First Day at College

Grace has started one day a week at Further Education College. This has been a major change for us, this academic year. No longer, after 11 years of full time education at home, am I solely responsible for her education. It is a good thing. The right step at exactly the right time. She is ready now to take instruction from others and ready for the new experiences college will bring.

She was very upset and nervous the night before. She was crying (very unusual for her) and saying, "I don't like change!" Which, if anything, is just the essence of Autism. But we enlisted a great deal of prayer support for her (thank you!) and she felt calmer in the morning. Here she is, almost ready for the taxi on her first day. She cannot manage the complicated public transport route so she has a taxi paid for by the Local Education Authority. It's a 30-40 minute ride each way, but she takes a book and her mp3 player. The tutors are the specialist unit are really good. Grace enjoyed herself so much!

Part of the curriculum there is learning more about her condition and how to relate to others, which is really important! She's also doing quite a bit on practical Maths applications and has a class called Problem-Solving! Woo-Hoo!

Grace coped far better than she thought she would. She is making friends and enjoying the tutors and the work. There is a very relaxed, home-like atmosphere there. She said it was just like home-schooling! {g} In fact, today, she told us she is wanting to increase the number of days she does there, already. We had planned to build those up gradually, maybe an extra day a week after Christmas, but I think it will be sooner than that!

She is one of the more able students there in terms of the ASD, though not academically. Some of the kids with Aspergers are doing university level Maths!But this is the first time Grace has been in a group of people where she is one of the BEST in the group. Normally, she is the one struggling to understand, baffled by the social complexities of the situation, anxious about making a mistake etc But in this situation, she copes better than anyone else. And she is loving that! Her confidence is growing so much. We are really proud of her.

Her tutor rang me as she left on the first day to let me know that Grace had done well on her literacy assessment and that she had extremely good social skills for a person with ASD! The neuro-psych put all that down to home-education. I do too. How can a person with ASD develop appropriate social skills when they are stuck in a classroom with 30 or more other kids all behaving badly, acting in a confusing way, with loud noises and unpredictable activities, possibly being bullied? They can't. Our decision to pull her out of school at age 5, to 'rescue her' as we thought of it at the time (before her diagnosis), was the RIGHT one.

And the decision to send her off to this specialist department of the city college is also the right one. We've found that all through our home-ed journey, though. That God goes ahead of us, preparing the way for our children. When the need arises, God provides for it. He has been so faithful to us all along.