I first came across T4L one year ago, when Tim was 4. We were only a year into knowing that he had autism, and still had some serious problems at that time. I found out about T4L from other parents on a special needs homeschooling group,and decided to try it. He liked the site, but I just couldn’t afford it, to be honest. Not that it’s expensive, but when you don’t have money, even $5 is too much. It really wasn’t helping him at that time, either. He was really struggling with letter recognition at that time, and I was trying to find anything to help, but nothing was. So, I quit, reluctantly. I LOVED the graphics, and how well everything was explained. But, it’s not exactly ‘preschool’ level, and that’s where he was then.

We started kindergarten on August 6th, but I still didn’t have the money to add another monthly bill, so I still didn’t sign up. About two months ago I tried another free trial, and he was finally ready to handle it. He’s all over the place in terms of what grade he’s working on, but it’s so helpful in explaining things to him. So, it looks like we’re staying with it now. I like knowing that I have something else to add to our every day curriculum that helps cement things I’m trying to teach him. He’s breezing through the phonics, not even needing my help, and I just love seeing that.

I never bothered to research them. The way I think and act is that I put more emphasis on what parents are actually using and liking rather than what reports say, so as long as something has been referred to me by people I trust, that’s good enough for me. I trusted my own instincts to know if this was going to be right for MY kids, and it is! The only problem I do have, is that from 3rd grade on, it’s not as animated and isn’t as interesting. For a lot of kids on the autism spectrum, this can cause them to lose interest, I’ve seen this happen with my neighbor’s son. At the very least, I wish there was some way of having the text read to him without having to download the parrot that’ll do it. It would be nice if there was a simple button that parents could click on that would read what is there. My son’s reading level is nowhere near as high as his comprehension, so this leaves me doing A LOT of reading to him, not just on T4L but with anything else we’re using. But, that’s only a minor problem compared to the many benefits they receive. There is nothing more exciting than to have your kids begging to ‘play their school games’!