Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John. Thanks for tuning in today. You guys have found me at my little corner of the internet today is Tuesday, September the 28th and I have a huge treat for you guys today. My friend author Mary Ann Sunderman is here today and we're going to talk about why you can homeschool special needs kids successfully stick around. I think you're going to be encouraged.

Hi, I'm Heidi St. John. You probably know my name because I've been working hard for the people of Washington State for the past 17 years. Now I'm running for Congress in Washington's third congressional district and I need your help. I'm running against several big money Republican opponents in the primary and I am determined to prove that a grassroots campaign financed by working men and women can still compete with super PACs and mega donors to make a difference. Please visit Heidi St. John for Congress.com.

So thanks for tuning in today you guys before I get started with Mary Ann today and I'm so excited that she's here. I wanted to remind you guys of a couple things that are coming up on my schedule. I am going to be in Oklahoma trying to get you guys off the bench and onto the battlefield that's coming up on the first second and third of October and I will be starting out in Mustang and then move into Tulsa and in Oklahoma on the third you guys can find out more information about that at Heidi St. John.

I have a special treat on the show and really Mary Ann is here today in response to listener questions. A lot of you guys asking me in light of what's happening. I want to pull my child out of public school.

Can I homeschool a special needs child if you have a question that you would like addressed at the show the way to do that is to go to Heidi St. John.com forward slash mailbox Monday.

Leave me those requests and we will do everything we can to get people on the show who are going to love on you and encourage you and give you the answers that you're looking for.

I want to introduce you to my friend Mary Ann. We met years ago and she Mary Ann has been homeschooling for a long time.

Homeschooling special needs kids and she has a real heart to encourage mothers that you can actually do this thing that God's called you to do. Mary Ann my friend. Welcome to the show.

Thanks Heidi. It's nice to be here. It's nice to be nice to see you. It's been a while. I know I see you online all the time but you probably don't see me. I feel like I just saw you.

I know right. It's kind of crazy what's going on in my life right now but I'm trying to think the first time that you came to see me it had to have been at a women's retreat right in Oregon.

I forget what it was called now but it was something about. I think it was come away. I'll call away. Come away. It was the first one.

Yeah and fearless. Yeah. That's all the way to Oregon from California to you.

Yeah. How do the frying pan into the fire? That's right. Yeah. It's true. Well and you how many kids so I so it's been a little while.

I know we tell listeners a little bit about you and what you do and about your family, your children and then we'll get into some of these nitty greedy questions.

Okay. So we've been homeschooling. We just finished our 25th year. I have eight kids. The oldest will be 30. Oh my goodness.

I know my daughter just turned 30 last week. So crazy. I think that's why we connected so much.

Because who else is crazy enough to homeschool all these kids. I don't know. And so and then the youngest is 11.

We started homeschooling kind of because we wanted to travel and we were living in LA at the time and the schools were expensive or terrible. So it seemed like a good option.

And you know we just figured how hard could it really be you know. Right. Famous last words. How hard get to be. Well it was easy like the first year I bought a bunch of workbooks from the drugstore.

And that's how we did kindergarten and then I went to a homeschool conference that summer and that's when things went down.

Well because they complicated it. Yes. Very much so. So it took me you know years to to get out of that kind of school at home.

And that really I think I would have been perfectly happy there doing school at home except that my kids weren't.

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