My 11 year old (5th grade) son started Embark about a month and a half ago. Last night, for the first time in 2 years, on his own, he picked up a pen and a notebook and wrote something. This is after massive amounts of stress around writing and spelling stemming from well-intentioned support from an occupational therapist and teachers at school which rather then help, led to a lot of shame on his part about ‘being bad’ at spelling and writing, which led to total refusal to do so and a lot of school refusal and stress at home between us, his parents, and him. I am also excited to say that he is now SO much happier, he loves going to school and he is even upset by a snow day because he can’t go to school. Our relationship with him has improved greatly as well and I’m noticing a lot more independence, a lot less anxiety overall, and a huge decrease in his separation anxiety.

He is a very smart child who actually did quite well in public school up until 3rd grade, though the online COVID year (he did 2nd grade virtually) really caused a lot of anxiety and likely contributed to the writing and spelling issues and also started to cause a lot of stress at home around school and school work. Part way through 4th grade, we realized public school just was not working for our son nor for our family any longer, so after much research, we enrolled him in an excellent online program called Prisma. Our son really loved the teachers and the friends he made through his online school and things were seeming to be much better for us. Fast forward to his 5th grade year and we once again were really struggling with anything to do with writing, even on the computer, and then were struggling with him voluntarily doing any asynchronous work for school, once again causing a lot of school stress in our relationship and home. He was also really struggling with only interacting with friends online during school and really missed being in person. We began searching for another solution and found Embark and thought, could this work for us? Could this work for him?

We scheduled a visit to Embark and all of us loved what we saw and heard. After our initial visit, our son asked, “Is this a dream?” Gratefully we were approved for some financial aid and were able to enroll our son at Embark part-time, two days a week. By this time, he had been home with me for so long, and was really struggling with separation anxiety after his grandmother passed away, he did not want to attend unless I could be at Embark with him. Andrea and Catina helped us create a very supportive situation to help our son feel comfortable, allowing me to work on-site while he was in school and helping us come up with small ways to enable him to feel comfortable with separation (me going to the coffee shop, getting him a phone so he can call/text when he needed me, me going to lunch for a couple hours). I’m happy to share that after 1 1/2 months, I’m going to be moving off of Embark’s campus to a coworking space and he is totally fine with that, feeling comfortable and much more independent. He is also very comfortable going on short trips in Leesburg with classmates on his own. It’s funny, he would leave the building and not tell me, but he didn’t want me to even go to the bathroom without letting him know at first. 

It has been a bit challenging as a parent to truly embrace self-directed education and especially so to catch myself when I’m trying to impose my own agenda on my son and in truly trusting the process. But by doing so, I have seen my son grow and thrive in so many ways that seem small but have huge implications in the big picture of his life. My son is the kind of kid who can tell instantly if someone, especially his parents, have an agenda for him and his instinct is to rebel against it. One example is that for pretty much every school day since he’s started Embark, he has walked to the shop that has candy and had a soda and candy for lunch, bought with his own money. I had to bite my tongue so many times and not judge or say anything about it. I kept packing him food, snacks, anything, but it kept happening. Well, yesterday we had a well-child visit and the doctor asked him if he eats healthy. He was honest and answered no. The doctor appreciated his honesty and very gently encouraged him to try to add some vegetables and more protein to his meals – we didn’t even talk about the candy. I didn’t comment on any of it and this morning while walking past the sweet shop on the way to school, my son said “Can I bring some money for lunch on school days? I’ve been eating candy every day for lunch and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’d like to buy some food for lunch.” Again, I’m blown away by how smart and capable my child is and how his life and decision-making skills keep growing the more I step out of the way and trust him and the self-directed education process. Our family couldn’t be happier with our decision to enroll our son at Embark and to keep learning how to parent him in the best way possible. I’m not sure where my son’s educational and life journey will lead, but I know that we are on the best path possible now for him to be a happy, healthy, independent, thriving human on this planet who knows how to care for himself and others and who succeeds at anything he puts his mind to.