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| Logan and his many trains! |
Children with autism get some crazy obsessions. Logan has obsessed over dinosaurs, trains, Pokemon, Star Wars and most recently, gardening. In the dinosaur obsession phase, we read books about dinosaurs, used them to help us count our math, and colored pictures about them to practice our fine motor skills. See where I'm going with this? Use the obsession to your advantage. If it gets the child to pay attention to their lessons and learn then by all means use it.
You can keep your curriculum in tact while incorporating the interests. No reason that you can't entice your child to finish his science with the promise of a rousing game of dinosaur attack. If you are learning geography , encourage the child to find out what trains do in that country if that's up his alley. Want to encourage prompt work? Make a small treasure chest with little trinkets that your child will love and let him get in at the end of the lesson. We use one of the drawers in our stand up filing cabinet. At one point, we had two sections, one for finishing daily work and one for bigger prizes as incentive for finishing the entire week. After awhile , we were able to back off the daily and just give prizes for finishing our weekly lessons.
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| We so want to do this! How cool is that? |
Some obsessions can be turned into meaningful career choices. If your child likes to draw then he could be an artist or an animator at a big movie studio. Logan loves gardening. He could spend hours in his garden. He pours over the gardening magazines and seed catalogs so long that they are worn out . Dog eared does not do these poor tattered pages justice. But you know what? People pay big money for personal gardeners. In our area, Disney hires many gardeners and botanists for their parks. Logan could easily make a living in this field. Look at your child's obsessions and make them work in your homeschool. You'll make it much more enjoyable for your child.
Very true! My son with SPD is physically active...and it's such a great thing (that needs some taming here and there LOL). We now have a fire pit because of his ingenuity! And he's already starting to learn household repairs. I can definitely see him outside constructing in the future! (LOVE the plants too!)
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