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Last summer, as we struggled to raise our newest family members, I never thought I’d have the time, let alone the inclination, to write an article about homeschooling adopted children in just ten short months. But because of the techniques we’ve learned from books like Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control and The Connected Child, seminars like the one we attended with Juli Alvarado in February 2007, and the incredible support and prayers of ours Family and Friends – Our family has stabilized and our home has become a place of refuge rather than a war zone.
Homeschooling my three children is one of the greatest joys and undeniable challenges I have ever encountered. My children are 9, 7 and 6 years old and my biggest challenge is teaching not only their intellectual age but also their emotional age. I’m certainly not an expert, having only been homeschooling for three years, but I’m hoping to make some good suggestions on how to establish routines while remaining flexible, how to accommodate a child’s developmental needs without overdoing the academic content sacrifice, and some curriculum decisions we’ve made in our family that seem to facilitate the types of learning that many special needs children thrive on.
Let’s start talking about routines. I find adoptive parents faced with extreme behaviors often do one of two things. They either build such a structure in their children’s lives that their children are suffocated and stressed, or they have no boundaries or expectations at all and apologize for apologizing for any behavior but never re-educate their children in appropriate language. Neither path is helpful and if you are going to school at home there is nowhere to hide – you are responsible for your education and you must have a plan. I have found that routines with flexibility offer the best hope for a peaceful home. Let me explain what that looks like.
At my house I have two boys who get up fairly early and one girl (the youngest) who is generally a late riser. Instead of dragging Rose out of bed before she’s ready and arguing with her all morning about not getting enough sleep, I let her sleep in and use the morning to have breakfast with the boys and focus on her . We often play a game together after breakfast before they even get dressed. (I try to get up, dress and get some rest before either of them get up.) Then they get dressed and brush their teeth. When my middle child, Gabriel, hesitates to get dressed, we set a timer and see if he can make it. He loves every game and it always works. Rose is usually up around this time and needs some cuddles so the boys can play together while I take care of them and make their breakfast. Once she’s dressed, we begin our “three Rs,” with Mom bouncing between the three kids as they first work through their math workbooks. Then Ezra, my eldest, does his handwriting, grammar and silent reading while I do phonetics and reading with the two younger ones. If I need someone with Rose or Gabriel, Ezra is assigned to read to the kid who isn’t with mom. The younger kids love this and it encourages closeness between siblings which is nice as they have only been living in the same house for a year!
After an hour the kids usually need some exercise and are sent to jump on the trampoline or I let the boys wrestle inside if it’s cold or rainy. During this time I do some homework before taking it back to be read aloud. First we’re making picture books for the unit we’re making (I’ll talk more about Konos later, the syllabus we use for all other subjects) and then we’re making a chapter book. The younger children aren’t listening very well yet, so feel free to play with cars or Polly Pockets on the floor while we read the book geared towards the elders. After we talk about what we’ve read, they can play until lunch. After lunch we do our unit studies together with all three children. The Konos curriculum includes all science, history, music, art, drama, physical education, practical life skills, geography, and Bible for each child’s needs. This curriculum is hands-on and we carry out the projects together, exploring each topic using a variety of media. My kids love this part of the day and learn things I never thought they could learn at such a young age because they are doing and discovering instead of just memorizing facts for a test. We carry out scientific experiments, meet famous people and re-enact historical moments. We take walks in nature, dissect and practice positive character traits with dolls or role-playing games.
The next part of our day is rest time. Most days, that means playing quietly indoors for an hour while mom regroups. Some days the kids actually need a nap and stay on their beds with books in hopes of falling asleep. Immediately after rest time is snack time and every other day we have 30 minutes of computer time for each child. (This is a fun time for the kids to choose a game to play.) On the other days I try to come up with a simple craft that the kids can do mostly on their own while I clean and start dinner. One thing we have learned is that television is a disaster for our children. Because of this, we’ve eliminated it altogether for the occasional movie. The handicraft time has replaced the television time in the afternoon.
By this time, dad is almost home and often takes over after a quick chat with mom. He takes the kids on bike rides, plays games with them, reads stories to them, or lets them help with the chores while I put dinner on the table. After dinner everyone gets ready for bed and we listen to books on CD, read together with the family or play a family game for the little ones before bed. Rose and Gabriel are in bed no later than 8pm most nights and sometimes earlier. Ezra is allowed to stay up an hour after them to have alone time with us.
In general, my children know what to expect from our time and that makes a big difference in their attitude and behavior. What I just described would be considered a really good day – often I have to change something because someone else needs something else. There are some fundamentals that make up the skeleton of our day that don’t change much. Morning routines, meal times, reading aloud, rest times, and bedtime routines are essential to a successful day. Other parts can be lengthened; possibly shortened, rearranged or deleted entirely, depending on what is going on at home. Our day is not regimented; it just has a flow.
Since we go to school year-round, I don’t worry if we end up cuddling on the couch for most of the day a few times a month. When my kids are in the right frame of mind to study, I know when to move on and I know when to pack up the hard stuff for the day and call it a day. My main goal right now is to teach them to trust me, teach them character and work on their reading consistently. The other things will come as their brains heal from the trauma they experienced.
Typically, parents of adoptive children have an extra layer of issues to deal with on a daily basis that make home schooling particularly challenging. Adopted children need so much of us that homeschooling seems to alleviate problems that are often exacerbated by the public school system, which often fails to understand the adopted child as someone who needs an extra dose of understanding. The last thing we want in our human selfishness is to have to deal with all these problems ourselves without “break”! However, I assure you; the rewards far outweigh the sorrows.
Gabriel attended a fabulous public school (while still a foster child) with a wonderful teacher, a great clerk, and a staff that bent over backwards to help our family. Despite all of this, we had behavioral issues at home due to the stress that school brought into the equation. After six months of home schooling, these problems have all but disappeared. We’ve slowly weaned him off the medication he’s been on since he was three years old and we’re still seeing progress we never saw until the stress of public school was removed. Not everyone has the opportunity to study at home, but we have found that it is the best way to build the relationships in our family that help our traumatized children heal.
Update: My kids are older now (12, 9 and 8) but this article is still relevant. I wanted to resubmit it in the hope that it might encourage others.
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