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I have a gifted child and a "special needs" child. I can boost the education of my gifted child. I am not trained and educated in helping my special ed child. With extra help, my daughter will be a productive member of society. If left alone, she would be a drain on society her entire life.

I am not saying the schools should ignore your daughter. I am saying that they should spend just as much time & money helping the gifted to excel. That is how we make advances in important things such as medical research, food production, energy utilization, etc.

I have a gifted child and a "special needs" child. I can boost the education of my gifted child. I am not trained and educated in helping my special ed child.

With extra help, my daughter will be a productive member of society. If left alone, she would be a drain on society her entire life.

Thank you for taking the time to post this. As a father of a nine year old boy who falls in this category I can appreciate the desires of some parents to see their kids mainstreamed... yet as someone generally conservative-minded, I can also see how some would perceive this as another "liberal statist mandate"... which may have some truth to it, but it's not the entire picture.

When I was in high-school some twenty odd years ago, and kids like this were kept completely separate, it was a common occurence for one of "their" buses to pull up and see the usual idiots making fun of the "retards". Striving for some level of integration in school has, I believe, resulted in kids being more compassionate towards those of severely lesser abilities. I'm not saying all special needs kids should be 100% mainstreamed - that's foolish - but, for example, our elementary school tries to mainstream difficult children at some level of minimum disruption - perhaps music classes, phys ed, lunch times, whatever.

My wifes friend has a sister, about 45, with Down's Syndrome, who spends her entire life in her bedroom in her folks house, watching TV, because the mindset some time ago was that most of these people were hopeless cases who should be institutionalized, and hidden from view until then. Her parents will likely not live much longer, God knows what's going to happen to her, without any developed skills whatsoever.

We're fortunate enough that we're in the position to homeschool our son, but we still pay a good amount of money every year on various professional help. Many families are not as fortunate, cannot homeschool this type of child nor afford the services that may help. And people who are not in this situation have little idea of how incredibly trying it is just taking care of a child like this, let alone trying to educate/socialize one. I know many, many families in these circumstances for which public assistance and education is a godsend.... they're not out to "milk the government", they're just trying to get help.

As a conservative, I think most people should try to be as self-sufficient as they can... as a Christian father of a special needs kid, I also see a place for publically helping some who are nearly helpless.

I also have a child in gifted program and the other is "special needs."

I am learning how to work with both. My wife and I started working with them as soon as we realized what was happening. We have worked very hard at getting them what they needed. My oldest is in a program that challenges him to do his best and our youngest is getting what he needs to be in line with his peers.
The best resource we have found so far is Dr. Stanley Turecki's book "The Difficult Child"
Both are very stressful on their mother. Understanding and coping with the individual needs of each child are extremely important to getting them what they need to excel either into a mainstream class or beyond. "Difficult" children are not out of the range of normal and some late talkers have exceptional minds. They are just different and WE need to adjust OUR techniques if we are to be effective teachers. Isn't teaching a child how to become a good adult is a parent's job?
Problem is, not very many teachers want to work that hard and not too many parents know what to do. It is very difficult for parents to know what to do if they desire to work at it.
Quite a lot of these problems are hereditary and if the parent's situation was mishandled, there is a good chance they still have the same needs as the children.
It is a lot easier to just label the kid Autistic and write him off than to look a little deeper at them and ourselves to see what is going on and adjust.