Leaderboard

The post about the extraordinary burden of IEPs on Moms got me thinking today that the biggest burden I carry is the awareness of the extent of my child's challenges. He presents typically which creates an illusion of competence. The reality is that he is falling further behind grade level at school, and further behind his peers socially and with ADLs. I am holding him together in multiple ways and if something were to happen to me I have no idea what would become of him. Given his skill set I cannot imagine him living independently or supporting himself financially. I'm not worrying unrealistically. I worked with his age group for over 10 years and can see how far outside the norm he is, and how he continues to fall further behind. He'll be an adult in just a few years, the window to turn things around is rapidly closing. His school doesn't see it. They alternate between not seeing his disability and blaming all the signs of it on him. Even his father doesn't see it. The other day he said he could picture our child becoming an engineer. My child cannot do a simple jigsaw puzzle and fails every single math and science test in the lowest level of class his school offers. While we cannot know the future I am not seeing engineer without some significant intervention. I'm the one who does all the IEP correspondence, pays for the tutors, finds and pays for the advocates, while my child's father naively assumes everything will be just fine and does (and pays for) nothing. I feel so alone. I'm not looking for advice, I have an advocate helping me with his IEP. I just want to feel less alone.

When a PWN is required is sometimes state specific. So you might check your state department of education's website for a list of when they require PWN's (or just call). It is possible that they don't need to send you one until the change is put into the IEP document. A copy of the minutes should protect you from them withdrawing their proposals. But there are other things you could do. You could send an email outlining the proposals made and agreed to at the meeting in the guise of "hey, I just wanted to confirm what we spoke about on_____ since we're coming up on the annual meeting." You could also ask for a PWN showing the agreed to proposals (the worst they can do is say they don't have to do this).