I love the light bulb moments, the time to reflect and ask questions, the time to focus. I love how we’re doing life at the moment. There is nothing all that contrived, nothing dull. Every day brings a new revelation. I love it that Master Nine and I have had long discussions about Chaos Theory and the butterfly effect as well as tackled big questions such as “does God exist ?” I love it that he counts backwards from 0 (-1, -2, -3, -4…) and works out algebraic formulas without even thinking about it (for instance: Mum what’s 365 + ? = 400 when trying to work out exactly how many days he had to go till an event). I love it that in the past four months, he’s worked out how to put together a blog with banners, links, and organised, interesting content, has read a book about website marketing (not that he’d know it in those terms) and implemented the advice to increase traffic to his website,  has learned teamwork and delegation skills by sharing his blogging responsibilities with others, has figured out how to use a variety of widgets, and writes constantly (He loves capital letters, probably because he’s so excited about his blog posts), has learned to use Photoshop including skills in cropping, reorientating photos and images (geometry…not that we call it that), using layers, animated banner ads and resizing images (percentages, understanding of pixel count). I love it that a discussion about jumping off a bridge into a boat led to the discovery that everything falls at the same rate regardless of mass so long as the air resistance is the same and I love it that he tried to test it out by dropping a bottle to the ground at the same time as himself (ouch!). I love it that we were on the bridge at the time.

I love it that he has gained more independence in getting his own food and clothes but that he still wants me to do it for him, because it fills his love tank… I love it that we have talked about that, while snuggling under my bed covers during a thunder storm with his two younger brothers. I admire his ability to make friends online and his wisdom at making sure the nine year old in Canada, really was a nine year old. I love it that he didn’t hesitate to call his new friend and then downloaded Skype to make sure he could call for free. I love it that he tweets and that he sticks to a set of rules in terms of who’s allowed to follow him to safeguard himself! I love it that he learned how to fish and didn’t get discouraged when he didn’t catch anything, I love it that he’s keen to give it another go.

I love it that he’s worked out what he needs to do to get a job at a certain place by a certain time and that he’s willing to do the work to get there. He’ll probably change his mind, but then again, he might not. I love it that no one’s told him he can’t do that or that he’ll have to wait until he’s a grown up to try. I love it that his eyes sparkle when he sees a well designed object and wants to replicate it, and thinks he can! (ie. a walled pond with a water fountain). I love that one day he figured out that everything was made from the same stuff and I love that he takes a keen interest in current affairs shows on TV. I love that after watching a documentary on lightening and storms we had a whopper of a lightning storm that knocked the power out! It was good timing! When Master Nine was in school I never new what he was learning or if, indeed he was retaining anything.  We missed so much! Now I notice every little thing, every little “ah ha!” I love the excitement, the thrill that comes with an accomplishment or a discovery and I love being there to help solve problems when they arise. Children learn. We can choose to make it difficult by sending them on a twisted, rocky path or we can choose to clear that path for them to decide their own way. I choose the latter.

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?

My son L has been saving up for a Lego Agent set. It was about $135 retail when he first decided he wanted it and he madly set about thinking up jobs he could do for us to earn a few extra bucks. Over the past two months, L has put every cent aside for his Lego Agent set and has dedicatedly set about putting mulch around trees, watering the new garden, weeding, washing the cars, cleaning the insides of the cars, helping his brothers with tasks, helping move rocks to a retaining wall etc to earn a few dollars here and few dollars there.

One day he put fliers in all the neighbours letterboxes advertising a “dog walking service”. He didn’t get any bites (pardon the pun) but mostly because our neighbours were worried about the size of L as opposed to the size of their dogs. One day a couple of Pomeranian dogs wandered into our yard and L looked after them with gusto. When the owners came to claim their dogs, they gave him $15 which wss quickly added to his stash.

He had saved over $100 and so, the other day, Wayne went out and bought him the set and we hid it away in our cupboard. Wayne asked him today, to bring out the money he had earned and count it for us. So out came the box and every cent was counted, but there was $17 missing. The $17, it turned out, had mysteriously made its way into A’s piggy bank. A was adamant that he had found it under the bed. L was angry and upset that his precious money had been taken from his room but we calmed him down and explained that A simply didn’t understand the value of money (we were secretly glad that L did now).

Then Wayne brought out the lego set. L’s eyes went wide. We told him that he had done such a fantastic job of saving that we had decided to get it for him and pay for the rest (about $15 difference in the end). He sat there and tears welled up in his eyes as he looked over the huge, shiny, box. He was so overwhelmed with joy and disbelief, he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t believe it. He finally had his lego set after saving all this time. He couldn’t believe that we had already bought it for him. Money was exchanged and a very happy eight year old set about putting the set together. He’s still going and probably won’t stop for hours.

At lunch L very spontaneously turned to us and said “Thank you for getting me the Lego Agent set.” My heart swelled with pride.

It’s not easy for most children to save, be gracious about a theft, understand the importance of a gift well earned and say “thank you” on their own terms but it is even harder for a very ego-centric child with Aspergers Syndrome. I am so proud of L. Not only has he learned the value of earning money, he has learned the value of working for something, the value of the different notes and coins, he has learned how to market his services and promote a business and he has learned about grace, kindness and love.

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?