Just wrote a post on Easy to Love but Hard to Raise (my publishing company’s next big project!) about how we came to homeschooling. Here’s how it starts:
Here’s the story: child, 8 years old, diagnosed ADHD and developmentally delayed/socially delayed, with up-to-date Occupational Therapy assessments stating small motor, trunk strength, and coordination deficits, as well as past diagnoses of SPD, ODD (although those behaviors are related to probably frustration at his limitations instead of him being just plain old oppositional), a recent IQ test stating that he has serious deficits in working memory and math, and a school history that includes In School Suspensions, a 504 plan, constant notes home to mom and dad about behavior, ways of dealing with behavior issues that included sitting him the corner, letting him play games and search randomly on the computer all day, having him “earn” rewards by staying on task in 15-minute increments, the inability to complete homework, the inability to demonstrate to mom, dad, and a neuropsychologist that he’s at the grade level that his teachers’ report him at, and day after day after day of screaming and tantruming and weeping after school in first couple months of each school year.
Whew! Take a breath, y’all. There’s more.
And when the parents request a meeting with the principal they are denied. And when they request an I.E.P. so their child can get some written-down accommodations that the school has to put into effect (because the 504 plan, although written down, seemingly has no real meaning to some of the teachers assigned to our child) it is denied.
Denied.