My very social former cheerleader daughter went to public school and enjoyed it because she was smart, pretty, and could color in the lines. She has so many friends and so many good memories of school. I really, really wanted that for my son.
But he couldn't color in the lines because of a disability that caused him to have hyperflexible finger joints and muscle weakness. Lots of coloring and writing caused pain. My son's pain didn't matter in our one-size-fits all, everyone must learn in exactly the same way kind of education system where rules matter more than common sense.
When I was told by the kindergarten teacher at the end of the year that she recommended that he be held back in a transitional first grade the following year so that he could learn to color better and that he didn't need to really learn anything, I realized that what I had read about our education system--that "children should build on what they know" was just part of the public education system's propaganda.
We explained to the teacher that he had a disability that affected coloring ability and that we didn't care if he ever learned to color better. We didn't know the name of the disability because our primary care doctors didn't know anything about connective tissue disorders and would not refer us to specialists who did until almost ten years later. His connective tissue disorder does not affect intelligence or his ability to learn. He was reading beyond a 5th grade level in kindergarten. He taught himself to read at 2 1/2 despite the fact that Marfans also caused his eyes to tire very quickly. He was somehow able to compensate for his vision issues, but how would he have been able to compensate for a year of coloring and not being allowed to learn at his level?
After the kindergarten teacher's recommendation to hold my son back, I asked a first grade teacher who had gifted sons and training in special ed, including gifted education, for advice. I showed her samples of my son's work. She told me that she thought he might be highly gifted and I needed to homeschool. She convinced me that I could do it.
Before I made my final decision, I talked to our state department of education and was told that laws would have to be changed before my son could get occupational therapy for his disability because he was not failing. The final tipping point was when I realized I could not get help even at higher levels of the public education bureaucracy.
