The Bumpy Road Way: Resisting Change

One of the biggest challenges with Sam is overcoming his anxiety when faced with change. This posed a huge hurdle for his teachers at school. Transitioning between activities could be smooth, but often teaching staff were faced with Sam's angst and very vocal protests. Sam can be very determined and stubborn. If he decides he wants to do something, he really can't see why it should be any other way. This is where the 22Q comes in. Children with 22Q are socially around two years behind their chronological age. So Sam is acting more like a four year old than a six year old. When you have this additional information, his behaviour is understandable. If you don't, his behaviour is unacceptable. This creates stress and anxiety for both Sam and those interacting with him.

Home schooling is giving me the opportunity to reduce Sam's stress levels and prepare him for a return to a mainstream classroom. I have two goals. The first is to learn how Sam learns. The second, is to teach Sam how to learn and behave in readiness for a return to his school. Sam has obstacles to overcome that a typical child does not, but I do not want this to become an excuse for not achieving what I know he is capable of. Life is hard. You choose how to live it. You can let set backs and difficulties prevent you from succeeding, or you can find a way over and around them. I've always chosen the second option. If I succeed or fail, it is always down to me. Yes, Sam has 22Q and some things are harder, but they are not impossible. If you want some inspiration, Google 'Temple Grandin'. That woman is amazing!

I also want to say that Sam's school has been wonderful and it has some of the best teachers I have known. Actually, Sam is very much missed by his class mates and in particular his Teacher Aides. He is popular with his peers/classmates and fortunately I am friends with many of the mothers and teachers, so I can organise 'social' catch ups. My daughter is in Year 3 and I am also Secretary of the P & C (Parents and Citizens Association), so we are still very much part of school life, which is great.

Back on the subject of anxiety. I read an article on Facebook today about dealing with an anxious child. The author raised some interesting points. One was that when a child (or any person) is anxious, although they want to listen to you the brain just won't let that happen. They've gone beyond reasoning as the brain kicks into survival mode - 'fight or flight'. It dumps a heap of chemicals and mentally prepares them for self preservation. At this point, anything you say to that child/person will fall on deaf ears.

Anxiety and worrying is a natural protection mechanism that we all have. It can help us survive danger. It has a purpose and in ancient times it saved many of our ancestors from a particularly unpleasant predator. So how to handle anxiety when the threat is not quite so life threatening?

I've tried all the usual 'Mummy' tactics and what I'm learning now is that an understanding, but firm tact is the way. I really do understand that Sam's game is far more appealing than doing lessons with Mummy, but lessons with Mummy is the only option. And do you know what? I win him over in the end.

First we worked on letter formation.

Then we worked on some sentences focusing on 'Ll' words.

'Ll' word are our focus in speech therapy at the moment. so I'm working that into our English session.

Sam did really well. I had drawn pictures to go with the sentences and Sam had to match them up.

We finished our English block with a new App I'd downloaded onto my iPad. It's called 'Talking ABC'. In one of the activities you can type in words and it creates it in digital play dough. Sam loved it. I created a word list starting with the letter 'l' so we practiced our 'l' articulation.

I pointed out in an earlier post that homeschooling is not all sweetness and light. Here's proof. This was Sam trying to avoid our second lesson session.

I've now got Sam out of the house to where we do our lessons, but he is still not happy about it.

Once I have Sam engaged, he is brilliant. Here he is practicing writing his numbers and number words.

Sam used his imagination with our next Math activity. The pegs became a giant finger.

When Sam got a handle of the intended purpose of the pegs, he was on a roll.

Another home made activity. I saw an idea about using pegs on Pinterest. I wrote the numbers 1 to 20 on pegs and on the coloured paper circles wrote the number word. Sam was really quick to match the word and numbers. His difficulty is pronouncing the word number, but he does know his numbers.