The frustrating thing with my son is that we have never gotten a very good and clear diagnosis. I am so sick of the soft-soaking and the politically correct terminology and would just prefer that they come out and say what is going on. They don't give much help to us as parents either. It seems like they want us to be dependent on others for our childs development. We have done tons of testing and nothing big has been diagnosed. He is not autistic. He does have speech delays, cognitive delays, and motor delays. He loves to learn though, loves people, and is a joy to be around. Sometimes I felt like the testing was incorrect too because we had never really taught the skill to him and it had not come about in daily life. I would not know those things before I was taught. I have been pretty devastated from the beginning though. I fell into such a horrible postpartum depression about everything and even went a bit psychotic because I constantly blamed myself for his problems and felt like a failure. I am starting to move past that though and want to improve myself to be the best mom I can be, but I will never be perfect. So many of the people make you feel so hopeless about your child's future, like you are the problem, like your child is a failure. It is a miserable situation and causes pain daily. I think he is more capable than the specialists know though and they really cannot know us or him or his future. Sure they have some blanket studies and ideas to fall back on, but nothing more. I have studied psychology and so much of the statistics and testing are skewed to what they want them to say and the people who formulated the ideas seem to be pretty questionable in character and motives. So, I am going to approach my son with hope and try to change myself so I am a better mother and educator.

Hi, I would use math u see. I do not have sensory processing disorder and am not delayed in math and I hated Saxon math with a passion when I was homeschooled. I don't think any of my sisters liked it. It was so boring and you basically have to either be instructed by a parent or teach yourself. Math U See has visual instruction ( something I really enjoyed), manipulatives ( great) and a fun workbook. For a special needs child I would go with MUS, should be a much better fit.

To Home Again's great living math list, I would add... Kitchen Table Math the booklists at livingmath,net Games for Math by Peggy Kaye math apps like Dragonbox and math computer games like Timez Attack logic games like Mastermind, Set, and Rush Hour games that feature math like Sleeping Queens, Rat a Tat Cat, Muggins, 24, Smath, etc. For lots more ideas, you might enjoy the Relaxed Math thread, which is an infamously good source of ideas for this sort of thing: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/499692-looking-to-do-some-relaxed-math-here-want-to-share-ideas/ This is a helpful list thanks for sharing it.

Some of you are being very rude. I don't think it is completely natural for all children to learn to count to 100 by kindergarten. You sound like you have a very academically inclined child besides the things you mention are a form of academics. I don't do those things naturally with my child! Most children are not like your child. I had a very hard time learning multiplication in 3rd grade and actually taught it to myself during the summer. Algebra was difficult for me as well, and I was a very good student! However, I was an early reader and writer. I could read well above my age grade by 2nd or 3rd grade. I learned those things before entering school.

Hi, OP. I believe if you really want to unschool do it, but make sure you structure learning to read, write and do math. Those are the topics every child needs to be succesful in life. They should also know what lights their fire. I think if you meet those goals you will be successful academically and in life. Those are the academic disciplines that teach you to learn how to learn. If you know that even if you don't have a classical education as a child you can learn anything you need or want to learn in the future. Personally, I think the WTM method leaves very little time for interest directed learning ( finding what lights your fire) and that is not good for children. I get so much out of the time I spend researching topics I like. They make me happy. It is kind of a drudgery to constantly ve focused on learning all the academic disciplines and a foreign language well if your heart is on something else, like on music, or dance, or horses, or taking things apart and putting them back together.

Hi, OP. I was unschooled myself through the high school years. Instead of focusing on textbooks and lessons, my mom and dad moved my 2 sisters and I to the country and encouraged us to learn about things actively and according to our interests. We always had a very impressive stand at the homeschool coop end of year get togethers because other families would have school work and we would have real stuff, like stuff from our garden. Two of us, me included, wish we had had a more rigorous high school education because it caused problems in getting the high scores we needed on graduate exams and had problems with timed writing. On the other hand all of us have gone to college and gotten above a 3.5 GPA. One sister even went to graduate school, and I plan to in 2016. Then I got married and had my son. He has had issues since he was born, first it was failure to thrive and then he had issues developing according to "schedule". He is very altert, active, and smart though. He just isn't very motivated academically. For a while people made me feel like I had to put him in school ( preschool even!) so he could develop normally and my confidence was shattered as a mother. Homeschooler generally teach like you said that children learn talking, eating, potty training and all that pretty naturally, but my son is not like that. It takes a very concerted effort to teach him things for him to learn. Last year after he started public school and we moved to a city area with a very substandard special needs program and a teacher who did not like him, we decided to pull him out and homeschool him ourselves. I found out through research that there are online public school charter schools that actually send you materials, have live classes and teachers, and he still has an IEP so we enrolled him in that. Funny thing is he is doing so much better now with us! Even with our faults we do a better job, with a little guidance, at helping his development than the educational establishment. He took forever in brick and mortar school just to learn to count to 5 and he knew hardly any letters, and very quickly after I pulled him out he was counting to 20. He now knows quite a few letters as well. His pottry training is taking off ( he hadn't been potty trained very well being in school half of the day). I do have the opinion now that unschooling would NOT be a good fit for him. He needs some academic structure so he will learn even if it is just directed by us in having him work on some workbook pages, or at the computer, or teaching him life skills. I think there needs to be a generally idea by the parents and goals for the day so young children can thrive. Oh, I wanted to add that it is amazing how bad public schools are with special needs children. In his class they expected him to do workbooks most of the day! It is so ridiculous for a speial needs boy who is very active to sit still all day. He just can't do it. And then they wonder why there is an obesity epidemic when children are being taught not to move in public schools. Another issue, the biggest for me, is that the segregated the special needs kids in the school. Before school and at luch they have a special round table while the rest of the school has regular long rectangular tables, so regular kids would learn that they are the weird kids in the school and should be shunned. He also started feelng stupid, which really hurt my heart for him. We now have him say that he is not dumb and is smart in our school so he will have confidence in himself. Furthermore, my son had some behavior issues in the class even though he had already gone through 3 year of preschool pretty succesfully with a minor hicup here and there. H eas getting out of control in the class. This behavior problem even began to leak to other places. Funny thing is that almost immediately after we pulled him out his behavior went back to normal and he hasn't had many problems when out in public. Because of the behavior problem, in his parent teacher meeting they blamed us for the problem when it wasn't our fault that they couldn't control him in class. They wanted to do a behavior intervention on him and wouldn't let him go to art, music or recess, even special events. His teacher didn't even do anything to help him be pottry trained. He would always come home with a wet diaper and all the diapers I had put in his backpack still there. I am never going to put him back in public school, but I may decide to put him in a private special needs school or christian school in the future. Sorry for the long post. This is a topic close to my heart. It is nice that someone else has gone through similar issues