Four years we hunted for the land and home that would be our families homestead. I scrolled the real estate app religiously over my morning coffee. Our devoted realtor joked about the kilometers we were putting on his BMW scouring the country side each and every Saturday. (we knew he was silently cursing us every click of his odometer.)
We had a list of wants that flexed and bent over time, but EVERY property’s address was entered into google to tell us how long we would drive to get our kids to school.
We loved our school. A semi-private Christian School, K to 12. We had two children graduate from this school. We planned for all our remaining children to walk these walls in cap and gown. Our new home had to accommodate our drive to and from the school, there was no other consideration.
At the time of the move to Lochend we had four elementary children attending. Two of these children had a diagnoses list longer than my arm. They each spent three prior years in a special needs preschool and my village of clinicians followed me to school meetings years before enrolling them.
We all did our preparation and due `13th diligence to ensure success. I hired a private Pyschologist, Speech & Language Pathologist and Occupational Therapist, all familiar to my kiddos, to coach the teachers and EA’s and to analyze environment and curriculum.
The school board was extraordinary at adaptations, accommodations and inclusion. They provided each of my kiddos a 1:1 Educational Assistants (EA). They welcomed the support of the clinicians, however unorthodox. I could write an entire post just on the blessing these amazing people were to our life. I will never doubt their heart for my little ones.
Regardless of all supports in place and everyone up to the task; the days were far from easy. Most days the kids eventually left my car and entered the school. Some days I picked them up with new knowledge in their minds. The best days this happened at the end of the typical school day. It was rocky, but it was “working’. My kiddos “belonged”.
Then one day….
One day, the documented and well known serious potential behaviours leapt out of my child file and became a witnessed and experienced reality. On this day the staff realized they were under equipt….and frankly; underpaid, to cope with these events, no matter how infrequent.
Meeting after meeting, we brain stormed a safety plan that ensured the safety of everyone. My children remained home for a month while we prayed for that answer.
It never came.
They never returned.
Insert here a frantic, overwhelmed and frightened Mama researching homeschool/ home learning/ unschooling/ wild learning. What was all this? I’m a wife, mother, foster parent and homemaker, now I’m trying on a teachers hat? How on Gods green planet did I arrive here?
Ah! It occurred to me.
The prayer had been answered.
