Beyond Homeschooling Autism

I am going to be a guest blogger on Hip Homeschool Moms this week and I decided to write about a minor-miracle we had with Jackson's reading last week.  In addition to that big breakthrough, we also had another big "ah-ha" moment.  I wanted to write about it here also and just link the 2 blog posts together so you could get the big picture.  So, if you've already read Part 1 of this blog on Hip Homeschool Moms, just skip over it to Part 2. Part 1 My son Jackson, has always struggled with reading.  He does not like to read independently nor does he always understand what he is reading.  Comprehension has been the biggest road block to his advancement in a number of areas.  His special education teachers spent hours on the  who, what, when, where, why  questions with limited success.  They communicated that he refused to read out loud and when asked to answer simple questions about a passage, he would often have an outburst of some kind ...

Jackson was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (autism) in October of 2002, in Fayetteville, NC while Paul was stationed at Ft. Bragg.  He left for Afghanistan 6 weeks later.  I have a very vivid memory of a moment between Caroline and I in the kitchen of our home.  I was loading the dishwasher while Jackson was running around, screaming and destroying the house and Caroline, who was only 14 months at the time, was promptly unloading all the dirty utensils I had just finished putting into the dishwasher.  I turned to her with a dead serious face and said, "if we are going to survive the next year, you have got to help me." Sweet thing looked right back at me, slowly put the forks back into the rack and sat on the floor quietly until I was finished.  I was at my breaking point and we clearly both knew it.  The next day, I ordered a yoga DVD and set off on a journey to learn to manage my stress during this very challenging time in my life.  Now, I am bringing ...