Everyone is posting going back to photos so I thought I’d hop on the... short bus😂 For so many parents of special needs kids this is a terrifying part of the year. We live in fear wondering if they will make friends, will the teacher accept them and follow the IEP, will the aide be any good, will the parents give me shit about him being fully included, we are always thinking so many things can go wrong for us.
And for those of us that chose to give up on the system and dump living with fear for victory well, it came with a price.
My freedom! I would never get 8 hours alone again! His friendships were up to me as was his education. I remember being on the wrestling mat with God on this one for years. There was this voice whispering to me, homeschool him! And me screaming back literally up to the sky in my front yard NO!!!! I will not! I am not capable! God taught me otherwise.
We made it! I created a curriculum based on Dane’s interest for 6 years. At first we drilled the basics but we drilled them through his passion, and every year those passions changed, keeping me on my toes. He studied horticulture because he was keen to grow food and in particular passion fruit. He learned to grow and pollinate is flowers so they would yield 100% fruit. He studied economics at 12 and opened stock trade accounts at 16. ( that story is in another blog post) We traveled A LOT, which made him adaptable because he didn’t have a choice. It was our own Applied Behavior Analysis, lol. Dane has more friends than anyone I know. He is surrounded by people that believe in him. And in return he believes in himself! His education was not conventional it was creative and made up by me, a woman with a high school diploma. But he knows more subjects he is passionate about than he would have gotten if I left him to rot in a system that didn’t care about him. I raised and nurtured a brilliant boy into an even more brilliant man who is kind, generous, hilarious and creative. I encourage each and every one of you to BE KIND. It makes all the difference in the world! Education is everything and everywhere.