JOURNAL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY FOR CHILD DEVELOPMENT
1996, Volume 10, No. 6
Special Needs Children: Parents Are the
Experts
Robert J. Doman, Jr.
Many families are becoming frustrated
at their often ineffective attempts to homeschool their special
needs child. Others still wrestle with the decision of whether
or not to succumb to the pressures being exerted on them by
family, friends, or the "professionals" to put their
child into the public school system. These decisions are not
easy, and there are no simple answers because there is generally
nothing easy or simple about our special needs children.
Being a homeschooling parent, the
parent of a special needs child, as well as having designed
over 50,000 homeschool programs for special needs kids has
given me some insight into the difficulties involved in the
process of determining what is best for a particular child
and family. Most parents are wondering, what really is the
best possible learning environment for my child?
If you take your child with special
needs to a public school and ask the "experts" to
describe the best possible learning environment for your child,
they will probably tell you that your child needs to be in
the least restrictive environment, to have lots of 1:1 time,
to have peers that are outstanding role models, and to have
a program designed to meet his or her individual needs. And
they are right! Furthermore, what they have described is the
home.
The home is the least restrictive
environment because it is the natural setting where a child
is able to participate in every day activities with people
both young and old who are functioning normally. In this setting
a child has the opportunity to observe and then to imitate
appropriate behaviors. The parent has the opportunity to provide
the child with immediate and consistent feedback if he displays
any type of negative or inappropriate behaviors.
This is in contrast to the school setting where the child
would most likely be grouped with other children displaying
a variety of negative behaviors, which he would then begin
imitating, thus further compounding his problems.
How important is 1:1 attention? Whether
we're talking about reading, math, gross or fine motor development,
receptive or expressive language, vision, processing, behavior,
or any other developmental or educational functions, advancement
is almost directly related to how much individual attention
1:1 input the child can receive. Schools typically will say
that they will meet the child's needs through small group
instruction and that anything more than minimal 1:1 instruction
is economically prohibitive. The environment that affords
the greatest amount of 1:1 per day is to be preferred.
A big step in the process of determining
what is best for your child and your family is the acceptance
of yourselves—the child's parents—as the world's
greatest experts on your child. The most powerful tool the
schools and professionals will attempt to persuade you with
is your supposed lack of expertise. But the truth is that
you know your child's strengths and weaknesses, likes and
dislikes, and wants and needs better than anyone else. It
is this knowledge and expertise that will enable you to design
and carry out an appropriate and individualized program for
your child.
Many "professionals" and
most of the schools rarely see past the labels that they give
our children. To them, the label becomes a reflection of their
potential and the basis upon which limited goals are established.
Almost universally the family has a significantly different
perception of the child, a much higher perception of potential.
Because the family really knows the child the family can see
past the inefficiencies and see the child waiting to be unleashed
from the burdens of those inefficiencies. Without proper program
design and support the homeschooling family is often disappointed
with the results they can achieve with their special needs
child. If provided, however, with the necessary expertise,
program design, and support, the home is most often the very
best place for our special needs children.
Almost universally the only chance
our special needs children have to achieve their innate potential
lies with homeschool.
Reprinted from the Journal
of the National
Academy for Child Development
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