Schooling / Education

We opted for mainstream education for the academic year 2022-2023. It was before my daughter had her official ASD diagnosis. It helped us get the support needed to get an ASD diagnosis. We chose a school in Dubai that was an inclusive school, i.e. one that runs mainstream education while accommodating and is inclusive for children with special educational needs. The school has an inclusion department with the head of the inclusion department as an educational psychologist, and the team of the inclusion department all trained and experienced to work with special educational needs (SEN) students. My daughter was in a class of her peers of her age group, she was the only one with ASD. She was shadowed by an individual learning support assistant (ILSA), and she started by doing only half day then completed the academic year doing full day. She followed the mainstream education curriculum, she would leave the class or would use the sensory room or simply go for a walk in a calm area of the school with her ILSA if overwhelmed. The inclusion department together with the ILSA and the class teacher implemented strategies to support my daughter's learning journey. For instance, at the start of the academic year, she would not sit on the rug with the rest of the class, and eventually she did on that exact spot that had her name and where she has learned to sit down when others would be. Yes there were times when it would not be possible, but mostly she would. My daughter also had an area in the class where she knew she could be comfortable and safe there, and her teachers knew and her peers accepted that if she needed to have some downtime, some alone time, some personal space/time, she would be there walking pacing or sitting down or lying down. She who had difficulties socialising with other children, would now be comfortable around other children running around her and sometimes coming too close to her. She who had difficulties sharing the space around her and her toys, would accept having other children near her, and moving her toys or playing with toys that she was just playing with. She stayed in the classes, even accepted transitioning to other classrooms that were not her main classroom, such as language classrooms or arts classrooms. And she even participated in the lessons, learning new languages, namely French and Arabic, or contributing to the music or visual arts classes. Physical education lessons were weirdly more of a challenge as them being outdoors took her out of the classroom setting, and following instructions outdoors was challenging as all she wanted was to run around as she pleased as she was used to.

One of the question we ask ourselves as parents of a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is that of schooling. Should we opt for mainstream education, specialised school or homeschooling?

We then tried homeschooling for academic year 2022 - 2023. This option allowed to explore the use of the tablet for items that she struggled with such as fine motor skills drawing and colouring; very quickly she was able to navigate the app to colour in as she wanted and as asked. In the picture above, I gave her a rainbow image and she chose the colours herself. As there were only 4 stripes, she coloured them in the first 4 colours of the rainbow, i.e. Red, Orange, Yellow and Green, then under the rainbow arch she placed the next rainbow colour, i.e. blue, and as there were 2 clouds under / at the 2 ends of the rainbow, we placed the 2 last colour of the rainbow, i.e. indigo and violet. 

Homeschooling was also about working on her communication using words. As one of her keen interests is alphabets, we used alphabets to spell our words and acting the meaning of the word, along with putting it in context with corresponding videos and songs. The alphabets that worked the best were fridge magnets alphabets, as my daughter would pick up the right alphabets and spell words. It is a lot to do with sensory processing and my guess is that the feeling of those fridge magnets from ELC Toys store were ideal for her. My daughter awed us as she would take the alphabets and spell words that we covered together, as well as words that we have never covered together.

Specialised school is what we opted for academic year 2023-2024. Although the school we opted for in Mauritius is for not a totally specialised school, it has a class that is a special ASD class, with a class teacher from South Africa who has been teaching children with autism over the past 20 years, and a teacher assistant. The whole team has been wonderfully supportive, and have successfully made her comfortable, eager to go to school, play with other children with ASD and neurotypical, share, respond, learn boundaries, and many more. After just a few weeks in, I could already see how she was responding much better to instructions, and how her communication was improving. The school follows the South African DCaps curriculum which the class teacher has experience with and has advised for us to opt for.

Homeschooling also allowed us to travel. I am an international school teacher by background and I took I year sabbatical to homeschool my daughter. My husband is a businessman with his company being online, allowing us to travel without any physical barrier. We stayed a bit in Dubai, then moved back home (husband's home and where Elyza was born) to Belgium, and then to Mauritius (my home country). We also during that year travelled to Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and more ... The real beauty of homeschooling is that it allowed us to travel, and the #ausome aspect to it all is that my daughter who has been travelling a lot with us around the world, despite her need for routine, has gained adaptability skills with us travelling so much ... this is a story for another time, please follow the upcoming blog entry for more on this topic ... 

We also explored her communication difficulties, and we first opted for picture exchange communication system (PECS), which was not quite successful. So we went for Makaton which uses symbols, signs and speech to help communication, and she responded well; more to me signing to her and speaking, than her signing herself. She would understand and react to the Makaton sign and speech, and from time to time she would also sign or sign along or sign back. Alongside, we used technology to help with communication, after all my background is in using information and communication technology (ICT) to enhance education. She had since a very young age demonstrated keen interested in the tablet and YouTube videos. So, we got her a Samsung A8 tablet and installed the app YouTube kids on the tablet. The app is linked to my email address, and allows us to choose and monitor what she watches, without any ads popping up. We selectively chose the videos that we would encourage her to watch, and we would follow up on what was watched and apply what was watched in context and in everyday life, as well as build onto it. I also learned the Makaton signs for the key words of her favourite videos, and signed them as we sing along on the YouTube kids videos.

We also covered the basic life skills, such as fine motor skills holding a spoon, which she was struggling with, and after patience, effort, and perseverance, she was able to scoop her food and bring the food to her mouth, not without spilling half of the content of the spoon but still, every achievement is to be celebrated. Unfortunately, food mess is something that visually is an issue for her, but this will be covered in a later entry under sensory processing support. We also worked on drinking from a cup, as well as from bottles with caps other than sports cap. We were successful with the picking up of a cup and drinking from the cup and putting it back down on the table; which was a struggle at first. Unfortunately, drinking from a bottle other than one with a sports cap was not a total success as we were not able to get her to drink from a straw, although she is now able to drink from a standard screw cap bottle. 

Despite her developmental delay, she was able to master other life skills such as toilet training, getting dressed, or even accessing her snacks from the kitchen drawer, and closing the drawer after she had taken her snacks. It allowed her independence, which she seems to really enjoy. It also reduced the meltdown episodes as there would be less frustrations in her communicating that she was hungry or wanted a snack.

Toilet training was successful until she had a constipation issue, and we had to restart the whole process. We will cover this in another blog entry where I will share the toilet song I used. Constipation has always been an issue, and is something many of you might relate to. Fu SC, Lee CH and Wang H (2021) published in the international journal of environmental research and public health an article exploring the association of autism spectrum disorders and constipation through analysis of the gut microbiome demonstrating that autistic people might well have a higher risk of gastrointestinal symptoms, including constipation.