EDUCATION OF NEURODIVERSE KIDS – PART IV

Hi Friends

Whether the child is neurotypical or neurodiverse, initially every parent hesitates to opt homeschooling. There are several reasons for this hesitation, some of them being society system of sending the child to formal school, peer pressure, feeling scared in taking over complete responsibility of education, lack of confidence, etc.

I faced similar mix of emotions and confusions when I started homeschooling my child. However, as we proceeded, gradually I started to develop my own strategies and tips & tricks which helped me to become confident and achieve my targets. In this blog, I will be sharing some of these strategies to enable new parents gain confidence to start homeschooling.

First most important tip is to create a daily schedule and follow it religiously so far as possible. For my child, initially I had divided the day into 5-6 slots of 15 minutes each. After following this schedule religiously for about a month, my child himself started demanding to study at the designated time. It gave me support to work on his academics as I no more had to struggle that much with his sitting tolerance. Gradually, we started increasing this time and after about two months, we were working in 4 slots of about 30 minutes each. This strategy helped me in increasing his sitting tolerance and imbibing regular study time in his schedule.

Another strategy I opted was academic goal setting. I started taking notes as to what we had done on a particular day, if the target was achieved or not, what are the goals for next day, revision schedule of work done that day, websites/books/ youtube channels to be referred for that particular topic, time designated for a particular activity, etc. This task took only 15 minutes everyday but was very helpful in keeping me sorted. Also, I made a repetition/revision schedule for every topic. For example, if we learnt number names 1-10 on a particular day, I made sure that the same was revised multiple times through different activities.

Though I took help of books and websites, I took his learning beyond table and chair. Apart from making my own worksheets as per the level/needs of my child, I made him revise a concept in multiple other ways including using activities in daily life e.g. counting ladyfingers, sorting mixed rajma & chana on color basis, identifying shapes of doors, windows, utensils, appliances, etc.

Apart from above, we tried to make his learning a family activity by including his father and elder brother. For example, we played traditional game ‘चिड़िया उड़, मैना उड़ …’ when we were studying means of air transport, game of ‘laddoo’ where every nth number is replaced by the word ‘laddoo’ to learn tables, etc.

A small area with high glossy tiles was designated for him to write anything he wanted apart from placing white boards in all rooms, sticking chart papers on doors and keeping a notebook and pencil box in every room to prompt him to use them.

These are some of the activities we opted to ease the learning process and make it interesting. Apart from helping in academics, these activities also helped my son in mingling with the family members which he never did before as he used to stay aloof all the time, he started enjoying family time and most importantly, developed a bond with his elder sibling.

One more important thing, I joined various homeschoolers groups in Delhi NCR. Due to the lockdown, there were no physical meets, but we attended many online activities that helped us in our homeschooling journey. Also, keeping in touch with other homeschooling families, helped us in learning from their experiences and applying the same strategies for our son.

From my experiences, I have learnt that you cannot impose or inject knowledge into your child. Approach has to be relative, interesting, functional, practical and innovative. Something that prompts him to step outside his comfort zone. Also, a strict no comparison policy helped me to remain calm as there was no rush and we were proceeding as per the pace of my child.

These are some of the activities that helped in academic progress of my child. In the next blog, I will be sharing more such tips & tricks along with exploring mediums of open learning in India.

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Author Shivani Lohia

Shivani Lohia is a Chartered Accountant by profession and mother to 9 years old child on the autism spectrum. The cause of autism awareness is very close to her heart and she strongly believes in equal education for all & strongly advocates inclusion. She has been homeschooling her son since he was 5 years old.