscenely proud of him.  He’s pleased and quite modest, although he likes to remind me he’s the first in our house to be published.  CreateSpace proved to be relatively simple to use, taking us from his story on the computer (originally written on Google Docs for greater portability from laptop to Mac to Dad’s house) to print with minimum pain and wailing on my part. CreateSpace offered a host of cover designs and art, templates for Microsoft Word, and decent support along the way.  (He did all the writing work and cover design and text.  I did the data transfer from Google Docs to Microsoft Word then to their layout software.  It wasn’t tricky, but each edit once it was in their format took a few somewhat tedious steps.)

Anyway, it’s done.  Five free copies are on their way, thanks to a NaNoWriMo code he received for meeting his writing goal, although we’ll likely order a few more for unsuspecting relatives.  I’d like to report it’s available in e-book formation, but the price point for doing that was a bit steep via CreateSpace and the reformatting a bit much for me via Kindle Direct Publishing, at least now.  His biggest thrill?  Having he own ISBN number.  He’s proud of his accomplishment – writing a novel and surviving a few edits – but that number seems to bring the greatest satisfaction.

His next project?  The next book in the Grand River Hotel series is underway, but the author is otherwise occupied lately.  With the rush of NaNoWriMo gone, he’s moved on to a deep study of the Revolutionary War, including daily private re-enactments in the living room (so private, my older son and I are not welcome to enter).  I’ve hinted that he may want to try a piece of historical fiction, and he’s mulling that over.  Whatever he decides, he’s gained significantly from the writing, editing, and self-publishing process over the last three months.  Now it’s time for his mom to catch up.

Behavior is Communication

Behavior is communication.  That’s a maxim more recently held among many parents of autistic spectrum kids. It’s certainly true with my Aspie son.  His behavior is my best indicator of internal milieu.  While my younger son is verbally precocious and his output, um, prolific, it’s his behavior that tells me what’s really going on.  When I see him chewing his shirt or blanket, I know he’s needing to soothe himself.  That behavior isn’t random, and it isn’t there to drive me nuts.  It may appear to be both of those things, but it’s not.  It’s communication and coping mechanism wrapped into one.  Holes and soggy clothing aside, it’s not a terribly problematic behavior, and he’s glad to substitute a piece of gum when asked.

Some behaviors are less clear.  Breakdowns during lessons require more detective work and rarely related to the assigned work.  When he becomes teary during a page of math problems, fatigue and anxiety are often to blame.  The anxiety may be about an upcoming flu shot, global warming, or his birthday.  Even fun stuff causes anxiety, since it also entails change. But his behavior for all is pretty much the same — teariness for assignments he generally manages well and resistance to all demands.  In the last year, thanks to growth, good therapy, and low-dose medication, with prompting he’s often able to identify the problem and work through.   We didn’t have this a year ago, but not just because he was struggling to express himself.

I wasn’t listening as well then.  I was listening for words, words in response to, “What’s wrong?”  I was watching for body language that matched his words, and the match wasn’t there.  I wasn’t considering the behaviors themselves to be communication.  Oh, I knew that certain behaviors meant he was distressed.  But the tantrums and all tended to overwhelm me, making it hard for me to really listen to what his behavior was saying.  I saw the meltdown, the chewing, the foot tapping, and I just felt frustrated.  Frustrated that I didn’t know what was wrong.  Frustrated at the behavior, which was often loud and large. Frustrated at the interruption in our lives, which occurred nearly every day.

When I can remember that behavior is communication, I can respond initially to what is being communicated, not to the behavior.  No, I don’t tolerate violent acts to people or property.  And yes, behavior does have consequences.  But we do the best around here when I listen to what he’s really communicating.  When I recognize the anxiety, fear, anger, or sorrow behind the behavior, I can respond to that. When he identifies the emotions behind his behavior (which often takes help), he’s more likely to shift away from more problematic behaviors.    Also, there are some behaviors best let be.  I’m delighted my son has found ways to calm himself, even if one of those ways is chewing his shirts to pieces.  He spent more than half of his life without any of those independent mechanisms, requiring me to soothe him.  I still do help him out, cuddling or just being near when needed, but finding ways to manage that oneself is a task of growing up.

Behavior is communication.  This holds true for my older son.  At fourteen, he has plenty of ability to express his feelings, but, whether due to gender, age, or temperament, he often doesn’t say much.  He speaks volumes when he retreats to his room to read –again.  Even missed assignments and failed tests give me information as to his state of mind and mood.  It’s harder for me to see his behavior as communication, perhaps because, in general, he communicates his feelings in words more readily than his brother.  But his behavior towards his academic work or music studies are a window into his heart and mind, one that as a mom to a teen, I’m glad to have available.  As with my younger, I try to verify my understanding of a behavior.  Did he not finish work because it was too hard, because he was bored, or because he has bigger matters on his mind?  This isn’t an out to assignments he doesn’t want to do — life requires us to do plenty that we’d rather avoid.  (My examples to my boys include cleaning toilets, cooking meals each day, and showing up for work on time.)

It’s far too easy to jump on the behavior — the tantrum, the late or sloppy work, the retreat to a room — rather than to examine the communication behind the behavior.  It takes a fair amount of self-restraint to block the initial (often negative) reaction to the behavior and think for a moment and ask aloud what’s going on. It takes some patience to help a child sort through their hearts and minds, but it’s worth it.

The more I try to see behavior as communication, the less conflict we have around here.  It decreases my yelling and their whining.  And, to my delight, it increases their ability to identify and share their feelings before they wash over into their behavior.  That makes for a more peaceful home, which we all appreciate.

Secret:  This works with adults, too, but adults tend to be more guarded about their emotions and have stronger ego-defenses.  Strong reactions and grownup tantrums are rarely about anyone but the one having the snit. At least remembering that can help you de-escalate and keep your own behavior in check.

Word Games

That's my score on the right, making for three losses in row.

“Aren’t you proud of how well your children play Quiddler?” my older asked this morning.  

“Sure,” I replied while losing again to his ten-year-old brother.  Admittedly, I agreed through gritted teeth, since I like to win just as much as I like to be right.  However, my sons’ growing prowess with words delights me, wordsmith that I am.  At the start of our homeschooling experience, science and math ruled the house. Looking back, I can see they dominated our plans and energy at home mostly because they weren’t as easily available in school.  For years, science, math, and history were our subjects of focus.  I worked language arts into the edges for many years. However, in the last year, there’s been a swing toward all things wordy.

Ready or Not!

In Michigan, public schools start the day after Labor Day.  It’s a tourism issue, encouraging folks to travel the state for the last weekend of summer, and many private schools start weeks earlier, allowing longer breaks mid year and an earlier end date.  Since a later start and an early finish sound good to me (heck, who learns anything in school in June?), we start after Labor Day and end around Memorial Day, with a few loose ends that we promise to each other to finish in the summer but generally don’t.  So, according to my calendar, we’re less than two weeks from Day 1, and I’ve been planning their work and our end-of-summer activities with that timeline in mind.  Aside from an online class starting this week and three more starting next week, all which I only realized yesterday (What?  The online homeschooling teacher in California doesn’t follow the Michigan public school schedule?) , all is on target.

Kind of.  I have severe pre-homeschooling school year jitters.  Severely severe.  Insomnia producing, anxious cuticle picking, crabby-when-spoken-to jitters.

I don’t usually feel this way.  Generally, I’m excited about our start.  Returning to routine generally soothes me.  This year, the thought of fall just gives me the heebie jeebies.  This summer, while packed with fun stuff like Stunt Camp, SUUSI, good times with friends, and trips to see grandparents, was just too busy.  My younger son with Asperger’s does not transition well, and busy trips away followed by quiet time at home really throws him off.  Heck, I don’t transition well.  Every week has been different this summer, with no semblance of routine at all.  Somehow this summer, we forgot to relax, or perhaps we did that in the first half, and the effects have worn off already.

It’s more than that.  Last year was far from stellar.  Both boys were plagued with executive function challenges, with my older revealing how much he really needs assistance with planning and scheduling and my younger struggling with compliance and anxiety (he’s poor at the compliance and good at the anxiety).  All around, I was glad to see that year behind us.  But the question of how to make this year better all around continues to plague me.  I’ve involved them when planning solutions to those problems, although I’m not sure this will actually change our outcome, as their insight to the problems of last year is a bit foggy given their difficulties with (here’s the refrain) executive function.

My younger wants a schedule that gives the times he’s to do things.  His main concern with a simple to-do list is that he won’t get it all done and be able to do what he wants to do.  Never mind that Mom is pretty good at knowing how long assignments should take for her kids.  Never mind that the day is long and his homeschooling day, if he stayed on task, would be fairly short.  I’ve agreed to give this a try, but I can smell the anxiety in the air when his schedule says math at 9 am and he’s still finishing spelling at 9:05.  This is not a flexible child.  As I said, I’ll try his way, but I have my reservations.

My older wants a daily task list.  As I posted last school year, he and I have tried a variety of planners on paper and the computer with no success for more than a day or two.  Last year, we ended up using the low-tech white board.  I don’t object to the whiteboard, but he took to erasing items that were only partially done, which hampered his ability to remember to finish them later.  Also, I did all the list making, and I think, at 14 and technically 9th grade, he should be learning to keep track of his life just a bit more than that system allowed.  I’m again playing with planners for the iTouch, but I’m still not impressed.  I’ve started using Opus Domini on the Mac, which is the simplest interface for scheduling I’ve yet to find, but that’s yet to be released for the iTouch or iPad, and I have no idea if it will work for him.  Since little of what works for me works for him, I’m keeping my enthusiasm in check.  Whether we schedule on paper, white board, or computer, I’ll be looking for ways to gradually turn the reins over to him.

My planning is another bugaboo this fall.  I’m designing a course for my older son on Earth Science and Meteorology (the latter to a greater depth than a general college level Earth Science class would go, since he’s been studying the subject independently since he was six).  In addition to science, I’ll incorporate history, literature, and composition into the course with and underlying focus on note taking and study skills.  Whew.  He’s quite interested in how weather and geologic events have affected history, so we’ll focus on the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, the Little Ice Age, famine and drought across the ages, and more, while learning how to write an academic paper.  I’m enthused but cautious.  Last year, we dropped so much, somewhat due to my giving him more responsibility than he was ready to take and somewhat due to Life Circumstances Beyond Our Control.  Life has settled, and I’m returning him to my side for more of his learning until he has the skills to be more successful on his own.  Still, I’m worried.  Have I put in enough material?  Have I put in too much?  How do I teach study skills when I never remember learning them?  When am I going to find the time to read all these books at the same time he does?  I could go on,  but I’m sure you get the idea.

I have less planning concerns about my younger’s studies, since his three online classes this fall limit my planning to science, composition, math, spelling, and handwriting.  After we tie up a few loose ends for Chemistry, he’ll start Earth Science, too.  I’ve done little to plan for that yet, but the course is clearer there, given we’re using a standard text with labs and all.  I’ll flesh it out with videos, current events, and other readings, but the big work is done by the textbook folks.  Somehow, I continue to feel anxious, but most of that focuses around his compliance issues.

Ready or not, our school year is fast approaching.  While we don’t have the rush to find new clothes and hunt down a long list of school supplies all while filling out the mounds of paperwork that go with sending a child to an actual school, we have our own angst as the school year starts.  And despite my worries, each time a store clerk or stranger says, “Hey, at least they go back to school soon,” I smile, grateful that we’re doing that at home.

Happy new homeschool school year, for all those who see September as a beginning.  I’d love to hear from you about your concerns or joys about your new starts, whether they are in fall or some other time.

A Bit of Self-Promotion

I’ve moved beyond my two personal blogs, Quarks and Quirks and Finding My Ground, and been published on The Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism.  I’m delighted to have a spot on that very intelligent and informative blog on all things autism.  If you have a child on the spectrum, know a child on the spectrum, or just want to understand Asperger’s and Autism better (often with a scientific bent) peruse the site and learn a bit more.  I had a similar post (actually, two posts, given the length) with the same resources listed here, but have taken those off for now to keep that content on TPGA only.  They’ll reappear here in a few months.