Family wanting to cancel early intervention...

     Hello. I have a 2 year old with down syndrome and a 4 year old- both are boys. I would like to homeschool. I am wanting to cancel (and my husband has agreed to let me) the early intervention services through the public schools that I have had for my youngest son for the last 2 years. Do you agree with Home School Legal Defense that it is best to not use public school services?

     Anyway, I am weary of the therapists with the public school, though I have tried to be grateful; and they are not supportive of homeschooling and it feels intrusive at times and critical.

     Can you help me find a private therapist who is affordable? I assume other families have had this problem? I have tried to contact home educators networks in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska but have not found anything useful to me yet. These would be the closest big cities to where I live.

     Preferably I think 4 to 6 times a year with a therapist would be sufficient to help me set IEPs and evaluate, test or whatever is needed to protect myself legally to teach my special needs child. I work with him on my own often (I'm a stay at home mom) when he is in a good mood, to stand, crawl whatever I can think of, so do I have to have therapists? Sometimes I think they seem stupid. Sigh. They were trying to get him to crawl at a year old and he wasn't ready and it would make him mad. Then he started army crawling/scooting and it was just wonderful and they never told me he would do that. He did it all on his own at 18 months and has just now at 23 months decided to crawl.

I assume I will need help with speech therapy later.

Rachael Nebraska C ncinman@alltel.net