Why it Costs More to Raise Special Needs Kids

Have you ever heard the saying "The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer"? This is the thought that has been rooming around in my brain for the last week or so.

My children are not quite disabled enough for the state to help pick up the tab.

Why should your daughter get an aid? She is not physically attacking anyone. She does not need a one on one, the district does not have money to keep rehire a paraprofessional for her classes.

Apparently they want her to start attacking people first. And here I thought that is what we were trying to avoid.

Then my youngest is not quite neurotypical enough to survive in the grant funded after school program at her school. One more major panic attack and she is out. She had two in the last three school days. But what do they expect when her teacher just ups and leaves? Yet she is not disabled enough to get any other support.

Then there is J. According to his therapist everything he does is a typical 13 year old behavior. At its core, yeah probably, but then he takes it to the extreme, like always. Trying to find him something for this summer has been a nightmare. He is either too functioning, or not functioning enough.

Walking the Line

How many of your kids seem to walk the line between the neurotypical world and the world of special needs?

There are a lot of kids with disabilities. Within those kids this is a whole range of needs. There are physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities, and mental health disabilities.

You cannot walk up to my youngest and tell she has special needs. Even when she is having a panic attack people will look at me like I am a horrible parent while I am talking her down from climbing a fence, throwing pine cones, or running. It is only the people who see it who understand, like her after school program. And their only solution is to ask her to leave.

With J people may notice he is off. I mean he talks about the ocean all the time. Even when he nearly took his finger off at church they did not get that he needed to be watched a bit closer until about a year of going there.

And S? People just think she is an undisciplined brat. (Other people's perception NOT MINE!) It does not help that she is adult size, so people expect her to act adult like. Yet, most times I think she would be happier in third grade. She currently sleeps through school (per her IEP), seems to have no grasp on reality, and is acquiring money from somewhere. She is the one of my kids most likely to be pegged for special needs.

When I told J's therapist to stop treating me like I am just a bad parent, she told me maybe I was deflecting my feelings onto her. ARE YOU FREEKING KIDDING ME?

Why it costs more to raise special needs kids

S needs an aid, or some extra type of support in the classroom. The school will not pay for it. There are no community programs because she is bipolar - not autistic. Which would leave me paying for my own or hiring an advocate or lawyer to fight the school.

I contacted an advocate. Before they would even tell me what they would do to help me they wanted me to give them A THOUSAND DOLLARS for only TEN HOURS of work. ARE YOU FREEKING KIDDING ME?

L will most likely not be going to the free summer camp held on her school, and run by the same program as her after school care. She needs more stability. Which means I get to call around to various programs and find one that can handle her. If I can get her into a mainstream summer camp then I am looking at about two grand for the summer. I cannot find a full day special needs camp, so that is not an option. My only other solution is a babysitter, which will probably cost me two grand a month.

Then there is J. What he really wants is a guy to teach him how to be a guy. That does not really cost money. I have been trying to find him a mentor, but the sixty year old guy who volunteered at church is not really who he needs. In the absence of that I have been trying to find him summer camps where he could go hang out with kids like himself. I have found one. It was 3200 for ONE WEEK.

All this is in addition to co pays, special devices (like the chewable necklaces my girls use), the things that are being broken, destroyed, or lost, not to mention the big expenses like the hospital bills.

Of course this is not counting the normal things my kids ask for - like money to bid on an auction at school, or five bucks to go to a school festival. There are still those things as well.