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Home › Articles › Special Needs › My Mom, My Teacher

My Mom, My Teacher

Home-schooling Can Be a Viable Option for Special Needs Kids

By Debora Geary

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For many parents, home-schooling is a pretty radical concept. It is a demanding and time-consuming choice for a parent to take on primary accountability for educating their child. For parents of special needs kids, such an option might seem even more daunting. However, the one-on-one time and flexible schedule of home-schooling can create a learning environment that is particularly good at meeting the challenges of kids with special needs.

Jesse's Story
Susan Caretti, of Pittsburg, Pa., knew her son, Jesse, would have extensive special needs from birth as a result of his chromosomal disorder. She accessed care and help for him very early Jesse saw a therapist weekly starting when he was 3 months old and attended preschool at a learning institute for special needs kids. At 6, he started kindergarten at the local public school.

Caretti was worried about Jesse's severe speech delays. She worked hard to get him speech therapy through the schools and an augmentative communication device to help him communicate. Her frustrations grew as Jesse spent a year in a special speech and language kindergarten program. "This teacher would not use his communication device in the classroom, or sign language, or even the picture communication pages I provided in a binder," she says. "This was the year my mother died, so I wasn't advocating for him as much as I should have." A year later, redistricting was going to move Jesse to yet another school, and that was the straw that convinced Caretti to try home-schooling.

Five years later, home-schooling Jesse is still a lot of work. His special needs make it challenging to find appropriate educational materials to use. While there is a wealth of home-schooling curriculum support available, much of it is not appropriate for Jesse. The upside, however, has been tremendous. "Jesse is not getting overloaded," Caretti says. "He was actually getting physically sick every Friday toward the end of that school year."

Caretti is less stressed out from trying to fit Jesse into a school's schedule. Instead, she can tailor her school schedule around Jesse. Perhaps the most important vote in favor of home-schooling is Jesse's. "Every time we pass one of his old schools we ask if he wants to go back to school and he says, 'No, me home-school with Mommy'," Caretti says.

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