If you ever listen to homeschooling parents the first thing they will tell you, including myself is homeschool is not public school at home. We hear that with homeschooling we can follow our child’s passions and the rest will fall into place. But what happens when your child doesn’t really have a particular interest or doesn’t like ”school” and you as the parent/teacher are running out of ways to make homeschooling not public school at home? Well welcome to the current problem in our homeschool. I read hundreds of posts on social media and articles about homeschool kids living their passions, they are playing tennis, doing karate tournaments or they already know what they want to do as a career, so they have a curriculum that fits their passion of being a doctor, lawyer, zoologist etc. Well, my son to me is a normal teenager, has no clue what he wants to do in life and his current passion like many other teens his age are video games. So now what. So, then I decided to stick to basics, and I get a lot of whining everyday about how he does not like school and doesn’t want to do it and asks why he must do it. So, me trying to be super mom swoops in and tries to make school not look like school. Well, I am tired. No matter how many fun games I make, no matter how many different styles of curriculum I use his response is the same, he doesn’t like school. Then the other day my 19-year old daughter said to me, how about just follow the same subjects as public school kids use. My responses are, "Well that is busy work or what life experience is he going to learn from annotating Shakespeare." Then she said the magic words, who cares! Who cares if he doesn’t ever use anything he learned in school in his adult life. True learning for her, she said, was when she got out of school and started working, then she was exposed to “real life” learning. She also said that I put too much pressure on myself to find the magic curriculum or the magic way of doing school to where he understands the material and enjoys it. Honestly, she’s right. I mean he hasn’t expressed any interest in really anything that would require using a “curriculum” to learn it, so why not. So, if you are in my shoes, just do what the public schools do. I am not saying do school 8 hours a day or give a time limit for each class and take tests, no I am saying if your child is supposed to be doing a certain subject based on his age and you are having trouble justifying if that certain subject is going to be something he will use in his adult life, don't, just do it. The worse thing that could happen is that they will never use it in their adult life. Just expose them to the concept and see where it leads. Who cares if he or she doesn’t get all the answers right, just learn. Think about it like this, what do we do as adults when we want to learn something, 9 times out of 10 we watch a video, read a blog or just ask someone who is knowledgeable in our area of interest. Do we test ourselves afterwards, do we grade ourselves and decided we failed so we can’t move on to the next thing we want to learn, nope, we just learn. So why does it have to be different for our children. We can take that public school curriculum and adjust it to the needs of our children. If that means not doing all the quizzes or instead of writing the answers on paper you just have a discussion that is perfectly okay, that is what it means to be a homeschooler, adapting a curriculum to our child’s needs. I will say, if your child knows exactly what they want to do when they are an adult, or they have some passion or talent by all means make their homeschool revolve around that. But I feel that so much emphasis is put on that type of learning we forget that there are children out there who don’t know what they want to do, they don’t have any real interest in anything and they just need the basic subjects to get them through the school day and that is okay. Homeschooling is about what works for your family and being stressed out because you are not doing nature studies or building a car in your garage will blind you to what is most important… Family! I was just thinking about when my middle child was in early elementary school. At that time, we had both of our daughters in an online school (my son was just a baby). I noticed and her teachers noticed that she was having trouble reading. So, the school provided a tutor that we met at the library twice a week. I remember that first meeting with the tutor, I was so excited to say that my daughter read a k-1 reader all by herself with no help. The tutor looked at me with no excitement in her face and said, “Well she needs to be reading at grade level”, which was like 2nd or 3rd grade (don’t quite remember, that was a while ago). I was so crushed by her statement. Yes, okay we want to see improvement in our kids, but what happened to celebrating the small victories. It meant a lot to my daughter that she was able to read a book with no help. I feel that part of the problem today is that we don’t celebrate the small victories, we are too busy looking forward instead of living in the moment. To a child the here and now is what important, especially the youngers ones. They don’t know what tomorrow will bring, they honestly don’t care, they are more worried about what is happening in their present. I honestly can say that not celebrating the small victories stunts enthusiasm for wanting to learn more. I mean why would anyone want to try harder at something if their accomplishments are not recognized. I am not saying throw a party every time they achieve a goal, I am talking about being genuinely excited, in your face so the child can see it, or maybe pulling out that book they read with no help and let them demonstrate their skill, anything to show them that we as parents and teachers are proud of them. We were lucky, it didn’t take my daughter that long to catch on to reading and now she loves to read. Now my son on the other hand, totally didn’t work, he struggles to this day with reading, and I honestly believe he has dyslexia (but that is another post for another day). I vowed after my daughter’s tutor didn’t celebrate her small victories that I wouldn’t let that happen to my son. So, parents, fellow homeschoolers, I give you permission to celebrate those small victories and don’t be afraid to stand up and say, I understand that my child “needs” to be at a certain place, based on standards that another human being put in place, but for today we are going to celebrate this victory and if you don’t want to participate then leave. Parents with special needs children that want to homeschool usually avoid it. They may feel like they wouldn’t be able to provide the specialized education their child(ren) needs, or their child wouldn’t be eligible for services that are usually offered through the public school. This is farther from the truth. The beauty of homeschooling is to create a specialized education that fits the needs of your child regardless if they are special needs or not. In the Beginning… I will be the first to say that I started out by enrolling my son into an online public school. After seeing that he was behind, according to the public-school standards, I requested to have him tested. As suspected, he did need some extra help. The testing revealed that he had trouble retaining information and instructions would need to be explained in detail and sometimes more than once. So, he was put on an IEP. So just to be clear, I didn’t really need the test to tell me that information, I was seeing it myself, but I thought, cool, since he was tested, he will get the help he needs. Don’t get me wrong, his intervention teachers were amazing, but there was a problem. One, not only was he working at a grade level or two behind, but they expected him to still do the current grade level work. That was just confusing him more. Then he was about to go into 3rd grade and in the State of Ohio, kids in 3rd grade must take a reading test (this is only if your child is in public school). I begged the school to let him take it in a separate room with a teacher reading it to him. He didn’t have problems with comprehension, he just couldn’t read the words on the page. Well, they didn’t want to do that, and I wasn’t about to let my son be embarrassed in front of other students when he didn’t have a clue how to read the passages on the screen. So, I pulled him, and we started to traditionally homeschool. IEP and Homeschool Was I nervous? Yes! Even though I knew what the problem was and had some idea on how to go about fixing it, I was still nervous, nervous that I wasn’t good enough and he would never learn how to read. Putting those fears aside, I got to work. I knew what needed to be done, he needed to go back. He needed to go back to the basics and start over. This is beauty of homeschooling, I could go back, I could go slow on some things and go fast through other things. There was no pushing him to the next grade level and there was no embarrassment from his peers because he was struggling and they were not. To this day, he is not on the same level as his peers when it comes to reading, but you know what, that’s okay. It is not about memorizing facts or doing research papers or reading Shakespeare, it is about teaching him how to learn, not what to learn. Will he be a successful adult? Yes! Will he need help with certain things? Yes! But don’t we all? I am 43 years old, and I don’t know everything, and I still need help, what makes that different for our children? Why do we expect our children to learn everything in school, true learning in my opinion don’t happen until we become adults. Extra Services I know that not every child is the same and some may need more help than others. So, with that said, Yes! You can get all the services you need even if you homeschool and there is financial help. I encourage everyone who is homeschooling a child with special needs to check out the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship. I linked some general information about the scholarship, but keep in mind, Google is your friend, other homeschooling parents are full of information when it comes to testing and financial help. Also, if you feel that your child needs to be tested, ask your pediatrician to arrange some testing. If there is a will, there is a way. I can’t say for sure that you couldn’t get your child tested at the local school, but usually the school won’t provide testing for students who are not enrolled in their school. But again, don’t take my word on that, call and find out, they can only say no. Conclusion Homeschooling a child with learning disabilities or other disabilities is possible. As parents we know our children, we know what they need, and the best part is, we know how they learn. Homeschooling is all about Individual Education Plans, it is about tailoring an education that fits your child. Don’t think that the only way to receive services for your child is through the public school system, there are plenty of resources for homeschoolers with special needs kids. |
Hi! I'm Robin. I am a sister in Christ, a wife second, and a homeschooling mom third.
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