Homeschooling: Special Education Needs
Homeschooling a child who has a special learning need makes it important to find support specific to the learning disability as well. Finding other parents who share the daily struggles will prove helpful as homeschooling will cause a parent to be immersed more deeply in the difficulties that the disability present. Homeschooling is not a secluded activity despite the private method of delivering instruction.
Choosing the Public School for a Child with Special Needs
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, over 13% of parents in 2003 say they chose to home school because their child has a special need. While every parent who home schools their child has a specific reason, or many reasons, why, it is interesting to note that many parents have gone that route for specific special education needs. Even so, the public school system has a huge benefit for special needs students.
The public school has a responsibility to provide every child a free, appropriate public education. This means that if a parent is concerned about her child, she has the right to have her child tested by the state, free of charge. Then, if that child is deemed to have a disability, the child has the right to receive whatever services are necessary at no cost to the parent.
Special educators have unique training with various disabilities and have resources at their disposal for capitalizing on each child’s strengths. Therapists are available and come to the school to provide students with the specific targeted exercises necessary to improve the student’s abilities. These resources are simply not available to the same extent in the child’s home for the same cost to the parent.
When a parent makes the decision to home school a child, it is a huge undertaking. When that child has special needs, the job is even more challenging. Yet, homeschooling may be the best option for some students with special needs.
Choosing to Homeschool a Child with Special Needs
To home school a child with special needs, the parent needs to know or be dedicated enough to learn everything she can about the specific disability or learning difficulty that her child has. The benefit a parent has in this regard is that she can devote all of her learning to a single disability instead of a general knowledge of multiple disabilities.
For a student who is very distractible, homeschooling may be a better option than public or even private school because the parent has the option to remove excess stimuli without compromising the education of other students. With specific knowledge regarding the disabilities of her child, a parent is armed to do whatever is necessary without the constraints of a school system to hold her back.
While in the public school system students have a multitude of services at their fingertips, when a parent chooses to home school, there is more freedom to choose a specific service provider. This benefit will allow a parent to ensure that a therapist works well with the personality of the child, and is at the top of her field. In addition, a parent has the option of going above and beyond the basic therapy that a school would provide and have their child receive additional specialist services.
