By the end of last September, we knew that Tom couldn't stay in public school indefinitely - or he'd never make it through high school. How did we know, you may ask? Well... I made the statement at an IEP meeting that "if he doesn't learn multiplication in fourth grade, I don't see how he's going to make it through high school by the time he's 18!" The response was "why are you worrying about that?"
hm.
To be honest, I'm not as worried about the "18" as I am about the "high school." To me, the message was "he's not GOING to make it through high school, so why get your panties in a twist over it?!"
The truth was, given the kind of education he was getting, she was quite right. He'd never make it through high school.
In October, Peter and I left the kids with his parents and took a weekend up in Boston. We went to an About.com video conference. Why video? We had just launched our own new business. The original idea was to produce products for people on the autism spectrum - and we still wanted to do that. But what if Peter could expand the business to do enough video to be truly self-employed? That would mean we could leave Pennsylvania... maybe for Cape Cod!
After the conference, we stopped off in our soon-to-be (we hoped) hometown and looked at some properties. On the way home, we made our decision: we'd put the house on the market ASAP, and we'd outta there before the beginning of the next school year.
And between then and the following fall, we'd be ready to start homeschooling Tom.
The moment I got home, I rushed to the computer and started looking up "homeschool" and "Cape Cod."
2 comments:
Wow! On many levels, wow! Tommy and his sister are blessed to have parents with knowledge and courage to do what is right for your family. Thank you for sharing this journey.
Thanks so much! and please, do share your thoughts as the story continues. I can use all the insights I can get!
Lisa
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