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Kimberly Maher, the mother of a child with autism and intellectual disability, attempts to dispel the rough edges of special education. Her son Bobby is now an adult, but back when he was young, the autism diagnosis was not available. The word used was “mental retardation,” and all children with this label were escorted to special education. At the end of the day, the words given to her and her husband by the school were unteachable and seclusion. Those two terms were difficult to understand, and she could only equate them to mean the school was going to house her son but not educate him.
Kimberly pulled Bobby out of the education system and began homeschooling him. The year was 1994, the homeschool world was still developing, and laws for special education were just breaking onto the horizon. Now, over twenty years later, Kimberly asks the rhetorical question, “What’s so special about special education?” Her You Can Homeschool Your Special Needs Child series of articles starts with explaining the vocabulary associated with special education and then explores why parents are capable of homeschooling their special needs child.