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The Homeschool How To
I don't claim to know anything about homeschooling, so I set out on a journey to ask the people who do! Join me as I chat with homeschoolers to discuss; "why are people homeschooling," "what are all the ways people are using to homeschool today," and ultimately, "should I homeschool my kids?"
The Homeschool How To
#126: From Resistance to Resilience: How Homeschooling Helped Wendy’s Autistic Daughter Thrive
When Wendy’s autistic daughter came home from school writing “I am not smart” on her papers, everything changed.
Initially completely against homeschooling, Wendy faced a painful truth: the public school system was failing her child. With IEP accommodations ignored, concerning approaches to gender identity, and even medical decisions made without parental consent, Wendy reached her breaking point.
She took education into her own hands.
In this powerful episode of The Homeschool How To Podcast, Wendy shares:
- Why she walked away from the school system
- Creative strategies like “grocery cart math” that made learning click
- How multisensory, movement-based learning helped her autistic daughter succeed
- Her bold stance: parents can educate neurodivergent children better than professionals
- What the 6% independence rate for autistic adults means for her family’s goals
Whether you’re homeschooling a child with special needs, curious about alternatives to public education, or searching for hope in your parenting journey—this episode will challenge and encourage you.
What is the most important thing we can teach our kids?
HOW TO HANDLE AN EMERGENCY!
This could mean life or death in some cases!
Help a child you know navigate how to handle an emergency situation with ease: Let's Talk, Emergencies! -
🛒 Get 15% off the Tuttle Twins books mentioned in this episode using code Cheryl15:
🎧 Subscribe and share with a fellow parent who needs to hear this.
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Welcome to this week's episode of the Homeschool How-To. I'm Cheryl and I invite you to join me on my quest to find out why are people homeschooling, how do you do it, how does it differ from region to region? And should I homeschool my kids? Stick with me as I interview homeschooling families across the country to unfold the answers to each of these questions week by week. Welcome, and with us today I have Wendy from New York. Wendy, how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm good. Thanks, cheryl, how are you?
Speaker 1:So we know each other and you don't live in my area in New York any longer, but you used to take my Zumba class.
Speaker 2:That's right, my first Zumba class. And you're the reason I still today love Zumba. It's my preferred way of exercising, because it's just absolutely fun.
Speaker 1:It's so fun and I just got done teaching a class, so it's so funny that I was thinking about you during the class while I was teaching and I'm like, geez, when did Wendy take my class? Cause I've been teaching at the school down the road for me for like 10 years and you were yeah, well, you weren't you at, like, the vent fitness gym?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that was after my first child, so yeah, that was like a decade ago.
Speaker 1:That's so cool that you reached out to say that you homeschool as well, which it's like there are a lot of homeschoolers in New York, but I nobody from like the world that I lived in before I kind of woke up to reality none of those people like homeschool or you know, live that kind of lifestyle. So it's so funny to hear people from my past that are like yes, I'm, I'm on this path too. Where did you even did you know you wanted to homeschool from the beginning.
Speaker 2:No, actually I was the opposite. I was never going to homeschool. I was very adamant that I didn't want to be my child's everything, but after the pandemic it was 21. So my kids actually went to school the year after and it was like a month into the school year the following year and I was like I'm out, like I can't do this anymore. It's, it doesn't make sense for us, um, and it's not really working for all of us, and I had some trust issues as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, Interesting so they. How old are your kids and how many do you have?
Speaker 2:Now, my oldest is going to be 12 this August, my twins are eight and we're actually expecting our fourth in January.
Speaker 1:Congratulations. Thank you, that's so exciting. Oh, so you got a 12 year old and a baby. That's fun. Yeah, it's going to be wild, yes, but that's so fun. I love it, cause, yeah, homeschoolers just you're supposed to have lots of kids, right? I like Exactly you know what?
Speaker 2:Let's just go for it. You know, I just turned 40 in February, so I'm like it's now or?
Speaker 1:never. I'm exactly one year older than you. I turned 41 in February and we have like the one month where, cause, I'm trying to like not put a lot of toxins in my body anymore. I did a lot of damage the first 40 years and but we had one month where we like had a scare and I'm like, oh, we got to figure something out. I don't think I can do a third. They're a lot, but I love them.
Speaker 2:They are. I mean, we had twins and that was bananas.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's fun though, and so okay. So your daughter was about eight when COVID happened and you or seven or eight and you were like thinking this was nuts.
Speaker 2:She was six and she was in first grade, and it wasn't until about two years later, I think, that I pulled them out. So yeah, she was eight by the time I decided to homeschool.
Speaker 1:What was it? You said trust issues. What was this kind of centered around?
Speaker 2:I mean I wasn't a huge fan of the COVID shot being pushed on children and hearing that some teachers in certain districts not necessarily mine were giving it to children without their parental consent what, yeah, so that was. That was just kind of one part, but I had toyed with the idea because my oldest is autistic and I knew where she was in school and she wasn't like keeping up and I didn't feel like it was working for her. She's not the kid who can sit still all day long and just kind of do what she's told. She needs movement and a lot of it, um, and so homeschooling really allows us to work around. Her needs, um, and all of ours honestly.
Speaker 1:Yes, are your twins. Are they both boys? No, I have all girls. So far, okay, and you don't know for the next one.
Speaker 2:We don't know yet for the little one. Yeah, okay, okay, and you don't know for the next one, we don't know yet.
Speaker 1:For the little one. Yeah, okay, all right, so we have old girls. So, yes, this is interesting because I once I kind of like my son, I gave him everything on the CDC schedule and all that stuff, um, never thought twice about it. And then with the COVID, I started, you know, watching the high wire with Dell big tree and like, oh, they're putting that in the COVID shot and oh, that's how little they've actually studied the safety. Yeah, no, we're not getting that.
Speaker 1:And then they kind of would delve into the other ones and I'm like, wait a minute, is this stuff? Parents, like, do I have the authority to question this? And it's so weird that we really they kind of make us like think we're not even able to. But so this was one of the fears I had, I think the first episode. I talked about the fears of homeschooling, but then also my fears on sending them to traditional school, and one of my fears was like I am worried that they're going to inject them with something, whether it be a flu shot that I no longer want them to have, or the COVID shot or anything else, that they're going to take those liberties at school, in the nurse's office or wherever. Maybe they have a truck, pull up to the school and trust that my kids are going to come back the way I sent them. That was, you know, and I felt crazy actually thinking that way. I'm like am I nuts? Have I dropped off the deep end? But now that you're saying it, you have validated me so much.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean, I mean having to have that conversation with your eight-year-old and your four-year-olds. Don't let anyone do anything with a vaccine. Don't let them. I should be there if you are to receive anything, Because even the flu shot you had to be there with your kid in order for them to receive it at the school. But when I get that kind of information, I'm like, yeah, I have trust issues now, and even more so as the political and social climate has changed and how we've opened up on this whole gender identity thing in public schools. I know for certain that my child would have been a target and we would have. We would not be the family that we are because we would be fighting just to keep her here and keep our parental rights.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's another thing. I don't feel like I talk about it a lot on the show, but I have a lot of opinions about it. I mean, I know that the agenda behind this is to get our kids on pharmaceuticals for the rest of their life and they want to depopulation. They want to depopulate there. They literally tell you on TED Talks and the World Economic Forum they're telling you the world's overpopulated. We have to bring it down 15 percent. You know Bill Gates is on video saying it, so we know that they think there's too many of us. And then all of a sudden now they want to give our little ones things that would make them not be able to procreate later on. And just if they're on pharmaceuticals for the rest of their life, I mean you kind of have to be if you're gender transforming, you know I would imagine you got to block hormones and estrogen and whatever for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1:So there is a customer for the rest of their lives and it's like would anybody really do that? But yeah, they would.
Speaker 2:Yeah, unfortunately, we kind of have to believe almost everything these days, you know, because, I mean, things have just been boggling your mind Like is that really happening? Actually it is happening, you know, and I didn't want to get into a situation where my daughter would say, you know, I want to be a boy and so I didn't want to be lied to, deceived, things to be kept from us because we are her parents, we are ultimately in charge of her until she becomes an adult and is in charge of herself, and I don't trust that people would be honest with us. I mean, I sent her to school for therapies like the year after. It was like fourth grade, and the first question out of her speech therapist mouth was what does your daughter, what does she identify as? And I was like I don't understand.
Speaker 2:She is a girl, like no, I know that she might like being a boy, but it's like it's called being a tomboy and we've lost that term over the past few years and it is still a thing. She can dress however she likes. She dresses the way that she does because she has sensory needs, and so we don't like girl clothes because they're cut too close to the body. And so when she was six, I could barely keep clothes on this child and she was like naked in the backyard for the whole summer. Like you're at least young enough to do this now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So let's figure out what those clothes are. And it was just boy clothes stuff that was boxier, cut farther away Instead of interesting, yeah, and so it took some time and her hair was also a sensory issue and so that was cut off. She only started growing it back out over the past like year or so, because she wants braids now. But you know it's a physical pain for her and so after a while we just stopped fighting those things because they're trivial, they're clothes, they're hair. Hair grows back. Maybe you like to wear girl clothes another time, but who cares? If you don't Be comfortable Be who you are, that doesn't mean you have to change anything about your body.
Speaker 1:Right To chop something off, add something to it or take a chemical to change what's going on?
Speaker 1:physiologically inside, right, yeah, and I think about this. Like the teachers, I feel like they're, they feel that they are coming from a good place. Like the teachers don't feel like I'm going to get another one and, you know, put this one on the tally marks. Like they feel like, oh, they just, the parents just don't understand, Like the old Will Smith song or something from the nineties, so they can come to me, but they don't see the world the way that we do with. No, they're targeting their pharmaceutical industries are targeting the kids to make lifelong customers and you're stepping in and aiding the pharmaceutical industry. That has already proved to us that they are liars and manipulators and will do anything to make a dollar.
Speaker 2:And trying to keep our parental rights from us, which we are 100% entitled to. That's my kid. I get to make those decisions for the greater good, for her well-being, until she's old enough and wise enough to make those decisions on her own. She chooses to do something about that when she's 18, she'll be an adult, not a child and pre pubescent child at the time Right, and even I experienced it with my son when he was four.
Speaker 1:We sent him to a private preschool. It was only like a couple of times a week, but they would put hand sanitizer on them every time they entered the school and I would tell my son, I told them I don't want hand sanitizer on his hands. If his hands are dirty, just send him to the bathroom to wash them.
Speaker 2:Water is better than anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're putting a chemical right on your child's hands so it's seeping in, it's getting into their bloodstream and I didn't want it on him. He was four, three or four and um, so they were doing it anyway and he had to tell me, at four years old, mom, they're still making me put hand sanitizer on my hands, and yeah, so I had to say to them again. They were like well, is it an allergy? You know it's. It's again the parental rights.
Speaker 2:Right, and you know I had. You know my child at a younger age wasn't very open and verbal. I mean she didn't really speak a lot until she was almost four, you know three, four. She was in speech therapy at three years old but you know I wouldn't get any information out of her when she went to school, like how was your day, what did you do today, I learned like that was all I would get from her. So it was, you know, even more of a trust issue because I can't get any information out of this child and so I'm just trusting that you guys are doing a good job for her at blindly trusting and after a while I'm like no, I can't do that anymore. I need to know what's going on. And you know I probably became a little bit of a nuisance to her special ed teachers. You know you're going to communicate with me and like regularly, yeah, so like every single day.
Speaker 1:How has homeschooling her? What have you done to make learning easier for her? Like I know, there are probably parents listening that are like, oh I, I couldn't homeschool my child because they have autism or because they're on the spectrum, so therefore let me let the professionals handle it. They're better equipped than I am and I know, just like you're nodding your head, that's far from the truth. What have you done to help her learn in a way that the school can't offer?
Speaker 2:Well, we had a really good example. She went back to school in fifth grade. She wanted to and she was very much struggling at home, and so I allowed her to go back for a couple of months. I allowed her to go back. It only lasted a couple of months, but you know, she was in fifth grade and in a fifth grade math class when she was really more like first or second grade math, because they really didn't cover it or make sure that she had mastered the fundamentals back during COVID and the year after COVID, because that was her first and second grade years.
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Speaker 2:And I even told this to them at her progress report in November. She went in September and she was out basically after Thanksgiving and at her progress report with her teachers I told them I said you are limited. I said I am not. I can do whatever I want. I said so if I need to go back and master those fundamentals, I will, and I did, you know, over the past couple of years.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, she was in fifth grade with you know a barely a second grade math and she's in fifth grade math. So she is feeling stupid and she's writing on her papers. I am bad at math, I am not smart. Nobody talks to me about this, I just see it on the papers that come home from school and that bothered me. So you know I can do what I need to do to meet her where she truly is and adjust our curriculum, adjust how I teach, what I teach, just how I teach what I teach, what we use as our resources in order to help her along, not let her sit and flounder and feel worse and worse about herself.
Speaker 1:Well, and I wonder how many kids in the class were just like her and it was like but this is the curriculum this year, so we're rolling with it, no child left behind. You all have to pass this one way or another.
Speaker 2:I mean the truth is is that I talked to her special ed team a couple of times and they're just telling me, even though she has an IEP, that there's not enough room in the remedial math class for her. There's already too many children in that class to make room for a autistic child who needs that help also. And I thought, well, that's crap. You make room, you figure that out. But also now we're not following her IEP, which, in my opinion and as far as my understanding goes, is against all of the rules and the laws. With special education children they're supposed to do that.
Speaker 2:And then I just get you know crap answers Like there's not enough room and I'm like you cannot seriously leave her in fifth grade math. She can't do it, yeah, nor should should she. She needs to go backwards because you guys didn't make sure that she had it and, yes, I had her for third and fourth grade and I missed it too. I was trying to just kind of pick her up where I thought she was, but that's not where she was. So we've had to go back and even this year, as a sixth grader she we had to go and do a whole unit on subtraction just so that we had that fundamentals, but we did it in eight weeks and then we did multiplication and we're going to finish next week.
Speaker 1:That brings up pretty much like what I'm doing with my son right now, because he's technically should be ending his first grade year if he were in the traditional school. But we've jumped around a little bit for reading because you know, I tried all about reading with the pre-reading for the kindergarten year and he liked that. But I wanted to see what other curriculums were like. So you know, I picked up the I think it was teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons and then I mixed that with something else and the first 50 lessons were great. But then he got to lesson 50 and it was like Mount Everest for him. So I took a break. We did just kind of like I just read to him. Then we picked it back up from lesson one the minute he got to lesson 50 again, it was just the paragraphs were so long and it was just really hard for him and I was like, okay, I can't make him struggle with this because he's just not going to enjoy reading ever.
Speaker 1:So I asked around for some tips, some pointers. We tried a few different things. I ended up landing on where he's working right now, on Reading Horizons. I think one of my guests, natalie recommended Reading Horizons and it is online but I mean he kind of likes that. I feel like he. He feels like he's got ownership of it, he's got agency there, it has some games in it, it has lessons and it's teaching him the fundamentals. But I started him at the kindergarten level and this was a few months ago. So he was like, technically, all his friends in school would be finishing up their first grade year and he was starting. I started him at kindergarten. I was like I'm sorry but I, if it's easy, you'll go through it really fast.
Speaker 2:And if it's not easy On those skills from there because, starting farther back because I did the same thing I went back to like first grade Cause I'm like we're like still counting on our fingers and we should be farther than this, and so I went all the way back just to make sure that we could have a little confidence in what we were doing and feel good about ourselves and yes, I can, I know that and build from there. And math is still a struggle. Reading is a struggle, but that's a uh, also a vision thing for her as well. She's had glasses since she was three as well, so you can't push it, because then she's just pushing back instead of just kind of finding that happy medium of where I can teach her and she's learning and we're not flipping out and having meltdowns all the time, either one of us.
Speaker 1:Have you found ways to mitigate that?
Speaker 2:I have to pick and choose my curriculum. It can't be overly wordy, overly cumbersome. It kind of has to get right to the point. And I'm at a point now that I'm piecemealing our entire curriculum. I am on Pinterest all the time looking for just different lessons and different games.
Speaker 2:I will reach out to another homeschool mom who is actually a former teacher. She's got four boys and one of them is also autistic and I'm like, please help me with a resource that will work when it comes to this math, because I'm like we're not making any headway to this math. Because, like I'm like we're not making any headway. And she recommended Kate Snow and what was it? Subtraction, facts that stick. They also have addition, multiplication, division, and then she has a whole bunch of other like curriculum math. Math with confidence, I think, is what it is and that's been working. I picked up subtraction and multiplication and, like I said, we're almost done and next year we get to do division. Okay, so just building blocks, building upon what she already knows, so that way we are confident and we can move on to the other things, because without those fundamentals she's just going to struggle for the rest of her life Right.
Speaker 1:And how long did it take you? You said you started back at like first grade. How long did it take you to get to where? What level are you at now?
Speaker 2:We're closing in more on fourth.
Speaker 2:Um, I've been more focused on key areas, that key areas of struggle, key areas that she needs to work on. I'll Google it. You know, google what does a third grader need to know? And it just spits out all that information and I'm like I'll write all that down and then we'll just start kind of chipping away at that information. But, yeah, we're, we're closer to fourth grade because it took us last year. It took us like we had to do like not all first grade, but we had to do a good portion of it and second grade, kind of math.
Speaker 2:And the twins are in a very similar situation. They're finishing up second grade right now. So I can kind of do a lot together. You know, and with a child who is on the autism spectrum, you have to understand that their brain works differently and they probably won't be at the same level as their peers and that there's nothing wrong. That's just how their brains work and they learn. They usually learn differently. So, making it more fun, more play, so games work nicely, but a kinesthetic way of learning is also helpful. Having that hands-on ability helps them learn in a very multisensory way.
Speaker 1:So what have been some of the tactics that you've used or found that really worked on Pinterest Games? Like board games, or games that they just kind of do up and you can get home with what you have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they just kind of do them up or I replicate them, even like spelling. We are atrocious with that, and so this year I was hyper-focusing on math and spelling, cause it was just bad. So I found that crazy. Spelling was something I found on Pinterest. I recreated it myself and it's just you use a dice and whatever they roll, that's what they get to do for their. They write down their spelling words, so it could be like funky letters, cursive write it three times. There's a few other ones, you know six different ones. They loved it. It was. They wanted that every day for a while, and so it's just changing things up too, so that we're not getting bored, because she's also ADHD, so we get bored with things, and so we just need things to be a little bit more exciting and make sense in real life.
Speaker 1:That's key. That's key to make it relate to something in their world Right.
Speaker 2:Because if you just spit, spit, yeah, on pizza for years and it did it again when I made pizza this past week I I'm like what you know, what is this and what you know? If I cut it like this, what, what are they now? And cut it like this, and you, what are they now? And I cut it like this, and you know, and she's really starting to grasp it because it makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, and I try to do that, like with my son when he's doing math, you know, and he'll write. Okay, here's the word problem. And he just usually knows to write the first number he hears and then the second number he hears. But they'll try to trick him every now and then to make sure he's putting the larger number first to subtract. And I have to turn it into a money problem and say, ok, so if you have seven dollars and I took 13 from you, how's that going to work? And then he knows it clicks. Oh, I have to switch the numbers around because he's not into like integers or anything yet negative. So you know, I have to put it in terms like money, because that he'll, he'll get or I'll use like okay, these screws are lug nuts for a tire, you know yeah exactly Right.
Speaker 2:So real life, you know real things that make sense to them. Another thing that I've I picked up that I didn't finish this year, um, cause we were doing it with the family, but um was grocery cart math, and so it was like once a week we'd go to the grocery store near us and during the day, nobody's. There was a small little grocery store, so I knew that the kids could just kind of go anywhere and do whatever the task was. You know, find, find items that are less than a dollar.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, how fun.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine my two terrorizing this grocery store. Oh yeah, I would take over the grocery store with my three, and then I brought in another family who brought her four, and so it was just bananas, but everybody loved it, raved about what we were doing, that is so cute, so you do find something under a dollar.
Speaker 1:What were some of the other things?
Speaker 2:You know it was about size. You need to find things that come in a gallon or a quart or a pint, and so we're looking at ounces on the containers and we're comparing them. We might even be you know what, what, and then we would go to like a pound, but we might compare them If you were to get two pints or one quart, which would cost less.
Speaker 1:Type of I love that Because you're doing the, which would cost less, but you could also do which would equal. You know, would this equal the other, which would be bigger, which would have more volume in it, more liquid? Right, I love this.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of a small grocery store.
Speaker 1:We have other stores. It might not be a grocery store here, but we have the, even kids.
Speaker 2:You can just go up and down the aisles and you can even just like help them, like. Well, if we're looking at ounces, we're probably looking at liquids. If we're looking at pounds, you know we might be looking at a solid or a box something you know but you know ounces are still on a lot of those boxes and a lot of those other packaging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I bet you adults don't even know that's a whole other thing.
Speaker 2:You know that we're not just learning about math anymore, we're learning about, you know, ounces and weight measurements, which I mean, of course it's still math, but yeah, but it's science, it's different parts of it.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's one of the things cause I'm I'm putting together an ebook right now on like things that I've learned from all the people that I've interviewed. What are the overarching themes of this? What are the things that stick out? That has been one of them. How, in homeschool, subjects blend so easily. That's part of the reason why they're in school for six hours or more and you only need to do homeschool for maybe an hour.
Speaker 2:You know give or take, but you know because you can learn things like math and science and history and writing and art, and it's so easy to and it's better to even learn that way because they have that connection between everything and just make it easier for you as the parent but also more interesting and fun for them. But like to kind of keep going with that one subject like, or that one topic is what I mean. So if you're talking about, you know, the Revolutionary War because we've been doing that this year, you know we might watch a video on it because there's a great show, liberty's Kids, that covers them at a. They're just, they're absolutely wonderful. So they get to watch a video.
Speaker 2:But maybe we'll read a book that talks about the clothing of the Revolutionary War, and so we talk about what they wore, how they got their goods and the fact that they had to make them back them. How did they have to make them? And we can write about that too. What was the most interesting thing that you learned? And so you are crossing the subjects constantly and you really haven't changed the subject at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying to think back to my history class and maybe why I was so terrible at history. I don't remember them making me like write anything about it or do any projects. It was just like like the projects would be more science class and the writing would be more your writing class. And you know reading was separate. But yeah, and maybe that's why none of it ever stick and that's why the only thing I know about the revolutionary war is what I learned in Hamilton. So that was probably a biased liberal side anyway.
Speaker 2:I mean mean, I remember just doing like in my school we were able to do some of those special projects. I remember it was like I don't even know what it was called that day, but like we went outside and we cooked on fire with like cast iron, like, and you were encouraged to dress up and the teachers did and and it was. I remember that you know and you remember those things that you did that were hands on, that was an experience, not just a lecture or busy work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I haven't done stuff like that with my son. He's six, He'll be seven soon. I almost am like well, one, I don't feel super creative. Two, I'm like I don't want to do all this stuff and then have them forget it and have to redo it again in three years.
Speaker 1:But I do have a love of history that I, like I never knew I had and just learning this, I think we're just learning more, like in the world around us and like the books that we get from the library and I'll select the books and have them. Or like I'll go on Read Aloud Revival what's her name? Sarah McKenzie? So she does read aloud revival and she's got all these book lists and I'll order the books from the book list through my library's app to come to the library, go pick them up. So they're all there waiting for me and you know I'll keep. I'll get like sometimes 30 at a time and just keep them for a month, and sometimes they're on themes, like you know, springtime or a holiday or something. So that's been cool. I've learned a lot about history just through, or like, the Tuttle Twins books. Oh my god, the history Learned way more.
Speaker 2:That's how I saw you and what you're doing. Because I had seen the Tuttle Twins ad, because I have the book series. My kids have watched the Tuttle Twins show and we have, like I think, some other like kind of comic book thing from them as well, and I, you know what. That's the one email that I actually read every time it comes through.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. I read them too, and I don't read anybody else, but I always learn something about government and what's going on in the world.
Speaker 2:Yes, and they've really helped us, even as adults, to really break down that information so that we can be more empowered and more in understanding of what's really happening and what that stuff means, because you know, you don't ever feel like you were really taught all of that, some of it maybe, but not all of it.
Speaker 1:Well, when I had Connor Boyack, who wrote the Tuttle Twins on my show, you know he said it perfectly. He was like you, send them to a government school that's paid for with government money, taught by government employees, why would they teach you anything else other than government is the solution for everything? Right, right, they're biased. I mean it makes so much sense Like, yeah, all right, that makes sense and yeah, things that you just wouldn't even think to question. I never questioned this stuff before and, like I said earlier on, I didn't even know I had the authority to question it.
Speaker 2:They kind of dumb us down in society to feel like you're just mom, you don't really know Right, or they just, you know, kind of make you just feel like, well, you should just kind of do what everybody else is doing, and I'm like, yeah, you know, my husband and I don't really do that.
Speaker 1:So what has been some of the pushback? Have you had any from family members or friends since you decided to homeschool For the most?
Speaker 2:part. It's been like my husband's family. They're full of teachers and so we still get it today where it's. You know well, you know what school district are you in? I'm like I don't know, I don't care, like I didn't move here for a school district, I moved here for my property. Like I don't, you know, I have no intention of sending them back, or just you know well how are they doing in school. So it's like you always just feel like maybe they're trying to interrogate you. But we've been. You know, this is our fourth year that we're completing and I think at this rate they are getting more on board.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, and it's like even helpful, like I had my mother-in-law. She had to take the kids while we were moving and I'm like we still need to do school. So here it is. I like gave her all the things. This is what we need to do. She did that and more, which was helpful to me. I'm like thank you.
Speaker 2:I didn't have the time to do this, you know, and I've had to repeatedly explain to them why and open their eyes a little bit to what's really going on, because you don't have children in the system. Yeah, you haven't been a part of the public school system in a long time, but things are different now and I grew up in public school, so I was a believer, was going to send them, you know, no big deal. But things change and you have to do right by your kids. I had some friends to who were just like, well, just send them back to school if you're so, you know, stressed out about it. I'm like I can't do that, like I can't do that and like my, my right mind, send them back. I don't believe in it anymore. Yeah, and even my kids now they don't believe in it either, you know, they know that they don't have to sit in school for six hours a day.
Speaker 1:Have you tried the Tuttle Twins books with your kids yet? We love them. In our home, my son plays the audio book and follows along in his book. It lets me get things done while we're homeschooling without missing a beat in his education. The stories bring history, economics and freedom alive in a way kids really connect with. Check out the link in this episode's description and use code Cheryl15 to get 15% off your order. Teach your kids about why independence matters, why freedom is worth protecting and to always stay curious. So you said that your daughter went to school for about three months and you pulled her out because of not meeting her where her needs were. But how did she do socially with the kids? Did she like going to school? Does she have any issues with how they treated her?
Speaker 2:Actually the reason that she stopped going is because she was having panic attacks and she refused to go back. So then I had had wanted to, she wanted to go and she was fine with children who were like her. There were two other children that she gravitated towards and they were in her therapy classes, the best friend that she had had since she was four. They were no longer like talking, they were in the same school and they didn't even get together anymore. She gravitated to neurodivergent children like herself, and so we didn't really socialize all that well, even though she was in a social group therapy class.
Speaker 2:It just seemed kind of silly, like she's not really, you know, progressing in that area. We're really just allowing her to stay where she is and to kind of be more childish where she's. You know, getting older we need to be, you know, more advanced and do better. I mean, she was never really picked on, as far as we know that these kids knew her since she was four, so that was always a blessing, you know, and they'll still, they'll see her out and they are like hey, haley, hey, haley's mom, and they're just excited to see her. She's loved dearly, but she is a very picky person when it comes to who she spends her time with and that's who she would choose children like herself, and I understand that and that's fine. We need to learn how to be a little bit more grown up. We are getting older, we are changing and we need to kind of get on board with that instead of reverting back to baby behavior.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it's easier and yeah, it is hard, and I think that it's so easy to throw your hands up and say, all right, just go into the school district where they know what they're doing and let them handle it. But when you homeschool, what's been probably one of the biggest challenges for me is being there to watch my kids interact with others, or particularly my son, because, I don't know, you don't have to think about it when you're at work and your kids are at school. Like I didn't remember thinking about it when he was in daycare, but he was so young too. But, um, now that I'm there for all of the group things that we do the co-ops or the play groups or whatever I just have noticed over the years that, wow, he really has a tendency to either he needs to be the one that everybody gravitates to or he goes off on his own.
Speaker 1:Like there's rarely that in between where I can just be part of the group and I don't have to be the lead guy, and if I'm not the lead guy, I'm going to go off on my own, or with younger kids and I for a while I mean I would be like all right, what's going on how come you're going, you're leaving the kids and I get it now Like he doesn't have to be with the kids his age because that is silly, he can be with the. But what you were saying struck a chord with me because I'm like, oh yeah, I've seen my son leave multiple groups with kids his age to go be with the little kids because he's the authority to them. It's not like a challenge for who's the alpha? You know he's the alpha because he's the older one.
Speaker 2:So it's been interesting that I noticed that too a little bit with Haley. Well, she loves babies, she loves little people, she wants to teach them things and so, honestly, she's probably going to have a life in childcare and being almost 12, it's good to know that now and that might just be her life path as she gets older and we can help facilitate that. You know, I watch my nephew once a week or twice a week right now and he just turned one. She loves being with him, loves holding him and doing all the stuff with him, and she doesn't love kids. Her own age for the most part, but maybe just a little bit younger than her. So she has chosen a few people who are just maybe a year or two younger than her. But that makes sense, for where she is she is probably closer to where they are in her mind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to go back to before too, like teaching her you know on the fifth grade level, or you know third grade level, or whatever it's like sometimes their brain just needs more time to be able to connect those synapses, exactly right. Yeah, it's silly to think that everybody should learn the exact same thing the exact same way at the exact same time in their life and that at 18, you need to have known X, y and Z in order for you to take the next step in your life, because now that I've quit my government job and I'm learning more home with my kids or doing the podcast or whatever, than I ever did in school and college or sitting in a cubicle doing government work, yeah, yeah, we have the ability to do that, to learn all those things, and we're learning them to help our children.
Speaker 2:But then I'm like, oh my goodness, you guys notice this and I'll just rattle on about how cool and interesting and how this makes sense and how this connects to that, and they're like, oh my goodness, and they get really excited too, right alongside me. And so that's happened actually a lot with the total twin show. I was constantly pausing it to explain and they're like, stop it, it's so funny.
Speaker 1:It relates to everything. I love the title.
Speaker 2:I'm like oh my gosh, that makes so much sense now.
Speaker 1:Like this is why do you understand? Yes, we needed there. They like take these concepts and bring up, like dumb them down for the people who were publicly educated. So it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. There's so much that my husband and I learned by watching those.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and their book series the Age 5 Through 11, is awesome too. I'll put a link and a coupon code in the show's description so people can you know, go look at the link, grab the or click on the link, look at their site and use the code if you want 15% off. But yeah, I love their stuff. I bought their stuff actually before I started kind of being an affiliate for them. So it sucks, I didn't, I didn't use any discount codes, but I just loved reading that stuff and, like you were saying, it was more for me at the time because my son was little. But I was like, wow, I didn't know, this is how the Federal Reserve works.
Speaker 2:Right, and we would read them for story time at night and you know it would take us a couple of days to get through it, but it covered our patriotism and our citizenship. Check mark on our reports.
Speaker 1:Yes, that we need in New York state. Oh my God, I love that. Though, when I read that on the HSLDA website that we need to do patriotism and citizenship, I'm like I'm pretty sure they're learning anti-patriotism in school. So what is this about? They're holding the homeschoolers to a higher standard, but that's all right. Oh, that's great. So any like as we close up, last, like things that you wanted to make sure you know, told people or words of encouragement, or even like bits of I don't know. Just, I know that people always ask me about homeschooling kids who are autistic or on the spectrum and is there helpful pointers? So anything you have that you can give them from your toolbox.
Speaker 2:I don't know. One of the biggest things you know is we know our children the best. No one is as invested in our children as we are. So it you know it's an empowering thing because you know you're the safe place they are going to come home from. You know public school and maybe completely lose it because you are their safe place.
Speaker 2:And who? Who is better than the genetic makeup that made that child to teach that child? Not necessarily someone who's fresh out of college who doesn't know anything about autistic kids. I even had a English teacher who was homeschooled himself. He didn't know a thing about autistic children and so he just wouldn't really know what to do to teach my child. And so you know we are the best equipped people and we care the most. No one is going to love them and care about them and invest in them and have to look at what their future might be. We're the ones who have to figure all of that out and make the best decision for them, and if that means we have to go back a grade or three, like I have, do what's right for them, because one of the statistics that I had read about was I think it was only 6% of autistic children live in successfully independently from their parents. As an adult, really and that was a statistic I wasn't allowing my daughter to become Right, wow, I think that they get given up on, they get pushed aside.
Speaker 2:You know what? They're just not going to get there and that's crap. They can if they're given the right tools, if they're learning in the way that they learn. You have the tools. There's a million tools, and I mean Pinterest is a phenomenal resource and YouTube as well and I know that that sounds silly, you know you're you're taking them to. You know YouTube and Pinterest, but I mean there's so many other parents just like us who have figured it out, have figured out at least a multitude of different options, and you can pick and choose based on your child's interests, or do a unit study and something that they're really interested in, because they can hyper-focus on something, which is one of those wonderful things that children on the spectrum can do, is hyper-focus. My daughter was obsessed with trains for two years and I mean it got really tiresome here, but she loved it, and so why not take trains and teach all of the subjects?
Speaker 1:And it's so easy. Now you can go on to ChatGPT. I did it earlier today and you can say I have a 12 year old daughter with autism. She likes, you know, dirt, getting her moving, kinetics, kinesthetics, kinesthetic kinesthetic, yeah, and kinetic sand, you know, and we. She loves trains and I want to incorporate math, science, reading, history. Um, all of that I want to do it for one hour a day, three times a week for four weeks.
Speaker 1:Can you create a unit study for me and it will spit it out for you? You can ask for please include library books. I can get from the library videos on YouTube or other places, documentaries on the subject, and you can say, like, the subject needs to be trains or the subject needs to be the history of the state of New York or volcanoes. It can be anything your kid is into and it can go into the history and from the history you can even branch out into like, okay, well, who was living there during? You know this time, or that you know it branches, but it's relevant. Like you said before, it relates to something they want to learn about.
Speaker 2:Right Cause I mean, most of the time they're just learning something that's arbitrary to them. I don't understand. Why do I need to know this? What does this have to do with anything? And making it make sense is a key to getting them interested in it. And when they're interested in something then they're going to learn about it. And that even helped with my daughter's reading. She found it's one book that she liked and that helped her continue to read On her own more of an easier chapter book. But I mean I will take it. I will even take those Roblox books that got awful to read. I can't stand them, but she likes them and she's reading and that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, I love it. Wendy said you had so many bits of inspiration in there. I am going to have a hell of a time trying to make reels and stuff for social media for that Cause there's so much. It was so good. Um, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This has been wonderful and it's been so nice reconnecting with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of the homeschool how to. If you've enjoyed what you heard and you'd like to contribute to the show, please consider leaving a small tip using the link in my show's description. Or, if you'd rather, please use the link in the description to share this podcast with a friend or on your favorite homeschool group Facebook page. Any effort to help us keep the podcast going is greatly appreciated. Thank you for tuning in and for your love of the next generation.