Montessori or Waldorf for autistic preschooler?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a very unpopular position, but Montessori was absolutely wonderful for my child. The best school experience he has had, to be honest (and we have tried the range). He was always very academically oriented and Montessori let him soar; I attribute a lot of his patience with challenges and ability to dive deep into problems to his great start in Montessori. I don't really get the concern that SLPs and others always have with the lack of socializing. There was lots of cooperative work, plus plenty of unstructured outdoor time, AND, for the three-year-olds, it was only three hours a day anyway. We had plenty of other opportunities to interact in different ways with other peers.

My two caveats are that any school experience is extremely teacher dependent. My child had a teacher for four years who instantly got him and appreciated him but was also willing to establish clear expectations. (She was also just a brilliantly gifted teacher.) Montessori may have been a uniquely good fit for my curious kid who hyper focuses but we would have gone anywhere for this teacher. The second is that, there is no question that my child was able to avoid non-preferred tasks and that that helped conceal a very serious LD. On the other hand, he wasn't able to avoid them in public school and they were even more clueless about the LD, even when it was obvious, so there's that.

Because for some kids, socializing at all is a non-preferred task, or they can't keep up socially (especially around older kids as they would be in Montessori) and so they're left out and don't practice speech and social skills as much as they could.

[Anonymous]

If your child is diagnosed and you know their are issues, please don't look at schools like this. Also skip the progressive schools.

They are not designed in anyway to accommodate those children with true diagnosed issues. They are meant for kids who are slightly above average, neurotypical, and display age appropriate behaviors meaning they move out of a certain behavior stage within a months and move toward a socially compliant behavior. They might be able to accommodate a child with a learning disability. Or a child with inattentive ADHD who doesn't present with any hyper activity issues. But that's really about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also work sheets are not at all appropriate for 3YO. Look for a school that uses Creative Curriculum.

Worksheets?!?!

[Anonymous]

Montessori wasn’t a good fit for my ADHD inattentive kid with MERLD (no autism diagnosis). The problem is that in Montessori kids are allowed to choose what they do - and when something is hard for you, you do’t choose it. Language acquisition is hard for my kid and he needs more explicit teaching than the typical kid. While the Montessori materials for language were probably better than public school, he simply never chose it, even when the language teacher narrowed his spectrum of choices to choosing among language-based activities.

OTOH, my DS is pretty bright and very interested in math and numbers and spent a lot of time on those activities and ended up being ahead of grade level when he entered 1st grade in public school. So, it wasn’t a total loss.

[Anonymous]

I can't speak to the motessori or waldorf experience, but i can speak to the fact that worksheets are not remotely the norm for any preschools. We were at 2 different schools, and toured several others, and everything we looked at seemed to be "play based" these days - which really just means an absolutely normal, appropriate setting for 3 years olds.

If your kid is reporting that there is a lot of worksheets, i would first check with the school if this is actually true. Based on even our experiences with K and 1st grade, i have a hard time imagining any preschool setting, no matter how "academically rigorous" spending more than 20 minutes a day on work sheets. I'd make sure your child is a reliable narrator on this point. If it's true that they spend this much time on worksheets, i would pull out and just go to any other well regarded play based school.

[Anonymous]

Highly, highly recommend Achievements at KKI. Get on their wait list if you haven’t already. There is nothing else like it in the area for that age!

[Anonymous]

Waldorf has too much delay in introducing foundational skills (reading, math) to be suitable for most autistic kids.

Montessori can be OK, depending on the child and the school.

Progressive schools generally work poorly for autistic kids. Direct instruction, ritual, order, solo exercises, predictability, etc. are in shorter supply in schools that follow that model.