Homeschooling Our Child with Auditory Processing Disorder

Homeschooling has been the best decision we made for our daughter with Auditory Processing Disorder, Dyslexia, mild Sensory Processing Disorder, and mild Visual Processing Disorder. 

When she was the age to start kindergarten, the special education program at the school district she was in decided they wanted to drop her from their program; she would no longer qualify for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and would be mainstreamed with absolutely no support or additional services such as speech therapy, which she still desperately needed.   Having been a first grade teacher myself for years and having taught kindergarten for student teaching as well as some substitute teaching, I knew the environment my child would be going into.  I also knew that she would not be likely to even tolerate it well.

She already came home from the special education preschool having meltdowns from her stressful half-day.  She already was not able to do the pre-academic work of the preschool, so how would she be able to do the kindergarten work.  She was still having problems with social interactions; her speech was not clear; and whenever I went to spy on her through the window in the door of her preschool classroom, she would be staring into space, completely tuned out to her surroundings.

There was no way I was going to subject my little girl to five days a week, seven hours a day of a classroom full of 20 children and one teacher with no support.  That was when we decided to homeschool our children. (When you teach one at home, we figured, you might as well teach the others.)

At home, I am fortunate enough to be able to work with each of my children one-on-one.  My daughter gets a completely individualized education plan; she works at her own pace, learns in the style that best fits her needs, takes breaks when she needs them, and when she needs the help of a specialist, we find her one.  (We paid for private speech therapy, listening therapy, a social skills group, vision therapy, and reading intervention.  My spouse is very fortunate to work for IBM, a company that has a program for children with special needs and reimburses its employees for 80% of the cost of services.)

In another post, I will tell of some of the strategies we have used for teaching her.  Suffice it to say that she is doing well academically at 11 years of age, has a relatively healthy self-esteem and awareness of her strengths and needs, has friends, and is growing into a young woman with good coping skills.