We shift the view of a special needs student away from the acknowledged view, that is as a student who requires interventions to restore a currently expected functioning behaviour, introducing a new paradigm to frame special needs students' learning of mathematics. We use the theory of objectification and the new paradigm to look at (and characterize) students' learning experiences in mathematics as generalizing reflexive mediated activity. In particular, from this perspective, we present examples of shifts to higher levels of generalization of a student with mathematical learning difficulties working with Mak-Trace, a Logo-like educational software for the iPad.