Since my son has a disability that affects him physically I have made sure that he knows he will need a degree to get a good job. He learned practical math (things I learned in business math years ago) before he learned anything else. This was easy to do since we homeschool and had plenty of time to talk about budgeting and financial planning for the future. I have also made sure that he knows about debt and how it would affect his net worth and his ability to buy the things he wants and needs in the future.

I think maybe I did too good a job of teaching him about the pitfalls of student loan debt. He wonders if he will be able to go to college at all and if he can't he wants to know why he has to do more than the basic algebra that he agrees he needs.

He will not be able to joint the military to pay for college like his dad did. He would have difficulty working full time and going to school part time like I did because he will need to manage the fatigue and endurance issues that come with his disability. I think it might be more difficult for him to get scholarships because he is homeschooled. He knows he will increase his chances of getting a scholarship if he can find a way to take the ACT or SAT and make a good score. This will require a lot of math knowledge. For now all I know to do to motivate him to learn more math that he probably won't use in life is to have him work problems in an SAT prep book and remind him how important getting a good score will be for him and how important it is for him to find a way to work around his dysgraphia to get the answers quickly. We don't have time to worry about how his handwriting looks, as long as it is legible. He works on speed and accuracy while writing down only what is absolutely necessary to get the correct answer so that his hands don't get too tired to continue.

Luckily my son has always liked to take quizzes where he has to be the first to answer questions to make the highest score. He enjoys playing against other people doing online quizzes in anything but math. He says he thinks the reason he wins so often is because he reads and reacts faster than the other people taking the quizzes. I am hoping he will get to a point where he is comfortable doing math quizzes because I think it might be a good way to reinforce mental math skills and build confidence.