Homeschooling Your Child with Down Syndrome

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Barb

Momto4 left this comment on my old blog:

I had my daughter in public school, she is 6 in kindergarten and has down syndrome. They haven’t a CLUE what they are doing. I was very disappointed in their lack of teaching. I will be homeschooling her and it will be interesting as I have never done such a feat. Is there anywhere one could go to help start off in kindergarten for my little girl? Is the curriculum the same? So many many questions. I do know this, anything is better than what we have now.

Since there might be other parents with this same problem, I thought I’d post my response here, where they can find it easily.

Momto4, I admire you for taking matters into your hands once you became unhappy with your daughter’s schooling experience. Pro-active parents are the best asset a child with a disability can have.

Every child with Down syndrome has unique abilities and unique needs, and that’s why I did not use a specific curriculum with my son with Ds, who is now 15. Having homeschooled three older children, I could see that my son was not at or near grade level in scholastic subjects at age 6. I decided instead to test him (using a test I rented for a very reasonable cost from HSLDA). There weren’t any surprises in the test results because I’d been working with him since he was 3 or 4, but you might find such testing very useful for you and your daughter. It will give you an idea of where to concentrate your efforts.

Anyway, after testing him, I continued working with him as I had since he was small, using my own IEP to chart the path we’d need to follow at his speed. We read many, many books, he practiced his printing every day, and we played lots of board games that stressed the different skills he needed.

For example, he had real problems grasping numbers conceptually. He could recite numbers but did not understand what they meant. We played the game “Trouble” once or twice a day and that helped him understand what “six” meant, because that’s the best number to get in that game. BTW, I frequently found the best educational games (sold in teacher stores) discounted at TJMaxx and Marshalls. For my son, educational games where he learns by using his hands instead of just sitting and listening are a real blessing.

My son is speech-delayed, like many children (especially boys) with Ds. I sat in on his sessions with the speech therapist and imitated what she did with him at home on a regular basis. We could not afford thrice-weekly sessions, which had been recommended, but at least this way he was getting daily speech practice. One of the most effective methods of working on speech sounds with him was something the therapist taught me: he’d say a word or sound and I’d reward him with a puzzle piece. So he had to make 100 sounds to get all the pieces of a 100-piece puzzle, and then we’d work on the puzzle together. (We still do this at least once a week, because he really enjoys it.)

In addition to working on his letters, number concepts and speech, we did lots of artwork, including working with crayons, paint, stampers and clay. He loved this, and it was a nice break from the “school” work. We also got him out in nature by going on bike rides (we used a third wheel attachment on my husband’s bike because our son loved to run off and we didn’t want to teach him to ride a bike on his own, thus helping him get away from us more quickly!) Visits to parks, zoos and the aquarium also widened his horizons.

One more thing we did as part of his “school” was to teach him how to work around the house. He’d seen the older kids doing their chores and wanted to be like them, so this wasn’t hard. In fact, he’s been a very eager helper. He also likes to work with his dad in his workshop. (I can still picture him at around age five or so driving nails into a piece of wood with great intensity.)

You’ve asked for specific materials that will tell you what to do with your daughter. There have been several books that helped me learn how to work with my son, and I will list them in a subsequent post. In the meantime, I’ve asked another blogger who homeschools a daughter with Ds to answer your question. You’ll find her post here.

The bottom line, Momto4, is that you are really doing something wonderful for your daughter. Homeschooling her will mean she will get much more one-on-one instruction, or “face time” as I like to call it. Not only is that much better for her, but it will help you learn more about how she learns. She’ll also be able to avoid the negative effects of school socialization, such as picking up bad habits and being bullied because of her disability. And, of course, the bottom line is that you know her better than any teacher can know her, so she’s getting a teacher who knows her well and wants the very best for her. I think your daughter is very fortunate to have you for a mom.

(If you enjoyed this article, you may also like Book List for Homeschooling a Child with Down syndrome.)

Preparing for Adulthood Without College

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Barb

I loved college. I loved the campus, I loved the dorms, and I loved the challenging classes (well, most of them). College was a great experience for me, and once I began having children, it was something I wanted for them, too. I assumed they would feel the same way. But as my oldest reached her mid-teens, she decided that college was not for her.

At first I thought she would change her mind, and so I geared her work toward college preparatory subjects, and required her to take the PSAT and ACT. She scored above average on both tests. Soon college brochures and catalogs filled our mailbox, but none of them changed her mind.

Her dream was to work and be on her own. She felt that going to college was a way of delaying adulthood, and she was eager to be an adult. She had dreams of travel, and eventually getting her own place to live. She had been very independent, even as a small child, and that trait grew stronger as she approached her late teens.

I kept thinking that maybe we should just sign her up somewhere. I thought if she went away to school and lived with other girls her age, she would change her mind and enjoy her surroundings. But my husband felt that there was no point in sending an unmotivated student.

As I grew to accept the inevitability of the situation, teaching only college preparatory subjects felt all wrong. Why study subjects she had no interest in, like a foreign language or chemistry, if she wasn’t going to need them for college? All she could talk about was how she was going to move to this city or that city. Some of her plans were very impractical because she had no idea of what it would cost to live on her own. Her naive talk started to make me a little nervous.

I closely studied my large collection of homeschool catalogs, hoping to find resources we could use for her last year of homeschooling. But it seemed like most products were geared toward the college-bound student, and those that remained focused on cooking and sewing. She already knew how to cook and sew. I was more concerned about how she would handle credit cards and whether she really understood how much it would cost her to feed and house herself. If she didn’t want a degree, she would likely have to live on a modest income. (How times have changed!)

I decided to design sensible projects for her. So, in addition to Math Review, Shakespeare, Bible, History and Expository Writing, each week she had to research different aspects of living on her own. She compared rents in different cities, and interviewed insurance agents, landlords and utility companies. She asked many questions and got many answers.

Soon we branched out to subjects she would need to know about before she got her first full-time job. She learned about health insurance (a must, as our health insurance would not cover her once she turned 19 unless she attended college full-time). She learned about taxes and withholding, budgeting and even mortgages. She educated herself about every aspect of buying a car, and the pros and cons of car loans.

I noticed that as she completed the projects*, her naive plans slowly turned into more logical ones. By the time she finished homeschooling, I felt that she was well-prepared for independence. She started studying different cities on her own. She researched and bought her first car, for which she paid cash, because she understood just how much interest a car loan would have cost her. And she didn’t move out as soon as she turned 18, as she’d always said she would, because now she really understood that she couldn’t afford it.

Instead, she saved up a portion of her pay, and she now has a good-sized savings account. She is nearly 20, and will soon move into a city apartment with two other young women. We will miss her, but we see how excited she is about living on her own, and we are thankful that she is prepared for it.

Walking through the preparation process with her taught me a lot, too. I learned to listen to what she was really saying instead of expecting her to want what I wanted for her. I saw how prepared she could become with the right training. And now I get to see her try her wings as she leaves the nest.

Author note: Since I wrote this article almost ten years ago, my daughter has lived in three large Midwestern cities. She now owns two Internet businesses and, unlike many of her peers, is enjoying the debt-free life.

* The projects are in my book Life Prep for Homeschooled Teenagers.

Saving Time and Money with Stashes

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Barb

Gas is nearly $4.00 a gallon here in northeast Wisconsin. My husband and I are fortunate that we both work at home, so we don’t have commuting expenses. But there are still many places we have to go.

With the nearest large city an hour away, we’re trying to conserve gas by combining trips there. For example, if I need to take someone to the doctor for a check-up, I think ahead to which stores I pass by on the way home, where I can pick up needed items as long as I’m in the neighborhood.

I’m also being careful about how many short trips I make around our little town. I don’t go to the library unless I also need to stop by the bank, which is a few blocks over. I put book orders to be shipped in my bike basket and ride to the post office, unless I have a heavy box of books to ship. These activities help me save gas.

But what’s really helped us limit the amount of driving we’re doing these days is something I’ve done for years: keeping stashes. Ever since my kids were little, I’ve stockpiled doubles or triples of items we use frequently. There’s nothing like the 3 am discovery that your baby has a high fever and you’ve run out of fever reducer to make you realize that it’s really smart to keep spares of such things on hand.

I have a lot of stashes in my house (I describe them in detail in The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling), and they’ve made my life as a mom and homemaker much easier, while also saving money. But now that the price of gas is so high compared to just a few years ago, I find that the stash concept is saving me more money than ever.

To start a stash, you buy two of every item you use regularly in your household. This means you always have a spare, and don’t waste gas or time running out for a last minute replacement. Besides, you’re going to use the same amount of gas going back and forth to the store whether you buy two bottles of ketchup or one. So why not buy two? (Take this concept a step further by only buying these items when they’re on sale, and you’re now reducing your grocery bills as well as the amount of gasoline that you use.)

One important thing to remember about stashes is that they don’t work if you don’t remember to buy items before you need them. Train yourself, your husband and your children that when you open something new, you put it on the shopping list (you do keep a shopping list somewhere that’s easily accessible, I hope!). Be warned: it may take a while to train the rest of the family to do this.

The only problem I’ve ever had with this system is that I became so used to it that I couldn’t stop, even after two of our four children moved out. Our supply soon far exceeded our demand.

That’s why, for the past few years, I tried to stop buying multiples of staples because we weren’t using them up fast enough. But now I find that my stashes let me go much longer without driving to the store, thus saving a considerable amount of gasoline.

So I’ve stopped chiding myself for keeping a stash for only four people. As long as we make an effort to use up what we have and keep a list of what we need, I can easily go two weeks without a major shopping trip. That saves me gas and time. Time is always very valuable, and gas is becoming more so every day, it seems. Why not try it yourself and see if it doesn’t work for you, too?

Life Changes

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Barb

Lately I’ve been posting the homeschooling articles from my old website here every Friday. There are two reasons for that: one is that people still ask for them, and the other is that I’m just too busy to post anything else 🙂

Who knew that life after homeschooling would keep me so busy? I’ve been sewing like a maniac because my first grandchild is due any day and I just had to make him a bunting, a crib sheet and a quilt. I’ve been in a Bible study about spiritual gifts (so interesting!) and have become the finance secretary at my church, so those things have taken some time. And of course I’m still chief cook and housekeeper here at our cozy little home; it takes a lot less time to keep up this place than the five-bedroom house took, but it still requires some effort (and regular weeding-out of stuff) to keep things in good shape around here.

Add to this the fact that my husband got a job after being out of work for five years, thus putting me back in charge of the daily activities of our rambunctious 19-year-old (who has Down syndrome), and I guess it’s not so surprising that I’m a lot busier than I thought I would be once I was done homeschooling our four kids.

Note what’s missing here: I haven’t been writing. I have a couple of e-Books to finish but I just don’t have the desire right now. I’ve been praying for direction and the only definitive thing that’s happened is that someone offered my husband a job! So I’m sitting tight, keeping busy and looking forward to being a certain little fella’s grandma very soon.

How about you? What’s new in your neck of the woods? If you’d rather not post it in the comments section, you can always email me, you know 🙂

Homeschooling to Prevent Rebellion

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Barb

One of the many reasons I wanted to homeschool is that I didn’t want rebellious teenagers.

The homeschool magazine I read back then (before there were many homeschool magazines at all) was great for keeping me enthused and inspired about homeschooling before I was even doing it. The articles in it assured me that as long as my kids were homeschooled in a Christian home where God’s Word was taught, there would be no rebellion. In fact, more than one writer insisted that teen rebellion is not only unbiblical, but is also a product of our society, unique to our modern times.

I bought that argument completely. Besides, I was so busy keeping up with my growing family that I didn’t have time to consider the biblical stories of the Prodigal Son (rebellion) and the behavior of the Israelites in the desert (repeated rebellion). All I knew is that I didn’t want my kids to become the self-absorbed teens I’d seen in our extended family, our church and our neighborhood.

Fast-forward to 2004. I’m one of the veteran homeschoolers in my support group, where I meet homeschooling newbies who love their adorable little ones so much, who enjoy their innocence to such an extent, that they fear what will happen when their children hit their teens. One recently told me, “I can’t bear the thought that they will change into people I don’t like!”

This presents me with a dilemma. I can whitewash my response so the newbies can stay in their comfort zone, or I can be honest and risk a “shoot the messenger” situation. So if you, dear reader, want to stay in your comfort zone, I suggest you click over to another page of this site. You’re not going to like the rest of this article, because the truth is, even when you’re Christian, even when you homeschool and study the Bible together and pray together, and even when you do all those things and Dad works at home and is involved in your children’s lives on a daily basis, you will still have rebellious teenagers.

Maybe.

The thing is, it depends on the teen. I’ve seen homeschooled teens sail through those years as calmly as though nothing had changed. I’ve also seen kids from wonderful Christian families turn into scary-looking, sullen people. I’ve even seen both of these happen in my own home.

The word “seen” is important, though, when it comes to teens, because what you see may or may not be what you get. Inside the young lady with the ever-changing hair color and pierced eyebrow may beat the heart of someone who is passionate about the unborn and has a sincere concern for the underprivileged of this world. Conversely, inside the young lady wearing the flowered jumper and no makeup may beat the heart of someone who is just biding her time until she is old enough to jump ship and live life her way, no matter how unbiblical her way may be.

What’s a parent to do? It’s scary to think that the loving, sweet-natured six-year-old who lives in your house may turn into someone you don’t like eight or ten years from now. What will you do if that happens?

The answer is to love that child anyway. Love is a verb, you know. No matter what you feel inside when you see your formerly winsome child with a snarl, or funny-looking hair, or even a face covered with zits, you love them with your words and with your actions (which include discipline, but that’s another article in itself). You love them even when you don’t feel very loving towards them. It’s not easy. I don’t think it can even be done without lots of prayer. But it must be done.

Because the rebellion, the strange clothes and behavior, the gangly appearance-these things will pass. For some kids, rebellion is part of the process of separating from the family. We parents know we are here to work ourselves out of a job by raising kids who grow into independent adults. Some kids can make that transition smoothly, while others have to fight their way to independence. And even the kids who sail through their teen years often surprise you with a few rebellious issues when they reach young adulthood and are out of your reach. Still, as the saying goes, this too will pass. They come through on the other side as mature versions of the little people you once knew, but this time without the dependency on Mom and Dad.

So if you’re homeschooling because you don’t want rebellious teens, I’m sorry to tell you there are no guarantees. But if you’re homeschooling because you love your kids, then you’re on the right track, because practice in loving your kids can only help. You may have to face a time where you discover that despite your best efforts, despite years of homeschooling and a loving Christian home environment, your child has turned into someone you don’t always like very much. But hang in there and keep loving that “someone” anyway, because the best is yet to come.

“….he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 (NIV).

Note: If you are struggling with a rebellious teen, I highly recommend the book Prodigals and Those Who Love Them: Words of Encouragement for Those Who Wait by Ruth Bell Graham.

Excerpted from Stages of Homeschooling: Letting Go (Book 3), available HERE.