Four mothers speak about stepping outside of the frum bubble to meet their child’s unique educational needs 

When a child has special educational needs that cannot be met within the framework of a frum school, parents are faced with what seems like an impossible choice:

Do they leave their child in a trusted environment but watch the daily struggle erode his self-esteem?

Or do they send him to a specialized school where he’ll get the tools he needs, but will be exposed to a secular worldview?

Even after parents have asked daas Torah and are assured that switching schools is the right choice, it’s still not an easy path. Four mothers speak about stepping outside of the frum bubble to meet their child’s unique educational needs.

ELISHEVA’S STORY

“My son Dovid attended frum schools in Chicago through part of high school, but had some behaviors that concerned us,” Elisheva remembers. Academics weren’t challenging for Dovid, but picking up on and following social cues was. He was overly rigid, yet clueless about scheduled school events even when they were announced frequently. He also had trouble planning ahead.

His transition to high school wasn’t smooth. “He was never in the right place at the right time. During assemblies, he’d be in the hallway, or he’d be outside when he was supposed to be inside,” recalls Elisheva. He wanted to keep every chumra, and he also tried to be everyone’s mashgiach.

They started sending Dovid to a therapist and tried all sorts of incentives, charts, checklists, and behavioral techniques to help him do the right things at the right times. They arranged for special time with grandparents, cousins, and friends. They took him for educational therapy to work with him on organization and executive functioning. It was incredibly intense, but at the same time, it wasn’t enough.

Finally, his rebbi told them, “He needs something that he can’t get here.” Dovid was a solid learner, and was doing fine academically, but it was clear that he needed more guidance in learning how to follow societal expectations.

“A big part of this challenge was the guilt,” shares Elisheva. “The feeling of not being a good parent. I would ask myself, ‘Why is my kid different from the others? What could we have done differently?’”

Their therapist told them about a nonpublic school that could help their son develop the skills he was missing. The state of Illinois has a number of these private, nonsectarian, state-certified schools that provide special education services to students based on their Individualized Education Plan (IEP).

Elisheva started doing research. Most of the students who attended the school were not frum or not Jewish, but Elisheva knew people in her community who had sent their children there. She spoke to the mothers, so it wasn’t a complete unknown. She and her husband were impressed when they visited the campus and spoke with the administration. By the time they went to ask a sh’eilah, they were comfortable with the idea of sending Dovid to the specialized school.

“We knew it was highly structured, that it could help our son become a more confident person and achieve success socially,” says Elisheva.

He attended the NPS until early afternoon, then went to second seder at his yeshivah, followed by dinner at home and night seder. It wasn’t a secret that he was attending a secular school, but Elisheva didn’t discuss it, except for with close friends. If it came up in conversation, she kept it vague, mentioning that he was temporarily going somewhere else, but not sharing more details than that.

For support, she turned to other students’ parents, as well as a therapist, who helped her talk through the experience. “I was figuring it out as I went along and taking advice from professionals. You have to try, and you must keep an open mind. I wasn’t sure what was going to work and what wasn’t, but I kept trying.”

Elisheva acknowledges that sending a child during their impressionable teenage years into a secular environment is a risk, and many children can pick up unrefined language or behaviors. Dovid was unique in that he didn’t feel pressured to fit in with the secular environment. He kept his yeshivish levush and didn’t socialize with his classmates at the NPS. “I think it was due to a combination of his personality and already established religious convictions, plus a lot of mazel, zechusim and tefillah,” she says.

While it’s normal for parents to be nervous about sending their child to a secular school, Elisheva and her husband felt strongly that self-esteem is the foundation for success. “As teenagers, it’s so hard in general. For him it was even tougher because he had these extra struggles. Sending him to that school helped him get himself together, find himself, and then he was able to move forward. For us, it was no choice. And baruch Hashem, we had daas Torah guiding us.”

After graduating high school, Dovid joined a small beis medrash and then attended a frum college, where he was very focused and did well. He is now married with a family of his own.

Looking back, Elisheva can see that Dovid was, and still is, his own person. “Everyone is different,” she says. “But if we learn how to follow the basic rules of society, we can go off and be who we want to be and create our own lives.”