Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Homeschooling and resources for special needs children

This topic recently came up on a message board I am on.

For the purpose of this post, the term "special needs" can refer to anything from ADD to autism and anything in between.

How do you homeschool if you have a special needs child?

Sometimes (as in the case of an ADD or ADHD child), homeschooling can be the perfect way to alleviate the hardship kids suffer in a traditional school setting.

But what if your child needs professional resources in addition to homeschooling?

Laws vary from state to state, but most of the time homeschoolers can use the resources offered by the school district/county to help with a special needs child (at little or no cost).

However, some homeschoolers want nothing to do with the governmental system. Period. And they prefer to use a private doctor/therapist/program.

Both have their pros and cons. Do your research and do what you feel comfortable doing.

The important thing is to make sure your kids get whatever help they need.

4 comments:

Wendy said...

We're facing this issue currently with our first grader who needs speech therapy. I'm taking him down the street tomorrow morning for our first visit to meet with a speech therapist (at a public elementary school). I wonder if I'll get asked a lot of questions about why we've opted to homeschool?
As for using a government run school, I have no issues as of yet with letting my tax dollars pay for my son's therapy. However, if they get weird on us, I'm just as happy taking him elsewhere! We'll see how it goes. :)

Anonymous said...

Hi Shay, it's Goldie...
Baby BearCub starts speech next week. Not in the school system yet...but if you have any good links about parenting special needs kids I am on the lookout for resources...

Shay :o) said...

Thank you both for commenting!

I will try to dig up some resources for parenting special needs kids - give me a few days, okay? :o)

Miekie said...

I am an experienced teacher of mentally handicapped children. I have been homeschooling a 12 year old since January 2008. She was in my special needs class in 2007 and the parents asked me to consider homeschooling her. I could not resist the challenge: what could one achieve under optimal conditions. These past 2 months we have achieved more than the whole of last year together. I write about our experiences in homeschoolingaspecialchild.blogspot.com. I would love comments and I am very interested in how other homeschoolers overcome certain challenges.