As a homeschooler, I have worried a lot about what would happen if my child with a motor learning and handwriting disability had to go back to our public school. After I got my son's diagnosis, I talked to my special ed teacher friend about it. She has known my son for several years because she has two gifted sons of her own and they are both good friends of my son. They are also in the same musical theater class and one of them is in Cub Scouts with my son, so my friend has witnessed my son's difficulty in learning new dances and the difficulty with drawing and handwriting and everything. Since my son has spent the night at her house with her kids and we have gone to Cub Scout camps and slept in a tents next door to each other, she even knows about his other sensory issues and difficulty sleeping. Because of her job at the school and her masters degree in special ed, as well as being the parent of gifted boys, she recognizes and understands my son's difficulties better than most people. Some people refuse to believe that my son has enough of a disability to need accommodation because he doesn't "look" like he has a disability. Some people, even teachers who should know about this kind of thing, can't understand how you could possibly have a learning disability of any kind and also be gifted academically.
She told me there are teachers at that school that still refuse to provide accommodations for kids with dyspraxia and dysgraphia. One teacher sent a child to her who supposedly had trouble spelling. Yet, my friend tested the child orally and the child was an excellent speller. The teacher refused to test the child orally. There are teachers at the school who think a child must do the "fill in the bubble" tests just like the kids without these difficulties instead of letting them circle the answers. It seems that education is not really the priority at the school. Making kids fit in the box is. My friend confirmed that my son would not be allowed to learn as much as he is learning at home at that school. She agrees that my child deserves to learn and if he needs to learn differently, then he should be allowed to learn differently. Since we know it is very difficult to change some teachers' attitudes about the need for alternative learning methods, we will continue to homeschool. I sometimes talk about these things on teachers.net hoping that maybe a few teachers will learn more about hidden disabilities and the need for understanding and accommodations for kids like mine.
My husband just increased life insurance on me so if something happens to me, my husband will have to quit his job and take over homeschooling our son. My husband and I don't even go out together without our son because I worry that something will happen to us and my son would no longer be able to get an appropriate education. We will do what we have to do so that our child can learn and reach his potential.
For now, my son is doing a minimal amount of math because we are focusing on the spelling bee (about 500 of the advanced words left to go out of about 3,300 before Feb. 15) and we have been spending way too much time on literature studies. We have been reading and discussing classic books that I heard about but never had time to read. He can tell you the difference between parody and satire. He loves metaphor and allegory. He notices double entendre and oxymorons that I sometimes miss. He loves books that make him think. We recently read The Giver and he took an online test over the book at sparknotes.com and got 24 out of 25 correct. He likes to talk about the book and then read an online analysis. I think he would score very highly on vocabulary and comprehension tests. I had hoped he could take the Explore this year, but I guess it wasn't meant to be. There was no way I could make him miss the Cub Scout pinewood derby race and he did win two trophies and had such a good time.
My special ed teacher friend is also curious about how high he would test and she told me that she thought it might be a good idea to enroll him school just long enough to have the educational psychologist at the school test him. But I won't do that because he would have to attend school for days before they had to do the testing. My son does not want to go back to school even for a few days because he knows his friend (my special ed teacher's son) had a problem with bullies. His friend told us that he thought my son would be bullied if he went there, just as he was, because he doesn't do sports and is very smart.
Because I told the developmental pediatrician about his "freak and a geek" description of himself, she talked to him about how he felt about his disability. He told her that even though he wasn't able to do physical things as well as other kids his age, he knew that he was at a higher level mentally and he felt good about that. He later told me that he was embarrassed that he said this to the doctor, but I am glad he said it. I think it is even more important for kids with disabilities to be allowed to reach their academic potential. It is a shame that this is not happening in some of our schools.
