HELP have completely lost my way!

[knat]

Hi I home ed my 7 yr old dd who has Aspergers, ADHD and poss PDA. We have home edded for nearly 2 years. She attended reception for 7 months but it was a complete disaster. She is very bright but very wilful and wants everything her own way. We have times when she seems to want to do things and more times where it is a struggle to do anything. I've tried everything, using her obsessions etc but still achieving very little. I want her to be happy and try and encourage herlearning and have so much stuff I have prepared waiting on teh shelves but just don't know now what to do. Feel I am at a complete loss - all she wants to do is play Little Big Planet on PS3 and talk about it all day 24/7. Asking her to do anything else is resulting in tantrums with a huge meltdown this afternoon where I have been beaten black and blue. any advice/guidance would be great. We don't have any local HE groups and I don't know anyone else locally with a child like dd who I can talk to and bounce ideas off. Thanks

I'd be going in two directions (and this is the voice of experience)

1. Have some absolutely FAB activities on offer. Swimming, season ticket at local petting farm, season ticket at local soft play, all that stuff that other people do at the weekends. Offer something FAB every single morning, but not even really as an offer, but matter of fact. "we have to eat breakfast, put on our shoes, and then go to THE MOON!!!!" (or whatever slightly less amazing activity you have on offer).

That is your learning time. None of it is likely to happen through writing or reading, but your child will be out there, in the community, interacting with a really exciting environment and (with luck) with various people in that environment. It's quite likely that she will love doing the same thing day after day for quite a long while, so be ready to go with that. I do know a family not a million miles away from me (ahem) who went to one local attraction every single day for 3 months. They certainly got their money's worth out of the season ticket that year...

1. When you get home, it's Little Big Planet time. Give her some time alone, and some time where you are watching with her. If she's receptive, it's an opportunity for conversation, for story telling. If she likes, she could freeze the screen and you sellotape a piece of paper over the screen and trace through the picture for her to colour in. Is there any way of having subtitles on while she is playing? And let the Little Big Planet obsession run its course. In a few months, she'll be ready to move on - perhaps to another computer game, or perhaps to something else entirely.

Are there Little Big Planet videos on Youtube (for lots of games people put them playing the game up as a video), or are there spin off cartoons or comics or anything? Just go with it, wholeheartedly

If she is telling you a long boring narrative about Little Big Planet, write it down in clear handwriting and then when she pauses, READ IT BACK TO HER. that is such a good game!

My DD2 is older (11) but also tends towards obsessions where she just can't get her head into gear for anything else. At the moment it is Pokemon. At the start I half listened to her endless conversations getting very bored and kept trying to pull her away from it to get her onto the serious work.

Since Christmas, I've decided to go with it a bit more. We tend towards being slightly structured, especially as DD1 is doing GCSEs so it's easier to set the same thing for both. So, I'm still asking her to read, write etc (which may not be so necessary or appropriate for your situation) but I get her to write endlessly about Pokemon. I bought her the Pokedex which is a 600 page book with statistics on every Pokemon in it. She is immersed in statistics and with it we are covering plenty of secondary maths work!

She's having so much fun. There's educational value in everything, you just have to think laterally and draw it out. I find it much easier to go with obsessions and make them work for us than battle against them. The most difficult bit for me is letting go of the idea of what we "should" be doing!

everything ommward said!
couldn't have put it better!

re-reading your post, maybe preparing work is what you need to let go of. What happens if you go with the moment - will she ever do anything related to Little Big Planet except talk? (although talking is good and can be a very valid learning tool!)

thanks for your posts. She has started writing a story re Little Big Planet every now and again which I can't believe as she hates writing! She will look up pictures on Google and cut and paste into a Word document (I showed how to do this as I thought she was learning some IT skills that way). Any maths etc we do I do try to centre around her particular interest at the time but it isn't always enough. Its very much on her terms and I might try to steer a conversation re LBP toward another end but she's quite cute and knows what I am doing. She tends to want to domineer a conversation rather than have a 2 way one. She narrates all the time she is playing and it does have some value re building levels, a bit of physics etc. She has no problem with reading - she could read prety much anything from 3. It just feels very strange sitting her letting her play LBP and not feeling like we're doing anything. I know its a different way of looking at it but it does feel strange. Will think about the activity per day thing, especially next month as at the moment we have 4 puppies who will have been homed during February which will make it easier to get out then. Thanks v much for the advice and I am open to more suggestions!

Have you tried watching documentaries with her ?

My 7-8 year olds love watching things like Victorian (and Edwardian) Farm, David Attenborough's Life, Coast, pretty much loads of things one BBC4 if you keep an eye out. We record them and they get watched time and time again. They learn a huge amount from that sort of thing.

I would also suggest you might like to post in the SEN forum, as ASD kids can be even more stuck into their present craze than NT kids, so this might be an area where seasoned help could be useful.

Try noting down discussions you have (really micro discussions count too). Also, any new words she uses which stand out.

Try being an appreciative and rather passive outsider, not one who is critical and who is trying to intervene and direct the child. (Speaking from experience here.)

Spot any references to why things happen in LBP world, current events, biology, nature, science, why the cat hunts mice, why the moon is full at the moment etc. etc. Your notes might surprise you and give you encouragement.

There is a yahoo list called Shinewithunschooling which is all about appreciating your children instead of trying to change them. Try that for inspiration.

thanks for that milou will look at it. Having been doing that with LBP with some degree of success but sometimes she just wants to narrate. Got a LBP sack figure today which was an Australian sack figure which led to a small discussion about Australia so that was good!