GREAT Description of the IEP Season!

This was just too funny, so I felt obligated to repost it from another site. Enjoy!

The IEP Season
(The author for this article is unknown).

We have the cold season, the flu season and even the holiday season, but no season strikes panic in the hearts of parents of children with special needs like the IEP season. For those who don't know, IEP season usually runs from late March through early June, but IEP's can strike at any time.
An IEP is an "Individualized Education Plan" that is made for every student, who qualifies for special Ed services, each year. These insidious stacks of paper can pit teachers against principals, parents against parents and turn grown men into towers of Jell-O. There is no cure for IEP's, and no research is being done to eradicate this dread affliction. The only thing we parents can do is try to survive.
The following are symptoms of an upcoming IEP. These symptoms will appear at the school level: Excessive testing, prying into your family's personal life, and a complete breakdown of communication with school officials. A parent will experience: a racing heart, sweaty palms, excessive worry over little things, and a generally sick feeling all over. Advanced symptoms include: extreme paranoia, irrational thoughts of violence or the desire to listen to Yanni CDs while weaving baskets.
As stated before, there is no cure for the IEP, but suggested treatments include: extravagant preparation, including photo murals of your child, charts, graphs, fresh baked goods and an interpretive dance depicting the future you envision for your child. Character references and a complete life history (typed, double spaced, in triplicate) also help. In ordinary circumstances these are usually sufficient. In the more difficult cases, these things are recommended: heavy drinking, antidepressants, and subtle hints that your sanity may be teetering on the very edge.
Yes, you too can make it through the horror of IEP season, if you follow these simple steps: Document what your child needs and why, prepare ideas on how these things can be implemented and if all else fails, rant and rave like a lunatic. Hey, it doesn't hurt if they are a little afraid of you! Hit men have also proven effective, but are in no way encouraged or approved by this author. (Psst - my husband is Sicilian!)
Before I close, let us pause to offer up a silent prayer for our comrades who have fallen during previous IEP seasons:
"Dear Lord, Help us to remember the parents who have gone before us. Those who have lost their patience, their tempers, and their minds dealing with school bureaucrats who have no idea what we are dealing with or what our children could accomplish given the right kind of encouragement and opportunities. Help us to be better advocates to our own children. Help us to negotiate well, to compromise only when necessary, and to NEVER, EVER give up on what we know is right for our children. Be with us during this IEP and future IEP's and help us to keep our composure during this trying time. Amen.
Now, let's go kick some school butt!

Trying Times

I have done the unthinkable. I am enrolling my son in a private school with no special education program and no experience in dealing with special needs children. I have chosen to do this so that he can receive a religious education, be challenged academically, and be in a supportive environment, all this so that he can reach his maximum potential. We are lucky that we have enough means to be able to do this. Just barely. To accomplish this, I have met with a group of people from his school that included the school psychologist, principal, kindergarten teacher, special needs teacher (only deals with ADD and the like), reading specialist, and my sons preschool director. After calming every ones initial fears, and making promises to provide my own services and be a support person I set out to find a, no THE perfect aide for my son as well as a consultant to implement his IEP.  So, after much finagling, I found a great potential aide and independent consultant. Oh joy! Until I tried to make arrangements through the school to pay for this aide via scholarship and was told that this was not workable. Back to the drawing board. I then contacted a service that was more expensive but was the lesser of two evils compared to the other service I contacted. After the horror stories I have heard about the latter, the expense will be worth it.

    Here's the thing... I am well aware that he can attend public school for free. I also know that he would be in a special needs classroom. I know that he would become bored. He is becoming bored now in his second year of preschool. He wants to be around typical kids and shows a big interest in playing near and with them. He soaks everything up he sees and he is improving.

  I am enrolling him in the private school because I believe in inclusion. REAL inclusion. I also believe in giving him the same opportunity his sister in first grade is receiving right now. Am I really the only one that gets that? The scholarship I will be using to pay in part for his aide (I say that because it truly only pays partly for the aide,the rest is on our dime) claims to give parents of autistic children a choice, a way out of the public school system. Hmmm. Choice yes. My choice? Not quite the way it works.

  So, dear private school, please be good to my son. Welcome him with open arms. You don't know how hard I worked to get him here and how hard he works daily. Please don't succumb to the fear of dealing with an autistic child just because its a new experience. Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from him. I have.

Ipad Advocacy and Local Government

  One of my many projects lately is what for all intents and purposes I will refer to as the Ipads NOW! project. Our County Board of Disabilities does a great job. People with disabilities move to our county just to get the services they offer. It was our dumb luck that we were here when Connor was diagnosed. After we purchased the Ipad for our son and had great success with it, I had to ask myself  "what happens when a family can't afford one?" What kind of impact would it really make on a non-verbal child/adults life? After a lot of poking around for info as it turns out quite a bit. So why if our local board was providing assistive devices,etc. would they not pay for an Ipad? I posed this question to my sons preschool director. I was told that an Ipad was not considered a assistive communication device. It was too risky to pay for a $450.00 Ipad because another family member may use it for another purpose. They will however, pay for apps. They will also pay for a much bulkier communication device that only serves one purpose at $1500.00 on the low end going up into a few thousand dollars. That one left me scratching my head.  So I pressed further, was the board open even a little bit to further discussion about the Ipad? Yes, but what information would hold any weight when it came to changing their decision? The answer was clinical studies, the wide acceptance of the Ipad as being a assistive communication device.

  In the mean time, I stumbled across something called the Assistive Technology Act of 1998. What the heck was that all about?! I googled it and found out that there are local entities that carry out this law by providing lending libraries, etc. with communication devices etc. I even found one in our area. I called to see if they had Ipads available. Low and behold they had them on order and there was no one on the waiting list. Could that be because NO ONE KNEW ABOUT IT?!  I felt that it was my patriotic duty to spread the good word! I downloaded the application and immediately contacted my sons therapists to see who was interested in a clinical study. I am happy to say they are all either first or at the top of the list to get one. I also passed out applications at my sons school for the parents and a few people in the speech therapists waiting room.

  My current plans are to do some research myself, put together a power point presentation and in conjunction with my sons speech therapist and her study results and meet with the board at a later date this year.

  Sometimes you can't solve the problem but you can give it a great big shove in the right direction.

Advocacy As We Know It

When Connor was first diagnosed, I read a ton of information. One of the common phrases I ran across was "As a parent, you are your child's best advocate".  Well, I knew the basic definition of advocacy, but I had no idea how it applied to me. Things were fairly simple and ran smoothly in the beginning so there were really no battles to fight, no one to "enlighten".  The same month that Connor was diagnosed, a couple of parents from my sons school encouraged parents to join them for the local Autism Speaks Walk.  I couldn't bear to participate. You see, if we walked I would have had to admit to myself that he was autistic and my dreams for Connor were not what they used to be. At the time, that was as scary as looking the devil right in the eyes. "Maybe next year." I said and made our excuses.  This past year I stumbled into being team captain for my sons school team. I organized, printed flyers, raised money and said "yea team" periodically. We walked the walk, raised more money that I would have dared hoped and had more team members than I would ever have counted on. My friends, it felt good, REALLY good. I learned something very important at that walk. When your child and family are living with autism (which is neither curable and in a lot of cases, you don't even see it in a child) it is pure pleasure to feel as if there is something you can fix. Not only can I advocate for my child, but for other children as well. This is just one of the ways I have found to date to advocate for Connor.  Will I walk again this year? You bet! Heck, I may even jog....;)