Homeschooling Special Needs Part 1: Tips for Success in Social/Emotional Growth

 “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” ~Matthew 19:26 

Everyone wants to help their child succeed. But what do you do when your child has unique learning abilities/challenges? How do you find strategies to meet their needs while also helping them develop into confident, independent learners?

This can be a challenge, but it's also an opportunity to help your child thrive and is worthy of the extra effort. We’ll focus on three main areas where homeschooling can be especially challenging for some kids:

📍Social/Emotional

📍Intellectual

📍Physical

For the first part of this blog series, we’re sharing ideas for social/emotional growth. A big challenge area for many kids and we have one focus that will help strengthen this important foundation

Social/Emotional: Focus on Others in Need

If your child has difficulty connecting with others, it can be difficult for them to understand empathy or even learn how to make friends. Try getting to know more about how kids in other parts of the world or even their community live, and connect them. Add this element to your homeschool and connect with others for support through struggles which help us learn empathy and compassion.

This can be done as simply as reading about how people live differently from us, about how others overcome adversity or have made the world better. Utilize online resources from organizations that respond to disasters, send Christmas gifts to children in impoverished places, or donate food for kids in poverty on summer break.

It's easy to make this come alive for your family, by utilizing the internet and sitting together with your kids to look through the websites of ministries like, one that's dear to our hearts, The Apparent Project School in Haiti. Everyone in the family will benefit from learning more about these types of ministries. Consider adding an opportunity for your family to create an outreach of prayer and provision support by doing a challenge such as: "Save the Spare Change". We've done these with our homeschool community where any found spare change is added to a collection jar and were pleasantly surprised by the end of a few months just how much coinage is tossed on the ground in America. Not only did it open our eyes to being more careful with our own money but, the donations were incredibly appreciated by the school. 

This project doesn't need to take much time or effort and it's a wonderful the chance to give your child the perspective of life in a different country. It will be a long way towards bolstering their social/emotional development. 

Here are a few more resources we’ve used to enhance our children’s social/emotional growth by focusing on others:

The Kind Mouse (feed local children)

Samaritan’s Purse Operation Christmas Child

The Hungry Planet by photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D’Aluisio.There are free pictures from this book online and the physical copy has an engaging narrative added.

Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel, Charles C Mann & Paul Kennedy.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer.

We hope these ideas are helpful in nurturing the social/emotional growth of your children by encouraging them to learn about and reach out to help others. The most important thing to remember is that God made each of us…including your precious child….with unique talents, abilities, and gifts, which He has already decided on how they are to be used for His glory. Lean into His word and promises every day, all day, and seek Him even in your dreams while you sleep. He will comfort, and open and shut doors that He knows are for you and your child’s best purpose. Take refuge in the Maker of the Universe, and trust that the timing of your child’s educational gains are perfect.