Until very recently, I had no idea that gifted and autism could go together, but I’m learning real quickly that they can! Tim is very scattered in his abilities, but mostly ahead of his peers. I know a lot of this is due to the therapy I’ve given him myself over the last two years, he’s passed so many milestones that I didn’t think were possible when he was three and moderately autistic. But, he just has amazed me since starting kindergarten in August.

This week he has been working on 1st grade math on T4L, and he’s working on place values. I wasn’t even going to touch this yet, I thought it would be too confusing for him and the last thing I wanted to do was confuse him! But, I’m a little bit OCD when it comes to him having to move from one lesson into the other and not skip around, so I had him do it just to experience it. Once again, he just blew me away! He understood what it was about, without any help from me. And, this is the funny part. The whole ‘place value’ thing never really made sense to me, and just seemed to be more confusing than just flat out counting. But, I understand it now myself, and why it makes sense to look at numbers that way! Ha! That’s what I love about homeschooling, is if we don’t understand something we get to learn it right along with them, and it just really helps our bond as he sees that you never stop learning, and there’s nothing wrong with admitting that you don’t know something. It builds his confidence, which is a big issue with him.

I babysit an 8 yr old that I help homeschool after his mom goes to work, and he uses T4L as well. He has Asperger’s, and is behind academically. T4L has really helped him connect to what we’re trying to teach him in ways that are just wonderful to see. He’s JUST understanding multiplication, and the online school he’s using is expecting him to start in division, which is crazy to me. I’ve been working with him this week on memorizing his times tables, we’re working on his threes. She had an especially hard time with him yesterday, he just wasn’t understanding what he was supposed to do, and was frustrated. I reminded her to check on T4L to see if there was a lesson on it, which of course, there was. He did the lessons, and that helped a lot, but still didn’t quite sink in. He came over here and I showed him the relationship between the numbers when you multiply and when you divide, and he got it! I truly did not feel he was ready for this, but T4L really helped pave the way for him to be receptive to what I showed him. He’s still going to work on memorizing his times tables, but while using a multiplication chart in the meantime, he can now do the work his school is wanting him to do and not fall further behind.