Home Schooling and Ostomies

Did you think that your ostomy may help you with home schooling your kids? Nope well it can do!! Ra-Ra is learning about the human body right now; more specifically the organs, so what better way to talk a bit more about ostomies (and poop and pee) than during this topic.

We have a whatsapp group amongst the mums in our year group to help give each other ideas etc and one mum is a flipping genius she got some wallpaper and drew round her son on the back and had him draw on the organs from his encylopedia. Now I didn’t have any wallpaper but we had some fax style paper which I luckily had enough to draw round both kids as Button has a tendency to want to join in and of course I don’t want to dampen his learning!

I bought Ra-Ra some science books for her age group and between the two of them they had enough information she could read along with picking our brains; weirdly it didn’t include bladders! So after that initial discussion of what the organs were called, where they are, what each did and why it was important; she wrote out a sentence on each one in her book. Of course with a mini poster to stick alongside it!

Now Ra-Ra has helped me with bag changes and been fascinated with the poop (well she was 2 when it was formed and she is 6 now) I decided why not take it a step further and talk about what parts I’m missing and why.

We shaded out the organs I no longer have and what the changes to my bodily functions are since each surgery, we talked about the different types of ostomies you can get. Ra-Ra is currently really into science and although she only deems science to be chemistry at the moment it was nice for her to focus a little bit on biology and something that allows her comprehension of what I live with everyday to expand.

Home schooling isn’t easy and trying to find ways of making subjects or topics that the school provides us isn’t always easy. We have been given some ideas but not all kids learn in the same way and it really is a minefield out there! Are you home schooling? How are you finding it?