Homeschooling, Autism Style: Reset for Success

by Wendela Whitcomb Marsh

Parents all over the world are suddenly homeschooling. Are you one of them? If you have children on the autism spectrum, the prospect may seem even more daunting. Homeschooling, Autism Reset for Success will give you what you need to step up. You’ll plan out the best way for your kids to learn at home, according to their own strengths and rhythms, find varied and fun activities to create teachable moments, and integrate learning into everyday life. You’ll also meet three fictional characters you may recognize from your own Distractible Dory, Hyper-focused Hermione, and Creative Calvin. Learn how personalizing a homeschooling experience works for each of them. Homeschooling, Autism Reset for Success is written by a mother-daughter team. Wendela is an autism consultant, author, and speaker. Siobhan, also a writer, grew up in an autism-majority family and successfully homeschooled herself for several years. Siobhan’s Strategies appear throughout the book. Although the book was written primarily for homeschooling families with children on the autism spectrum, the tips and tools are equally effective for your kids with ADHD, OCD, sensory integration or processing problems, learning difficulties, and even for typically-developing children. Whoever you are, and wherever you are on your homeschooling journey, you’ll find something here for your family.

92 pages, Paperback

Published November 10, 2020

Reviews

[Tina]

This book focuses strongly on kids doing virtual school (specifically those switching from a physical school to virtual during the Covid-19 pandemic), so don't expect a discussion around curriculum choice or different varieties of homeschooling here. There is an underlying assumption that there is a parent present who can give full attention to the kids during school, which actually does not fit with a lot of parents' experiences during Covid school-from-home, but is probably fine as applied to homeschooling generally.

All that said, there are some nice basic ideas about how to make school-at-home work for kids with various leanings and how to give enrichment opportunities in keeping with what you might more traditionally think of as homeschooling. The authors are very good at creating mnemonics, and they provide some helpful ideas for working with neurodiverse kids going a few different directions. (My favorite was creating a "time machine" for a kid with the creativity and going-in-all-directions nature of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. The time machine was where you would put things that the kid was playing with when they should be doing school; they could "travel through time" and get them back later.)

[Claire]

Lots of great ideas for breaking routines and looking outside the box to ignite learning at home. Lots of references to pandemic times and overuse of "handy" acronyms take away from a book with some good ideas...