Taking the leap

Sometimes, walking in faith means taking a deep breath, closing your eyes and taking a giant leap off the side of a cliff.   Initially it sounds scary, crazy, or risky, but the more you pray and the more you allow God to show you what path you should take, the more comfortable you are with your decision.  Randomly jumping off the side of a cliff is obviously not a very smart thing to do, but when you take that leap with God then you can take it knowing that there is a giant cushion at the bottom of that cliff to catch you. 

We took one of those leaps last week.  We signed paperwork to refuse all of Peanuts services through the school system.  Essentially, we pulled him out of the public school system.  We chose not to utilize any therapy services through the school.  Initially I was saying, “Now we are on our own.”  But I soon realized, we are not alone because God is with us.

For the past year now I have felt the push to do this, and as time progressed the push was stronger and stronger until we could no longer ignore it anymore.  At first I was scared.  With more and more prayer I began to feel much better, and now I am excited at the prospect of having my children at home with me full time!

I want to be clear, this decision is one that was a long time coming, but was NOT because of any issue with the school system directly.  We have always planned to home school full time, it just was a question of when.  Peanut is considered “high functioning” and so there is only so much the school can justify spending.  Honestly, they were doing a good job, and were doing the best they could, but I felt Peanut still needed more.

I sat down, created a therapy plan and 36 weeks of preschool lesson plans.  It surprisingly has all come fairly easily for us, and it seems everything is just falling into place.  I’m combining multiple resources to create my plans.  Our therapy plan is extensive and covers a wide variety of therapy.

* The kids will continue their Sensory Integration therapy privately and we will utilize the therapists for OT needs as well, with carry over to home.  We have planned sensory and fine motor activities into our daily plans.

*Peanut is  continuing with Therapeutic Listening.  We plan to use this therapy as well for Sassy in the fall.

* The kids will both continue Music Therapy.

* We are going to use Playing it Right! Social Skills Activities for Parents and Teachers of Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, Including Asperger Syndrome and Autism for social practice/activities.  We are also planning to go to a local indoor playground to take advantage of any social opportunities with “neurotypical” children as well as get in some great gross motor activities.

* We are using Skills through CARD for our ABA therapy.  We have just started using the program but so far I think this program is amazing!

* Our home school plans are and eclectic combination of multiple websites and the Preschool curriculum we already own.

* We have the names of some private Speech Therapists but we are going to wait on that until we feel Peanut may need Speech Therapy.  Right now his biggest language issues are pragmatics.  This area of speech is also addressed in the Skills program so way may not need to utilize speech therapy right now.

* We just had our yard fenced in (to stop the kids from running into the street) and my parents decided to build the kids a new swing set!  It is incredible!  What a blessing!  We are so blessed to have such awesome and supportive friends and family!!  So now the fun part, pictures!!

Here is the whole swing set.  It's hard to see everything but there is a slide, 2 swings, a horse swing, a set of rings with a bar in the center and a tire swing that also spins.

Sassy LOVES the horse swing!

Peanut is getting in LOTS of gross motor activity on the ladder.

The ground is covered in a thick layer of untreated Cedar wood chips to cushion any falls.  Sassy like digging in them.

He's such an unhappy boy isn't he?

All in all we are feeling really great about our decision about homeschooling and we are feeling overwhelmingly blessed.  We have Peanuts 4th birthday coming up soon as well as some much needed family vacation days we are also planning for.  I'm so excited to see what the future holds!

"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God your needs, and don't forget to thank Him for His answers. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ."   

Philippians 4:6-7

God Bless!

Mommy Provost