Homeschooling a Special Needs Child

Among the homeschool community there seem to be a higher than average number of children who would be described as special needs if they were in school. Many parents of children who are homeschooled never intended to homeschool them originally, but only investigated homeschooling after seeing their children fail to thrive in the school environment.

In my 14 years of homeschooling, I have seen many people wrestle with the decision to remove their child from school and take on the job of educating them without the help of professional educators. Without exception, I’ve seen all of those children thrive in the hands of a loving parent all day instead of spending time with a specialist resource teacher in school once a day or once a week.

My story

I always planned on homeschooling my three sons (and later my daughter) so the decision of school or homeschool wasn’t a difficult one. But one son was harder to homeschool than the other two. In 4^th grade we realized he was dyslexic and that explained his struggles. This is his story:

My son badly struggled socially and academically in the early school years. He was reading, but he didn’t learn to write until 4^th grade. I call 4^th grade our miracle year because below 4^th grade he was very behind. He struggled with schoolwork and got very frustrated and angry. In 4^th grade I got him a tutor, art lessons and occupational therapy. Between them we worked on fine motor skills and he started to write. Prior to 4^th grade so that he wouldn’t drop behind I did all his schoolwork orally. The next couple of years we caught up and by 6^th grade he was at grade level in everything. He worked really hard in 7^th grade, doing 7^th and 8^th grade work and so he skipped 8^th grade and he went straight into 9^th grade. Then he started at high school in 10^th grade a year younger than everyone else in his school year. As I write this he is about to graduate high school a year early.

If he had been in school we wouldn’t have been able to do that. His frustrations in the classroom would have been interpreted as bad behavior, he would possibly have been retained a year and would certainly never have skipped a year.

ADHD

Another son has ADHD and struggled with sitting still. This meant for him to sit still and read a book was torture. I passionately believe the best education comes from reading lots of books, but he wouldn’t sit down. Finally to get him to read I realized he would only read if he was in motion, so he did a lot of his reading while walking on the treadmill. In fact the only time he would read was when he was walking at the same time.

That’s the beauty of homeschooling. If he were in school he would have struggled with not reading the required books and maybe been punished for that, but in the homeshcool environment we found a way that he could learn.

Homeschooling special needs

Why do parents do better than the expert educators when it comes to special needs children? For me, with my dyslexic child, he would get angry and we would try again later in the day. For a child who goes to a resource class, if they have a bad time then they have missed their time slot and the teacher has another child coming. I could use evenings and weekends to educate my child. But mainly the homeschool environment is one that is slower paced, with less stress and more love.

One right method

Schools teach there is one right method of education. They teach things by one method and if your child struggles with that method, then they suggest there is something wrong with your child. Children are unique and don’t fit into a box. As a homeschool parent I had to figure out for each of my children which teaching method worked and which didn’t.

For my dyslexic son, he didn’t read much, but loved to listen to stories. I could never read to him enough, so finally I discovered books on tape and books on CD. He would spend 4-5 hours a day drawing and listening to audio books. At a young age his vocabulary was amazing, he would use words that even I hadn’t heard of. Then when he finally got the fine motor skills to write he was able to write incredible stories.

It is my opinion that the more rigid schools are in their teaching methods, the more parents will choose to homeschool, even if their child is diagnosed as special needs.