Early Intervention

I have wanted to write something about early intervention for a long time now. Ozzy had his first assessment at age 2 1/2.We had to see the dev ped every six months, and now, once a year.We came in for his speech delay and he was observed to be hyper-active. When we started looking at therapy we realized how expensive it was going to be. With the apparent cost alone, we could have just ignored the problem. Many suggested to wait for him to grow up and maybe, later on, the problem will go away.

This is what I looked like before Ozzy had therapy sessions....

Everything was a stand off. I didn't know what was going on. the worst feeling was that I couldn't understand why my son was so disconnected to me. When I used to bring Ozzy to his therapy center, I recognized this same look in another mother's face. Perplexed at their kid. Have you seen your mother look at you that way? Do you realize how that look feels like? Can you imagine what it does to your spirit when you keep getting them? It was the look of disappointment.

Things get better after therapy. I caught a therapist saying, "mukhang nag-iimprove naman si *name*. Tingnan mo si mommy naka ngiti na." 

To see that alone is a grace from God. I am sharing this because I want to share this grace with you and if early intervention is necessary go ahead and take the plunge. It takes lot of hard work and personal acceptance.

Here's our relationship now...

I think I shall leave the planet a better place. 

Figure It Out Along the Way

Now that I’m done with “my” report card, I can let out a sigh of relief. I hold my breath when I do assessments. I don’t know why. It’s just the way it is. Even when I was teaching in a school, it felt the same. You can slice the tension in a room when its assessment time. In school, I am welcomed by exhausted faces of students when I enter a room. Any room. In any class. Across the board. Maybe they hold their breath too. It’s a time when everybody needs a hug. Teachers and students feel pretty much the same way.

Anyway, this means that the following reports will be much easier. I’ve done my formatting and all I have to do is fill in the blanks and file properly. It’s not really tiring to home school. Just tedious. My learning curve is improving.

I am comforted by the idea that nobody really knows what they’re doing at the beginning. I’ve had no experience teaching a kindergartner and now I do. It reminded me of the time I took Art Studies classes and thought I was being spoken to in foreign languages. And I thought I was an art buff and have had my share of art history. It also reminds me of that first day I taught my first grade 2 class: Grade 2 Section 4. They are in college now. Some have become my good friends.

There may be some readings that advice leaving education to the experts (schools and teachers). I thought about this too when I started out. I was really tense about teaching someone how to read. But the truth of the matter is any teacher has to start from scratch. And I wouldn’t have been a teacher now if I wasn’t given a break the first time.  So if you want to home school, make room for some mistakes. Know that even the best teachers make them. There are good days and bad days just like in any classroom. Children will be children. You will always be you. You grow together in the process. Classrooms are kind of like that too.

It’s a Sick Day

We usually have weekends on Ama’s day off and have our school days when he’s at work. It’s a perfect way of having family time despite the BPO work schedule. So on Saturdays, Ozzy and I are supposed to be having a school day. But his cough is so bad it kept him up last night and he couldn't get out of bed this morning so I had to feed him. Poor kid. He‘s got snot coming out of him, coughs intermittently, and has decided to stay in bed. (Judging from the amount of legos dragged into the bed.)

I’ve noticed he’s been getting sick a lot lately. I think this might be because he’s been too clean and safe at home.  You develop stronger resistance in school from most viruses when you’re exposed to many other kids. So here we are, coughing again just like the end of August. I shouldn’t be too worried. Sigh.

Anyway, so here’s a chance to write some things down.

Our home school is coming along just fine. There’s a lot documentation that has to be done: portfolios as evidences of learning, records of attendance and activities, and assessments (Ozzy was scheduled for Math assessment today, but that’s not going to happen). When I was teaching, this is the part I hated. I liked making lesson plans, but not assessments and record keeping. I try to do them well because of the responsibility attached to it, but sincerely, I just want my students to have fun while working and grade them based on how much fun they had a.k.a. applying themselves (haha, there goes my teaching licence).

The good thing about home schooling is that there’s no mean, median, mode. You’re not comparing him to an average number of students. So the approach is really on a case to case basis. This means you can keep studying difficult areas longer and easy skills faster. This is actually very helpful to Ozzy and very fulfilling to me as teacher. I am so happy to see my son put more effort to things that are difficult to him allowing him to experience success when he does it right. His favourite line after a mistake is “Let’s do it again.”

Academic time has also been my concern. I have counted the number of days and plotted lolo and lola’s visits (my parents and husband’s) to make the academic days required. I will be including some field trips during the visits so that we can count some trips as academic time. We are in a foreign country after all and cultural/ science trips are up on my list of places to go. So we’re holding off trips until family members come. We do go out for park visits when the activity requires it. There’s not much nature all around though (not like what we have in Antipolo) so we just kinda pick things up from the planter boxes in the “backyard”.

Nonetheless, documents are due by the end of next week. I have written to my adviser and she has assured me that I was doing well. Haha. It’s not over till it’s over though. I have to get my documents in line. Another sigh.

What We've Been Doing Lately

I am so thankful I am home schooling at a time when a wealth of information is online. This is a grace. Thank God for that blessing! Also, I discovered that a lot of parents in my generation actually prefer to home school their child/ children. How cool is that! I am sooo not alone. I am one of thousands! It has also been very educational. I was telling my husband the other day, “I can’t believe home schooling can be so educational.”

Ozzy’s progress is nothing less than satisfying. It’s like breastfeeding, I suppose. (Sadly, I wasn’t able to breast feed him) With home schooling, you nourish your own child as his teacher regarding everything about life. I can not be happier. I found out that there is so much joy in being my son’s religion teacher. I am sharing what I know about God and how to love others and in return, he checks on his mother as reference for right and wrong. That alone is just precious.

Ozzy just tried wall climbing over the week end (unfortunately, bad me, I have no pictures). He had expressed he wanted to try it, so husband and I obliged. Ozzy, completely strapped, got so scared at the beginning that the moderator had to have the other kids go first. After a lot of encouragement, and seeing how the children had fun doing it, he eventually agreed to climb. He successfully did! We were so proud! After getting down, he made the sign of the cross, and said his Glory Be. His father and I were laughing. He knew exactly what to do after a scary situation.

Language Arts are so much fun too. I was so worried about this, to tell you the truth. I really wasn’t confident about teaching a child how to read. As I said I was grateful for the wealth of information on the Internet. There are many theories, programs, and styles. At some point, it could get very confusing. But this is what I got from my previous boss and my Language teacher: Listen, Speak, and Write. And I remember that when I plan my lessons. I’ve also been brushing up on my phonics skills as I’ve recently discovered that how you say it, helps them learn how to read it.

Listening/ Speaking/Writing. For Ozzy, it seems that Listening is the hardest because this requires a lot of attention. And because keeping the attention of a hyper active boy is as easy as trying to catch a fly, we had to overcome a lot of routines. It gets easier when he begins to anticipate what is about to happen and the action required after it. We had a difficult time at the beginning of Teach Your Child How to Read with 100 Easy lessons, but we kept on it because I knew that listening is a skill we need to develop. He has improved so far and now waits for my turn, and his turn, and listens to most of the instructions. It’s not yet a perfect dance, but we’re getting there.

Communicative Approach. We still use our BrainQuest cards, this time for Kindergarten. We started with Max the Monkey as soon as we were trying to develop his speech. With these cards, he learns to understand questions. This is a very important skill we’ve been working on. I’m still waiting for my mountain to move on this one.

Sight Words. Ozzy learns his sight words through flash cards and have shown a lot of progress with them. He’s very visual. I think he finds it easy to remember what the words look like.  I haven’t tried testing for comprehension though. I’ll let him take his time.

It may seem like he's doing tons, but these are all just short lessons done daily, along with Math. Science is just once a week. It’s been good so far. If you ask me, I’d say I’d do this again.

Montes-Victoria Home School

When the box arrived, it felt like Christmas!

I am learning how to teach someone to read! Good luck to me.

We chose Singaporean Math just to jump right into the bandwagon.

Colored books! Nice!

Things are getting busier and busier. And before it takes all of me, I want to be able to write things down. I’m homeschooling! Yay! And I’m the only person I know among my circle of friends and teachers doing it. Yay! Pompoms raised! Feet leaping from the ground! I am my very own cheering squad... in Malaysia!

Home schooling didn’t really occur to us until a few months back (March 2013). My mind has always travelled along the line of getting him ready for school, which paved a laborious trail of assessments with the Developmental Pedia, therapist assessments, parent teacher conferences, therapy appointments etc. They were all very helpful with absolutely no regrets.  Ozzy and I would recommend it to anyone who needs them, but with a warning that it does come with a huge price tag and a huge demand for time. Financially, I really have no idea how we survived it at all. There was an obvious multiplication of the loaves that happened there.

If you feel that your child has special needs, by all means don’t hesitate to start them young. Early intervention is still the best thing any parent can do for their child. My whole relationship with Ozzy, his relationship with himself, and my personal well being were rescued from being a complete disaster.

So why am I home schooling? We expected a lot of change and uncertainties when my husband’s work had to be done in Malaysia. And since it wasn’t a permanent assignment, we felt that it was best to have more room for change rather than structure. I was also worried that I would put him into a system that doesn’t know his learning style and I wasn’t willing to start from scratch. Not to mention, the anxieties of starting from scratch. The school year in Malaysia starts in January too...and to come in June would mean his classmates would have been trained and structured.  I can just imagine all the letters I’m going to get from the teacher, the sad faces, and cultural differences. It was a personal choice not to let him go through that.

We enrolled him in Kindergarten with Kolbe Academy. It’s a Catholic Home School Program that is Classical and Traditional. My husband asked me what that meant. I told him simply: they learn from the classics and the lessons are taken up from easy to hard, from small ideas to big ideas. I’m comfortable with this. Often times, we associate traditional schools with private schools in the Philippines where kids are asked to line up and follow procedures. This isn’t what “traditional” means at all. “Traditional” refers to the method of teaching, not the policies of the school. I’m still looking forward to putting him back to the school edifice in the Philippines when the time calls for it which is one of two major reasons why I chose this program. Like in any other school, we have a number of hours to complete (attendance, 3 hours for 180 days), coursework to follow, and grades (for me to submit). At the end of every quarter, we send sample work and report cards to our adviser to assess and qualify. Kolbe is in California. We may request for a formal report card to be sent to us at the end of each school year. I have already spoken to the registrar via phone call and she was very helpful in setting up all of the things we needed including books. We are taking up Language Art, Singaporean Math, Science, and Religion.

I was asked before how do you home school? First of all, I am newbie, but this is what I would recommend.  

1.       Do your research way ahead of time. I kind of ran out of time because I had to suddenly do this and so I only started asking/ researching about home schooling in April. Luckily, I had an aunt who worked with cases of home schooling and she was able to give us guidance on this. Until the last minute of enrolling, I was asking and consulting.

2.      Not all parents can do this. I was reading the welcome packet and what struck me was the line “first, do no harm” and so it would be best to know yourself and your threshold. My developmental pediatrician asked me to practice before I decide on it and so we practiced for two months and it was very helpful (that was while, husband goes to MY, packing, moving to my parents house, moving to MY.) Do expect that as teacher, you would also have a learning curve and the first month is always the period of “breaking in” of both teacher and student. There should be minimum expectations and a lot of getting-to-know. And because this is a child, not a class of 40, your influence is affective 100 percent.

3.        I change lighting to create mood for study.  My developmental pedia suggested I put on a costume, but I’m too lazy to even think of it. So I change lighting all throughout the day. I draw the curtains for waking up, kitchen light for meals, lamp for watching t.v. , and the not so bright white light for house chores. When we study, I put on a study light, and this helps him put his mind into studying. Light changes everything in the room and affects the color that hits your eye. His response has been automatic lately. I guess he has been Pavlov-ed.

4.       For younger kids, physical activity is necessary.  For this reason, we swim everyday. This helps Ozzy sit down when it’s time to sit down and focus. Kids feel more successful when they are able to finish their task and so fidgeting and complaining during a task is not a point for giving up. Master motivation or rewarding as necessary. Kids feel better when they are able to complete even if they are too impatient to focus while doing it.

This is my story so far. It’s life lived from day to day. Happy Feast of the Assumption to you all!

Happy Sunday!

I am so bad at taking pictures for documentation. I must confess, I've been too concerned with finding my way (characteristic of my general approach to life), so I decided to spend one Sunday to consciously take time capturing a week end here in Kuala Lumpur for back reading's sake.

St. John's Cathedral

At Tony Roma's (excellent service, by the way!) with ama annoying Ozzy. I'm spared one meal a week from cooking.

Ozzy enjoying the activity sheets given to him. He didn't actually want to take a picture here.

Fries for Ozzy

Bread for Ozzy

New York Strip Steak...for the mom.

Ama, catching up on some work.

Ama's burger and fries.

Aeon Supermarket for groceries.

A specialty store for pork. Our source for Ma-Ling.
Ozzy:  "I smell ma-ling mom!"

Ozzy and Swearing

Ozzy and I have been arguing lately about swearing. He has been watching Batman, Superman, and other Superhero cartoons. I don't believe in protecting him from the world completely and so I let him and correct him when things are not good. And  so he has been exploring swearing words for the past three days-- constantly. We would argue about it as often too. He has tried "shit!", "oh, shit!", "damn", and what makes me flame up most of all "jesus!".

Today, we spent the afternoon fighting because he kept "practicing" during play. I was folding the laundry right beside him arguing that what he was saying was bad. He kept playing. I kept folding the clothes.

Suddenly, he stopped and looked at me with his big eyes as if a light bulb had turned on. Finally, a question that gave my parenting style more dignity than its had for the past three days: "Mommy, what do you say? What do you say when something goes wrong? What do you say when something goes wrong?" Dear heavens, thank you for that inspiration!

We explored our choices. And we agreed that "Oh man!" and "Oh no!" was the best way to go. He says he prefers "Oh man!" over "Oh no!" and so I said ok. Let's just limit it to that.

Parenting takes time and is embarrassing sometimes... but it has to be done.