College & Kids with Special Needs: Can They Go Together?
Sometimes thinking about the future is hard for parents of kids with special needs. If a child is severely developmentally delayed, parents worry about who will care for their child after they die. If a child’s needs are less severe, they worry about whether or not their will find work and be able to live independently. If a child struggles in school, parents wonder if they’ll graduate from high school. If their child graduates from high school and wants to pursue higher education, they wonder if such dreams are unrealistic.
Northwestern College
Knowing those worries can eat away at parents’ hopes for their children’s future, I was delighted to read an article in the current issue of the Classic. This quarterly magazine is published by Northwestern, the small Christian college my daugther attends in Orange City, Iowa. The feature article profiled three differently abled students who currently attend Northwestern.
Academic Support Department
According to the article, “Northwestern’s academic support department offers assistance to all students with documented disabilities. Services include reading tests orally, securing a quiet location for testing, and reviewing papers. The department also offers assistive technology, such as software able to type the spoken word and read scanned book aloud.” Wow.
Free to Be
But more impressive than the description of the support center were the stories of three student currently using them. You can read the article, Free to Be, at http://classic.nwciowa.edu. What you learn there may restore the hope eaten away by your worries. If you know of other colleges providing support services for students with special needs, leave a comment and a URL so we can check them out, too.
Hopeful,
Jolene Philo
Hi Jolene I have a special needs child and he has a extremly hard time with all his academic work in school and he is in a school for students with specific learning disabilities and he’s still having problems comprehending and they don’t seem to get the message that he is not comprehending or understanding the work and he tells me that the teachers do not want to take the time to explain the work to him they look at him like he’s a failure to society and gives up on him because they are frustrated because he don’t understand the work. So he tells me sometimes that he is so depressed because he feels there’s something blocking his mind from comprehending and he wishes he was dead because he can’t learn and they’re not taking him seriouly at his word. He also say he want to go to college but don’t know if he’s able to make it because he’s not getting the help in school now to how would he be able to do college work .If you can be of any assistance please feel free to send me information that may help me to help him with his comprehenshion to school work.
Sincerly
Mrs. A.McRae
Hi April,
What a difficult time for your son. Does he have an IEP? If so, you can call a meeting and discuss your concerns and ask for goals that address the comprehension. If that doesn’t work, you might want to contact WrightsLaw (http://www.wrightslaw.com/) about how to advocate for the services needed.
You also need to assure him of his strength areas and give him a chance to exercise them (in whatever area, including non-academics) so he experiences some success. Also, remember that school is a very artificial environment, and many of the skills important to success in school don’t matter much in the real world. What matters in the real world is cooperation, effort, punctuality, and respect. If your child has those traits, he may experience more success once he’s out of school. I don’t know how old he is, but maybe a job training program should be part of his IEP.
I’m just giving suggestions off the top of my head. Does anyone else have something to contribute?
Jolene