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Though for sure that I could do homeschooling but I am wondering if one of my 2e twins would be better off in a school that specializes in kids with ADHD/dyslexia. I am starting to feel like I am doing her a disservice by trying to teach a child with specialize needs. Anyone with experience they would be willing to share?

Hi Laurie,

This is a really individual question with a million different answers. One big thing I'd consider is the age of your child and where they are at re remediation. For instance, I could not have adequately home-schooled my dyslexic child during the time she was being taught to read simply because I didn't have the specialized program knowledge that others had. She attended a brick and mortar school, but we also sent her to a tutor to give her the quickest and firmest start at a foundation that we could to get her reading. If we'd had the option of sending her to an LD-specific school that specializes in dyslexia I would have sent her to it in a heartbeat (if it checked out ok of course ) I only wish we had started earlier! We continue to see a huge gap in vocabulary due to years of missed reading opportunities compared to peers, and there is no way that a slower pace of catching up with reading would have helped, which is honestly what I think would have happened had we homeschooled. That's just our family though.

Best wishes,

polarbear

I have a TON of experience with this. DD10 is in OOD placement at a spec Ed school and I can't imagine finding/creating a better solution for her. It was a l-o-n-g road getting here though.

She does not have ADHD but has been diagnosed with just about every possible LD. We tried public with an IEP and a combo of resource supports, a para, introducing AT, etc. It was not successful. She developed severe school based anxiety and it was almost impossible to get her classroom teacher to understand or follow her IEP. 2E was not well understood and she was accused of being lazy, manipulative, trying to get out of doing her work, etc. For the most part teachers and staff saw either the giftedness - which meant the disabilities didn't exist and were just an excuse made up by an overprotective mother who wanted my little snowflake to get special treatment. Or they saw only the disabilities and then I was crazy for thinking my little special Ed kid could possibly be smart... The neuropsych eval after 1st grade said she *had* to have twice daily enrichment breaks which helped a bit but it came no where close to meeting her needs.

When we were fighting for out of district placement we were looking at placing her at a 2E school that would have required DD and me to stay away from home M-F. It was very appealing that they got 2E and I wouldn't have to keep explaining, explaining, explaining all the time. We decided to try the local spec Ed school our district suggested as a last ditch effort to stay at home even though we didn't think it was likely to work. I'm glad we didn't make the leap to the 2E school as I've heard it has evolved into a placement for kids with behavior problems. Also they do an enriched grade level curriculum so DD would not have gotten the radical exceleration in her areas of strength that she gets now.

While we were deep in the battle for OOD placement I considered homeschooling but realized there was no way I could meet her special Ed needs. My DD is profoundly LD so she needs intensive interventions. If I did homeschool it would require that I enlist the help of numerous outside specialists. DD gets daily Wilson intervention for her dyslexia, daily math intervention for her math disability, 3.5 hours a week of OT, 1.5 hours a week of SLP services and an hour a week of counseling services to help her cope with all her challenges. She also is doing a HS literature curriculum and an enrichment program on any topic of her choice (she always chooses history) along with grade level work in social studies and science.

I know a family that tried valiantly to homeschool their dyslexic child. Mom is a teacher and she trained in OG in order to homeschool but it didn't work. After a couple of years they gave up and sent him to a school that specializes in dyslexia. He spent 3 years there and finally seemed to get what he needed.

I hope some of this may help you formulate your thoughts. Please let me know if you need any more info. Good luck!

You've gotten some good advice above. I agree that the answer to your question depends on the child, the exact school options, etc. I homeschooled my DYS dyslexic/dysgraphic until he was 11, at which point he entered a college prep private school. Homeschooling him in the early years was likely the best thing I could have done for him. I probably caught the stealth dyslexia earlier than any school would have. (It was fairly mild and well-compensated.) I spared him being labeled or feeling "stupid". Because we didn't have big private school costs, we were able to pay to have the LD intensively remediated. And I was able to tailor his learning to support his weaknesses and challenge his strengths. He is currently getting pretty much straight A's at school and is feeling very confident. It sounds like our situations may be pretty different, however. I do think you are probably the best judge of whether you can best meet the needs of your child.

Ditto above.

FWIW, the available research (and there's not much of it, mostly exploratory) on homeschooling vs public school special education for ADHD & dyslexic students is fairly positive for homeschooling, even when the homeschool educator has no formal training in special education. The outcomes were comparable in either setting in the two exploratory studies, while the longitudinal study on 2e kids found better outcomes for homeschooling. But of course, much depends on your family situation.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/42899486?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
http://search.proquest.com/openview/3ef3e26be5c2fd16d78bc6c688425068/1?pq-origsite=gscholar
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0161956X.2000.9681939

We homeschool a putative 2e child (never been formally tested, but lots of rich clinical information!), who is most likely mildly dyslexic/moderately dysgraphic. So far, I have felt each year that this was the better setting (over public or private of any description), due to the ability to tailor instruction to strength/weakness areas. Now, this may change in a future year. Earlier in elementary, this setting also avoided a lot of the negative outside labels and internal perceptions. As children get older--especially bright children--they figure out their strengths and weaknesses for themselves, so one still must manage some self-image concerns, but I do think that we as parents are in a better position to support the experience of competence, and to pause academic instruction in order to invest time in discussing individual differences and the basis of our value as human beings.

Thanks everyone. Our intent was to "unschool" for awhile and then ease into homeschooling, but the more I was reading about dyslexia, I started to get a bit panicky. I was worried that since we just got dx'd at 10 (we suspected something wrong but previous docs didn't call it out), thought we might be so far behind that I would make it worse. We plan on spending the next 6months with intensive Speech/language, learning specialists, and OT, so hopefully we can remediate some of the disability and be successful with homeschooling. Thanks again for all the feedback!!!

I definitely support some deschooling or u schooling for awhile. School can be very damaging for a 2e kid. When I took ds to Lindamood Bell, the tutors all commented on how confident he was. The schooled kids they usually work with have all been beaten down, but my kid hadn't had that experience. I also think that his having homeschooled has helped him be so successful in 6th grade this year as he hasn't been damaged or turned off before and has his enthusiasm intact.