Preface: Yesterday my son D was sent home from school because the learning support teachers said they couldn’t manage his behaviour. He was shafted from one person to the next and finally they sat him in the office until I was able to collect him. So today, D and L didn’t go to school (L said he had a headache). This is what we did instead…

This morning D and A got out the mat with the car track, and raced their cars around it to see who was the fastest, pretending they were race car drivers. Then A decided to do some colouring-in while L played “Line Writer” on the computer and D practiced on the Mario Kart Wii game. Then we found a cool science experiment on the internet looking at what happens to an ice cube when you drop it into a jar of cooking oil. In the instructions it said to float the ice cube on the oil but our ice cube didn’t float…. It just sank to the bottom. We watched as the ice melted and released little bubbles of oxygen into the air. The ice cube looked silvery, kinda like mercury. Eventually all the water settled at the bottom. From this we figured out that water has a higher density than oil and that oxygen likes to find a way out, even if trapped.

Then we went to the school for a visit with the special education teacher to discuss D’s “behavioural problems” and the fact that they were having trouble getting D to do anything for them. As we were discussing this, D and A were playing beautifully in the corner with a dolls house and their cars and then they were playing make-believe with the plastic dinosaurs. L was lying on the couch reading his Andy Griffiths and Paul Jennings “Just Annoying” book. After we finished, I asked D to pick up the toys and put them back in the box so we could go to the shops. He did so with little prompting.

At the shops, the boys got a little over-excited and over stimulated, so I focused their attention on finding items on my grocery list. It became a game. It fizzled a bit when they didn’t know what the words were so next time I’ll make sure I have pictures. While at the grocery store L figured out that 1kg of icing sugar was cheaper than buying two packs of 500g by three cents.

When we got home a storm rolled over and the boys went downstairs and placed Lego pieces in the new drainage pipe Wayne had placed in the ground and waited at the other end for the Lego to spew out of the drain pipe. They experimented with putting the Lego in at different points to see if it got stuck. Then L and A played “Trampoline Poison Ball” which involved jumping around and over a variety of objects on the trampoline. Then L decided to write up a set of instructions for each variation of the game “Poison Ball” he came up with, while D stayed downstairs to play and draw pictures in the mud. When I went downstairs there was mud splattered everywhere!

Today we covered science, ecology, engineering, drama, social science, maths, art, physical education, writing, and reading. Of course, while doing all these things, they didn’t learn a thing, did they?

Lately, I’ve been investigating the possibilities around home educating. I was watching D at school one day and it suddenly hit me that he would never do all those things that most “normal” children do and to be honest, I don’t want him to. That day, a storyteller came to school and he had every Prep child engaged in his flamboyantly presented tale…. Every child, except for D. While all the children sat there attentively and chimed in when expected, D climbed over the fence, under a chair and swung around the poles in the undercover area. Daniel dances to his own tune, his own rhythm.

The boys have this book that my husband reads to them (now off by heart as he’s read it soooo many times) called “Giraffe’s Can’t Dance”. In the book the giraffe decries his lack of dancing ability but in the end, he discovers that he has his own unique style. He declares that “we all can dance… when we find the music that we love.”

So, I came to a cross roads. Do I send the boys to school next year and watch them struggle or do I just dive in and try out home schooling? L has struggled with boredom this year because he’s not being challenged and can’t navigate the whole social thing because he doesn’t understand how to interpret people’s body language and spoken language for that matter. D has had a great year in Prep with a lovely, compassionate teacher but next year, in grade one, I’ve been told he’ll find it difficult coping with the rigours of learning to sit still, moving from one activity to the next in the space of 20 minutes, writing and reading when he’s only just learning to talk in full sentences.

And there’s a whole other set of questions. How do I home school? There are a myriad of styles. I am learning as I go that my style (or ideal style I should say) is to allow learning to happen naturally rather than doing “lessons” or “teaching school at home”. However, that said, I have one child who thrives on routine and structure.

L is extremely self-directed and he does a lot of extra activities at home with no encouragement from me (that is not to say I don’t encourage him, just that he starts these projects of his own volition). When he gets excited about something, writing, reading and learning the history behind something comes naturally. Lately, its “dragons”. He’s being playing a computer game about dragons where he has to read the instructions and dialogue between characters before he can play different aspects of the game. One morning I came into his room to find it littered with cardboard. He’d made a 3D cardboard dragon and was half way through colouring it in red when he ran out of ink. The next day I found a book at the supermarket called “The Dragon Chronicles’ which had all kinds of pictures and curious facts about fictional dragons. In L’s learning life, I take on the role of facilitator rather than teacher. I help him find information and activities related to whatever it is he is interested in at the time and the learning flows from there.

D, on the other hand is not yet at the stage where he will make things or look up information on the internet. He’ll play games and is learning how to conquer Super Mario Galaxy but he lacks confidence in holding a pen and generally doesn’t do craft activities like L and A do. He will however, sit and play in the dirt for an hour at a time, chattering away to himself. He will play physical games such as “king of the mountain”, “hide and seek”, “What’s the time Mr wolf,” etc. He’ll often engage his younger brother in play and will willingly participate in play scenarios set up by L as well. Because of his language deficits, I wonder if I need to do something more structured for D. I’ve been offered support by his lovely special ed teacher, by his speech pathologist and by his Prep teacher but I’m unsure about the path we’ll take to learning as yet. Is it possible to unschool one child and home school another?

My middle son D doesn’t ever lie.

Me: “Did you hit your brother?”

D: “Yes”

Me: “Did you eat that last cookie?”

D: “Yes”.

For my eldest son, D’s honesty is a revelation. My eldest has been known to tell some whoppers and went through a spell where he’d tell lies all the time, primarily because he was afraid that if he told the truth, he’d be punished. Thing is, mothers always know and little boys always get found out. Writing lines, going to rooms, naming and shaming… they’ve all failed. But when L discovered that D was let off easier for telling the truth, it finally sunk in and he stopped telling lies.

Lying is actually a sign of high intelligence according to some books I’ve read. It’s not that Daniel is not intelligent. He is. He is just incapable of lying because he sees the world differently. He calls a spade a spade. Everything is literal, factual and real. If it isn’t, it doesn’t exist. That’s not to say that D doesn’t know how to play tricks on someone. He does that very well, just for fun offcourse.

L, who has turned lying into an art form, is perplexed by his brother’s honesty. He sees lying as a quick way to get the parents off his back, as a means to an end. Lying is a strategy. What gets me is that he doesn’t seem to feel the least bit of guilt or remorse, unless he’s found out.

Whenever I’ve told a lie, either intentionally or unintentionally, I feel horrible. I obsess about it and decry my lack of moral fortitude. I try not to lie to my kids but sometimes an easy answer just slips out.

L: “Mum, why can’t I have such and such”

Me: “Because we’re broke and I’d have to sell the car in order to pay for it.”

Well, maybe I don’t go that far but as a parent it can be challenging to be that beacon of morality you want to shine onto your little ones.

Perhaps I should just be content if they appear to catch even a glimmer of that light. Perhaps I should stop expecting perfection of them and myself or perhaps I should just look for the entertainment value in a son who lives in a fantasy world and another who is so grounded in what is real.

I have often felt isolated from the world of motherhood, despite my immersion in it. There are rituals, and rites of passage that most mothers take for granted… like the first words your child speaks or the first outing to the community fair or visit with Santa at the local shopping mall. Our lives revolve around three full-on little boys, one of them who has been diagnosed with Autism. So life is different for us.

Being a parent of a child with Autism is not like being a parent of a child with some visible disability. My child looks normal. It’s only when another child enters his space uninvited or he opens his mouth to speak or his obsessive compulsive behaviour plays out that people see a different side to him. In the first instance, other mothers look shocked and react quite defensively when their child is hit or kicked or worse. In most cases, a quick explanation of my child’s disability suffices to diffuse the situation. In some cases it does not. I’ve had people tell me to control my child, teach him manners (like that means anything to an Autistic child) and I’ve even had a police officer threaten to arrest me for being a negligent mother because my child nearly strayed into the path of an oncoming car in a shopping centre car park. He had told me to buckle my child into our hot car while I loaded the groceries in. What he didn’t know was that my child had a compulsion to jump into the boot while I did that task and would have untangled himself from any Houdini-locked device in a flash despite my best efforts. I’ve had old ladies lecture me on the virtues of leaving my children at home while I do the grocery shopping and I’ve had people yell at my child and reduce him to a catatonic state because they misunderstood his disability for misbehaviour.

Isolation comes in many forms. When Daniel was little I had to pull him out of playgroups, activities and limit outings to manageable events. A sad day for me was being told by another mother that I should stop attending the mother’s group I helped to found in my local area because my child was too aggressive. It was tactfully put to me that my child was ‘obviously stressed and not coping’ and that maybe a smaller group would be ‘more appropriate’. She was concerned for the safety of other children–I got it–but it hurt nonetheless. We were forced out of a network of friends when I badly needed support.

Since that time I have found solace in my friendships with other mothers of Autistic children. My friend Jamie* at my sons’ school summed it up when she said: “I don’t talk to the other mothers outside class. They all sit there and compare their children’s performance and I just don’t fit in. They really don’t give a sh*t!” And that about sums up the experience of motherhood for most of us.

Last year I was privileged to get to know a small group of other mums through Autism Queensland’s (AQ) early intervention program. We met at the school gate each morning (ummm, actually it was more like a locked fortress really) and chatted while our children attempted to play with each other… or was that beat each other up?… It was hard to tell sometimes. Nevertheless, we formed a lovely supportive circle and were there to give hugs and pass the tissues when one of us inevitably was having a crap day. I miss them dearly.

Another opportunity I had to connect with other mothers in my world was at AQ’s Mother’s Camp. It was there I met my beautiful sole sister Jennifer*. At that time I was still coming to terms with and grieving over my child’s disability and many of the mothers at camp had been there done that. Jennifer was about the only person who seemed to meet me where I was at. In some ways, I felt like the other mothers tried to out do each other with their tales of woe in a “who has the most stuffed up life?” competition. Jennifer and I had long conversations about spirituality, childbirth (she was pregnant at the time), shed tears over the movie Sense and Sensibility and spent time appreciating all the little gifts that life had on offer for us.

When I was in hospital recently, Jennifer phoned me to give me some encouragement and shared that her new baby was very sick with a rare form of Leukaemia. However, she was so gracious about it and so strong. It made me want to be stronger and humbled me deeply. I can’t wait to see her again!

I am grateful for the mums and children I have come to know through my journey and grateful for the understanding that comes with experience. However, I still feel jealous of mums who can take their children out to see a show or to a fair, who can feed them regular food without worrying about an additive-induced meltdown, who can do school holiday activities without having to worry about whether or not their child will beat up some poor unsuspecting pre-schooler that happens to stray into their path and without having to worry about vigilantly watching their child all the time in case they run off into the distance, run into traffic or drown in the nearest body of water.

Is it too much to ask to want to do all those things that most mothers take for granted?

*Names changed to protect my friends’ privacy.