HighSchoolParent

" what thoughts, feelings and emotions come up in IEP meetings themselves" Anxiety about my child's future as they fall further behind grade level. Worry about my child's self esteem as they work harder and harder to fall further behind. Worry that one day they will just give up trying. Anger that my child's disability symptoms are discussed as though they are character flaws. Frustration about being lied to (about my child's grades being inflated to deny services, laws being misrepresented to deny services) and not being able to think quickly enough or have the necessary facts on hand to refute the lies. Anger at having to scrape together the money for an advocate so the iep team will do what the federal government has already mandated them to do. And close on the heels is despair over educational inequity since hiring an advocate seems to be more and more necessary. A headache from the strain of remaining tactful and polite while monumental decisions are being made for my child by people who don't understand his condition or needs. Occasionally, relief and even cautious hopefulness when it seems like goals and supports are being put in place. This is usually short-lived as the supports don't manifest. And exhaustion because I rarely sleep well before an IEP meeting.

Thank you for your support, and sorry you are in this place also.

Thank you! If this were going to happen automatically I'd be a lot less stressed. I do have an advocate who can help me with this, I am just feeling overwhelmed but the amount of work and money required to get the most basic support.

I don't have advice, but just want to acknowledge how hard it is to parent a child that has needs other parents in our immediate circles don't share. For the mods/admins, is it possible to add parent support subforum. Not a place to ask for iep/504 advice because that is covered well in the rest of the forum, but a place to chat with parents whose kids have similar diagnoses and presentations, or just to say, wow today was really hard, that 3 hour iep meeting wore me out, ugh the only teacher in my child's school that understands him took a job in another district, and know the people reading can relate?

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.

I have heard some young people are able to get special education services until their early 20s? What exactly does this mean; is this just for those who need extended time to meet graduation requirements or are vocational and life skills services included in this? Can any person on a IEP get services until age 21 or is it just for certain categories or types of needs?

Thank you for this response, both the information about how your son's relatively lower VSI affects him and to trust my gut instincts. In my son's case, his VSI is both much lower than his other scores and objectively low (not in or anywhere near the average range). When I posted my question I was wondering if my school uses a WISC report template and the sentence minimizing the importance of the VSI was standard verbiage in that template. But that doesn't seem to be the case, and I haven't received a reply to my request to see the research. I'm reluctant to say any more here because I think I find/retain an advocate who can work with me directly on all my concerns with his IEP.

Thanks. I need to give some thought about how to handle this. It seems part of a larger issue of my child's school underestimating his struggles and not giving him adequate support.

I was looking over my child's WISC-V report and saw something that looked odd. The report described what each index measures, then my child's results. When describing the visual-spatial index it says that according to research, the visual-spatial index does not have a large role in academics. It seems odd to understate the importance of an entire WISC index. All of my research shows that it does play a large role in academics, especially in the upper grades. Is this a typical statement on a student's WISC report, or is it specific to my child's school?

I don't have advice to offer but I had to reply to your post because I am in an extremely similar situation and can relate to your disappointment with the school and concerns for your child. My son was identified at the end of 8th grade and is in 9th grade now. He is so far behind on some essential skills that I fear he may never catch up. I've spent thousands on tutoring (which I don't have, I took out a home equity loan). I am very glad you have a lawyer but am so sorry you need one.

I am not sure how old your son is, but at some point is does seem appropriate for him to take ownership of his organizational system so he can start internalizing strategies to use in higher grades and vocationally. I wonder if this is the intention here? It sounds like a further conversation is needed about what they mean by 'self monitor' and if he is at an age and stage where it is appropriate for him to be owning more of the organizational tasks. Disclosure: I am a parent, not an advocate or special ed teacher. This is just my opinion to be used if helpful or discarded if not.

Just trying to get a little more information here, I am still not certain what data could be used to show a need for more support in planning long writing assignments and mathematical problem solving.

On the WIAT his arithmetic scores were solidly in the average range so they determined there was no educational impact on math performance. There was no achievement testing for any other kind of math besides arithmetic. Is there a standardized assessment that would measure the kind of math high school students do? His WIAT essay score was was very low, but his overall language index score was average and they said they went by the overall score, not subscores. We pushed and they administered the TOWL-2, which his scored average to above average on. However, his actual writing in class is very disorganized and vague.

My son qualifies under OHI, but to get certain goals added to his IEP I need to show his disability has adverse impact on his performance in those areas. What kind of data is helpful for this? Classroom assessments? Standardized assessments? If he fails every test on a specific topic, but does well enough on other topics that he passes the class, can his passing grade be used to disprove educational impact? Specifically I think he needs goals in mathematical problem solving and organization of essays and research papers. I can see that he cannot do either of these things well and his grades on any assignment containing them are very poor (D's and F's), but he has enough other math and language arts skills that he can pass those classes.

A comprehensive list of every school in every state would probably be really hard and time consuming to create. I guess I am thinking more of a crowd sourcing thread where parents can share information about schools and programs they know about. There's a thread like that in College Confidential forum, but it is heavily high school based given the nature of the forum.

I know this forum focuses on the IEP and 504 process in public schools. Some of us aren't going to get our child's needs met through the public schools, either their needs are too specialized or the local school district's strategy to deal with the special education funding crisis is to deny services until parents are bled dry through through advocacy and due process costs. For parents who are receiving compensatory funds or have decided to use their resources on school tuition rather than legal fees, it would be really helpful to have a list of private schools and programs that specialize in educating students with disabilities or independent schools that provide learning support to students.

Update, I sent a short email asking for an amendment to change the descriptor category. Five days later I have had no reply. I am left wondering if this is big enough to email again and how hard I will have to work to get the mistake fixed. This is why I find the IEP process so exhausting. Even getting a factual error corrected is time consuming and difficult.

Thank you. I will do that. Sometimes I have a hard time knowing what to follow up on and what to let go, so I appreciate your confirmation that this is one to follow up on. I know the number is correct. The school psychologist wrote it and the correct descriptor in his report and we had a conversation about it in the meeting. The descriptor changed in the writing of the IEP.

I just noticed an error in my child's IEP. One of his WISC-V index scores is 78, which has a descriptive category of "very low." The school psychologist who did the evaluation wrote the correct descriptive category in her report, but everywhere in his IEP and diagnostic summary report, the descriptive category says "low average." Maybe it is a typo, but his school has a long history of denying his disability and this feels like more of the same. I wish I had noticed this before I signed his IEP, but I was focused more on his goals and accommodations. I try to keep my communication with the school to what is absolutely necessary. I don't want to nitpick every little thing, but this feels like a big thing. Should email them and ask them to correct it now, or wait for his renewal in a few months?