what do middle income households who have kiddos with SN do in the DMV?
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Anonymous
Thank you for a detailed response, this is very useful. Is your partner/spouse stay at home? I find with 2 parents working it's impossible to do without outsourcing some household tasks or hirinig a babysitter. |
Anonymous
9:55 here. My youngest is now 16. We still don't outsource anything. It's not impossible, you just have to let go of the 'ideal' and require family members contribute to the best of their ability. My NT kids started doing their own laundry in 5th grade. I don't remember what age they started vacuuming, mopping the floor, cleaning their own bathroom and on kitchen clean up rotation. In high school, they were each responsible for making a meal for the family once a month. By age 16, kids had part time jobs and were paying for their own 'extras'. It wasn't always easy teaching and getting the kids to do their chores but it was an investment that has paid off immensely. I do all the yard work because it's one of the few times I'm actually alone and I don't mind doing it. DH has learned to be handy and can fix most stuff around the house and keep our cars in good repair - you can learn to do pretty much anything off You Tube. |
Anonymous
Nice list. Well, not "nice" necessarily, but accurate. |
Anonymous
| We homeschooled through ES and MS so we could take advantage of morning therapy slots, flexible age groups, flexible scheduling, and year round school. Returning from summer break is really difficult in all SN kids. I worked part time for several years. The price of SN school is so expensive that part time and homeschooling was less expensive than full time employment in my line of work. |
Anonymous
| We are in a middle class area of MCPS and have gotten good support. We don’t update our house and save in other areas to be able to afford private therapies that are more intensive than what the school provides (speech, OT, social skills groups). |
Anonymous
OP here. We own our home in a wonderful community with a very reasonable mortgage (affordable because of the v poor reputation of our school district). One of our concerns is that the current school district will not be able to provide reasonable services for our child. Do we try to sell our home and move to a more expensive district for our child and where should we go? We can afford 750k but don't feel comfortable going above that. One of us commutes to downtown most days so far out suburbs are not an option we'd consider - especially given the number of appointments our kid has, all close in to DC.
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Anonymous
I would wait and see if the school is a fit before assuming that a richer school will be better. We were at a wealthy north Arlington school and they were really difficult to work with. Our higher poverty school now is much more willing to provide supports. Although, if we didn’t have other kids already settled in here, I would sell, move to a lower cost area, and send my SN kid to private. |
Anonymous
Same. We knew DC needed extra therapies that we couldn’t afford while living in the DMV. Financially, it was our only option. |
Anonymous
You should look at Silver Spring/Wheaton. We have been very pleased and there are still houses in your budget. |
Anonymous
| We bought a relatively undesirable house that sat on the market for a long time. We basically massacred our ability to save for retirement. I buy all my clothes used and wear them til they’re falling apart. I also had to cut back to part time because my child needed more than we were able to provide when both working full time. We have pushed hard for additional services from the county. We take advantage of all the “free” services and events. |
Anonymous
| We get money from family to help us. |
Anonymous
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We own a 1m+ house because of the neighborhood. The house is small, old and needs work. It wasn’t that price when we bought it many years ago.
The public schools are not magical and we are seriously thinking about homeschooling our high schooler because we can’t afford private and haven’t found one worth the cost near us. |
Anonymous
| Unless your child is already in school and you have actual knowledge as to how the school experience is for your child, moving is really jumping the gun. Some really undesirable schools are amazing for some kids and desirable schools can be a terrible fit for some kids. |
Anonymous
+1 9:55 here. You have absolutely no guarantees that moving will make any difference in your DC's school experience. To the PP's point, I'll add that the experience is completely dependent upon the staff at school That can vary between one year and the next from one grade level to another. Within the same school, you can have completely different experiences if you have different kids in different classrooms. We spent a LOT of money on an advocate/consultant who helped us craft excellent IEPs. She taught me an incredible amount so that by the time my kids were in upper elementary school, I was quite capable of understanding, crafting and monitoring them. Still, the amount of money we spent on that pales in comparison to the cost of moving and the cost of private school - which may not serve you any better. I don't think I saw this info - how old is your DC and do they have an IEP? |
Anonymous
We're doing private school anyway. I'm in debt up to my eyeballs living in a house that has good bones but is cosmetically in the early 2000s. Thank god for a federal pension but otherwise, we're no vacations ,no renovations, no frills - but sending my kid to a school that doesn't make her want to kill herself. |