Alternative Education
Homeschooling Provides Its Own Therapy For Special Needs Kids
By Tonya Poole, 2-11-06

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One afternoon three years ago in Albuquerque, we learned from the back of a brown paper grocery bag that my then nine-year-old daughter Sarah has autism. We unloaded groceries as we read, putting fewer and fewer cans and breads and teas away as we made it further down the list: vocal "stimming" or chanting; extreme resistance to and/or distress at change in routine; "flapping" arms and/or hands; becoming easily and markedly distressed for no visible reason; unusually focused fascination on specific subjects or objects; frequent repetitive behaviors; coordination and motor difficulties; noticeable lack of natural fears and presence of unnatural fears; delay in and difficulty following set of instructions &

By the time we reached the end we were sitting at the table, bag in hand, looking across the room at Sarah on the floor playing and wondering why Albertson's knew more about my daughter than her comprehensive interdisciplinary team at school seemed to. Even her pediatrician had never mentioned a word or suggested an evaluation. So for nine years, Sarah had been a compelling mystery to her doctors, her school system and, admittedly, to us too.

To their credit, Sarah is and always has been incredibly high functioning. And despite how obvious it is to us now that we know what to look for, her behaviors were fairly mild on the spectrum. There were no social withdrawals, no self-injuries, no spinning and she was anxious to speak and interact with kids and adults alike at every opportunity. What she did have that earned the attention of her teachers and therapists were developmental delays, gross and fine motor delays, and speech delays - ranging from mild to severe - with no readily apparent cause or condition. So when it came time for school evaluations and IEPs (Individual Education Plan) and checking the appropriate boxes on the appropriate forms to indicate the appropriate category within which to place her, there being no other feasible group at the time, her evaluators always checked "mentally retarded'. The sting of that tic mark still hangs on.

Years went by, as did tests and observations and special programs, and yet it wasn't until the day we brought those groceries home that the light bulb finally went on. We immediately took the issue to her doctor, and to her team at school, and after an in-depth evaluation at our request we found what we'd been looking for: an official diagnosis, an end to the mystery and now, a place to begin.

But despite the diagnosis and our efforts to bring the school district in on the new ideas and information that resulted, Sarah continued to struggle and ultimately met little motivation or ability - mostly due to lack of time and resources - to develop a custom curriculum or set of services that would help her to excel despite her challenges. A move to Santa Fe's best school district a few months later did little to help. Within a few weeks it was clear they weren't sure what to do with her and they weren't able to offer her the aid she'd received in Albuquerque. One Friday, the bus driver dropped her off at the wrong stop and left her there until I, absolutely frantic, drove around the neighborhood until I found her still standing in the spot she was dropped more than an hour ago. The following day when I contacted the school to discuss the incident, I learned that she'd been relegated to a corner of the room to color each day while the rest of the kids learned and participated in class. The day after that, I quit my job and pulled her out of public school.

We were all terrified. I was afraid if I was making a mistake, it would be only Sarah who'd pay for it. Where would she receive speech therapies? Physical and occupational therapies? What did I know about teaching a nine year old girl? But in the months following, the only regret to materialize for any of us was the regret that we hadn't homeschooled Sarah from the start.

Here was a child who, the day she left public school, could not despite our best efforts up to that point read more than one or two-letter words, could not ride a bicycle, bounce a basketball, or function in large groups. Who was afraid to step over speed bumps in the road, but not afraid to run out into it when a car was approaching. And who spent the better part of a day repeating words and partial sentences over and over to herself under her breath to the exclusion of most everything else going on around her.

Formal school, classes and expectations had been a stressor and a trigger for her, and we had no desire to immediately repeat that environment at home. So, while we spent several weeks exploring ideas and methods and information in the background, we let Sarah unwind and de-program. Little did we know that those few weeks would uncover the key to exactly what she needed: nothing. And a whole lot of it.

That's a scary thought. We're programmed to think that, in order to be intelligent, capable and productive members of our communities, we need to follow a regiment, be fed information, conform to institutional rules and shuffle on from one lesson to the next to be sure we cover all the appropriate bases. Maybe that works for some kids, but, as we very quickly discovered, Sarah's brain isn't hard-wired to learn like the rest of us learn. Much like stuffing food down a drain - formal, forcible learning for Sarah did little more than clog the pipes and suffocate the natural flow of idea retention and adoption. Let up, and things start to flow through.

Academically, the progress was slow at first to come to the surface. But we were alarmed at the rate at which she propelled forward developmentally after coming home. Within two months, her hand-eye coordination had improved to the point that she was able to not only shoot but to make baskets at the hoop in the driveway. Another few months and her older brother came running in to say that Sarah was outside riding her bicycle. By herself. The same bike that had sat in the garage since two Christmases ago. Just shy of a year later, and we sent our families a video of Sarah following cooking instructions and making a homemade pizza. And a few months ago, we sent them another - this time of her reading, out loud, a few pages out of a new book. Today, just two years after her last day in public school, she's doing math worksheets and navigating GPS readings and concocting her own recipes. She's still behind her peers, but the progress has gained momentum and while we were once sure that she'd never be able to function independently as an adult we wouldn't be at all surprised to watch her go off to college or to work or to travel the world by the time she's in her early twenties.

Sarah, for all intents and purposes, has grasped learning by unlearning. Homeschool for us hasn't been about the superiority of parents as instructors over teachers, nor has it been about a content or a curriculum or an ideologic preference. It's been about the leap of faith - born from the spark we found and ran with during her first few weeks at home - that children given the environment and opportunity will find their own way, establish their own connections. Sarah has since outgrown her need for physical and occupation therapies, and within the next couple of years we anticipate she'll need little to no speech therapy. Her future, in two years time, has rewritten and continues to rewrite itself.

In our two short years as homeschoolers we've met a multitude of parents with similar stories of bright, capable children who live "off the map" and can't be reached by traditional instruction - instead quickly accelerating with a hands-off, self-directed approach after years of stalled or muddled progress. And each of them just as frightened as we once were that what their children were missing was more detrimental to their well-being than what they were gaining. But we've learned to trust the process, we've learned to trust our kids and their natural abilities and curiosities, and we've learned to trust ourselves and our instincts about who they are and what they can achieve - with or without us. And perhaps most importantly, by way of the journey, we've learned that maps are merely suggestions, and the rightest roads don't always make it into print.