I don’t talk about Brandon that much or his “special needs.”  I don’t think I am the typical parent of an autistic child.  He was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder when he was three and I am sure he has autism.  When I took him to Lansing to have him diagnosed, they didn’t diagnose him specifically with one type of autism (PDD-NOS, Asperger’s, etc).  They only told me that he was definitely on the spectrum.  It is pretty easy for someone to tell if they spend any amount of time with him.

He is a little weird and doesn’t act like other kids but he is a very sweet kid and a very bright kid.  My brother has PDD-NOS, so I think this is why I was able to spot the symptoms so easily.  He had all the classic autism symptoms like rocking and spinning, head banging, toe walking, echolalia, flapping his hands, and doing things repetitively like flipping the lights on and off on and off on and off.

Well, I have to tell you about this because I am so excited.  My little Mr. Moo is reading!!  He is actually reading very well, better than his older sister.  Angie and Brandon both have had developmental delays.  They both didn’t talk until they were over two years old but Brandon’s issues were always more severe.  He didn’t walk until he was almost two and didn’t start talking until he was almost three.  He also didn’t eat real food until he was about three.  I could only get him to drink pediasure.  He had a challenging start to life and is the moo I worry about the most.

Kelly does most of the homeschooling with the kids.  He hasn’t really worked with Brandon as much as the other kids.  We use Time4learning.com for our main curriculum, which is an internet homeschooling site.  (They aren’t just good for homeschoolers though.  I think it would be great for any kid.)  We also do other activities because I wouldn’t consider Time4Learning a stand-alone curriculum, just because kids need to be writing and doing some work on paper.

Brandon has this amazing memory.  He used to have dozens of commercials memorized.  I think his great memory has been what has helped him learn to read.  Kelly hasn’t done a lot of reading one on one with him.  This is why I was so amazed when I realized he was reading.  My other kids took much longer to learn to read.  As I was flipping through the TV schedule, he was reading the different shows.  At first I thought he had just memorized the names of shows because he does that.  But then, I was standing at the computer and typed something into Google and he read it to me.  There was no way he memorized it.  So I got out one of Angie’s books and sat down with him to read it.  He read the entire book all by himself!

I am so stinking excited!  I try not to be too braggy about my kids but I am downright emotional about this.  I think the moms that have special needs kids might understand how I am feeling.   Way to go Mr. Moo!

Tags: autism, homeschooling, reading

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 9:42 am and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.