We went for option three.<\/p>\n
![\"mainstream](\"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Non-mainstream-school-painting.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
You might wonder, why bother educating a mentally disabled boy? At the risk of sounding like a Hallmark card, it\u2019s not about the destination, it\u2019s about the journey. When you look back on your school days, do you remember the time you learnt how to do algebra, or do you remember making your first friend and sharing sandwiches on the playground?<\/p>\n
We found a school for Travis, the Wiggles and Squiggles Special Needs Academy in Boskruin, where the principal has adapted the Montessorri curriculum for children like Travis. He has an IEP, or an independent education programme, where each term we work towards simple goals. This year one of his goals is to master his pencil-grip. Last year another of his goals was: learn to blow your nose!<\/p>\n
Travis gets a report, and we attend regular parent-teacher sessions. We don\u2019t feel like we\u2019re just going through the motions or wasting our money. Instead of being side-lined by the education system, we\u2019ve re-worked the system to suit us. Travis is in the school of life, and his life has value, no matter what that is.<\/p>\n
And here we are..living a normal life with a school going child..when the dr had cast a shadow saying he cant go to mainstream school!<\/p>\n
P.S. The photos in this article of my family and I were taken by Noleen Foster Photography<\/p>\n
Click here<\/a> to find\u00a0schools for children with special needs<\/p>\n Note: If you enjoyed this article, and would like to stay updated with more, you can:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cTravis will never go to a normal school.\u201d\n
\nIt hurt, hearing those words coming from our first-born\u2019s paediatric neurologist, but we needed to hear them. Up until that point…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":353223,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[127,128],"class_list":["post-4436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-autism","tag-challenges-for-parents-with-autistic-children","tag-children-with-autism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/134"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jozikids.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}