Homeschooling

I'm here to talk to you about a topic that has special importance to me both professionally and personally: the Homeschooling of Gifted and Special needs children. In my professional life, I'm a neurologist and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Washington. In my practice, I specialize in the care of children--often gifted children--with learning disabilities.

In my private life, I'm also the proud and fortunate parent of an extremely gifted, wonderfully creative, but also significantly disabled child. I've also become what I never imagined I'd be during all my years of training at Harvard and the University of California San Francisco, or my years as a Professor Neurology & Neurobiology at the University of Chicago...I'm a Homeschooling Mom.

In my experience, some people just seem to be born homeschoolers, other homeschool by choice, and other have homeschooling thrust upon them. I have definitely found myself in this latter category.

My husband & I are the proud products of public education and we had always believed our children would be educated in public schools--but when my son entered preschool, it became very obvious that he was going to have difficulties in the hustle & bustle of a typical classroom. In these early years, we had many well-meaning teachers, counselors, & professionals suggest that he might be deaf, autistic, retarded, or depressed, that he might have Asperger's disease or ADD. It seemed almost inconceivable to us that they were talking about our child, because at home he was happy, communicative, and bright.

But one thing became increasingly clear. As our child wound his way through preschool and into the lower grades, his infectious joys of life and learning were being extinguished--he was beginning to grow increasingly dissatisfied not only with his schools, but with himself as well. As we watched this scenario unfold my husband & I became desperate as well, an we were determined to find out how we could help him.

We immersed ourselves in the literature of Learning Difficulties and consulted all sorts of experts in their respective fields. At the age of 7 we found our son had a conceptual IQ of a 'superior adult' (> 200); but in other ways his impediments were greater than we'd ever imagined--he had such significant Sensory Integration problems that he couldn't move his eyes or arms & legs in smooth coordination. He had difficulty holding a pencil and cutting with a scissors, and couldn't dress himself in an age-appropriate way. His eyes were terribly mismatched (20/50 farsighted 1 eye, 20/200 nearsighted in the other); and his hearing in 1 ear was 5 times more sensitive than normal, making him overly sensitive to background noise & overwhelmed by noisy children's groups. In other words, he was a complex amalgam of strengths and weaknesses which placed him at both ends of the Bell Curve, making him as Different from his peers in almost every way possible, and rendering classroom-based education as much a torture as an impossibility.

Despite many efforts from kind-hearted teachers and his principal, his obstacles to traditional schooling were too great to surmount. The fact that he could read & write on a high school level at the age of 8 , was insignificant to him compared to his not being able to use a pair of scissors or to follow his teacher's words. At home, we watched, helpless, as he grew increasingly withdrawn, passive, and depressed. When we reached the point where we felt no only that his education but also his survival was at stake, we made the decision to homeschool.

Homeschooling has required lots of effort and some major adjustments on all our parts (my husband is another physician), but its effort has been well worth it. He's now able to learn in a setting, at a pace, and in a style that is specifically designed for him...And my old joyful child has come back: we see his smile again, he's again feeling confident in himself and has regained his joy of learning. He's learning much more each month than he ever did in any of his previous years at school.

I tell you this story because it is the one I know best, but I could relate many more from my professional practice of children who find themselves for various physical or emotional reasons--unsuited to the traditional classroom. There are many children like my son who are currently flourishing under the liberating environment of homeschooling...and as homeschoolers they are becoming the beautiful, accomplished, and creative INDIVIDUALS that they were meant to be.

It is the very uniqueness of these Special Needs children which makes the flexibility of homeschooling so important. Restrictions to that flexibility should not be imposed with any less gravity nor for any less compelling reasons than restrictions to other essential liberties. Much more is at stake in the future of homeschooling than mere freedom of choice--it is the Future for my, and many other unique & uniquely-gifted children.

Fernette Eide M.D. & Brock Eide M.D. M.A. 

About the Authors: Brock and Fernette Eide are physicians and consultants to a wide range of parent, teacher, and clinical professional groups seeking more information about brain-based learning. Their book, The Mislabeled Child is coming August 2006.

Together the Eides have authored more than 50 articles in neuroscience and learning, and they speak internationally for keynote lectures, seminars, workshops, and small groups.