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31 Stop Accepting 'Perpetual Elementary School' - How This Mom Cracked the Code for Severe Learning Struggles

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Are you exhausted from feeling like your special needs child is stuck in perpetual elementary school because they don't read, write, speak, or do math?

Do you wonder if God has abandoned you when your child faces constant rejection and you're drowning in decision paralysis about what they really need?

What if there was a Biblical foundation that could give you direction for homeschooling any child - regardless of their abilities or disabilities?

In this deeply encouraging episode, I sit down with veteran homeschool mom Stephanie Buckwalter, who has over 20 years of experience homeschooling five children across the spectrum from gifted to moderate special needs. 

After hitting rock bottom with her nonverbal daughter in sixth grade, Stephanie discovered a life-changing truth in Genesis 2 that transformed her approach to education and gave her hope for her daughter's future. She shares her innovative ELARP method of homeschooling and her journey through public school IEPs, alternative therapies, and ultimately finding breakthrough communication methods. 

This conversation offers practical hope for exhausted moms who feel stuck between survival mode and actually helping their children thrive, especially those navigating autism, ADHD, and severe learning struggles.


Connect with Stephanie Buckwalter:


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Connect with the host: Elyse Scheeler


Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this episode are those of the guests and hosts and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Speaking Life Into Motherhood. None of the advice or discussion on the podcast is medical advice. Always consult with your medical provider before using any supplements, essential oils, or therapy methods.

Elyse Scheeler (00:00)
Welcome back everyone. Today I have Stephanie Buckwalter with us. She is a veteran homeschool mom over 20 years and counting of five children, including the categories of gifted mild learning struggles and moderate special needs. She works with parents of children with more severe learning struggles and specializes in helping parents with children who are stuck in perpetual elementary school because they do not read, write, speak or do math. She's the creator of the ELARP method of homeschooling and spell as you go.

a spelling and communication program for homeschooling nonverbal students. Welcome Stephanie, thank you so much for being here today.

Stephanie Buckwalter (00:35)
Hi, great, thanks, I'm glad to be here.

Elyse Scheeler (00:38)
Yeah, so tell me a little bit more about yourself. I mean, you have so much experience then and obviously some things that brought you to be this creator, but help us just get to know you a little bit in your background.

Stephanie Buckwalter (00:49)
Okay, well, I have five children and their abilities range from gifted, neurotypical, mild learning struggles, moderate intellectual disability. So I had the whole range. My four boys, the oldest are boys, and they were born in five and a half years. And so they were close together. And then there's like a four year gap and then my daughter with special needs. So I kind of had two homeschooling experiences. One was more typical with

⁓ You know the gifted struggling learner neurotypical and then a separate learning experience with my daughter with special needs So I've kind of I've kind of gone through homeschool twice. I Kind of got into homeschooling by experimenting I was going to a church where other people were homeschooling and everyone was talking about it I thought well try it out with my oldest son. I thought okay How bad can you mess up kindergarten right and if not, we can always just redo it

put him in school then he'll just be a year late. But once I got started I realized I really like teaching and I like all the learning that goes with it because I get to learn right alongside him and so I just kept doing it. And I will have to tell it one funny story though the first the first year I guess kindergarten you don't really have to testing in our state you have to turn in a standardized test at the end of the year. So for my first son when he was in first grade

Elyse Scheeler (01:40)
Mm-hmm.

you

Stephanie Buckwalter (02:05)
He did great on everything, but he totally bombed on spelling. And I thought, wow. But I realized I never taught spelling, because I thought spelling was just something that comes along. So my big takeaway for my first, maybe second year of homeschooling was, if you teach it, they will learn. But if you don't, they'll bomb their standardized testing.

Elyse Scheeler (02:27)
I

So can you tell me a little bit more, did you homeschool than all of your kids or was there any point in which they were in public school as well?

Stephanie Buckwalter (02:36)
We did a mix of homeschool, public school, private school. So my oldest son, I homeschooled him through eighth grade and then he went to private school for a year and then public school for his last three years of school. Primarily because they opened a new high school in our area and he just wanted to play football, which is kind of interesting because they didn't do like peewee football or any of that stuff, but he wanted to play football. So he made the team and he was really happy with that. The second one I homeschooled all the way through 12th grade. He's what I call my struggling learner.

The next two I homeschooled through fifth grade and then one of them went to private school for two years, one for one year, because they're just a year apart. And then they went into public school and middle school and then finished up through high school. And then my special needs daughter, I was actually homeschooling her up until third grade. And then I'll be honest, because I was having struggles because she was constantly in fight or flight mode. And it put me in a fight or flight mode and I just couldn't get out of it. And so my husband...

And I didn't really want this to happen, but my husband was wiser than me. And he kind of gently had us put her in public school. And she ended up staying there for six years. So I've been through the IEP process multiple times. We actually ended up going to mediation with the state. So I've been like that route, little side route. And I don't really have a problem with the public school system because I think at the teacher level, a lot of them, not all of them, we had one or two that were not.

But they're dedicated, they like the students, they have the right heart towards them. But as soon as you get into that next layer of management in the school and the principals and the people who control the budgets and stuff, that's when you start running into all kinds of problems. But I had pretty good relationships actually with the IEP teams because I wasn't antagonistic toward them. But I did.

you know at one point I did have to get a an advocate to go with us and that's how we ended up in mediation. She's like I just go to mediation. It's time. And this was after two years of trying to work out a communication program for my daughter who's nonverbal.

Elyse Scheeler (04:39)
Yeah, I've definitely been there. on the other end of it too, being somebody who was a front line worker, quote unquote, a lot of times, parents would say, well, you know, I'm thinking about getting an advocate and

You're shaking your head. Yes, yes. know, please, please do that. I can't tell you to do that. But like if you do, then what I'm trying to advocate for maybe will be heard because a lot of times those teachers and the other staff are really trying. And like you said, They're more likely to make some changes or more likely to be moved when there are other, things like advocating in place. So, yeah, I definitely understand that. 

Stephanie

 I just realized I didn't finish the story of my daughter because she was in school for six years and I pulled her out for high school because that's around the time COVID happened and I saw what was going on in the classrooms and actually the final straw was at the end of the first six weeks I got a report card we had been going to the wrong PE class I thought it was adapted PE and it wasn't and no one told me hey you're in the wrong PE class you're not registered here and I also saw there was really this was the the moment when there was

Elyse Scheeler (05:20)
yeah.

Stephanie Buckwalter (05:44)
well a woman, because she was in the public school, you can stay until you're 22 in the special needs area. And she was getting ready to age out of the system. And in math class, they were still trying to get her to identify the number five. And I thought, oh, it just broke my heart. It's like, you know, she's probably had that on her IEP for 20 years. Or I guess you're in the school for 12 plus six, 18, 18 years. I'm not good at math. 18 years.

just you know with what is the number five and I thought I can't do that to my daughter and I liked the teacher I had met her and she used to drop the homework off at home she'd drive by everybody's house and drop it off so that we could have that oh and then the other thing was so at the end of the semester they're like well we can't give her a grade because we don't have any homework so we want you to sit through these hours of class with her and then do homework take pictures send it in and I thought that is more work than homeschool I'm just gonna homeschool so we pulled her out

The other thing I was going to mention was the whole time she was in public school, I did after schooling, I did weekends. I worked with her after school, the weekends or summer school. I never put her in ESY, extended school year. I always kept her home with me. And I didn't even do her speech services usually. One year I think I did. But that homeschooler in me was like, they can do what they need to. I needed the break.

I still kept schooling her at home the whole time. So it actually was great because it gave me lots of time to do research. And I took a deep dive into neurology because those are her problems. And she was, she has brain anomalies, like six of them. has a, we didn't get a diagnosis until she was 16 years old. So until that time she had, you know, had the MRIs, the CAT scans, the, you know, the tests, like all the stuff. She'd even had the genetic test early on. But back then when she was younger, A, her syndrome didn't even exist. It hadn't been identified yet.

And B, it was just a, there anything extra, anything missing? Those are the kind of genetic tests they used to do. Now they look at individual genes. so by the time she was like six years old, I was so tired of going to all these doctors and driving to children's hospital. Anyway, it was some quite horrible experiences there. But I finally wrote to the doctor who was supposedly, or who was identified at the time.

one of the top five white matter brain specialists in the world. She happened to be doing a research project at the hospital we were going to, so we had access to this great doctor. And she was actually really nice. So I finally sent her an email and I said, okay, tell me what's going on with my daughter's brain and how is it affecting her learning? So she writes back and she goes, well, these six things are wrong with her brain and alone, none of them should cause a problem, but altogether they present like this, so just keep doing what you're doing.

I was like, okay, that was like no help. that, so that kind of pushed me into the alternative medicine area and alternative therapies and all kinds of stuff because I tried for six years and there was no help in the medical community ultimately. And I went, so I kind of went down this neurology route. So I have a lot of background in research and I took classes. I went to the Family Hope Center in Pennsylvania and took their classes.

I've a retained reflexes therapy class and things like that. So I've done a little bit of everything. So by having her in school, actually gave me the opportunity to take a really deep dive into what was behind her. And now I have all this knowledge and stuff. And so I'm hoping to share it with others. That's kind of why I do what I do is because I had that opportunity. And I also innovated several products. One of them was the method. One of them was.

visual photogram cards. I've innovated several things to get her where she is today.

Elyse Scheeler (09:27)
that's amazing. I think I was going to that was one the questions I was going to ask too is just, you know, how has your faith been either challenged or how has God played a role in that? I think you kind of started to answer that. Do you feel like because I know something that we talk about a lot on the podcast is that.

that feeling, sometimes people feel abandoned by God when they have a kiddo with additional needs. Sometimes they're so overwhelmed that they, and I'm speaking for myself too, there's just times where you're so overwhelmed you can't even think to talk to God. where has your faith grown or changed throughout this journey?

Stephanie Buckwalter (10:01)
Well, by the time she was in sixth grade, I was at rock bottom. I thought I'd hit rock bottom several times, but I think I was actually at rock bottom this time, for real. And I got mad. I threw a little hissy fit with God, and I said, you know what? Why was she created? She's in sixth grade, so I'm facing high school now. So she's in middle school. I'm looking forward to her future. I'm like, why was she created? What is her purpose? She can't talk, read, write, do math. And sometimes I get...

emotional over it. That's where I was. It takes me back to that time, and I was just so low. And I was like, okay, everyone always says every answer you have is in the Bible. So I said, I like threw down the gauntlet. I'm like, I'm gonna start reading the Bible until I find the answer about what, you know, what is my child's purpose? Why did you create her? And thankfully the answer was in Genesis chapter 2, so I didn't have to read very far at all. And it was the creation story. And in the garden,

Elyse Scheeler (10:33)
Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Buckwalter (10:57)
He created us for three things. When he says, you know, it's not good for the man to be alone. So I'll create a helper for him. You know, that's talking about marriage, but marriage is the foundation for the family, which is a foundation for community and then society. So we are created for relationship. So because of that, we treat, we teach social connection. And so I was getting, you know, this was like giving me direction for my homeschool at the same time. I didn't even ask for that. It was like a bonus. And then the second thing,

was he said, you know, he put him to work and said, here, tend the garden. So we were created for work. So because we're created for work, then it's like, okay, we teach productivity how to be productive. And whether it's the creative arts, can be, you know, the Bible's full of like when they're building the temple, they had the artisans, they had the builders, they had the masons. mean, they had masons for the portable temple. But I was thinking about the tabernacle actually. Anyway, so, so they're like, so all these

So that's what I come, that's what I think of when I come into productivity because we're created for work. And then the third thing was, said, you you can eat from any tree of the garden except that one, because for the day you eat of it, you will surely die. Well, we were created for self-governance, which I call the responsible use of free will. And because we're created for self-governance, we teach our kids how to be independent, you know, and make wise choices and be moral people and all those kind of things.

So it all kind of fit together and it was right there in Genesis chapter 2. And that was a turning point for me because I was like, okay, and I actually made a little bookmark with little circles on it and all that stuff. But it really helped me realize, okay, it doesn't matter what your abilities or disabilities are. We all have the same purpose. We are all created for independence, social connection, and productivity. And if we...

teach our kids increasingly in one of those three areas every single day, no matter how wild your school day is with your special needs kids, you're still winning at home school because we're created for all of those. And on my little scenario where I have all the little circles, there's only one little bullet point that says academics. The rest of it is the rest of life. And you teach this to all of your kids, but the difference with special needs kids is when you start teaching them,

They don't intuit things, their mirror neurons may not be working, and they don't intuit how to do things. So they can learn almost anything, but you have to teach them everything. So that you don't, it's not like, hey, you can just show them something once and they catch it. You probably have to be a lot more deliberate about your schooling. And that's why homeschooling is a lot different for a special needs child because especially when, you know, the more severe disabilities, because it just...

takes a lot more work on your part to get the results that you're looking for as far as whether it's learning, whether it's life skills, speech, anything.

Elyse Scheeler (13:47)
Yeah,

every single mom and even, just professionals who maybe don't have as much of a connection have had some sort of a God's got this moment or but God, right? I thought that it was going to be this was it but God, right? And I think that that's a good reminder for anyone who's listening who is feeling like maybe they're maybe they're dabbling their toes at that rock bottom. They're they're not sure they can do it, whether it's, the kids are at home or the kids are in school, but really,

finding that, whether it's reading the Bible or doing some sort of a devotional. I mean, I think all of those things are good reminders for all of us. remember when

I was at my rock bottom struggling with infertility and some much of mental and physical health things. And that's the same thing, right? Like once you start giving that up to God and you can start opening your eyes to some of the things that he's trying to show you, you can really start to see. So thank you for sharing that. I know that I am very interested in learning more about some of the things that God has, maybe gifted you

So would you mind just kind of walking us through the ELARP method that you have created and like what does it mean and who is it for?

Stephanie Buckwalter (14:54)
It's a really bad name. I'll say that right up front. Nobody likes it. They're like, LARP? Is that like the large, the language, you know, the online playing stuff, role-playing? I'm like, no, no, no. Sorry, it's a bad name. But it works great for what it is. The letters stand for explore, label, apply, reason, and produce. The process, I use more or less a classical education model for my older kids. And so I was familiar with that.

Elyse Scheeler (15:04)
Yeah

Stephanie Buckwalter (15:22)
And then when I was reading a book by Judy Monday, she has, if you don't have her book on homeschooling special needs, everyone should get that book. It's available on Amazon. Just look for Judith Monday, M-U-N-D-A-Y. And it's the book with the hot air balloons on it. I think she has, she might have more than one out there, but that's the one I'm talking about. I actually know her. She's in my state and I would see her at the state conventions. I would volunteer to talk

at the special needs table at our convention and she would be there so I actually got to know her a little bit. It's her life's work, she's in her 70s now, it's her life's work distilled into a book. Her life's work of working with special needs kids. Now granted it says right up front that she's used to working with kids who were on the milder end, but there are so many good ideas on there for how to homeschool. And I got from her a clue about Bloom's taxonomy. Bloom's taxonomy was

developed by an educator, I believe, maybe a psychiatrist, I can't remember, in the 1970s or 80s. And it has six levels of thinking that develop as you mature. And those roughly correspond with the three levels of the classical education model. And so I combined the classical education model with the idea of Bloom's taxonomy

If you have an education background, you may know what that is already anyway. And came up with the ELARP method. So I added one before Bloom's taxonomy. I mean, for the classical education model and that's explore. If you are struggling with your special needs child in school and you can't get them to do anything, you can't get them, if you're trying to get them to do book work and it's really not for them and they don't understand it, they don't get it, start with an explore stage. I liken it to going to a museum.

And think about it, when you go to a museum, nobody's going to quiz you on it when you get home, right? They're not going to say, you know, what was, you know, what military scene was in the museum over there, you because we have the Marine Museum close to us. It's like, what military, you know, gear was in this particular scene? No one's going to do that. And so you just kind of pick up whatever it is you can, but you kind of get an idea. So if you go to museum, let's say a natural history museum,

⁓ or a war museum. I'm trying to think of good museum example. So you go in natural history museum, there's a section where you can see all about insects and they have like live bees coming in and out of the building. It's kind of cool. And when I was there, the Hope Diamond was actually in DC as opposed to they send it around the world periodically. And

Or if you go into the history museum, it was, this was my favorite part, the dresses of the first ladies. Oh, it's an exhibit. Oh, it's so cool. The first ladies with all their dresses and their finery. but no one quizzed me on it when I got home. That's the point.

That's the idea of the explore stage. You let your child experience at their level, at their sensory tolerance, at their intellectual level, whatever it is, whatever topic you're getting ready to introduce in school. So let's say you're getting ready to introduce classification of animals. We're doing that right now. So I'm still homeschooling my daughter. We started school last week. Classification of animals. So I would take her, one thing we're going to do,

as a field trip next week is we're to go to a pet store so she can see reptiles and birds and mammals all in one place and then we can you fill out our little classification chart. So in this case the pet store is going to be like the museum where she's just I'm going to point out what they are but she's just going to experience it in whatever way she can then when we go back home and start the book learning that's when the rest of this stuff kicks in. So label is with

nonverbal child, the label stage is kind of equivalent to the pole parrot stage, the grammar stage in the classical education where you're just learning facts. Who, what, when, and where. And so you're giving labels to the child so that you you're building hooks that they can hang information on. When you get to the apply stage that's the equivalent kind of of middle school, the logic stage in classical education. I'm not saying this is a classical education by any stretch, I'm just talking about the general stages.

And on the apply, you're learning how. How do things work? You know, these are the things and this is how they fit together, how they work. When you get to the reason stage, which is the R in ELARP, that's kind of the high school equivalent. And that's where you're starting to learn to develop your own opinions, which kids naturally do at that age anyway. Those are the teenage years. You're developing your own theories about life. And so you reason, you learn why behind things. And not only do you learn the why,

But then a natural part of that stage is to then analyze it and develop your own ideas about it. Do I think that's a good idea or not a good idea? That kind of stuff. And then the last one is produce, in Bloom's taxonomy, that's the create stage. But in produce, for a lot of us that have kids that can't take standardized tests, the produce stage is where you create

You do a project at the child's level where they can do it as independently as possible, because remember we're always working on independence, independently as possible to show what they've mastered and what you've just taught through those other stages. So I actually created adapted unit studies with three different levels for each of these stages. And so the unit studies go start, give you ideas for explore and then label and apply and reason and produce.

And at the end of it, because you have those people, you know, when you're homeschooled that don't believe you should be homeschooling and certainly not especially these kids. So when you have the produce stage, you actually have something for show and tell. And particularly those kids who can't talk, they can at least show and say, yeah, look, this is what they did. And you can ask questions and they can point to answers, depending on what level your child is at. So that was the whole purpose of the ELARP method was to get your child from

preschool, which is the explore stage, because if you think about it in preschool, that's all you're doing is you're just kind of exploring the world. So there's kind of a preschool stage and then the who, what, where, when, and then the how, and then the why, and then at the end you produce something to show. For example, one of the teaching, I call them teaching kits, unit studies is on Native American housing. And so I have, print out a page of each of these nine types of houses.

and you look at what they made them of and you can just go in your backyard and like glue stand down or glue sticks or whatever and that gives a hands-on experience. You could have also done that in the apply stage but this is one of the produce things and then you can set up a little display or a museum and that's something that people who don't think you should be homeschooling can see and appreciate. ⁓ okay you know this person is learning because we had some of that.

Elyse Scheeler (22:07)
I think

I love all that. have a, so I have a couple of questions. So is it, do you sell it as like a homeschool curriculum? Is that how?

Stephanie Buckwalter (22:17)
I have 11 of them right now for 11 unit studies and they're kind of diverse to say the least. But the favorite ones tend to be, because I have these at homeschool conferences so I can like talk to the people who are actually standing right there. So the ones that are the favorites are one of them is story structure because it helps with understanding literature. It's like a really broad based one. You can use it all year. It's not just a one time thing.

Elyse Scheeler (22:19)
Okay, so 11 unit studies. Okay.

Stephanie Buckwalter (22:45)
And then I have a set called Kitchen Chemistry, it's candy chemistry, cooking chemistry, and baking chemistry. And what it does is it simplifies the scientific method. So you're as you're doing the baking stuff, you're learning about chemical reactions, whereas cooking is more physical reaction. And the candy stuff is just introduction to the scientific method, because all you're doing is doing different stuff to candy and watching what happens. So it's kind of so that one's a favorite. The human body one is a favorite.

Elyse Scheeler (23:10)
Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Buckwalter (23:14)
and then the story structure. Those are the three favorites. But I also have, like I said, the American Indie one. The one the kids like when the kids walk by the booth, they want to do the all about pets. It's kind of fun. But yes.

Elyse Scheeler (23:28)
I love that.

So it doesn't necessarily have to be for kiddos who have additional needs because I feel like it sounds like you are providing things at a lot of different skill levels. Is that is that fair or?

Stephanie Buckwalter (23:39)
Yes. So with each

of the E-L-A-R-P, each of those, I have three levels. if your child is... So Bloom's taxonomy has six levels of thinking and they roughly correspond with the education level. But on the other hand, like reason, that's, you know, the high school stage where you're starting to defend your own ideas. But what I have in terms of reason for like a level one student who's...

younger or who has intellectual disability, the reasoning is more of you're giving reasons why you do it. you, especially for non-verbal, you're telling your reasoning, you're modeling reasoning at that age. You're not just telling them to think and spit back answers. For example, on the human body one. So level one is talking about why do we need a band-aid?

A band-aid protection and you can put things on it like the salve and apply medicine that way for a kid who doesn't want you to touch it. You know, they're all kind of tricky things you can do with it. But you're really discussing life with your child and you start doing that anyway at first grade when you start doing moral training. You're always, you know, giving them the reason and the reasoning and the why and the Bible verses and everything. So it's just kind of an extension of how they naturally learn.

you're just doing it at a higher level.

Elyse Scheeler (24:58)
And are you... Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Are

I'm assuming then that you're allowing for nonverbal means in which to do this, right? Like that that's written in so that parents know that they don't have to be like asking their child or... How does that work?

Stephanie Buckwalter (25:15)
I have that kind of baked in ⁓ because you're learning the words and there is a assumption that the child can at least point to an answer or point to a picture. At the end of each of them I actually have flashcards of different things, the human body systems, and you can match them. There are all kinds of little tricks that I put into them.

Elyse Scheeler (25:17)
Okay.

Stephanie Buckwalter (25:38)
you can use those. But the reason I do that, and this is important if you're homeschooling a special needs child, I don't have flashcards in there for drill and kill. I have flashcards in there to isolate one piece of information that they can sink their teeth into and understand before having to look at another piece of information. So flashcards are actually a great way to isolate information, but they are horrible if you're trying to just drill your child to teach him something. If it's, if your child has

⁓ sensory processing, processing problems, a lot of special needs fall into that.

Elyse Scheeler (26:10)
⁓ any kid that

it doesn't work. Play is the best way, having it applied functionally. So I think a lot of times parents...

will, you know, parents who have kiddos who have additional needs are really open to some of those things. But I have interviewed a lot of people and talked to people too, who have kids that like you would say maybe wouldn't be considered more severe, but it's like the ADHD. It's, you know, some other sort of like, neurodivergent, those types of things. But that is true. A lot of these principles are going to be true for kiddos, whether they are gifted, gifted or not, like drill and kill does not work. I mean, it's gonna you're gonna get something out of it. I shouldn't say it doesn't work at all.

But like, what does that teach me?

Yeah, okay. I know what that is. It doesn't mean anything to me. have nothing to connect it to. I'm not going to hold on to it in my executive functioning skills of working memory because I'm not going to have anything that it connects to, to be able to continue learning and growing and gaining more information of like, okay, I have this basic vocabulary, but now I'm starting to connect more meaning to it and understanding. And I have a visual and I have an auditory and all of those things. So I think everything you're saying is, can be applied for kids, whether they're doing homeschooling or whether they're in the public schools or

or not. I love that. sure, sorry.

Stephanie Buckwalter (27:19)
let me go back real quick

I just think of more things as I'm sitting here. But on my website, there is an explanation of the Elart method and you wouldn't even necessarily have to purchase my products. You could just follow the logic behind the five words and create your own stuff. Mine is just for those people who don't have the energy or time to create it.

But anybody can create it just using the five words, public school, homeschool, summer school, after school, however you want to do it. We did a lot of after schooling when my daughter was in public school because I didn't totally just relinquish her. didn't just dump her on the public school system. I was always teaching her at home because I didn't want, I wanted to remain that. I wanted to remain her primary teacher. So it's just a matter of following the logic of the five steps.

Okay, so well actually I've created another thing if you we could go on the other one, you know, another time if you want. But ⁓ one of them is visual phonograms. I had a son who was more of a mild struggles of learning about fourth grade. He wasn't able to read and he had two brothers coming up right behind him who were already starting to read. And he was just like, Mom, I just need to learn how to read. So at that point, I dropped everything else.

Elyse Scheeler (28:21)
sure.

Stephanie Buckwalter (28:39)
I had just heard Diane Craft speak at our homeschool conference and she's big on right brain learning and using visuals. And so I created a set of flashcards. I bought hers, but they weren't quite right for him. So I created my own set and used those to teach him how to spell, to read and write. We were using spell to write and read program. And I just added the pictures to the phonograms.

We did an intensive, I basically dropped everything else because his brothers were already in school. You he would sit in on the other classes, but the only thing he actually had to perform in for school was the reading. And it was interesting because by the end of he was, I guess he was going into, he was, it was the end of third grade and I did an intensive time with him about four months.

of learning the phonograms, learning to read all these words and doing all these different things. And over the summer, of course, I meant to work with him and I didn't. The usual homeschooling things like, what's my summer off? But the interesting thing was, so he was reading probably at a first grade level, maybe second grade level going into the end of third grade. We did this intensive study with him. Over the summer, didn't do anything. But by the beginning of fourth grade, he was reading at like a third grade level. And I hadn't done anything over the summer. And then throughout

the fourth grade year we just did our regular homeschool stuff and by the end of the year he was reading at he was going into fifth grade so he was reading at a fifth grade level or higher and it was just his brain is actually a good thing that I took the summer off because his brain kind of did its processing thing over the summer where he could process it at his own speed you know because words are all around us so you see him all the time and he just

worked with it, then doing that extra year of work, and then he was caught up. And little things like that that I just learned over the years, and I did them out of desperation, like an unintended innovator. And so the other product that we don't, you we don't have to go into detail on it like we the other ones, but it's called Spell As You Go, and my daughter is, we tried everything with my nonverbal daughter. We started out with Pex, and then it just so happened that she was entering school right when the first iPads came out, and the only...

The only robust communication program at the time was Proloquo2Go. So we started out with that. When she went into school, we switched to Lamp Words for Life, because that made sense at the time. We had learned a bunch of sign language from watching Signing Time. So we learned 300 signs from them. And then we learned 300 more signs on our own at home, just from our daily, routine just words that we needed to know. So she actually.

knows a lot of that, but she never strung them together in sentences. She still speaks in kind of like one words at a time. And now we have, actually it's almost a year ago, it be a year ago next month, we have started spelled communication. And that's what we're working with now. And I know in some circles that is not in favor, but the results speak for themselves. And my daughter is slowly learning how to spell. And eventually the idea is that leads to communication.

as you work on building those same thinking skills that are in Bloom's Taxonomy in that same way So that whole program is designed to help the parents teach their kids how to spell that would lead to communication, potentially lead to reading because my background is the program Spell to Write and Read. So this is just Spell to Read and Communicate kind of thing.

Elyse Scheeler (32:05)
Mm-hmm.

Stephanie Buckwalter (32:06)
I've done some innovations on it. Again, not like the... You can go to therapy and get spelled communication. If your child has severe motor planning problems, I certainly recommend that. There are also a couple of books you can buy to go down that path. But it's really promising. And like I said, my daughter is 19 now and she is learning it. And she's excited about learning it because she's desperate to communicate. And that's one of the nice things about this spelled communication stuff.

is so many of the kids are so desperate to communicate that at some point that desire kicks in and overrides all of the sensory issues, all the motor stuff, all the cognitive stuff, and you start moving forward. Some kids, it happens fast, especially if they're It was designed for kids with autism, and it works really well for that community, but it also works, it's worked for Down syndrome, genetic problems, all different kinds of diagnoses.

Elyse Scheeler (32:59)
Yeah,

no, I love that. think you have there's so many. Yeah, I think we might have to be back on we might have to do some more like specifics But we're gonna start wrapping it up. So I always like to ask my guests like what is one thing? thinking about the mom who right now is like I said, she's kind of she's tiptoeing near that that rock bottom She's just really struggling whether it's for

reasons of decision paralysis or just feeling like, she's not doing enough for her kiddo or just being kind of overwhelmed by all of it. What are some things that from your experience that you would just suggest or maybe ways that you could help to lift her up?

Stephanie Buckwalter (33:34)
Two thoughts, they're kind of contradictory. They're not really contradictory. But the first one is God's not surprised and He actually put you with this child. So, He has equipped you, even if you haven't located that equipment yet, He has equipped you to be the parent of this child. And when you take on the additional part of

Elyse Scheeler (33:49)
Yeah.

Stephanie Buckwalter (33:58)
school educating your child, that's, I think God smiles on that too, but you have to get out of your own way. You have to understand that yes, you do have limits, your child has limits and you can't wish them away, but you can slowly but surely work with your child, train them in the three areas that we talked about, productivity, social connection, and independence, because they will probably, I'm talking more severe kids here.

need help with all of those and all kids need those things. But your special needs kid, it'll just take more time and a lot more of your effort. But also there are times when you aren't enough, but God is enough. And you don't have to carry a burden that you weren't meant to carry. You weren't meant to carry all the rejection that your child receives. This was the hardest thing for me to learn. That's what a lot of that

rock bottom is, is you see how your child is treated and it drags you down and you feel for your child, even though they may not even notice, you feel it. and then the, you know, being behind the peers and it's actually harder earlier on when your child is just a few years different from their peers, but when they're older and they're like five or six years behind, then it's not a big deal. You get it.

But it's very, very hard to grasp that when they're young. And then you start taking on all that emotional pain from your child that's really not yours to carry. So you have to learn how to leave it at the foot of the cross and accept the child that God gave you the way they are today, but never losing sight of the hope of the future. The hope that's in the future.

Elyse Scheeler (35:37)
That's amazing. It

gives me goosebumps just hearing that. Can you remind our listeners where they can find you online or where they can maybe learn more about some of the other programs that you have?

Stephanie Buckwalter (35:47)
I have rebranded a couple of times, you can find me now at adaptedhomeed.com and everything that I've had that I've talked about today is on that site and you can find information about it like the ELARP method, the Spelly program, the adapted unit studies, all of that is available there. And I'm not a huge social media person. I do have a Facebook page.

but you have to search on Adapted Home Education because for some reason when I created it, the URL has a bunch of numbers and it has like some subcategories. I don't know how that happened, but you can't just find it easily. You have to just search for it and it's Adapted Home Education. But my website is adaptedhomeed.com.

Elyse Scheeler (36:28)
And I'll make sure that I include all of those things in the show notes as well. this was great. So many great ideas. And I think a great reminder that if you want to homeschool a child who has additional needs, you absolutely can. And if you want to be able to provide extra supports and really feel good about what you're doing at home with that kiddo who maybe is in public school, like there's other things too. And just thank you for providing those resources and thank you for your time today.

Stephanie Buckwalter (36:54)
You're

welcome. It was my pleasure.