Last updated on November 26, 2023
If I were not home, our children would still require supplemental supports. Those are expensive and not fully covered by insurance.
At home, I am the provider of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, reading supports, behavioral intervention, and much more. Mothers (and fathers) knew this before the pandemic. Special needs parents often choose to stay home becuase it is cheaper and easier than working!
It’s not uncommon for families to spend, out-of-pocket, $25,000 or more for supports. Per month, each service might cost $300 to $1500, depending on the provider, frequency, and other variables.
As COVID-19 appeared to be receding, I called local providers to estimate a budget in case I returned to work and homeschooling became impossible. Speech-language therapy is $150 per hour, with two sessions per week. That’s $1200 per month to help our third grader with her language processing challenges.
Physical therapy and occupational therapy (PT/OT) is $100 per half-hour with three weekly sessions suggested. That’s another $1200 expense.
Thank goodness our psychiatric care provider is covered by insurance. Most of any talk-based therapy would also be covered by insurance. These therapies help support our daughters’ ADHD, anxiety, PTSD, and other challenges that affect their learning.
If I want to work for an employer outside the house, I have to earn enough to offset the rather shocking expenses required to help my children.
And yet, part of my nightly routine is a check of Indeed and LinkedIn, where I skim the latest job posts, check my previous applications, and feed the gray monster that gnaws on my ego. I remind myself of my qualifications, the skills I have demonstrated via academic degrees, costly exams, and online assessments. The monster laughs and reminds me I’m into my 50s without a “real” career.
“Why do you even look for work?” my shrinking ego asks, pleading for its survival. “You have a job.”
“I am a creative!” I tell the monster. “I am self-employed like many writers, bloggers, podcasters, and social media content creators.”
Yet, to actually write, blog, and produce content, I would need several hours of creative time daily. Those hours do not exist.
“No, not that job,” my ego mutters, his head hanging low. “The other job. You’re a special education teacher.”
It’s a truth I resist, while simultaneously trying to convince myself that I embrace being a full-time homeschooling parent. If I earned a significant income as a writer and content creator, I’d feel a bit more secure not having a salaried job for some organized entity. Yet, I’m probably making a much bigger difference by homeschooling a Neurodiverse student than I would make in a corporation.
Announcing time and again that I’m proudly prioritizing our family over everything else is an effort to convince myself that this is the right choice — not merely the only choice I have. I have to believe that I didn’t just “give up” and stay at home, that homeschooling wasn’t a result of my failures outside the home.
Reality is complicated.
I turned down some job offers during the pandemic because I wasn’t comfortable going into crowded spaces before vaccines were widely available. I also turned down two teaching jobs that switched from being tenure track to contingent posts with much, much lower pay.
Given a choice between any job and my family, the family wins. I’m not going to work long hours for insultingly low wages, doing more work I would have done as a tenure-track professor. Higher education is broken; colleges and universities seem to depend on a legion of doctorate holders willing to work for less than some retail jobs now pay.
I have a price, and reflects more than the finanical costs our family would incur. There would be the lost time with my daughters and the challenges Susan and I experience trying to schedule support appointments. Our emotional and physical energy has at least as much value as money does.
I need to work at home, on my schedule, as a freelancer and content creator. Even then, my primary job is “Elementary School Teacher.” Yes, it is a choice, but as I have hopefully demonstrated, a choice made for many reasons.