Weekend Edition~Why I would especially choose to homeschool a special needs child

This post is not to judge any one who feels they need the public school system to help them with their special needs child. But, rather just the reasons I would still choose to homeschool.

Firstly, children with special needs, will need more one on one time and personal attention then the average child. And the average child needs a lot of personal attention and one on one time as well! And a public school situation is not conducive to the amount a average child and especially a special needs child needs. It's not any teachers fault, there is just not the funds that would be able to allow that amount of teacher to student ratio or time and attention. It's just the numbers can not add up to it.

Secondly, and this is just as true for children with or with out special needs, no one will love and care about a child's education and welfare as much as their parents. No one. It's just a law of truth through out mankind's history. We can see that even in Solomon's wisdom in who he determined was the real mother of the child judicial case... a real mother has transcending love like no other! And yes, I do include adoptive parents in this.. I do believe the primary care giver, of care, love and daily needs of a child is the "real" parent, weather that is biological or adoption.

Thirdly, secular education is based on humanism and paganism. This can be confusing for a child with out special needs. ALL the more so confusing for a child with learning disabilities. Ask any parent of a child who does not have special needs all the educational deprogramming they have to do each night, on what their children were educated on in paganism? And how hard the deprogramming is. And then think about how much harder that is for a child who has learning disabilities.

I remember when one of my older nephews came home from Preschool and declared he had met Santa Clause, we tried and tried to explain to him that Santa was not real, he was a made up fairy tale. Well, nothing we said could convince him that Santa was not real... after all he had met him, and spoke with him, sat on his lap at school! We were the ones who were crazy for not believing in the person he met in real life!!! We seriously could not convince him otherwise. He did not have learning disabilities, I seriously do not know how we could help a special needs child in this same situation. Well, Christmas came and went, and Santa did not visit our home. And that just made my nephew very angry! He said the next time he met Santa he was going to kick him, because he had promised to come and he didn't. It took years to get him to understand that Santa really did not exist. And that is just one thing. The whole secular education is based on many many pagan and humanistic theories-evolution which skews every thing else they teach from science to historic time lines, to proper language, etc etc. And just the entire secular curricula is all centered on paganism and humanism.

And those are just the basic facts across the board with public school education. A few other reasons that come up often with special needs children are things like. Being passed on so that the school has a good passing rate, even when the child has not been educated to the degree they should for passing. Not teaching real life skills that a special needs child needs to be able to get a job after graduating. I know of a local school district that had so many special needs graduates with out real job skills, that the parents actually banded together to come up with their own business that their special needs adult children could now work for. As the schools had left them completely unhirable by the general public. Others report that the funding is not funneled correctly to the special needs children, and there is BIG funding involved. Which this high funding in and of itself lends to many public schools abusing their power and lying to families about the parents qualifications to educate their own child, so as to keep the child in their school for the funding! And then the numerous reports of child abuse to special needs children as well. Then there is the safety of a special needs child from the other students as well. Schools do not protect special needs children from abuse by other students at school.

I have two of my own experiences with this. In the seventh grade I had a major, 12 hour, back surgery. I was in a body cast for a year. When I went back to public school, I was pushed down the stairs and the rods in my back were broken. I reported this to the school principal who refused to handle the situation, because he said, I could of been confused on who I seen push me down the stairs. And since I could of been confused, he could punish the wrong child. So as that, he refused to do anything at all about it. I was NOT confused in the least! I was very adamant about who pushed me down the stairs and didn't waiver in any of my reports about who it was! I know to this day who it was. In fact, after facebook came around (almost 30 years later!) one of the girls who was part of that situation actually contacted me and apologized for it. But, that had absolutely nothing to do with the school ever protecting me at all. Later in high school, a special needs child, physically attacked me during lunch. Again nothing was done, because he had special needs, and apparently could not control his self to not physically attack other people. Who knows how many of his fellow special needs students he also attacked.

A few years ago, a friend of mine, from my congregation asked me to help her home educate her daughter. A special needs child. Who was getting sexually harassed at school. Again the school refused to help, saying it was normal. Children should be allowed to make sexual choices on their own, and they would not get involved. These kind of situations I have heard, time and again and again. So much so, as my friend was relating her story to me, I would finish what had probably happened next, and she was in shock I knew... yes, I knew because I had heard her same story, from other mothers that many times! Then the school, her daughter was in, went so far as, when my friend pulled her child from the school, they gave the sexual predators my friends home phone number and home address so the predators could contact them outside of school now! This was of course in the name of helping my friends child have social interactions outside of the home! Again this is of course not all teachers, and not all schools, but reports have been made for decades on all of these situations.

Below is a REAL worksheet that was sent home as homework to a son of one of my friends. I am in complete awe of what is being taught on this worksheet. And awe meaning, completely shocked at the sickening education this worksheet is teaching. This was for speech therapy. Which many special needs children are in. Again do not take this as a judgement against speech therapy, only as this is what could be included, and what was included for my friends son!

I would also like to close this post by saying, if you are considering homeschooling your special needs child, but are concerned about how. HSLDA.org provides help, advice, and guidance for such.

HSLDA Special Needs help

A little anecdotal from me, so far I do not think I have ever met a parent of a special needs child that has regretted choosing to home educate their child. Across the board, mothers have told me of how their children were failing and falling through the cracks at schools, and they brought them home and they flourished, some to levels of not even being considered special needs any more. Of course there are many special needs out there, that will not be over come with home education. But, time and again I have heard especially from families with ADD/ADHD, reading comprehension disabilities etc say after they brought the child home for education, the problems nearly or did disappear.

Edited to add a news paper article from the Washington Post, recently published about the public school education policies for special needs children.

Washington Post Article

The above post describes a court case about special needs education. The bottom line to me, shows exactly why public school doesn't work for special needs children. They do not have the time, staff, nor specialty to individually help those with special needs progress to the best of their ability. And are happy with mediocrity. When we home educate we can hone in on our child's needs, and specialize the curricula and learning to fit that specific child.