A Radical Solution to IEPs, 504s, ALPs, and the Drudgery of Accountability

Homeschool offers us the opportunity to teach and learn without IEPs, 504s, ALPs, and standardized tests. My children get to be their unique selves without the stigma associated with it. They get to pursue their interests, be curious, make decisions, and be productive members of the community early and often.

So it doesn't matter exactly how my children are different because I don't have to figure out a way to make them be the same as everyone else.

And yet, it matters entirely.

By recognizing the different ways my children are drawn to the world, I am able to be the facilitator they need.

Read the rest at Free-Learning Colorado...

There is No Such Thing as a Reluctant Learner

No Such Thing

There is no such thing as a reluctant learner. There are, however, reluctant students.

Wait a minute! You are probably here to read "Tips for Teaching Reluctant Learners" but before you leave, let me explain how the distinction between "learner" and "student" helps me define my role as a homeschool mom and how it informs my "Tips."

Learners v. Students

For me...

Knowledge grows from within a learner; whereas,
knowledge is given from a teacher to a student.

A learner chooses the subject of study; but
a teacher chooses the subject for his or her students.

The duration and location(s) of study is determined by the interest and sensibilities of a learner, exploring for longer, deeper and in many ways if possible; however,
students learn for a set amount of time and in a fixed location as dictated by the teacher.

It is OK for a learner to decide when he or she is finished studying the subject at hand; in contrast,
the teacher decides when the student is done learning.

A learner is capable of discovering important topics and pursuing education;
a student is unqualified to self-direct his or her education.

The relationship of a learner to his or her teacher is based on democracy, kindness, and learning together.
The relationship of a student to his or her teacher is based on power.

An Exceptional Learner, a Terrible Student

Case in point: my son. He is twice exceptional: his social skills and restrictive repetitive behavior place him in the bottom 2% of children his age, which is labeled Autism; his IQ places him in the top 2%, which is labeled Gifted. His unique set of strengths and weaknesses make him an ideal learner but an infuriating student.

He can spend an inordinate amount of time immersed in something he finds interesting. As a baby, he would lay on the floor and watch the wheels of his car or truck move while he gently rolled it back and forth. His belly time was spent flipping his thumb across the pages of my Joy of Cooking and watching the pages fall. Last week, as a seven year old, he sat with a LEGO set and assembled over 1000 pieces in one day.

But when he was a toddler and I invited him to color with me, I got a look from him that spoke volumes. "Are you delusional? Why would I do that?" it said. (He was nonverbal until he was 2.5 years old.) Nor would he imitate me and do the work of life (toilet train, get dressed, brush teeth, etc.). If it wasn't interesting to him, he wouldn't do it and he couldn't be convinced to do it either. No bribe was worth enough; no consequence compelling enough.

It was all fine and good when he was little. Young children are given a LOT of leeway. They develop at their own pace, asynchrony is expected. But now he is nearly eight years old and his quirky tendencies are more obvious and more problematic in mainstream schooling.

That is why we are homeschooling (again, I suppose) - because he is an exceptional learner but a terrible student...

An Exceptional Facilitator, a Terrible Teacher

...and I'm an exceptional facilitator but a terrible teacher (to him - I was actually a great teacher to community college students).

My strengths lie in learning with him. I am good at paying attention to his interests and finding ways to learn more together. What is more, I enjoy doing it.

On the flip side, I am terrible at helping him with his weaknesses. It isn't for lack of trying. When he is disinterested in something it is impossible to convince him to do it. Think the popular quotation by Katrina Gutleben (with a pinch of Autism-Stubborn-Doggedness):

"Learning can only happen when a child is interested. If he's not interested, it's like throwing marshmallows at his head and calling it eating."

Pleading doesn't work. Reasoning doesn't work. The only thing that works is coercion.

Cost-Benefit Analysis (i.e., Things to Consider Before Coercing Students) 

Coercion, bribery, bargaining. Whatever you want to call it, it is ubiquitous in education.

It starts with children earning stickers for toilet training (which, by the way, never worked for my children) and it continues with paying for chores and then manipulating their emotional well-being in schools. Essentially, the adult offers something valuable to the child iff he or she does what the adult wants them to do.

When to Use Coercion

There are two things that inform when I use coercion:


1. When I am not willing to compromise my expectations.

Through our exploration of the world, reading, and volunteerism, we have discussed subjects of science, art, history, citizenry, politics, maths, and the human condition. We've discussed ethics of how the fire began in Oregon, reasonable consequences, responsibility, and prevention. We have discussed humanitarianism because of the hurricane. We know about history from the Magic Treehouse stories of Thomas Edison and Leonardo da Vinci. We've learned climate change (and other science) from Jeff and Paige and music theory from Mr. Hoffman. 

What has not come up organically is writing down his ideas about this myriad of topics. (My daughter is a different story....she writes and writes and writes.) My expectations for my seven year old second grader is that he will become a fluent writer. 

I need this for two reasons - for evidence of his learning, and to feel satisfied with the work I do as a homeschooling parent. However, while I believe that it will probably happen naturally by the time he is 14 years old, I am not willing to wait. 

So I use coercion to entice him to sit with me daily to work on spelling, phonics, reading via The Bravewriter's Wand curriculum. He earns screentime.

2. When I am not willing to trust that it will happen naturally, organically, and in due time.

My son is Autistic; his brain is different. So different that his life skills prevent him from participating in life like everyone else. He needs therapy to bring some of his skills up to par. The way his mind and body develop is too far delayed and out-of-sync for me to stand by and watch.

For example, his eyes could not track left to right or forward and backward and needed vision therapy. Simultaneously, he needed to do a speech therapy "homework" at home as well as occupational therapy. However, none of this was easy for him. He would absolutely not do it without coercion. 

So I bribed him. I paid him $1 per day for sitting with me and doing the work with good manners.

In each of these situations, my son is decidedly a student and I am the teacher.

Methods of Coercion

I refuse to use guilt trips or emotional coercion with my children. So that leaves me with finding things that will work as bribes. In my family, stickers, candy, and high fives are not enticing enough compensation for what I want them to do. The two most sought-after commodities are money and screentime.

Screentime because we are learning our limits with screens; money because, despite our policy on allowance, they always want more.

What it really comes down to is cost-benefit analysis. How important is it? And what is it worth? ("It" being some educational goal.)

Coercion-Free Life and Learning

For most of our homeschooling life we are coercion-free. That is the power and the glory of self-directed, interest-based learning. 

Together we explore places like science centers, art museums, national and state parks, and libraries. We host parties and play games.  We attend community volunteer work days and neighborhood parties. 

We read. We laugh. We enjoy learning. 

It is so easy and so fun that you wouldn't even know we're learning.

On Trust and Mindfulness

The extent to which you trust that your child will learn to be a competent, kind, and productive member of society will dictate how much coercion you need in your life.

My recommendation to you is to be mindful of coercion.

Pay attention to the situation and ask yourself: "is this something that is so important that I need to coerce my child? Or can I let it go?"

Only you know your child, his or her needs, and your needs. We all have different non-negotiables. We all have different methods of coercion. But we should all recognize when and why coercion is the force by which our child performs as a student compared to when and why our child shows us that he or she is a learner.

GHF Changing How the World Views Education

This was written as part of the GHF Blog Hop. For more surf over here...

The Secrets of a Happy Life. Homeschooling or Otherwise

It was spring and the days were getting longer. The sunshine seemed to bring with it healing energy - streaming in through our windows to wake us, inviting us outdoors and then warming us when we stepped into the light.

It had been two months since we disenrolled Tigger from public school and we were beginning to see him come back to his normal self. Over the course of six months he had completely changed from a happy and curious child to outwardly depressed, stressed, and lethargic. His zest for life and learning had been drained away by well-meaning but uninformed, distrustful, and overworked educators.

Back in the caring and self-directed learning environment of our home, he was slowly but steadily rediscovering his love of learning. And there was no more striking evidence of it than the day he picked up a book again.

The springtime sun was setting and we were moving toward bedtime. As I walked up the stairs to join my husband and our five year old daughter, I gazed over the banister. What I saw made my heart jump into my throat. Sitting below me was my son with a book in his lap.

That moment was big. In that moment I realized that he had not picked up a book of his own volition in five months. At once, I felt overjoyed that he was drawn back to books and furious that his love for reading had been poached.

In the weeks and months that followed that special moment, I made some important decisions that have allowed me to focus more on happiness in homeschooling instead of the anger toward the situation of how we got here.

1. Manage Expectations

How are your expectations formed?

Mine are not formed in a vacuum. Opinions from family, friends, doctors, and other professionals have shaped my expectations for what parenthood and childhood should look like. When and how to breastfeed, potty train, sleep train, discipline, educate, travel with, feed, buy pets for, socialize, et cetera, et cetera.

Social media doesn't help matters. Memes about young children doing chores, mothers taking care of themselves, and amazing fathers sometimes make me feel, well, feelings. Depending on which memes I see on any given day or in any given hour can play tricks with my self-esteem. I have thought "I'm doing too much for them!" as much as "I'm not doing enough!" and sometimes both of those thoughts in the same breath. Never mind seeing how amazing my mom friends are who have paying jobs that take them out of the house, children who don't stim and who aren't overexcitable, and self-confidence to boot. Comparing myself to anyone on social media only skews my sense of reality and what are realistic expectations that are right for my family.

My best ally in knowing what is right for my family is, and always has been, my Intuition. She (yes, I'm referring to Intuition as "she") has never been wrong. She has always paid attention, even when I haven't. She knows what is coming, what is happening, and truth in matters before I acknowledge things concretely.

In order to recognize and enjoy the happy moments in the day I have had to dig deep and re-set my expectations for a lot of things.

• I don't expect my son to sit much. He does jumping jacks when he practices spelling. He paces at our homeschool Minecraft group when the children come together to summarize their work at the end of the event. Together, we go on "Walk-and-Talk"s to flesh out his ideas for composition.
• I don't expect to sneak work in during the day. The day goes smoother when I rest during my down time instead of write. (It minimizes the likelihood that I will be interrupted.)
• I don't expect that we will have a breakthrough with my son's self-care. It will be something we work on together and will require a LOT of scaffolding on my part, like this. (As an added bonus, it will fall under "Home Economics.")
• I do expect to have leisurely days.
• I do expect to be flexible, democratic, and meet our needs on a daily basis.
• I do expect to have a routine that works for us all - my need to plan and check things off my list, my son's need to learn what interests him, and my daughter's need to work at her own drawn out pace.
• I expect academic learning to grow organically from our life experiences.
• I do expect some days to be hard for one of us, or all of us, and on those days we can curl up together and watch movies all day, eat ice cream for lunch and pancakes for dinner.

That entire list is formed entirely from my intuition, my knowledge of my family, and not a lick from what society tells me I should or should not be doing. And the reason I know my expectations are reasonable are because I have slowed down and taken the time to pay attention to myself, my children, my husband, and our life together.

2. Slow Down

When I first got married I always had WAY MORE on my to-do list than was reasonable. That, in and of itself, was not a big deal. What was a big deal was when I got upset that I didn't get it all done. My husband, bless his soul, caught on to my "problem" and helped me learn what a reasonable to-do list might look like. It was the first step on a long journey toward a slow life.

What he didn't know (well, maybe he knew), was that for YEARS I lied to him. He would ask me what was on my list of things to do and I would report a reasonable list - one that fit on a post-it note. My secret list, in fact, was much longer - like a scroll that would unravel for miles.

Fast forward several years. I have begun a dedicated Kundalini yoga practice (daily meditations plus once weekly classes with a teacher). I have two children. I want to slow down. I want to let go of my scroll of things to do and simply be. And I have. I do not allow the scroll to distract me, nor do I let myself become frustrated if I don't accomplish what I thought needed doing. I've slowed down and I like it....a lot.

That is not to say that I don't regress. My natural state is buzzing with ideas of things to do - make dinner, do lesson plans, blog, contact that children's book publisher, write science curriculum, start a completely unrelated hat business, and on and on.

But I have slowed down so much of my life that I notice the buzzing when it comes and I can know how important or urgent the buzzing is, set time aside for it, and manage my expectations for it. After all, denying my natural state of compulsive creativity would not be taking care of myself.

3. Self-Care

Homeschooling is not just a marathon, it is an ultramarathon. In order to sustain the role of homeschooling mom, I have had to bring a whole new level of commitment to self-care. This is my list of essentials for self-care:

1. Set realistic expectations for my children. Part of this was to set a routine and know which part of the routine is flexible and which is not.
2. Slow down. Slow down some more.
3. Morning meditation.
4. Evening walk.
5. Daily creative work.
6. Weekend recharge time (yoga, grocery shopping, longer walks, dates with hubby).

Those are the things I need to be (and to remain) patient, kind, flexible, and a good leader.

4. Child-Care

There are several differences between my son's public school experience and the homeschool experience but they can by boiled down to: caring and trust.

I trust that my son will learn. It might not be what schools define as the first grades standards - he might learn third grade math and pre-K social skills. But he will learn and learn in the most authentic way, the only way, learning happens. It will be self-directed and he learns/will learn what he wants to the degree he wants. It is the essence of self-directed education. My biggest job in this sense is to focus on his ability to learn and to express his learning in a way that makes sense for him.

Caring comes quite naturally to people who have the time and inclination to connect and build a relationship with someone else. For some people, nonviolent communication comes naturally (like my sister). For me, I had to learn about nonviolent communication and practice using it.

With Trust and Caring as the basis for how we homeschool, we then can search for and find a rhythm that balances our needs.

5. Recognize Happy Moments

The happy moments are not always overly animated. Here are some things I noticed this week and took the time to enjoy:

• As my daughter walked slowly home from the pool she said, "Rain must take a long time to get down here, flow in the rivers, and get to the ocean."
• After lunch my son cleared his plate without being asked. 
• My daughter colored quietly for an hour in her room.
• My son built LEGO alone in his room for an hour.
• After eating without complaining about the meal, my children ran off together to play.
• My kids left me alone for 15 minutes while I took a cat nap.
• My son said, "My new friend..."
• My daughter asked me, "How can I help?"
• My son thanked me for doing the laundry.
• My daughter wrote her name in cursive.
• My son read all the words on a page of his Minecraft book.
• We had LOTS of fun from splashing in puddles.

It has been a long time of learning about parenting and what works for my family that all these things can happen.

Because I have slowed down, I am able to be present in each of those happy moments and enjoy them....

6. Enjoy Happy Moments 

It has been a stressful year. In fact, in the fall I confessed to a friend that I really wanted to learn how to enjoy my children again. I could see my children in their best moments but I wasn't enjoying those moments. I was always caught up with what had to happen next...go to dance class, swing by the library, meet someone for a play date, gas up the car, cook dinner, baths and bedtime.

I am happy to say that since we disenrolled my son from public school his mental health and, consequently, his behavior has drastically improved. Our family life has improved along with it.

And since I re-committed to self-care, slowing down our lives, and setting reasonable expectations for our family, we are all better cared-for, happy, and dwelling in happiness.

--

For me, there is no single happiest, best, or favorite thing that stands towering above the rest. No holy grail of perfection. Only sitting with our lives as they are and accepting the opportunity and responsibility of teaching and learning with my child.

This was written as part of the GHF Blog Hop. Read more here...

The Trouble with Self-directed Learning

What the Teacher Told Us To Do

I was all smiles when Twinkle came out of her first dance class. She had been begging for ballet lessons for almost a year and finally gotten her wish. She looked at me with her almost-four year old pouty face and said, "I didn't get to do anything I wanted! All we did was what the teacher told us to do."

I stifled a laugh. This, I thought, is the trouble with self-directed learning.

Philosophies of Learning at Odds

Twinkle had been attending preschool at a democratic school for two half-days per week for four months. Outside of school, I draw from the authoritative parenting camp (something I've learned a lot about from Janet Lansbury). So at home and at school, she was accustomed to being heard and having a say in what goes on.

So this type of setting, with this type of philosophy of education (where the adult imparts knowledge), was new for my daughter. It was out of the ordinary for us, if ordinary for mainstream.

Listening

My reply to her was, "It wasn't what you expected?"

"No."

"What did you do that you liked?"

And we went on.

A Living Book

I reminded her of "Tallulah's Tutu" - a book about earning your tutu through commitment and hard work. That was how we reconsidered dance lessons. Twinkle decided that she did, in fact, want to learn ballet, to commit to attending class and performing in the end-of-year recital. Then she would choose if she wanted to continue.

Her Experience of the World

While I watch her as she moves between homeschool, democratic preschool, and mainstream activities (ballet, public kindergarten, etc.), I tell myself that this is her experience of the world.

It is hers to make sense of and to decide how she wants to be part of it.

My job is to provide a safe place to come home to, a home life filled with books, music, and rich conversations about the world...and to lead us into the community with openness and curiosity.


This was written as part of the GHF Blog Hop. Surf over to read more...

Revisiting 2e Issues: The Danger of Ignorance is Broken Children

My 2e Autistic child has suffered injury because of the unique way he moves through the world. Most importantly, the way his giftedness (verbally precocious) fools his caregivers into having unreasonable expectations has resulted in a broken arm and a broken heart (dangerously close to depression). The following stories are my plead to therapists, teachers, and other caregivers to take a step back and consider “bad” behavior by 2e kids as a desperate call for help. Each story is also a cautionary tale to parents.

BROKEN BONE

I cried over the pages of The Out-of-Sync Child. Finally I understood how and why my almost-three year old son was out of sync. He is undersensitive. Signals between his mouth and brain were muted, which explained his affinity for food with textures that were not too hard, nor too soft, but just right. It explained why he was so anxious in noisy places - the sound never got processed correctly. It explained the constant repetitive motion - jumping, spinning, arm flapping - and the ways he earned adrenaline junkie status at age two. It explained why when he fell on concrete and came up bloody he never once shed a tear or sought comfort, instead continuing right on what he had been doing before his faceplant.

Reading that book was the first research in my journey to understanding twice exceptionality. My son’s subsequent diagnoses (Autism, Phonological Disorder) and cognitive assessment (Highly Gifted) pointed us toward occupational therapy and speech therapy. So that is how I took my four year old to Pillar.

We had been going twice a week to Pillar for a year when it happened. Normally my two year old and I would wait in the waiting room while Tigger would do his work. Some people would drop their children off and go run errands but I usually just sat and read books and played finger games with Twinkle. Until the day I didn’t. Twinkle and I ran to the grocery store.

When we got back to the office there were no signs that anything had happened. At the end of the session the therapist walked Tigger out and said, “Tigger fell off the swing today. He wasn’t listening. When he landed he cried and cried and cried but he’s fine.”

Cried? I thought. That's weird. He never cries.

But then I figured that if I had something to worry about that she would have told me. I assumed someone would have told me something. But they didn’t. So I took Tigger and Twinkle home.

Over the course of the day I noticed that Tigger wasn’t using one of his arms. So I asked him to lift a fork for me with that arm and he couldn’t without wincing.

A trip to his doctor revealed a broken arm.

I was livid. I was angry that he had broken his arm in their care. I was disappointed in myself that I hadn’t trusted my gut - that nagging feeling that something wasn’t right when they told me he had cried and cried and cried. Regardless of how I was feeling, I had to spend the rest of the day carting him between doctor offices to get the break diagnosed and treated.

The next day I asked to talk with the owner and the therapists. This is what I was told:

• “He wasn’t listening.”
• “We had followed all the protocols. We are not at fault.”
• “No one has ever gone on record about being hurt here. Yes. There was one other injury but they didn’t file claims.”

Let’s put aside the fact that they were protected legally because they were “following protocol” by putting pads under the swing. That is a conversation for a whole other topic. Let’s just focus on the part: “He wasn’t listening.”

He was four years old.

Four year olds are notorious for listening, following directions, and remaining calm when stimulated with fun rides, right? Wrong. Even typical four year olds have a hard time turning things around.

But twice exceptional autistic four year olds? If they are laughing and “not listening” then they probably aren’t even on this planet. They are higher than high with happiness. If other 2e four year olds are like my son, then you need to stop the ride, get eye-to-eye, and reconnect with them to bring them down from the clouds of glee.

So tell me. If a four year old did not appear to be listening to you, would you allow him or her to swing? Would you assume he was being defiant? Or would you pause and try to connect with that child and make a safer choice?

Now when I leave my son in the care of a ski instructor, karate coach, or anyone, I tell them: “If he doesn’t seem to be listening, then do not assume he is being defiant. Assume he does not hear you. You will have to get eye-to-eye with him to bring his attention back to you and your request.”

No matter if it is someone who has had training with 2e kids, autistic kids, or gifted kids, I still tell them. Because if they just “follow protocol” instead of following my child, then he is likely to be injured again. And I will not give anyone the excuse of not recognizing his “bad” behavior for what it is, nor the out of not knowing what to do.

BROKEN HEART

To the Principal:

We disenrolled Tigger because his health and safety needs were not being met and we were not willing to put them further at risk while we waited even longer for the school to put a plan in place. I am writing now to bring the most salient concerns to your attention without the filter of the IEP team and to ask one question.

The problem easiest to discern is Tigger’s increased eloping. His classroom teacher reported that he was showing up unexpectedly at the SpEd room, at the counselor’s office, and at other teachers’ classrooms. The study written in Pediatrics shows that wandering is a serious issue but an important one for families and schools to attend to. His classroom teacher said that she wrote a Safety Plan but that it wasn’t working. He was still eloping during the school day and leaving the school before dismissal without her permission. You can imagine our concern when we learned this information, especially when we considered how he has been telling us that he “doesn’t deserve to be alive” and that he was going to “walk into traffic.”

His decline in mental health is only slightly harder to coincide with his school attendance. At the start of the year he was known as an energetic, charismatic, and creative young boy. He was intellectually insatiable with a special craving for novel and complex systems (scientific and social). By January he had stopped showing interest in learning, working creatively, or doing karate, and it was noticed by the providers and people who have known him intimately for years.

After the community-building part of the year (the first three weeks), he started begging to stay home from school. Hour-long meltdowns seven days a week lessened to five days a week, then to five minutes per day, but they never stopped. Angry or sad, he requested daily to stay home from school. He started sobbing during our evening prayer claiming “I don’t deserve love.” That was when things first started to unravel at school...the music teacher called very concerned about the holiday performance. Next he confessed to his therapist/yoga instructor “I don’t deserve to be alive.”

The recommendation from the counselor’s Suicide Risk Assessment was to “give him different language” to express himself. She was wrong to assume that Tigger’s vocabulary is insufficient given that he has demonstrated above-average verbal comprehension on the Verbal Comprehension Index and we have been actively and intentionally teaching him skills to identify and name his emotions since he was born. Her response suggested that she could not (or would not) offer me viable or valuable solutions to meet my son’s needs. That evening he threatened to walk into traffic but it had been the last day of fall semester.

Winter break was not without intensities, but in those weeks he never uttered a statement of self-loathing. Two days after attending school in January he stormed toward the exit of our house to walk into traffic again.

His emotional outbursts were not happening just at home any more. I started getting calls, emails, or pick-up assertions that he had had a “bad” day - crying unexpectedly requiring intervention, angry outbursts, increased eloping, required interventions from whomever was available (sometimes the speech therapist, sometimes the counselor, sometimes the classroom teacher). The classroom teacher and others were asking me my advice but not able to implement what works at home for lack of resources. For example, the classroom teacher told me that she tried to give him the sensory breaks he needs but that she cannot because she has an entire class full of children for whom she is responsible. She also said that he performs beautifully academically when he has one-on-one support but that she could not give him one-on-one support he needs, again because of her responsibilities as classroom teacher.

So I requested increased one-on-one support either in the form of pullout or classroom aide. I even reiterated my proposal for a new program that I volunteered to build that would serve more than just Tigger.

At parent-teacher conferences last week everyone asked me what had happened at home that might have caused Tigger’s decline. Believe me, if there was something we would have taken care of it. We have had the same daily and weekly routines for two years. My husband has had the same consistent and fulfilling job. We are screen-free, food-dye-free, and eat good food made from scratch. (Gluten-elimination and casein-elimination yielded no changes.)  No one has come or gone from our lives unexpectedly. His therapists concur with us that his life at school is the source of his anxiety, imminent depression, and suicidal ideations.

Why was my request for the School to meet my son’s needs for more one-on-one support denied?

I have not received an answer that demonstrates ownership of any misunderstanding or wrong-doing. (Duh.) And so I am left to draw conclusions based on piecing together the responses I got over the course of the year and the way I was treated during those answers...as an overbearing hysterical looney of a mother.

The single most telling “data” I have is what the school counselor told my son’s advocate. I had given permission for them to connect to, hopefully, partner to find a solution to his behavior which was becoming increasingly problematic at school and worrisome at home:

“Plenty of kids have it worse than Tigger.”

That is what happens when a twice exceptional child is seen by an uninformed person. That is what happens when the bottom line is academic success instead of mental, emotional, and physical well-being. That is what happens with a well-spoken and seemingly robust child asks for help through tears. The tears are assumed to be a manipulative tool, the sophisticated language an indicator that he is “fine.”

He was not fine. And when I observed a school-wide 500-person assembly, he was the only child I saw stimming in an attempt to self-regulate. He was also the only award-winner who was taking advantage of physical space of a the stage (half of it!) to move his body - bouncing, spinning, flapping his arms, and shaking his head. He had won a reading award but his body was brimming with physical energy and anxiety.

That’s not what they saw. My gut told me:

• The counselor thought Tigger was stupid and certainly not gifted.
• The assistant principal thought I had no right to bring to bear my knowledge about anything regarding education.
• Everyone thought he was manipulating situations.
• The speech and occupational therapists “had their hands tied” and could not provide care despite recognizing the need for it.
• The classroom teacher was in over her head.
• They couldn’t handle my son. Everyone was worn thin by his overexcitabilities, stretched thin because they are always stretched thin in public schools, and would not own the fact that they were failing to keep him safe.
• They wouldn’t ask for help from the district...unless I sued them.

They all heaved a big sigh of relief when I disenrolled my son. He was too much, and so was I.

This was written as part of the GHF Bloghop. Cruise over to their site for more blogs about Issues of Twice Exceptionality.

Is my seven-year-old suicidal?

“I don’t deserve to be alive,” he lamented softly through tears. He was talking to his yoga teacher (who is also a therapist), I’ll call her Purple, in our living room - someone he has known for a year and a half and is one of his most-trusted confidantes.

Tigger had recently turned seven years old. This statement wasn’t a surprise, per se. I had watched his self-esteem plummet over the course of his first few months of attending all-day school. But his declaration broke my heart nonetheless and set alarm-bells ringing. As I moved toward a solution I reflected on how we got to the point where I was asking myself, “Is my seven year old suicidal?”

The first few weeks of school were unremarkable. He came home tired but seemed to be settling into his new place at the school and his new routine as expected. (He had attended half-day Kindergarten the year before.) The teacher was focused on community-building work, the days were filled with play and next to no academic work.

Things changed around the fourth week of the semester. The daily work was no longer focused on community. The schedule was: read, read, read, break, write, lunch, math, break, art/music/PE, science/social studies. It is an understandable schedule given the current climate of public education in the USA but one that is geared toward typical more flexible children. And Tigger is atypical: His social skills and restrictive repetitive behavior were assessed in the lowest 2% of same-aged peers, which earned him the label "autism" and his IQ was assessed in the top 2%, which is labeled "gifted." Combine this “Twice Exceptionality” with his energy level and way of learning (Visual-Spatial, not Auditory-Sequential) and it is easy to understand why he does not fit in traditional school.

Meltdowns

Every morning we spent an hour parenting him through meltdowns (sometimes sorrowful, sometimes angry) and desperate pleas of “I don’t want to go to school!” and “Don’t make me go!” We listened to his concerns, asked how we could help him, and helped him to find something to look forward to during his time at school. After school there were more declarations: “I’m not going to school tomorrow.” It felt like it was all we talked about...even on the weekends. We persisted and hoped that he would acclimate.

Turning Meltdowns Inward

It is February and I don’t think he has acclimated yet. He has merely stopped spending hours of the day arguing a losing battle. He stills says, “I don’t want to go to school” every day but it is no longer amplified with tears and angry outbursts. Instead, he seems to have turned those feelings inward.

The first evidence of his emotional masochism was mid-autumn. I sat with Tigger and his four year old sister, Twinkle. Their hair was still wet from bathtime and we were all dressed in pajamas. They had asked to sing our nighttime prayer together. It is a simple song, nothing but a chorus that repeats twice:

May the long time sun shine upon you

All love surround you

And the pure light within you

Guide your way on.

Typically, we offer the prayer to Tigger, then to Twinkle (or vice versa), and finally to someone else...family, friends, or strangers in need.

As always, we sat knee to knee in a tiny circle and put our hands in prayer position. We began singing in unison and I suggested, “let’s sing for Twinkle first.” And we did. In the second round, I suggested, “now let’s sing for Tigger.” And he collapsed, sobbing, in my lap.

“I don’t deserve prayers,” he said. Dumbfounded, I held him and let him cry. Twinkle gently rubbed his back and we listened to the song end.

That night we read a little longer, snuggled a little more, and then he fell asleep.

The same thing happens every time they ask to sing our prayers. So it is no surprise that he asks less and less to sing prayers.

Big Feelings Don't Just Disappear
Those big feelings must be scary for a young child...but I’m pretty sure he continued to have them. By December he was beginning to act out more at school. I was getting calls and emails from teachers, administrators, and the school counselor about his inability to behave as expected.

That is when he confessed to Purple: “I don’t deserve love.” and the following week: “I don’t deserve to be alive.”

Purple handled his sorrow the way you might imagine. She was gentle, open, and loving. She told him stories about finding his inner light. After closing their practice for the evening, he seemed to have settled a little and sat with his sister to eat dinner while I debriefed with Purple. Neither of us were panicked but we were both concerned. This type of pessimism and negative self-talk is highly uncharacteristic of Tigger.

Research

When Purple had gone I led our nighttime routine. Then, after they were sound asleep, I did what I do best: look to learn. I wanted to be informed not only by my experience of watching my happy-go-lucky child become depressed but also by knowledge shared by experts in psychology, autism, and giftedness. This is what I learned:

Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are way more common in autistic children than neurotypical children.

In the past couple of years, larger studies have confirmed that suicidality is common among young people with autism. Last year, researchers reported that among 791 children with autism younger than age 16, 14 percent had either talked about or attempted suicide, compared with just 0.5 percent of children without autism. Another study of 102 children aged 7 to 16 with anxiety and high-functioning autism found that 11 percent had suicidal thoughts and behaviors. (SpectrumNews.org)

The article goes on to say that sometimes a child says suicidal things over minute transgressions, like being asked to turn off a video game and come to dinner. It is possible that in those circumstances the child is being melodramatic. However, while I didn’t think Tigger was going to harm himself that night, I think his language is an indicator for how dismal his inner world must be.

Information regarding suicide in gifted population is less straight-forward. While there has been no correlation made between giftedness and suicide, the overexcitabilities common to gifted persons make them candidates for emotionally volatile lives, which may then lead to suicide. More research is needed.

I, too, needed more research. So I turned to a friend who my children call “Uncle” and who is a school psychologist. When my husband was home, I drove the mile to Uncle’s house and sat at his dining table with him. One of the best listeners I know, he sat quietly while I told him my story. Before turning conversation to him I told him that I believe that Tigger’s experience at school is the reason for this behavior at home because it is the only new thing in our lives. Then I asked him to draw from his expertise as a school counselor to guide me.

Among the many school-related ideas he offered was something called the “Suicide Risk Assessment.” Every school counselor should know what it is and should perform the assessment without dispute. The first thing I did the next day, which happened to be the last day of school before winter break, was to call the school and request a Suicide Risk Assessment.

Not Knowing
The school psychologist walked my son out at the end of the day so she could hand-deliver the assessment to me. She smiled politely and told me that he seemed to have no idea what she was talking about when she questioned him about hurting himself. Then she said, “you just need to give him new language to express those feelings.” (!) As if we had not been doing therapeutic work to teach him social-emotional skills and mindfulness for the last three years!

This woman who has spent a handful of hours with my son seemed to suggest that I was overreacting. Intuition told me I was being regarded as an over-reactive and inept parent. Then I realized that she may have less experience with and knowledge of Twice Exceptionality than I do. I thanked her and I turned with Tigger and Twinkle to walk home.

Walking into Traffic

That night after dinner I was cleaning the kitchen when my children began to argue. Tigger’s anger was explosive and I stepped in to keep him from hurting Twinkle. I yelled, “NO! STOP IT!” Then he said it.

At the top of his voice, strangled with tears, he said, “I’m going to walk into traffic.”

I dropped to my knees in front of him. “You seem so amazingly sad. But why did you say such an alarming thing?”

“Because then you will be sorry. You will have to love me.”

My heart swelled. My voice choked with tears. “You want to feel loved.”

“Yeah!”

I looked into his tear-streaked face and my mind clicked in new understanding. He didn’t recognize love.

“Do you know all the things I do because I love you?” I asked.

“No.”

“I cook your favorite foods several times a week because I love you.”

“I do the laundry because I love you.”

“I read books to you because I love you.”

“I drive you to karate because I love you.”

“Most of the things I do I do because I love you.”

His shoulders relaxed and said, “Oh. I didn’t know all that.”

“Would you like me to tell you when I do something because I love you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied.

And that is how I began to teach him anew about love.

Softening

The first thing I did to teach him about love was to start saying, “I’m doing this because I love you” at every opportunity. I said it when I set his plate of food on the table at dinner time. I said it again when I fetched a cup from the cupboard for him, and again when I helped him carry his things upstairs to his room. Every time I said it, I felt him soften a bit.

What I hadn’t expected is that I began to soften, too.

Walking through the yard to put the kitchen trash into the garbage can, I noticed his hat had been partially buried in snow. Two days before I would have thought that it was a good natural consequence that his hat would be cold because he had not brought it inside when I had asked him. The new me thought, “I’m going to do this kind thing because I love him.” I circled back and peeled the hat that was crunchy with ice from the snow. I shook it out and brought it inside to thaw.

I found myself doing more kind things for him and in doing so feeling more kindness for him. Again I started to imagine his experience of life - that is different from the norm - and thought about how hard it must be to recognize loving behavior when you are preoccupied with objects. Not only has self-care been a challenge because of his disinterest in learning through imitation, but so, apparently, has love.

Love Between People
That must be because love between people is a social endeavor. It is often marked by small gestures of affection and kindness, easy-to-miss body language cues, and, in parenting, the work of life (cooking, cleaning, et cetera).

And I have to imagine that the mysterious nature of love is even more perplexing for children (and adults) who have an atypical way of socializing, like Tigger. So I that is how, “I do this because I love you” has become an often-used phrase in my parenting. It joined the ranks of “I love you,” “Please,” “Thank you,” and “I’m sorry.”  

For two and a half weeks of winter break, I made a point of filling his bucket. We were entirely free of suicidal declarations, despite the typical day-to-day conflict of living with intensity. Then school started and after two days I heard it again. “I’m going to walk into traffic!” he yelled as he stomped toward the front door in tears.

My heart sank, again. “Something needs to change,” I thought. And the following week something small happened.

Something Small

It was a Wednesday, yoga day. When Tigger walked out of school at the end of the day he seemed lighter than usual. We walked home without the typical bickering over which trail to take. Then his yoga session with Purple was beautiful. At the end, Purple said that she had noticed the change, too. She asked him, “Tigger, do you know what happened that helped you have such a nice time today? I noticed you didn’t say anything mean to yourself. You were so positive!” His response: “Huh. I don’t know.”

I had a good hunch. “What did you do at school today?” I asked.

He confirmed my suspicion by launching excitedly into a description of two of his pull-out interventions. Instead of diving into the prescribed reading assignment in the Talented and Gifted class, he got to lead the beginning of class and they built with his electronics. Then in Speech Therapy, which he attends to work on social pragmatic language, his therapist brought in solar-powered building toys.

It was that simple. Allowing him to learn what and how he wanted for a five minutes and 35 minutes had had a lasting positive influence. It was something I had requested in the autumn but, understandably and disappointedly, had been denied.

Instead Of
Instead of feeding his intellect, they were starving it because of the misguided notion that a child so young who cannot read is unable to learn deeply in other ways.

Instead of nurturing his heart and his desire for deep interpersonal connection, they broke it by using canned social-emotional tools like a "behavior support plan" and "think sheets" instead of nonviolent communication and nature baths.

Instead of considering him as a whole child who is Gifted as well as Autistic, they ignored some of the most salient and effective tools (that I have found) for helping him succeed.

How Bad is Bad Enough?

The question that now burns to be answered is: what is good enough? Is 2.5% pull-out enough? That leaves 97.5% of his time spent enduring top-down sequential lessons without no support staff - something I have never had success with at home. And from what I understand there is little success with it at school. His behavior is becoming increasingly problematic, disruptive, and unsafe.

He is not “holding it together” at school and then falling apart at home any more. He is falling apart at school, at home, at karate, at handwriting… Which brings me to the next logical question: how bad is bad enough? The way he talks about coping with his stress varies from hurting himself to hurting the people at school. (He has literally threatened, “I’ll show them.”) He’s only seven years old!!

Cost-Benefit Analysis

It seems like the cost-benefit analysis of attending public school has tipped. The amount of time I spend at home mending the social-emotional damage done outweighs the academic hoops he has jumped through. In the limited time we have before and after school, I squeeze in time for him to pursue his own passions, to get enough exercise, and to connect with friends who accept him. I counsel him regarding things his teachers have said to him (typically the common threat of telling mom/dad/principal about his bad behavior) or what other children have lied to him about (“I changed the brain in your best friend’s body to be a bad guy”). But I’m not sure any amount of “I do this because I love you” can account for the constant and pervasive but unspoken messages he receives at school that he is different, his behavior problematic, and he’s more trouble than he’s worth.

His change in sleep, overeating, and loss of interest in things that once brought him great joy are all indicators of depression. The depressed behavior paired with the suicidal ideations he has already expressed have us all worried, including his primary care physician and therapist, but not the school (at least not enough to do something about it).

Cumulative Stress

The most convincing outside perspective came from his therapist who has five years experience leading the ASD program at Kaiser and now treats autistic children for mental health. She explained that her experience with kids like Tigger is that mental and physical health will not get better without making a dramatic change and that it is likely that they will deteriorate to a point of no return if we try to wait it out. She explained that autistic children do not have brain structure that is as flexible as neurotypical children. Second grade, which is often easier for everyone, is only harder for autistic children because of cumulative stress. Third grade is harder still. And she has only seen the necessary changes made because of legal action brought to the school district.

So as much as we would like to fight the fight for neurodiversity, we cannot in good conscience do it while we drag our own child through the mud. Instead, we have decided to homeschool Tigger. We will give it a year and if, by then, he has stopped proclaiming that he is going to walk into traffic then we will know it was the right thing to do.

Listen

This is what the important role of Listening in Suicide-Prevention means to our family.

[The studies cited were published in 2013 the Journal for Autism Developmental Disorders and Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders.]

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