Homeschooling your Traumatized Kids–You Can Do It!

Two summers ago, as we struggled to parent our newest family members I never would have guessed that I would have the time, much less the inclination to write an article about home schooling adopted kids in just two short years. However, because of the techniques we’ve learned from books such as “Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control”, and “The Connected Child”, seminars like the one we attended in February of 2007 with Juli Alvarado, and the incredible support and prayers of our family and friends-our family has stabilized and our home has become a haven instead of a war zone.

What a challenge and a thrill it is to have the privilege of home educating my three children! They are now 11, 9, and 8 and teaching to their intellectual and emotional ages every day can be quite the roller coaster ride. Many people in the realm of adoption preach schedules and rigidity but I have found routines with flexibility to be the most effective way to approach my kids. Routines give your children a sense of safety that they know what is generally going to happen during the day, and the flexibility comes in when you shift gears to accomodate the emotional state of your child in that moment, ensuring that you meet him where he is, without sacrificing content. I will be helping you to see what this type of homeschooling looks like and suggest curriculum you will find invaluable in teaching children with special needs.

Beginning with routines, let’s break down what routines with flexibility looks like. It is tempting as an adoptive parent of children with attachment issues and special needs to go to one extreme or the other. Controlling the environment by dictating every move the child makes, or alternately, allowing them to run over the entire family. Neither of those choices brings a lot of peace or is conducive to emotional healing. In addition, when you are with your children as mother and teacher, 24/7 your kids‘ problems become very obvious and because you aren’t sending them away to school, it’s up to you to help them. Having a plan is a must.

Watch what your children naturally do during most days. If your kids like to get up early, make sure you are in bed at night early enough to be up before them! If your child is a late riser, don’t force them to get up at the crack of dawn and be grumpy the whole morning (ruining your morning and theirs). These are tweeks you can make as a homeschooling parent–you don’t have to follow the public school schedule. And remember, you have plenty of time to train them for the “real world”. For now, your goal is to have a positive relationship with them first, and then to educate them.

Kids with emotional needs can be very unpredictable and that is why they struggle in school. There is no one to meet them where they are on any given day and so they fall through the cracks. In our family, we have enjoyed and benefited from unit studies as an effective way to combat this problem. As you teach, younger children are able to leave and play when they begin to be overwhelmed by the intensity of the activities. In this way, there are days they go through several levels of learning, and days they only get an introduction, but they are always learning. Your conflict level is greatly reduced because unit studies are comprised of hands-on learning, which is the best way for your kids to learn anyway! We use Konos unit studies and love it. If you want more information about specifics of what we use, you can sign up for my free mini-course below.

Knowing what to expect generally is important to my children and we provide that. The pegs we hang our day on don’t change much–breakfast, lunch and dinner, rest time, and bedtime routines. As long as those are not tinkered with too much we can usually add in other events and activities that aren’t a part of our regular day–things like library visits and soccer practice. I wouldn’t call what we do a schedule, but it does flow together in a predictable way.

Schooling all year helps this type of lifestyle tremendously. I don’t have to be concerned if we spend five days out of one month cuddling on the couch or recovering from meltdowns. Because I study them and make sure they are in the right “place” to learn, I can gauge how far I can push them and what subjects they can handle that day. Mainly, I‘m trying to build trust, character, and teach them to be good readers. Eventually, the other things will fall into place when their brains have had time to recover from their experiences.

Sandra Nardoni is the home educating, adoptive parent to three children. She also does private consultation with homeschool families educating adopted children. If you need help on how to homeschool your traumatized kids click on the blue text to get a free 5 part mini-course. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service