Taking Baby Steps...

Our family had the blessing of hosting two very special ladies last week.  The purpose of  their trip was to help us figure out how we could best meet the needs of our special needs kids.  To look at what we were doing and tweak things to help us get these guys on to the next level and to create an environment where they can grow to be all that God intends them to be.

When you live in a 3rd world country and in one of the smaller cities in that country, you are limited by what resources and support is available.  Add to that the language difference, and you limit it even more.  This all means that basically anything we decide to do is going to be implemented by my husband or myself.  We both have a desire and a commitment to our family, but there is a limited number of hours in the day, and at our age a limited amount of energy.

One of the big blessings to me that came out of our time last week, was the idea that we aren't talking about huge changes.  Each idea, is more than doable, and although they are small, they have the potential of making a tremendous difference in our family life, and also in the development of our children.

My children have been trained to use a timer, for their school tasks and they also use it presently for video game time.  So we are going to take that habit that they have already learned and expand it to be used throughout their day.  I made each of the younger ones a chart with their daily schedule and they will use their timers to go through their day.  They even have a "Saturday/Vacation Day at home" schedule.  :)  That may seem like a lot of structure to you, (I know a few years ago it would have to me, too!) BUT one thing I've learned about working with Special Needs kids, is that they THRIVE on structure.  Week-ends and Holidays are always times of struggle as is unplanned afternoons and evenings.  I have known for some time that if I would just bite the bullet and make a plan for those times, things would go much better for the kids.  YET, I wanted a "break" and didn't see how in the world to do it without being right there present over seeing everything, from early morning, until they went to bed.   So this is a way to give them the structure they need, while at the same time, freeing me up a little.    I have no idea if it will work, or how well it will work.  I'm sure that their will be some "tweaking" over the next weeks.

The kids were very excited when they saw their charts and wanted to know if they got to start using them tomorrow!  So here is the first "baby step" we are starting tomorrow. :)

Little Bud's daily schedule.

Special Days/Saturday's at home schedule.

This is Little Bud's independent school work.

The Princess' daily schedule.

Special Days/Saturdays at home Schedule.

Here is my Princess' school schedule.

Our Chore Charts