Yes and no. You don’t need a formal diagnosis to educate your child, but in some situations one can be very helpful.

My personal philosophy is that a diagnosis is as helpful as the doors it opens. I’d get one if:

• Your insurance won’t cover outside therapies or help without it.
• It would help you understand which curriculum or approaches will work for your child.
• It would get your child accommodations, like on standardized tests.

If it won’t make a difference either way, still learn everything you can about your child. You can understand that your child most likely has a diagnosis without going through the formal paperwork. This is a very personal choice, and that’s just my philosophy.

Absolutely. But you are not an island. You were never designed to do this alone; we’re built to be in community with one another.

Many special needs parents, me included, get so used to fighting for our kids that we isolate ourselves and think we have to carry everything alone. That isn’t true.

Support might be built in, through your church or family, or you may have to go find it and advocate for it: therapists, specialists, doctors, or a friend who can be a sounding board on the hard days.

Remember that therapies are part of homeschooling. In public school, kids are pulled out of class for therapy and it counts as class time.

Homeschooling actually has an advantage here: therapies can often be more robust and more consistent. They do take time, especially for travel, so:

• Learn in the car. My car schooling tips are in the video below, and here are my favorite resources for homeschooling on the go.
• Adjust your expectations on therapy days.
• Build therapy exercises into lessons. Your child reads one line of their word list, does an exercise, then reads the next line. It doubles as a mental break.

You can get really creative with this. See how we turned PT and OT printouts into a menu.

It’s the same as for any homeschooled child: it absolutely can happen, but it has to be intentional. With a special needs child, you may need even more intentionality.

In my experience, it’s less about creating opportunities and more about coaching:

• Before: “We’ll probably see other kids at the park. If you want to play with someone, how could you introduce yourself? What do safe hands look like?” Practice it together.
• During: Walk alongside your child.
• After: Replay it in the car. “How do you feel that went? I saw you do this, and that was great. This part might need some work.”

Many therapy centers also offer social groups, and my kids have been part of them. They’re less about socializing and more about teaching the social cues some kids don’t pick up naturally.

This is one of the hardest questions, especially if, like me, you have more than one child with special needs. A few things help:

• Feed yourself spiritually. God promises to sustain you, and His mercies are new every morning. Listen to the Bible or sermons while you drive or do dishes. Pray out loud, or read Scripture aloud with your child. You don’t need time away to be in the Word.
• Have someone to call. Ideally a friend from church, though a therapist can help too: someone who will listen on the hard days, point you back to truth, and say, “Can I pray with you right now?”
• Accept help. We fight so hard for our kids that it’s easy to make being their caretaker our whole identity. I’ve struggled with this a lot. We feel we can’t step away even for a shower or our own doctor’s appointment.

Trusting God’s sovereignty means it’s okay if your spouse or a friend doesn’t follow the care plan perfectly to the letter. It’s going to be okay. I’m never advocating for a lack of care, but we can be guilty of thinking we’re the only ones who can do this job.

It depends on how big the shutdown or meltdown is, and whether it’s a one-off or an everyday thing.

On a genuinely bad day, we allow for it. We pause, take a break, redirect and come back, which is a good life skill in itself. Sometimes we just have to stop for the day.

If it’s happening every day, all day, that’s a problem to solve, because we’re responsible to educate our kids, legally and morally. Work with your child in the moment, then step back afterward and ask:

• What were the warning signs? Rubbing their eyes, getting extra fidgety? Next time, redirect and offer support sooner.
• Is the material too hard? Do we need to adapt it?
• Do they just need to build stamina? A task can be hard and still be worth building up to. We might start with 5 minutes, then 10, and work up to 20.

It’s all about learning your child, helping them navigate hard moments (because life is full of them), and giving them coping skills to work through them.

More: the tool that helps us prevent homeschool meltdowns.

It depends on your state’s law and on your child. Over half my kids have ADHD, and so do I, and it looks different for each of them. Some have a mild case, some more severe, and for some ADHD is one of several diagnoses.

In general, the school day should be however long it takes to get the school day done. For a child with ADHD that usually means shorter lessons. That might mean shorter days, or longer days, because you need more meaningful, intentional breaks and movement between those short lessons.

The answer is almost never longer lessons. Short, consistent lessons win, even if the breaks make the day feel longer.

It really depends on the child. But in our house we say it all day long: practice makes progress, not perfection.

You can’t set goals until you know where your child is right now, today, and you can’t make someone else’s benchmark your goal. Track where they are, whether that’s a reading level, a behavior, or how often they need to be redirected.

For example, if your child needs about 50 redirections in a 30-minute math lesson, write it down. Put some tools in place, and halfway through the year you may see 35. That still feels like a lot, but because you know where you started, you can see the progress, and that’s so encouraging.

I set monthly goals for all my kids. For my kids with significant special needs, I often just write down where they started and where they ended the month, then ask: can we do that again, or beat it a little? Micro goals instead of macro goals.

Don’t get so focused on reaching grade level that you hurt your child in the process. If a child is behind because a school failed them, or because of a season where you weren’t as diligent, it may be appropriate to double up lessons; a lot can be learned quickly with maturity and buy-in. But understanding the material is the real goal.

It will take the time it takes, and that’s okay. You can extend school, do school over the summer, or graduate a little later. Keep your main goal, educating your child well, ahead of made-up benchmarks.

We’re honestly still learning this. So far, my other kids with special needs are on track for a traditional diploma, with adaptations we’re figuring out along the way, and I share those as we learn them.

But one of our kids will never get a traditional diploma. They’re in the borderline intellectual disability range and won’t complete anywhere near the grade-level work a diploma requires, so they’ll receive a certificate of completion instead.

That doesn’t make it any less of an accomplishment, or mean we care less about their schooling. We focus much more on life skills. And we’ll mark that milestone when they’re ready: not at 18, and not when a list of grades is done. I’ll share more as we go.

If you’re putting together a transcript for a child with special needs, HSLDA has a helpful guide: tips for completing a special needs transcript (with samples).

With a lot of grace and a lot of creativity.

• Lean on audio and video resources when sitting at the table isn’t possible.
• Keep lessons short and consistent. Even 5 to 10 minutes before you walk out the door for an appointment is good.

When a body is in a flare-up, it’s harder to absorb information. If that’s your normal, you’ll have to work through it to some extent, and it will look different for every child.