How could I find freedom by homeschooling my son? Exploring new territory is a common theme in my blog. It started with the Live Your Legend seven-day blog challenge in 2016. My life was evolving as I was trying to cope with my son’s “behavior issues” at home and school. I was desperately trying to keep my home-life, real estate career, and relationships, from jumping the tracks, but the fact was I was on a runaway train.

While we had been working with professionals for years, my youngest son had still not received a formal diagnosis of Autism (that would take another two years). We were all struggling.  I desperately wanted to maintain my sense-of-self by continuing to work. At the end of the day, that part of myself and so much more became wholly overshadowed by being a fulltime caregiver.

Fast-forward four years, and I’m finding new freedom. This freedom is thanks to specialized help for my son Luke at Including Kids, Inc., and online public school. In today’s post I’m going to focus on his new educational environment which is separate from his coaching at Including Kids, Inc.

This year we enrolled Luke into a K-12 program, the Texas Virtual Academy Hallsville. TVAH is a free public online school program. Luke has a case manager and an Individual Education Plan (IEP) with supports and modifications.

We had no idea what to expect when we enrolled Luke in this school, but we knew we could not send him back to his local “brick and mortar” for middle school. Once Luke knew he had a change of placement, he started to change for the better. His anxiety started to go down, and his self-esteem began to improve. Online school is not a fix-all, and we have a tremendous way to go to help Luke become successful in building relationships and become more self-aware of how his behavior impacts him and his surroundings. We do know that this learning environment will be an essential part of helping him to achieve his goals.

This adventure has also opened the door for me to begin stepping back out into the world of real estate sales. Most parents find their freedom when they send their kids to school each morning for seven hours a day. This experience is a little different. I work as Luke’s Learning Coach with the help of his father. We can plan out our breaks and schedule work periods outside of the confines of an 8:00 am to 3:00 pm school day. It also means that if it only takes him twenty minutes to finish an assignment, he can move on to his next one in a different class or break down a task into smaller chunks. Allowing him to have a say and take some control over his work has been fantastic.

I can work right alongside Luke on my real estate blog, creating video content, and answering client questions. I have had to change my focus a bit to primarily help people who want to sell their homes. Assisting buyers would take me out of the house a little too much right now, but I have help from my teammates at the office when needed.

It sounds counter-intuitive that having my son attend school at home online would give me more free time. But, when you take away the constant calls from the school, the stress of fighting every morning to get him to go to school, the fights about homework, and the hours of meltdowns over being bullied and targeted by both teachers and students, it is incredible how much time you have left in a day.

On a side note: I do want to say that I believe that the local brick and mortar public school teachers did their best, and I think, as individual teachers, they sincerely wanted to help my son. Still, the environment, constraints, and limited resources hindered their abilities.

All of this came about as I was desperately trying to find a way to help Luke because every time we mentioned school, his entire demeanor changed. I had researched online schools several years ago, but TVAH was not offered at that time. This summer, I discovered TVAH’s program gives the benefit of both online curriculum and online classrooms with teachers instructing and peers attending class. We even have field trips and meet-ups with local school kids who are also enrolled in TVAH.

Things are still unfolding, but life feels more hopeful today. I’m sure the train will continue to maneuver rough terrain and travel through dark tunnels, but the view out the window is much brighter today.