Special needs students require the same credits as above but with a longer time limit and lower rate of achievement expectation.  We set goals for our daughter, focus on her self organizing, self starting, self pacing for her academics.  Her electives are predominantly focused on life skills, character development, nutrition, and health.  Her math is not high school math, but it is math.  Her other books are high school level and she will complete many of her 9th grade courses this summer –taking a full 365 days to complete 180 days of work.

We expect her high school work to be completed in 5+ years at which point she will graduate with a SC High School Certificate or a SC High School Diploma with Exceptions.  Those exceptions being that she will most likely never take a formal SAT/ACT style test, or be eligible to enter college without beginning with remedial courses.  Since my God is far larger than our greatest visions/plans we will never put  a cap on what our daughter can do, but this day she will move forward in all areas of growth and we will walk with her on this road.

In hindsight we realize that a traditional school would have offered her many specialized approaches and therapies that may have moved her ahead in her abilities far quicker than we have.  It would also have taught her what she could not do.  By being homeschooled, correcting her speech, OT, PT, etc needs we moved slower in accomplishing the same goals, but she has no idea that she cannot do certain things.  We don’t believe that she cannot do anything if the desire is planted in her heart and it is from God.

Note- we did partake of the special services offered through the public schools but were quickly dissatisfied with their short sessions, even shorter shared sessions, immense paperwork, and taking more time to stop our day, travel to/from, and get back into a groove for sometimes only 15 minutes of therapy.  There were days that she received the full allotted time of 45 minutes and the less used therapies like OT were incredible, but the overbooked and overworked therapies like speech were ineffective.  So, we did the homeschool thing- became therapists, learned what she needed, how to provide for and meet those needs, and built it in as a part of our daily routine–all day long, every day and not just for a short time once or twice a week.  Her improvement was steady….and continues to be steady with some leaps and some rests along the way.