Why We Decided to Homeschool

I first heard about homeschooling when I was pregnant with ds1. I loved the idea right away. And then we discovered he had Down Syndrome. I was told it was out of the question because he'd need "early intervention" and would need lots of special education.

There are levels of retardation with Down Syndrome. Like the rest of us, the functioning level varies. There was no way to predict what ds1 could or could not do when he was adult. Our pediatrician suspected he had Down Syndrome at birth, but did not suggest it to us until ds1 was four months old at a routine well baby checkup. When he gave us the handouts to take home and read, the one thing that made sense was this was the reason he didn't smile until he was eight weeks old. He also had the simian crease on both palms, his big toe and next toe were farther apart than normal and his pinkie fingers were bent inward. He didn't really look in the face like he had Down Syndrome and in fact my sister whose daughter has Down Syndrome told me the doctor was just trying to make a buck off of our insurance.

When ds1 was very young, it is hard to remember, for it has been twenty years, I am pretty sure he was less than two weeks of age, he got a fever and all he wanted to do was sleep. His urine was dark with flecks of blood, but no one would listen to me. My mentors at La Leche League told me how to use a wet washcloth to wet his body so he would be chilly and would wake up and then I could nurse him. When I took him to the emergency room, his temperature had dropped down again and I was told it was because I was not giving him bottles of water and sent home with a prescription for a case of Pedialyte. When I told the intern he would not accept a bottle from me, the intern then demonstrated that my son WOULD take a bottle from him and therefore told me I was not trying hard enough. After he had been sick for two days, I took him to our pediatrician and his temperature was finally up at that time, so high that the doctor was alarmed and FINALLY took me seriously, that my son was sick.

He was hospitalized immediately and he was so dehydrated that his veins had collapsed and they had a difficult time finding one to place an IV. They tried his ankles and wrists and knees and elbows and finally found a vein on his head. He had sepsis by now and was a very, very sick baby. I had to stay with him in the hospital for ten days.

I have wondered sometimes, if the pediatrician shared the opinion that people with Down Syndrome were defective and should be aborted, and I wondered if he figured if he just didn't pay attention the child would die and that would be that. But I am sure that is not valid at all. It is just a thought I have had at times. It just bothered me that my concerns were not taken seriously. I KNEW my baby was sick, no one would listen to me for two whole days!

But I digress.

You know, I loved my teachers all through school. It's not like I have something against schools. I got a lot of positive feedback from my teachers. But I was one of those children that was constantly bullied by the other children. I was scared sick most of the time. Most of my teachers loved me. I was "teacher's pet" most years in grade school. Except in the fifth grade. Mrs. Lawrence didn't like me. I'm not sure why. And interestingly enough, I chose to rebel in her classroom. Oh, was I rebellious. I ate SUNFLOWER SEEDS while in her classroom. She never knew, but I was sucking the salt from the shells and popping the seeds from the shells in my mouth, all under her nose.

We had ds1 enrolled in Easter Seals by the time he was six months old for early intervention. We would take him in for occupational therapy and physical therapy and speech therapy once a week. Every Wednesday. The therapists would tell us what to do with him and we'd work with him throughout the week. They were especially excited to learn that I was nursing my baby and encouraged me to nurse him as long as he would as it was the finest speech therapy available. Ds1 graduated from that program when he was three. We were eligible to put him into a Montessori school which was about 12 miles from our home. Luckily we had a car by that time.

It was not a very happy time for me though. I was very unhappy about being forced to place him in school at such a tender age. My instincts told me that my child was not old enough emotionally or intellectually for the school regime. I was told to leave my child with the teachers and close the door. He screamed and cried, I could hear him through the door and it just broke my heart. I cried and cried over that. His teacher and I were just a few years apart in age. She was just out of college and about 23 years old. I was 26. We butted heads a lot. She thought she knew it all because she had the college education. Interestingly enough, we ran into each other about ten years later and the first thing she did was apologize to me for the way she'd acted. She had had children and now she understood what it felt like to know your child so intimately and then have someone else try to tell you what was best for your child.

When ds1 turned five, he was no longer eligible for attending the Montessori school. Since I was by now divorced and a welfare mom, obviously paying the standard monthly fees was out of the question. So I dutifully visited the public school in our neighborhood. I talked to all of the teachers and I picked the one who seemed to like Matthew the best, and also said she had friends who had a child with Down Syndrome. Plus, her classroom had a mix of children with some that were learning disabled. I thought it would be a perfect fit for my boy.

When your child has a disability, the school system writes up what they called back then an IEP. Individualized Education Program. They set up a meeting between the old teacher and the new, the school psychologist, the school principal and the parent(s). I wanted ds1 to be fully integrated into the classroom. You see, I had taken a class for learning how to advocate for your disabled child, which had been offered by the public school system. So I knew what I wanted and I worked to make change by letting my wishes be known. In spite of the fact that the teacher I'd picked had children with learning disabilities in her classroom, she ended up suggesting, at the IEP, that my son be placed in the disabled classroom. Now my son is very visual. He picks up behaviors quickly once seen. I had visited the disabled classroom and witnessed the typical behaviors one sees from severely brain injured children. The rocking, the head banging, and other inappropriate behavoris. I wanted my son to visualize and learn from so called "normal" children. The school psychologist was taken aback at the teacher's request, and said if the parent wants integration, that is what we were doing. The principal was also very supportive.

My child was five, but more like a 3 year old mentally. I did not feel he could tolerate an entire six hour day at school, and as it turned out, his behavior from merely going 3 hours a day indicated that I was correct. He had nursed until he was four, but now he was making attempts to pull at my shirt wanting to nurse, he was crying and throwing temper tantrums (very unlike him) and he started peeing his clothes (he was fully potty trained - he did it all himself - by the time he was three). He was already stressed out enough, but his teacher was insisting that he spend more time at school. She kept on me until I complained to the principal, who backed me up 100%. Something happened to the principal - he had to have some kind of surgery and was on medical leave when the teacher decided to call the social worker on me. She just wanted to talk to me about why it was important that my son be in school for more hours.

Well, that's when I decided I couldn't take anymore, and I pulled him out of school and that was that.

The first homeschooling group we started out in was very fundamentally Christian and it was very difficult for me to be around those women. Things like they couldn't do this or that without asking permission from their husbands first, and going on and on about punishment and "sparing the rod and spoiling the child". The last straw for me was when one young woman took me aside and gave me a lecture about spanking and how it was necessary for my boys and since I didn't have a *husband* to guide me, she was taking me on as a special project. She was younger than me and her children were younger than mine, but she knew best. She also spanked her daughter for hanging around her instead of going to play with the other children.

Well, needless to say we stopped going to that homeschooling group and found another that was not so radical.

I am very glad that we decided to homeschool our children. Every parent raising children is involved in an experiment. You cannot know with 100% certainty that what you do is the right thing. It is always an experiment, and we have to follow our instincts. We have to educate ourselves in parenting and listen to what feels right in our hearts. It is an act of faith and hope that what we do succeeds.

I can only say that for our family, homeschooling is one of the best things we've ever done. That, combined with learning a new way to parent, one that doesn't involved beating and humiliating one's children. One that takes children seriously and treating them with respect from the time they are very young. It's been a wonderful partnership with my children, and I am very proud of both of my sons.

Until next time.