Homeschooling With Autism: Simple Tips For a Smoother Day

This post shares 5 helpful ideas for parenting and homeschooling a child with autism; best tips for homeschooling with autism. Encouragement for homeschool moms and ideas for a smoother day, even with neurodivergent kids!

It’s been two and a half years since we got the official autism diagnosis for our son. I wrote about this once before, sharing why we love homeschooling a child with autism, and we’ve spent much time since then in thinking, praying, and observing our unique child. I’ve thought several times about writing more about this slightly “different” homeschooling situation, but didn’t feel the time was right; I wanted to wait until I had something helpful to share. If that takes a few years, then so be it!

However, I’ve been thinking more about this topic lately and realized that there are a few ways we have found to help us through our days and weeks of homeschooling; small shifts we’ve made to help everyone have an easier day, but especially our son on the spectrum.

I hope that these words might spark some ideas for you – so that even if they don’t apply to your specific situation, they will encourage you to observe your child and consider whether some simple adjustments in your day might make for a more peaceful child, and in the process, a more peaceful mom.

5 Tips for Homeschooling With Autism

1. Give lots of warnings for transitions. We’ve gotten into the habit of (usually) doing this pretty well, and I think it helps all of our kids to mentally anticipate what our day will look like. It’s the sort of thing where our neuro-typical children like it when we give them advance notice of what’s coming up, but our son on the spectrum absolutely needs it.

If I am on top of things (definitely not always the case), I’ll try to do something like this: during breakfast, give a rundown of the day and tell the kids what’s going to be happening and when. Example: “Kids, today is Thursday, which means that we’ll be going to speech therapy later this morning, and then after supper you boys have basketball practice. Before we go to speech we’ll do our morning jobs and some school time!” Then, I do my best to also give several warnings before we have to leave for speech – perhaps a half hour before and also ten minutes before. Doing this makes for much smoother transitions in general!

Now, you may wonder if it is a good idea to be catering to one child’s shortcomings in an area like this. “Wouldn’t it be better to just spring every new event and transition on him without any warning so that he can get used to dealing with that? How’s he ever going to learn to deal with sudden transitions if he doesn’t get a chance to practice?”

However, the truth of the matter is that even though you might try your very best to prepare your child in advance for every change and transition throughout their day, there will still be things that come up that you did not anticipate and cannot prep your child for – because this is how life is! My son still has – and your child will still have – times where they have to face unexpected events, changes of plan, and brand-new situations.

All I am trying to do is to minimize those times so that I can reduce the amount of stress in his life. Living with autism is stressful, what with the near-constant sensory overload and the anxiety produced by not understanding social cues, and I believe that the more we can minimize that stress at home, the stronger our children will be to manage the stress that greets them out in the rest of the world.

Furthermore, once my son is grown and on his own, I want him to have the tools and knowledge to give himself this warning before transitions throughout his day – and the best way to do that is to model for him what this looks like. Don’t we do this for ourselves all day long?

I look at my planner every morning, know exactly what events are coming up and when, and throughout the day I give myself advance warnings so that I have plenty of time to prepare. “Okay, we need to leave for piano lessons in half an hour, so I’d better make sure all the kids have had a snack and used the bathroom.” This is how we live as adults, and honestly we would be incredibly stressed if we knew that at any moment someone might suddenly burst into our house, start throwing our coat and shoes at us, and tell us we need to “Leave for basketball practice right this minute!”

So why would we do this to our kids?

2. Give yourself extra time – for everything. Because we only have one child on the spectrum (as far as we are aware at this point) I am not totally sure if this is a common situation with autistic children or not – but everything that our son does takes about twice as long as it should. If we’re in a hurry, it feels like it takes three times longer! He has no sense of time or punctuality or even how to hurry, which can be more than a little frustrating for a mom who dislikes being late. Don’t misunderstand me and think that, with five kids, we are somehow never late – we often are, but it still stresses me out and I don’t like it.

If I tell my son that we are running late and he needs to hurry, he will look at me with a blank stare and continue sliding his feet into his boots with all the speed of a deceased sloth. Hence the need for lots of advance warning (see tip #1), both for myself and for him.

Perhaps a sub-point to this idea could be the need to explicitly teach and practice concepts of time management. We are still working on this and finding ways to incorporate it into our day, but one simple way we’ve started is by putting a clock in the shower so that he can keep track of how long his showers take. Without some form of nudging or reminders, showers can easily take 20 minutes or more for this slow-moving child.

You do have to be careful, though, because when I tried setting a timer for his piano practice (to help him stay focused and keep moving through his pieces instead of daydreaming), he got incredibly stressed and burst out crying because he didn’t think he could finish all his pieces in the amount of time that I had set. The clock works better as a subtle reminder – his job is simply to check what time he starts, and then see what time it is when he finishes. Okay, it was 16 minutes in the shower this time – do you think maybe next time you could finish in 14 minutes? This has worked well for us, as a stress-free way to nudge him along, but your child might be different.

3. Celebrate and encourage their strengths. The older our son gets, the more obvious his differences become. Many, many toddlers have trouble adjusting to changes in their routine; very few twelve year olds will burst out in tears when we suggest rearranging their room. Often our son appears to be in his own little bubble, oblivious to the world around him, but at times he will say something that tells me he does notice (at least occasionally) that he is different from his peers. As these differences become more obvious, and his awareness of them grows, it will become even more important that we encourage him in the many things he can do well.

Every autistic child has strengths and gifts, and we need to celebrate these! There are so many areas of life that will always be more difficult for them than for others, so when we find an area they can succeed in – whether it be Lego building, memorizing random facts, drawing, noticing patterns, solving puzzles, reciting poetry, or anything else – we need to make an extra effort to encourage and support them in this.

4. Wait for eye contact before giving instructions. Okay, this one may need some variation depending on your child, because I know that many autistic children are not able to give (or really struggle with giving) eye contact. However, our son seems to be fine with eye contact; the mistake I frequently make with him is to walk past without looking him in the face, ask him to do something, listen for his “uh-huh,” and then assume it will happen. More often than not, if I come back in 30 seconds and ask him what he’s supposed to be doing, he will (again) give me a blank stare and be completely unaware that I even spoke to him.

A much better scenario is the following: I walk over to him, say his name, look him in the eyes, and then wait. It can sometimes take a full minute or two before he is able to disengage himself from his imaginary world (whether he is planning his next massive Lego build, skip counting to one million by threes, or reciting the counties of Mexico, I don’t know); but once I can tell from his eyes that he is finally listening, I will give him my instructions – and then have him repeat them back to me. This again is a tool that helps my other children as well, but our son on the spectrum seems to need it much more than the others.

5. Don’t give them a pass just because they have a diagnosis. Now this is a tricky one, and one that I don’t feel we have mastered yet – but at the same time it’s an important aspect to consider. There is a fine line between understanding our child’s differences and doing our best to help them navigate a world that, quite frankly, is not friendly to them, and excusing them from the need to treat others with respect and politeness. Just because my son doesn’t mean to sound angry doesn’t mean it’s okay for him to snap at his brothers in that harsh tone of voice. Just because he is right that it is his turn to read that favorite comic book doesn’t mean he has the right to snatch it out of his sister’s hands without asking her first.

Whatever his intentions might be, he needs to learn how to interact with others in a way that conveys respect for them – whether he wants to learn this or not! Recently I was talking with my son about this and explaining that he needs to know how to talk with other people in a way they can understand and relate to, otherwise he won’t have any friends and won’t be able to get married someday, and he responded by shrugging his shoulders and saying, “Well, I’m okay with that.” I think this was a literal #facepalm moment for me.

Be that as it may, I am not okay with it, and we will continue to practice these necessary skills. Our autistic children do not understand that certain actions and tones of voice convey rudeness and disrespect – in their minds, they don’t intend that at all! – but it’s our job to teach them.

Conclusion

Parenting a child – any child – is a complex, constantly evolving challenge that cannot be distilled into “10 simple hacks that will change your life!” Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or had waaay too much coffee. We are dealing with people here, not machines, and every child – every parent – is unique. These tips for homeschooling with autism are just a small part of the whole picture in our home; maybe they will work for you and your child, and maybe not.

Of course, there is so much more we all could say about our neurodivergent children. I could talk about how he does better with minimal screen time (too much overstimulation!), about how exercise and diet make a difference, and about the huge amount of joy he has brought to our life. We could talk about the frequent hard days, the many ordinary days, and the occasional days that give sparkling glimpses of long-awaited progress.

We still have much to learn – teen years are right around the corner! – but I am so grateful for the chance to parent this boy, and I wouldn’t ever change who he is.

He views the world differently, and that’s not a bad thing.