Conversations on Twice Exceptional Homeschooling
How to educate a child who won’t be taught? It’s not a question I thought I’d ever need to answer, but life (and my daughter) decided this was the path we needed to follow.
Today, I’m going to talk about a few of the strategies I use to create a welcoming learning environment that steers my kids in the direction they need to go, without explicitly ‘teaching’ them.
One of the great joys about homeschooling is the ability to pull in different resources and the freedom to explore all the different rabbit holes of knowledge. For us, maths is not limited to what is prescribed in text-books, but is a fundamental way of seeing the world around us (hello two maths majors in the family – my kids don’t stand a chance).
Here are some of our favourite maths resources – that both teach and inspire kids to learn and understand maths. Continue reading “Homeschooling Maths Resources”
It’s been a hard month. I’m not sure I’m ready to write about it, to be honest. Looking down the barrel of an unknown illness is not exactly the most fun thing in the world. There’s been a lot of doctors scratching their heads, and blood tests.
But there has been bright spots – I am now officially 2e myself, with a confirmed ADHD diagnosis. And that bit has been wonderful (apart from the mild hiccough of prescribed medicines with a high chance of pushing me beyond the veil – hello unusual allergies!) There is an amazing relief to be found in describing difficulties and events from the past and having doctors nod their head and say, “That’s typical“.
I am now more aware of my children’s difficulties, and how to help them avoid the problems I have faced. I also know of the pitfalls ahead, which I’d thought of as personal failings – nope! Instead, typical 2e is – me. And the fear I know every parent faces, “Am I raising them right?“, now comes with a few more signposts. There is real hope. Continue reading “Homeschool; Life Update”
It’s very easy to fall into the habit of only thinking about the negatives. I do it. In fact, it runs in my family – anxiety is a fact of life for more than one generation. But today, I want to talk about the positives. It’s easy to talk about the positives and negatives of my family’s special needs, and it is also easy to talk about the negatives of giftedness. It’s even marginally socially acceptable. But today I’m breaking the mould. I am going to talk about the positives of being a gifted family. Because without talking about those ‘oh wow!‘ moments, it’s hard to understand why being gifted is so different from the norm. Today I’m being brave. So here we go. Continue reading “Playing to the Positives”
It’s been a week since we returned from our holiday (which I plan to write about soon), and we’ve come down with the Something-My-Child-Caught-While-Exploring-Germ-Covered-Surfaces bug. As a result, we’ve not exactly gone swinging back into our usual routine, but kind of limped close enough to wave dispiritedly in its direction.
Continue reading “What We Do When We’re Not Doing Anything”