Chapter 3, My Struggles to Find the Right School. My name is Emma. I live in northern Colorado and have a son and a daughter.

We started with Asperger Experts about five years ago. At the time, we had just gotten my son Oliver's diagnosis of Asperger's. So I said to myself, all right, well, first thing you do is you get ABA, and you listen to what all the doctors and the teachers say.

I was also a teacher. I have a Master's in Education, so I thought I knew everything about kids and was approaching this from the standpoint of everything I learned in college. We had behavior charts set up, and I was even teaching other teachers on how to do classroom management.

I was applying the things that I was teaching to other teachers at home, and none of it was working. It was just making things worse and worse. Things were falling apart.

I think the first thing that really gave me a clue that something was different about Oliver was, he was about two years old. And we used to have this plum tree in the backyard, and it had green plums on it. We were waiting for the plums to get ripe, and he kept going up and picking the plums before they were ripe. And I kept saying, no, no, we don't do that. The more I did that, the more he'd go pick them, and so then I'd give him timeouts.

I did everything the way you're supposed to do. There was a positive consequence for not pulling the plums, a negative consequence for pulling them. No matter what I did, it got worse and worse. He just kept pulling all the plums.

So I thought, oh my gosh, this has worked with all the students I've worked with. This has always worked. Why is this not working? When he was old enough, we put him in preschool, and he kept getting kicked out of preschool, every day. And so we thought, is this normal that kids just get kicked out of preschool daily?

Then, we put him into transitional kindergarten. The teacher there couldn't teach him, unless I stayed there with him the entire day. I would watch him, and I'd watch the other kids in the class. And his reactions were just completely different, like this wild animal I didn't know.

One day, a bell rang, and he started grabbing his ears and getting down, screaming. And I thought, wait a minute, maybe I should see about getting him diagnosed for autism. That was scary to me at the time. I think it was scary, because I had only ever been told that was a bad thing.

When I was in school, we had the special ed kids that were in this little room that had all these windows around it, so we could all peer in between classes and watch. Then, we would volunteer and get to go work with the special kids. I liked those kids. I really did. In fact, some of them are still my friends to this day.

But there was always this elitism in our school that we were the helpers, and they were lucky to have us. It was so messed up, when I think about it now, but at the time, that's how it seemed. And so I didn't want one of my kids to have that label.

Then, when he got that diagnosis, at first I thought, OK, well, we're just going to run with it. We're going to get ABA. We're going to cure it.

So I started out with the ABA. I was immediately on top of it, but the more that I tried, the more resistance I got from my son. I also had a toddler at the time. My husband was just overwhelmed with it too.

One day, in kindergarten, my son was not getting ready for school, and we were stressed out, and I just completely lost it. Something snapped in my brain, and I was like, I can't do this. So I got in my car, and I just-- drove away.

I ended up at the mental hospital, and I said, I think I need to check in. Because if I don't, I'm going to drive my car into a wall. And they're like, are you serious? So I said, yes, I'm serious.

So I stayed there for about a week, and it was so good. I'm glad I did it. It was exactly what I needed. I just needed a break from everything.

My turning point. The turning point for me was one night when we had music therapy at the hospital, and I asked the therapist to play "A Beautiful Boy," by John Lennon, which was a song I used to sing to Oliver, when he was an infant. All the pain and the stress and the grieving and everything just came out all at once. When she sang that song, I just cried and cried and cried, because I realized I had all these expectations. And first, I needed to heal them in myself.

I think that this is true for any parent, not just a parent of a kid with special needs. But any parent needs to grieve what they expected of their kid versus the reality of what is. Once I grieved that, it wasn't like it all healed at once, but it was a huge turning point. I got back to my life, and I said, OK, I'm done grieving what's not. Now, let's see what is.

So we kept doing the ABA for a while, and I started noticing that ABA was all about trying to fix Oliver, and it was really bothering me. I kept saying, but what about the things that are right? Because there are gifts that come with this. I want to foster the gifts.

I remember talking to the ABA lady, and she said, well, we're really about fixing the things that are wrong. And I asked, what can we do to really help him to harness the things that are special, that he has that nobody else has, because he has autism? She just had no answer for me.

I was watching Ted Talks one night, and I found Jacob Barnett's TED Talk. And I think that was what switched me to thinking, OK, well, what if all the things I thought autism was, what if I threw that out and started from scratch? So I contacted Jacob Barnett's mom, and she talked to me for an hour. And she said, why don't you just consider putting ABA on hold for a little bit and try working with him on some of his strengths?

By this time, Oliver, who was now in first grade, kept getting restrained at school, and at the time, I didn't realize what they were doing was so illegal or so terrible. I just thought that was what schools did with kids that weren't cooperating. They were at a point where they wanted to move him into a special class, and I said no. I want to homeschool him. So I pulled him out and homeschooled him.

That's when something changed in my mind of that elitism I had learned in school, about how we were the good kids, and we were helping these poor little autistic or otherwise challenged kids. It was actually the other way around, that I needed them, and that they had so much that they knew that I didn't. So I got past that elitism and got over my own ego and said, I need to start from scratch. Throw out what I thought I knew, and start over.

I started just asking more questions, and that's when things started to change. I stopped looking at the way things are supposed to be and started looking at what is and what could be and what the gifts are in all of it. And I realized, my son has gifts that I never dreamed that my kid could have. It's really cool the way he's able to work on computers and the things that he comes up with that are just totally out of the box.

Getting help for my daughter too. When my daughter got into transitional kindergarten, I started to notice some of the same challenges that my son had in learning, but not in behavioral problems. So I went to the school, and I said, hey, I think my daughter might be on the spectrum too.

They immediately said, no, she's not. She can't be, and I said, but I'm seeing all the same learning challenges. And they're like, nope, no, she's not.

The same thing happened in kindergarten. I kept trying to push and say, I think she needs help, and she needs extra help in these areas. They wouldn't listen to me.

Then, in first grade, she started having behavioral problems. I put in so many requests to test her, but they never did it. Finally, they got her tested, and educationally, they said she didn't have autism, but medically, they said she does. Which I think is just a cop out on the school's part, because then they didn't have to give her services.

As soon as we got her diagnosis for autism, it was a completely different thing. Let's celebrate. This is awesome. This is great. We know what your challenges are now. We know you've got some gifts that we need to find.

I was homeschooling my son for a while, but homeschooling just got to be really difficult for me. He needed services that I didn't feel adequate to give him, and I felt like maybe he could benefit from being back in a school setting with peers and other adults that could help him out. So I put him back into school, and this time, I went ahead and put him in a special class. Which was, in hindsight, a big mistake, but at the time, it seemed like the right decision.

Two days into third grade was our first problem. He was wearing noise-canceling headphones, and his teacher decided that she wanted him to listen better. So she yanked them off his head and dug her nails deep into his arm, and he freaked out, which I could have told her it was going to happen. I tried to tell her what might happen. She wouldn't listen to me even before the school year started.

I freaked out at that point too, so I called the police. The police did nothing, absolutely nothing about it. They said, oh, we'll look into it. I wanted her investigated. I wasn't even calling for her to be fired.

I said I wanted her to have to do some more training on how to work with kids, because she obviously didn't know what she was doing. And the school said, you know what, we're actually going to do something even better. We're going to offer you the chance to send your son to a private school, and we are going to pay for it.

That sounded really good. They were sending him to this school that had this incredible reputation. I had heard from many people that I trusted that this school was the best school in the area.

I think it was the first day he was there, he came home with a black eye, and the school convinced me that it was a complete accident. Oliver kept saying, no, they did this to me. The teacher did this to me.

And I was thinking, I think you're a really tough case, and I think the teacher is trying really hard. I really wanted to believe that the school was doing the right thing. Suffice to say, more abuses occurred, and I decided to pull him out.

Use your imagination. There was an investigation. The legal system is now involved. It was bad.

But the scary thing was that, as a result of the lawsuit, I went back to my daughter's school, which is across the street from our house, and I told them absolutely no restraints are going to be used on her ever, and she needs more services. And I fought, and I fought. I had to get multiple lawyers to fight with the school.

It seemed like every time that I'd make a little bit of progress with the school, they would retaliate somehow. I said I wanted her to have a paraeducator and fought and fought, and they finally said, fine. We'll give her a paraeducator. In fact, we'll give her two.

And then those two paraeducators began restraining her. But they did it in such a way that they would isolate her in the classroom and would take all the other students out, so there were no other witnesses, and then they would restrain her. Then, they would bring the kids in, while she was really upset, and the kids would see her just freaking out, which did wonders for her social life.

Then, I had parents in the classroom threatening me that they wanted her out of there. There's this big, rainbow sign over the office that says, "All are welcome here" that the PTA put up, but the PTA group also was the same group that was fighting to get her removed from the school. It finally came down to when I court the school in a huge lie, that they had restrained her twice. My daughter was so upset about it, I pulled her out of the school, and I had to figure out what we were going to do at that point. I couldn't send her back there, but there's no way I'm going to send her to the special class that they're trying to force her into, because we know what happened to my son there.

So yeah, I was really having to make a decision on what I was going to do. I couldn't send her back. There was just no way.

Our home life today. I've talked about our school life. Now, I want to switch gears and talk about home life. With Oliver, at least once a week, he'll hit somebody or do something that normally a parent would say, you need to apologize for that. I don't do that.

First of all, I expect the very best. Whatever happens, I expect the best. I expect that was an accident or a misunderstanding, and just by setting that expectation and not assuming that he did that to hurt somebody or that he's a mean kid, that immediately switches the paradigm around.

I will oftentimes suggest that he apologize, but I never force it. And most of the time, when I suggest it, he'll go do it. It's not because he feels forced into it. It's because he'll be like, yeah, you're right. That would probably help.

As a result, the apologies that we get from him are genuine ones. And if I suggest it, and he's like, I'm not apologizing for that, then well, I don't want a fake apology. That's been huge, I think. If his sister gets hurt, it's not about saying, you're a bad kid. Go to your room.

It's about modeling behavior by immediately running to his sister and saying, oh my gosh, are you OK? What's wrong? Where does it hurt? How did that make you feel? I want you to know that you're loved, and everyone loves you here, your brother included. So we're going to figure out what happened.

Then, we'll turn around and say, brother, what happened here? And he might say, we were just playing a game, and I don't know why she's freaking out. I'll respond with, do you think she understood the rules of the game? And sometimes, he'll respond with, well, it's tag. She should understand that.

And so I'll say, why don't we practice tagging. Can you tag me? And sure enough, it'll end up being a hit. And so I'll say, yeah, let me show you how people like to be tagged.

So it'll be things like that, or sometimes, it is in retaliation. She'll do something that pisses him off, and he'll retaliate with a hit. And we have to talk about, how can we handle that better in the future? And sometimes, we make progress, and sometimes, we don't. But each time, I think it's little by little.

The way I built patience for this was a process. Actually, at first, it honestly was antidepressants that helped me, really. When I was first going through all of it, getting on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication helped a lot. So that's really what it comes down to is self-care, and at that point, I was at such a state, such a mental state myself, that the medication was the self-care I needed.

Music also really helped. I've always had music be a part of my life. It's always been a huge thing for me, and so I imagine that when I had kids, we were all going to sit around the campfire and have all kinds of family sing-alongs.

That was one of those expectations that completely got turned upside down, because my son hates music. My daughter is indifferent about it, but they're not like a family sing-along type group, and that was one of the things I had to grieve. I think having music therapy was like the perfect catalyst for that.

So I started going out, and I found a karaoke group. And we started doing karaoke every Friday and Saturday night. I call it "Mommy's sensory OT therapy," because it's loud, and it's crazy. And it's music, and it's boisterous. And it's lots of lights and all the things that my family hates, all rolled into two crazy nights a week.

We don't talk about kids there. I don't go there and talk to them about parenting stuff. We go, and we talk about music and Elvis and Patsy Cline and music history and all of that.

It's an escape from all of it, and I feel like that's something that gets me through. I've also recently found I get a similar outlet from going out in the backyard and playing my ukulele. I think I needed to go through that time of finding that self-care and finding something that just completely has nothing to do with kids.

So both kids are being homeschooled now. Oliver, after everything happened with the last school and the abuses that occurred, the district started doing a special program for him, where they start sending teachers out to the house. Which again, still sounded like a beautiful, wonderful thing and really wasn't in practice.

Then, with everything that happened with my daughter, I ended up pulling her out, and I put her in a hybrid charter school. Which is a really, really neat school, because the way they do it, it's a home school with classes that are completely optional. And it's almost like college for kids.

The classes that they offer are things like history taught in Minecraft and music and dance and martial arts and things like that. But they're all completely voluntary, and if we don't want to do any of them, we don't have to. We just have an advisor check in with us every two weeks and see where we're at. I liked it so much, they even gave me materials for Oliver, more than his school ever gave me. And so I'm moving him over to that school next year too.

What we have to do every week is we just have to turn in something to the school to show that we've done something in history, something in science, something in math, and something in reading. For science, it was really awesome. The advisor let me count Star Trek as my daughter's science lesson. For literature, my daughter is doing video editing. For math, we get to make cookies, if that's what we want to do.

I haven't really studied up on unschooling, but I think it's a little bit more along the unschooling lines than other things. It's more just observing what we're doing weekly. A lot of times, they'll be obsessed with a particular video game for that week, and rather than trying to get them off the video games to do their math, I learned that I needed to sit and watch the video game and see, is there math already in this game?

Or maybe there isn't any math, but maybe it's completely scientific. And we could get rid of all the extra science stuff this week, because this is their current obsession. We can replace that with some math or with some cooking.

One morning, my daughter woke up, and instead of wanting to watch any cartoons, she wanted to learn Japanese. So she got Duolingo and decided to start teaching herself Japanese. Kids want it. They want to learn. It's just natural.

So here's my message to parents. I would say, give yourself self-care. That's the biggest thing. Start with yourself, because you cannot have the patience and be the kind of parent you need to be, if you don't take care of yourself, and not just your physical needs but your emotional ones too.