The Ormeo Family & Photography

School starts in a few weeks around here, 24 days to be exact. Ethan will remain homeschooled. That’s all he’s ever known and doesn’t feel like he’s missing out on anything (and I agree). Enzo will most likely be homeschooled.  He would be a really young Kindergarten babe anyway.  His birthday is at the end of August so he barely makes the September 1st birthday cut off anyway.  Academically, we have no doubt Enzo can handle it, he’s been reading for a while now thanks to preschool! Emotional maturity, he could use some time. (Some places I’ve read say however many years a young child grows up in the foster system, is usually about the same number of years you can expect them develop emotionally. Not sure the truth behind it, but I do see Enzo having a slower adoption/emotional adjustment regardless of him coming from a wonderful foster home).

Lizzie, we’re so wishy-washy about homeschooling.  I think I’m scared about reading and comprehension with her.  Having a trach causes speech issues which in turn causes problems with reading and comprehension.  She can read although she didn’t get a solid foundation like Enzo did in preschool.  Lizzie was in public school for Kindergarten and it really didn’t do much for her academically.  Yes she got some basic reading skills at school but most of it is from Enzo and speech therapy.  Besides, how do I teach a child who can barely “speak” to read? A lot of times, it’s hard to know if she’s really blending words together or if we’re not hearing her right or if she’s just agreeing with you because she knows that’s what you want to hear.

Then to top of my reading fear, we’re still waiting for her Dynavox – it’s an augmentative communication device that will tremendously help her communicate in all aspects.  It’s going through her insurance and we’re praying it doesn’t take much longer (we’ve been waiting for more than 7 months now), but funding is so funny with money and having to get concurrence stuff with the public school.  I would hate for them to not pay for her device because she isn’t in a public school with public funding. They did say homeschooling shouldn’t affect getting the device, but government can be so technical with all that mess.

Or maybe I just need to feel like I have someone else to blame if something goes wrong academically with her?? *eeks*

So that still leaves us with, to homeschool or not to homeschool?  We’ve always said we would homeschool our kids (even when we only had Ethan). I want all my kids to get the same opportunity to be home with me and experience the flexibility and fun of learning. Can I handle 3 kids tho??? Ethan can be independent for the most part.  Really I could just use 1 curriculum for Lizzie and Enzo, because like I said, he’s capable of keeping up with Lizzie (even in the 1st grade). But that’s still homeschooling 2 younger ones.

We need to decide soon, because we need to start buying curriculum and looking through all my old stuff to see what I have left from Ethan’s earlier days. Plus, Lizzie has a nurse when she’s at school and the nursing agency is already scheduling her nurses for that. We wouldn’t get nursing during the day if I homeschooled, at least I don’t think we do.  Then again, I don’t think I’d want a nurse during the day…it’s hard enough tiptoeing around our house at night (but that’s another post for another day).

So we have less than 3 weeks to decide, the sooner the better….When we decided to homeschool Ethan, it was 2-3 days before school started. Oh I hope it doesn’t take us that long to decide. So help us pray about this decision. Any thoughts or advice?

To be continued…(in the meantime, I’m shaking in my boots…I’m scared!)