Homeschooling Life Skills Experience with Helpful Tips

I am excited to introduce this week’s guest blogger, Patricia from Homeschooling Autism. Patricia is a homeschooling autism momma helping her son navigate the world and learning from home! You can see her video explanation for homeschooling life skills below!

About Patricia

I am a mom to an autistic son turned homeschooling mom. I have been homeschooling my son Jonah going on 7 years now after multiple bad experiences across 2 schools and therapy. Follow me on Instagram for a full story on our journey through the education system.

I was once where you are now questioning if this journey is possible. Is it the right journey for my child? What will it take to start? What will people say? Am I even qualified to do this? And on and on… let me put your mind at ease right now and tell you I DON’T KNOW, but making a decision that accommodates your child’s needs could never be a bad thing.

The Homeschool Life

Patricia shows various ways that she has integrated life skills at home with her son and her classroom. She has created all the materials so that her son can be most successful in the homeschooling environment.

The homeschooling life skills environment that Patricia has created helps promote independent skills for her son and his growth. There are so many ways that she does this everyday for him.

Life skills are so important for all students. They are the foundation of our school day and everyday life. We need to know how to set an alarm, get dressed, call an Uber and arrive to a location on time. These are all life skills that we can be teaching to all children.

Are you looking for more explanations, read this blog post! You can also see more age appropriate life skills here!

Make sure to grab Patricia’s homeschooling starter pack for life skills you can be doing at home!

A message to homeschooling parents

Parenting is hard!  We are constantly making decisions that can be very impactful for better or worse for our children and let’s not get started on how much added stress is tacked on to parenting a child with special needs (totally not complaining,but it can be challenging).I’m coming from a place of different experiences as a once single working mom for four years to raising my daughter (non autistic) as a only child  until she was 9 before my autistic son came along. Meeting the unique needs of an autistic person can be a lot to handle.

This may be the very situation you find yourself in and you’re seeking answers to your questions.

I want to share some simple guidelines to help you visualize the process of making this decision a possible reality and what it may take to get there.

Where do I start?

Here’s a simple list of boxes to check off to get your brain rolling.

1. Check law requirements for your state
2. Download my question template and fill out simple questions to ask yourself.
3. Follow the guideline of your state to unenroll your child from public school.
4. If applicable talk with your child’s therapist (OT, SLP,ABA) to help with assessing your child’s strengths.
5. Assess your child’s skill strengths and areas that need support
6. Make a plan. Start from a place of comfort and move forward at your child’s pace.   
7. Research
8. Gather materials
9. Get a visual schedule
10. Create a space for working
11. Resources
12. Relax

Homeschooling Steps

Finally, I hope these simple steps will help you make the best decision for your family.   Doing what we feel is best for our family will always be a journey of trial and error so lean in with compassion for yourself and extend it to your family as you go through the motions of change. 

Also, you can check out a YouTube video presentation I did a few years ago that goes over some simple things you can do to start your journey. Be sure to download this free homeschool checklist from my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I have a whole lot of useful information you’ll want to read.

Believe in yourself and enjoy your journey.

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