Speaker C: We’re here to bring you helpful information from leading experts and give you effective tools and support. I’m Jason Grygla, a licensed counselor and founder of Techie for Life, a specialized mentoring program for neurodiverse young adults.
Speaker B: And I’m Debbie Grygla, a certified life coach. And maybe most importantly, we’re also parent to our own atypical Young Adults Friends. Hello. Welcome. We’re glad to have you here. We are so excited to have our guest today, a good friend from many years, days of soccer and when our kids were younger. Anyway, we have Shannon Bianca Mono on with us today, and she is a mother with neurodivergent children and a homeschooler, and she mentors others in the community. And so we’re just glad to have her on and share some perspectives and tips. And we’re just going to talk about homeschooling and doing it with neurodivergence and what that looks like and can look like and benefits and all of that good stuff. So, Shannon, welcome to our show. Thanks for being on tonight.
Speaker A: Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. I’m excited to kind of share a little bit of our perspective of schooling and how that works for us and our family and share kind of some of our unique techniques that we use in our day to day life, too.
Speaker C: Shannon, when did you start homeschooling? Was it because you had a son and maybe you could talk a little bit more about that that was neurodivergent? Or did you homeschool and then have a kid that was neurodivergent? How did that happen?
Speaker A: So we came back from vacation in 2019 and I remember kind of getting all the kids schedules and things kind of in order, and they were outside swimming, and I was standing there looking at them and I just had this feeling of, it doesn’t have to be this way, because it was just very overwhelming of all these schedules, all these things that we had to do before getting ready for back to school. And I don’t know, it was just a kind of a flash of a thought. And so we went right ahead and got our stuff in order. Kids started school. My son has autism. And so he was in mainstream classes, and then he would have pull out stuff for maybe speech or maybe he would get like a sensory room break or something like that just to kind of go take a walk. And things were going great for him. One of my other children, she was starting third grade, and I knew there was some speech development issues there, but there was also something else, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. And so as school had gone on, here we are now in September, and I was noticing some communication problems with the teacher and things that she was having difficulty with. And so sat down, had IEP meeting, and came home and talked to my husband a little bit, and I just told him, I think we need to just start looking at different opportunities for her, because I don’t know if I want to do this all over again with her. What I had to fight and advocate for, for my son. And at the time, I was actually working part time in home with kids as a behavior therapist. And I had been with this family for about nine months or so. And it just dawned on me one day when I was at work and I was teaching him and doing some therapy that I can teach my own children if I can be in the home and teach him. And so I started kind of researching some things with homeschooling, and it just was something I had never thought I would do. It was never on the table, never a thought, never even crossed my mind. It was like, no, I would never do that. And then never thought of it again. It was just I followed what we all do. We go to school. This is what we do. It only took two times for her to end up in a lunch detention for me then to make the decision that we were done. She got a detention for not turning in work that she was never assigned because she was out for speech therapy. And yet the teacher kept disciplining her, kept yelling at her in front of her peers, slamming her hands down on the table in class, shaming her again. I pull into the office, ask the school, and ask, how was your day today? And she’s like, oh, I was at lunch detention. And she’s just thinking, this is fun. I get to sit at this separate table, and she doesn’t really realize as this little third grader what was really happening. So I pull right in and go in the office, and I’m like, no, why are we in detention again? And so they weren’t following our IEP, they weren’t communicating with us, and they were taking away things, recess and lunchtime with their friends as punishment for not doing work that she didn’t even know she had. So I was done at that point, and I talked to my husband. So we really, for three months, kind of researched the home school thought, and I put in my notice and fall break, they were done. I pulled my three younger ones out, and that was in 2019. Oldest was at a different school, going to high school. She was content and fine, and that was fine and going well. And I just thought, if I’m going to do one or two, all three kinders come. They were all at the elementary school, so I’m like, let’s just do this together. So 2020 hit, and it was like, sweet, everybody’s home schooling so we don’t look too different right now anyways against the rest of the world.
Speaker B: Yeah, that’s kind of good timing.
Speaker A: I had that prompting and that feeling, and I kept hearing the same song over and over, and it was Come Thou font. And I kept listening to that song, and I was reading scriptures and praying, and I really researched and look up what is the true meaning of the Ebenezer stones and what does this mean? And that just kind of kept resonating with me. And I felt like although I wasn’t willing to fight with the school and do the same kind of hard work that I had done with all these IEP meetings for all these years with my son to do it, with my daughter. It was not necessarily like I was giving up, but rather it was already the stones had been laid, the foundations had been laid and I was giving another stone of now you go forward. You can do this. And so I felt confident that if I can go into homes and teach other children they’ve been in school, they got what they needed at this point in their schooling. We can continue it from here. We’ve got it from here.
Speaker C: It seems like a lot of parents, they start homeschooling because of a hardship. The hardness of staying in public school becomes greater than the hardness of learning and doing home school. But now that you’ve been homeschooling for a few years, how are you feeling looking back? And now that things are a little more settled, or you’re like, wow, I can’t wait to get them back into public school, or have you bought into the home schooling completely and you’re glad you did it?
Speaker A: I wish I would have done it from the beginning with all of them. I hope that I never have to send them. That’s my hope. I hope that we can do it all the way through. For the first two years, would ask them constantly, like, if they were happy, if they were good with where they were, and they were. They, I think, appreciated the freedom that comes with it, and they had something to compare it to. So that was also kind of a relief because they knew what it was like to have to get up, get going, get out of the house by seven. And we don’t have like, our school right here in the neighborhood. We drive to, it 20 minutes away and it’s a haul back and forth, 2030 minutes, and then you’re waiting. It was an hour round trip, so it wasn’t just, let’s walk down the street and you’re there. It was uniforms and belts and this has to be a certain way. And so they, I think, could appreciate it a little bit more. They can sleep in and they don’t have to rush.
Speaker B: And the reason we’re having you on is because we do want to help parents if they are in a situation where they’re not happy with the school situation, that there are other options and what it might look like, we’re not saying everybody should home school. I mean, every situation is unique, and we’ve done both and had positive experiences and negative the challenges that come. But to know that there’s other options, I think is really important. I would love to hear what have been some of the challenges with doing this, taking this different approach, and maybe some of your tips like those challenges.
Speaker A: Definitely. I think the challenge was letting go of the idea of bringing school to your home, because we were already kind of well, not kind of, we were conditioned to what the school system is. I had to let go of that idea of making it look, feel and carbon copying the school in a classroom and how our day was even ran. I sit back and I think of how I had the first months of our homeschooling. And while we were deschooling, in a way, I was still trying to mimic a school day. And no, it does not work. So it takes a good year, year and a half to really learn your child. And if you have more than one that you’re homeschooling, then that’s more than that more work, obviously put in there. But you think you know how your children learn when they go off to public school. You don’t. You get a very small glimpse, maybe, but you get the tired, worn out, doing the homework, and maybe just a quick highlight reel at the conferences, if it’s a good highlight reel. You absolutely do not know how your child learns until you are the one sitting down teaching them. And it is interesting how you have to learn more about yourself in the first year than it is about your kid. And that is very humbling, and you find out very quickly.
Speaker C: What I love about that is that if you, as a mother with three or four kids, have a lot to learn about how they learn individually, imagine how hard it is for teachers who have 30 kids new every year and how little they get time to actually individualize a learning environment, style, approach schedule. Especially with a kid that’s neurodiverse, they must really struggle trying to fit into the mold. And I think that was what we loved the most about homeschooling our boys, was being able to very much personalize it. And also, I think we’re very pro. Debbie and I are both, and I assume you as well. We’re very pro education, we’re very pro development, we’re very pro mental health, we’re very pro living a life worth living. And I think we’re always surprised when we get out of the typical things like public school, how much you can choose and how much freedom you have to create a life worth living. I miss being able to take my kids on trips during the school year when Disneyland was empty, or when the campgrounds were empty, or when the Grand Canyon wasn’t flooded with tourists in the early summer. So what was some of the harder things besides that? What about your kids?
Speaker B: I think, well, I want to go back and just say, too, I love that you brought out that first year, almost year and a half. It was for me, too. That was my experience. At first, I was like, oh, it was like playing school when I was a little kid. I was imagining the board, and I literally had a board, and I was standing in front of it like a teacher. And then after a little bit, I realized, this is silly.
Speaker A: This is our home.
Speaker B: We can go sit at the kitchen table. We can sit on the couch, we can be on the bed. I had to undo undo that.
Speaker A: Yeah. Ed school is so funny. I look at all my setups from the beginning and I just laugh because now we don’t even have a room and I refuse to have a room. I’m like that is dumb. Like, I need a room for a filing cabinet and a few other things because I like the teaching stuff. But yeah, no, I hope I answered it. Maybe I didn’t, but the hard part was the mimicking the school feel and stuff at home, but then also with the kids, I think the hard part was for them as well, understanding that they could help create the structure of their day. And it wasn’t going to be something that mom was in control of everything, and I wasn’t going to stand there and bark orders at them all day and be a drill sergeant or we weren’t having grades anymore. We weren’t really having tests anymore. We were kind of actually peeling back all of those things and unlearning those things because it was more, to me, important to make sure our mental health was top notch and that we’re all okay and that we’re doing okay. And how are you checking in with them, connecting with them, while I’m also trying to learn the curriculum and then figure out, does this curriculum really even work for this child? It was insane to me that and as you were just talking, Jason, it reminded me like, oh, yeah, I forgot I was doing that. But I was literally on teachers pay, teachers buying stuff for the teachers because they didn’t have funding to do it. Or I would ask, and I knew they had funding for, but they weren’t allocating the funds for it. I remember being in a meeting and asking, this poor teacher was buying a used curriculum for my daughter at the time for a math curriculum that would work well for Dyslexics. And I was like, could we please buy her entire program for the entire year? Why is she buying a used book to have to make copies for? We could buy that. Correct. Until someone asked to spend the money. They’re not going to utilize that money. And then the other thing is I’m finding out how much money they were getting from my child with a disability. That just changed things for me as well. And then they would not allocate funds for the resources that needed to be really utilized. And I had gone in and made this entire little tiny closet room, a sensory room for their entire school, for all their children there, to be able to come in and have a little break or what. I just realized, like, here I am. I’ve done everything I can, buying curriculum, setting up a room, setting up a space volunteering, and yet still there was something missing when I realized I could do this on my own and be so much less stress. No more IEP meetings, no more tension, no more donuts at the table pretending we like each other. I wasn’t willing to continue that because it wasn’t healthy for any of us.
Speaker C: I think that’s one of the things that parents are apprehensive about is what will my child’s development look like if they’re not in school? And I think because of the unknown, we assume that they’re going to be backwater hillbillies, protected from society in a way that is detrimental. What have you seen as far as their self identity and their development?
Speaker A: It has been amazing. I cannot tell you how impressed I am that my kids literally were on stage recently doing a Peter Penn play. Gavin was like the star on the stage. He didn’t have a huge main part, but when he got up and he did his thing, people were blown away and couldn’t believe, where did this actor come from? Like, he just was in his realm. Ava, super shy, didn’t like leaving Mom’s side ever. Was up doing her thing. It’s like they’ve been able to discover who they are as they’re discovering who they are little by little. And I feel like a lot of that is because we are not under someone else’s structure and routine and checklist. They have a lot of freedom in their day. They know what they need to get done. We do academics. We’re not an unschooling family, but we do a lot of things in the day where they know they have responsibilities to get done with education part, but I allow play. And so I think with that, they’ve been able to just develop a lot of self control and a sense of identity and just happiness and self awareness and knowing when they need to take a break. They’re very good about saying, I just feel really tired or overwhelmed. I’m going to go take a break. And so they can communicate that at 8910 years old, I’ll take it. I don’t care about your multiplication facts right now. You just told me that you feel overstimulated by whatever. Great. I’d rather you be communicating to me that then we’ll get to math acts. So they have just blown me away from where they were to now so.
Speaker B: A couple of things that you were talking I was thinking about that when they feel that need to take a rest. I think there’s like this fear that my kid won’t do anything. But when you’re in an environment that’s nurturing and you’re bringing in resources and we’re not all stressed and trying to check off the boxes, kids actually do like to learn. And for them to be able to learn when they need to advocate for themselves, I need a break, I’m tired. It doesn’t mean they’re not going to come back to it.
Speaker A: No. Yeah.
Speaker C: We were always surprised at how much of our children’s schedule at public school was just performative checking boxes and not learning and how much actual time each day they really needed to learn to get way far ahead. Less than half the time, usually. Which gives them a lot more time to either sit on their computer and become addicted to video games or go live life, depending on the environment that I think the parent chooses go be in a play.
Speaker B: There’s a lot of ways to approach homeschooling. You mentioned Unschooling, which is more of like a self directed, kind of almost like a Montessori kind of approach anyway. But there’s a lot of different ways to approach it. There’s a lot of different types of types of curriculums.
Speaker C: There’s a lot of supports. You can do it alone, you can do it with a bunch of families, you can do with an organized situation.
Speaker B: And sometimes all choices is overwhelming. But the cool thing is you do get to kind of try things, experiment, see what works for you. What do you specifically need, what fits what works into your lifestyle.
Speaker C: I think protecting the innocence of those who are autistics especially is a really big factor, a driving factor. Wanting to protect them and their bright eyes and their hopefulness and their little loving hearts and their mental health. And their mental health, but just their soul, if that’s the right word, from all of the effects of what public school can do and can bring. And I definitely think some school systems are better than others. You happen to live in Arizona where you’ve had this experience. I know Arizona schools rank pretty low in the nation for quality of schools. Yeah. Or supports for neurodivergence. For sure. I’m curious, what advice would you give to parents who are in struggle and crises with their child or children in the public schools trying to get IEPs, their kids are neurodivergent, school is not going well at all. What advice would you give them? What would be the first steps to looking at home school as an option?
Speaker A: Yeah. I think the first thing I would think of or maybe suggest to them is looking at it from a lifestyle perspective, what is their values, what is their goals for their family? And when you kind of have this mission statement style thoughts for your family? How can you incorporate an education into that for your child who may have some learning differences, and can you be okay with that looking different than what the standards are for? Maybe neurotypicals? I think that a lot of parents struggle with internalizing the reflection of what this may look like or reflect on themselves and that they need to let it go and perhaps look at connecting with their child versus checking off the standards of what a school prefers them to do.
Speaker B: Yeah. And that’s something that we really talk about and teach and advocate for, is that connection first, and then the other stuff falls in place. Right. But if you’re trying to do the checkboxes and you’re not connected to your kiddo, you’re going to lose all of it.
Speaker C: When you have to be the bad guy at home trying to support the school instead of being the good guy at home advocating and building a relationship with your child, it really is exhausting and not worth it. I was thinking that one of the things we recommend to parents whose child is in school and has an IP is advocate for things in their IP that are more developmentally focused than academic. For example, have them belong to a team, a club, some type of student council. Get them involved in something extracurricular and have that be a part of the IEP. When you home school, a lot of people think you’re going to not have access to those things, but there’s actually a lot out there. People aren’t aware of them because they’re not out there shouting them from the rooftops.
Speaker A: They just run in different yeah, and that’s the thing. People think it might be whatever perception people have of homeschooling in general, depending on your age and stage of life. There’s so many. But you have to be willing to set your priorities for the focus of your child. And I’m talking individually. They’re all going to need something obviously different, not each kid’s. Like, and what I do for one child and home school is probably not going to be the same for the other, but at the same time, you have to do the legwork as far as trial and error. There may be things they try. I had a kiddo that did violin for a little while, and that did not work in same aspects of 1 may like sports, 1 may not. You have to give it time to try that out. And in the same time, not pressure, because of what the world thinks we should be doing or the neighbor next door, whoever. It is just a matter of really getting to know your child and learning their strengths and collaborating together with your child to build on their limitations. I mean, not every kid likes math. Maybe perhaps that’s one of the things I hear parents talk about, like, oh, I could never do it because I could never teach you math. Okay, well, find someone who does like to do math or look up YouTube and find a video on YouTube for that matter. There’s so many resources now that it really can be done. It’s a matter of having the confidence to fail while doing it well.
Speaker B: And there’s so much development that actually happens through that trial and error and discuss, well, we didn’t like that or that didn’t work, but why not? And let’s learn from that experience, and now we try a new thing and let’s see how we like this. There’s so much development that happens just in that process. So it’s not wasted. It’s not like we wasted our time with that. No, there was a lot of development happening in that, and there’s that compare and contrast and oh, I really like this video after doing this other thing, for example, if it math, that is what development is, that trial.
Speaker C: One of the things I’ve heard you say and through your posts on Instagram is how important it is to keep your priorities straight. And I think you do a really good job. I think you put us off for like three months until you had the time, energy, and emotion to be on our podcast, which I actually really appreciated. And I want you to tell us a little bit more about that and.
Speaker A: Why that’s so important, so wonderful. Homeschooling humbles you quickly, just in the realm of you don’t start homeschooling with a bucket of patients. You learn to develop the patience as you go because you realize that you have your own expectations for your children and they slowly let you know that those don’t always equal up to their availability or their energy or their likeness. So I’ve learned to set boundaries within my own life so that I could be what I need to be for them during our homeschooling time and so making a priority for the extra things in my life, the extra people, the extra appointments or whatever. I am very much a person who likes structure and order, and I like to have things kind of land out. And so I am also one that is a recovering people pleaser. So I’ve had to learn to put that aside and realize that I need to also give myself some room and oxygen so I can move forward and help my kids too, because I didn’t do well with that in the past. I would run, run, run until I burned out, and I didn’t want to model that for them, especially now that we had all this time together. We’re homeschooling together, we’re living life together, and I needed to model, I need a break. It’s okay to communicate that. And I also have to set some priorities with my scheduling, and they have to learn to do on their own when mom’s working. So it is huge for our family and it’s still a work in progress.
Speaker C: So did homeschooling help or hurt your marriage and how so what happened with your marriage relationship?
Speaker A: I definitely don’t think it hurt it I definitely think it’s helped improve because of having to set our priorities kind of right there in front of us. And when we had this honeymoon phase of the homeschooling life with this new found freedom, when that started to wear off, dad would step in and teach and help and give me a break and do things in subject areas I don’t like. So he and I had to learn to communicate and learn to work together in teaching them. And there’s some funny moments and annoying moments and things that I would definitely like to be out of the house when he teaches his science stuff and not be part of it. And so there’s things we can look at and laugh. And so it’s, I think, improved just because we’ve had to learn to communicate better with each other about their needs and then also our own when it comes to the time commitment that we have comes with homeschooling.
Speaker C: I like that homeschooling doesn’t require you to have an IEP for your neurodivergent children or children with any type of learning differences. It’s just individualized and so it’s an immediate good fit and it’s work to figure it out. But I love that you’re not trying to put a square peg in a round hole and then you just need the hole for the peg no matter what it looks like and they’re kind.
Speaker B: Of included in it. You’re not just forcing right, collaborating, which is so important developmentally for them to have and to feel like they have a voice in it and that you’re responsive to them when you’re working with someone that has learning challenges. Because I know a lot of parents might feel like I’m not qualified to teach them. Like I’m not trained for that. Any thoughts or tips? How did you kind of work through that? Because it can feel intimidating.
Speaker A: Yeah, I think sometimes it can feel very frustrating because you feel like you can come to a dead end of ideas or maybe you’re even just tired of trying to think of something. One of the things that I feel like has really helped is switching off the comparison, comparing my child to another child who may be on the spectrum. And that was something that was hard to do, especially when they were in school, but then when I brought them home, I feel like I don’t have to worry about that IEP. We’re doing what’s best for this child and I think just as long as you are really staying focused on the goal at hand for that child that you’ve made for yourself and not necessarily an IEP goal, but a goal like our goal is XYZ for this child and not looking anywhere else. Don’t look over here on Facebook, don’t look in that group, don’t look in Instagram and the Pinterest perfect worlds because. You’re not seeing the ugly side of those days too. It doesn’t just come as easy as some of these squares on instagram that we see. And it takes a lot of work as hard as sometimes the hormones mixed with autism and other things that come along with that. I wouldn’t want to send them back even through the hardest days because I know that we’ve worked this hard to get where we’re at and I know they’re comfortable here and their mental health is way better here than anywhere else. I think just not comparing that helps to stay in your lane. It’s okay to go out and look for advice and look for different reasons, but don’t let yourself spiral down that comparison trap.
Speaker C: How do you know if you’re doing good enough? How do you assess where they’re at when you’re doing it yourself?
Speaker A: Well, I personally gauge it by our happiness and by our contentness. We don’t need to be at Disneyland every week or we don’t have to be doing this amazing new thing every week. We don’t have to be getting an award or medal or winning first place. None of that matters to us in a sense of that or accomplishments. More about how content are they? How content are they in their world? Are they regulated? Are they happy and content with their friendships? Are they happy and content with each other? Is our home content or is there something I guess that’s how I measure. Phil and I will be like, all right, it’s time. We need to go on a family hike. We need to get out of our house. We could just feel it. And I think we really just base it on how everybody is emotionally checked in or checked out and you can.
Speaker C: Be much more agile and personalized and that is a huge draw.
Speaker A: Yeah, I think it’s important for I really think it’s important for our kids to understand at a young age about mental health and I guess in a more depth way of not just self care and take a bubble bath and that kind of surface level mental health. I really want them to understand their feelings. I feel like if we can get them to a point where they understand their feelings, then they can use their words to communicate anything when they’re ready. When my kids were really little, I started journals with each of them and especially because my son didn’t have a large vocabulary. And so I thought, well, maybe I could just write back and forth and even if it’s just a couple of words, then it’s something. So I would leave a journal on their pillow or I’d leave it in a spot that they’d find and they would write back and leave it back for me. And I’ve had that going for years. And that is something that, through the communication, has helped us with them understanding their emotions and knowing when to check in and communicate to me when I’ve messed up, and I can understand then where they’re coming from. And I think it’s so important for parents to really be able to humble and to really kind of come down to their level, because I think too many times we get stuck in a direction over connection attitude.
Speaker B: Yeah. And I just actually talked about on my last episode, just the importance of that emotional regulation piece and your emotional intelligence. It actually has much more bearing on quality of life and even success measures success measures than IQ or academic achievement, even. So it’s like focus on that first. It’s like putting that foundation in place that all the other stuff can actually flourish. There’s capabilities there anyway, and which one’s.
Speaker C: Going to take you further in life? Emotional health and good emotional regulation, good self esteem, identity and a foundation of I’m okay, I’m content. Or I got them their diploma and they hate me and I hate them, and life’s miserable, but yeah, they got into drugs and alcohol or they got overexposed all this crap, but I got them diploma and that’s all that matters. And I think we’re all, especially those with neurodivergent loved ones, focused on development as an individual, and they actually teach us what’s important. And I love that about working with our neurodivergent mentees, children, clients, students.
Speaker B: Well, we so much appreciate you coming on, and we could talk so much longer, but this is a really great introduction to this is a possibility. And if there’s parents out there that if you’re thinking about homeschooling or you’re looking at, man, what we’re doing is not working, there are other options, there’s other ways it can be. And I just really appreciate you coming on and giving a glimpse of what this can look like and that you can do it. It is possible and can be wonderful.
Speaker C: Do you want people to go to your Instagram page? Are you okay sharing that, or would you rather not?
Speaker A: No, that’s fine. Yeah, I love helping other people, and people ask me all the time questions about how to get started, so I will answer in the DMs, or if they email me, I’ll help them out. So, yeah, share with us your my story has Glory homeschool on Instagram, and that’s all I have. I don’t have a blog or anything else, so great.
Speaker B: Thank you so much.
Speaker C: Shannon, it’s great talking to you again.
Speaker A: Yes, good to talk to you guys. All right. Thank you for having me.
Speaker B: Thanks for being on. All right, everyone, have a great week. Take care. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Autism and Neurodiversity with Jason and Debbie. If you want to learn more about our work, come visit us JasonDebbie.com. That’s JasonDebbie.com.
