Navigating the Educational Maze: Empowering Parents of Special Needs Children Through Advocacy and Community | Ep13

Ever wondered how to choose the best educational setting for your special needs child and navigate the often daunting world of Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and 504 plans? Join Dr. Deanna Iverson as she empowers you with critical insights and practical advice to make informed decisions for your child's education journey. Discover the nuances of private, charter, and public schools, and learn how to identify institutions that may attempt to limit necessary accommodations. Dr. Iverson emphasizes your pivotal role in the IEP process and demonstrates effective collaboration strategies with your educational team to ensure your child's unique strengths and challenges are fully supported.

Effective communication with educators is essential for managing homework and school interactions, especially for children with special needs. Dr. Iverson shares invaluable strategies to build strong relationships with your child's school team, stressing the importance of collaboration over apologies for your child's behavior. You'll also gain insights on involving therapists and special education advocates, and understand why accommodations are not unfair advantages but essential tools for equal access to education. The power of appreciation in fostering positive relationships with educators and connecting with fellow special education parents is also highlighted, offering a supportive community to enhance your advocacy efforts. Tune in for actionable insights and heartwarming stories that will support you every step of the way.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This program is made possible by friends and partners of the Special Parent Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:05

I believe that empowering parents of special needs children is like giving them the superpower of unconditional love and unbreakable determination. They are not just parents, they are true champions, shaping a bright future for their incredible children. I'm Dr Deanna Iverson and I'm glad you're here. I'm Dr Deanna Iverson and I'm glad you're here. Welcome to the Special Parent Podcast. This is Dr Deanna Iverson, and I'm really glad that you're here with me today. Have you ever struggled to understand your child's IEP, which is your individual education plan, or know what your role is in the meeting? Well, I'm here to help you understand some pieces of that. There are many education options for your children that range from private schools, charter schools and public schools. I know for my son, my husband and I have toured several different schools to try to figure out what is the right place for him, what's going to help him grow and develop and thrive as a child and into being a young adult. In the future, I will be interviewing individuals from each of these areas to discuss how disabilities can be serviced in each setting, so please look for those upcoming episodes. The best schools out there may not be the best school or the best fit for your child, and that's based upon the needs that your child has. So we have to look at each school not for the merits that it offers everybody out there, and not for its achievements or its flags that it hangs on the wall. We need to look at what is this school going to do for my child?

Speaker 2: 1:44

Children with disabilities can receive services in the United States using what they call a 504 or an IEP, an individual education plan. This decision is individually based. It's based on the child's needs and the team of people that come together to make the decision. Both of these the 504 and the IEP provide accommodations and modifications. Please look for my episode on the specifics of 504s, ieps, their similarities, differences and your rights. That's going to be a separate one. So one thing to be aware of, though, as you're looking for schools, is any school that wants to have you come in and they want to do what we call a scrub of the IEP or the 504. In other words, they want to reduce it down. Oh well, you know what, we'll take care of things. Or oh no, no, we got you, don't need that in there. Anything that wants to do that is usually the best interest of the school and not the best interest of your child, so be careful and mindful of those and watch out for them.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Today's main topic is working with your educational team, understanding what it is that your role is as the parent in this IEP process. I'm going to talk a lot more about IEPs, but pretty much everything can be doubled as 504 talk to. There was a topic that was given in one of the books that I'm reading, the book called Everything. No One Tells you About Parenting a Disabled Child. One of the quotes in there is we may be paddling up the same river, but not in the same boat or paddling with the same equipment. This analogy basically means that your child can learn, all of our children can learn. It's what they learn, how they learn and how quickly or much they will learn. And each team member of your team is in this riverboat with you and they all bring something different, including you, mom, dad. You bring something very important to this role and to this team. Every person on the team has a different and valuable set of skills and knowledge to bring to the table. You. You are the expert on your child. They should be and I put that in quotes they should be the expert on services and academics. That's what the education team is for. They are for servicing your child's educational needs while accommodating for some health needs that they may also have. So if you're hearing impaired, if you even have restroom issues, if you have physical needs, they are part of all of that. Shoes, if you have physical needs, they are part of all of that. So, step number one come prepared to every meeting with a list of strengths and challenges that you perceive at home and at school.

Speaker 2: 4:36

Talk about, be prepared with specific examples about how homework or schoolwork or socially, your child is being impacted. So is homework a good or a bad thing in your house? How does it? How long do you take? What is your child acting like during it? For example, when my son brings homework home, he is very fixated In his mind. He knows exactly what the teacher told him to do and he is very fixated and he will insist on doing it his way, no matter how correct it is. He will insist on finishing it, even if he's been told to stop, because part of our agreement is he only works on homework for a certain amount of time and then he stops and whatever he got done they work with the next day. He won't stop, but then we end up him now having behavior problems as the night goes on. So we've had to tweak and adapt exactly what it means when homework comes home for him.

Speaker 2: 5:39

You are part of this team, so you bring this to the table. What does it look like at home for homework? When you talk about schoolwork, what do you hear and see and why? When you talk about social skills and social systems at school, what do you hear and see? So bring this as well as a list of strengths and challenges you're having to every meeting. How decisions and expectations are impacting the home environment is important for the school team to know.

Speaker 2: 6:09

Don't apologize. This is a hard one. I've had to do this before. Don't apologize for your child if they're challenging the teacher or any staff member. Emphasize this instead. I can see that this is frustrating for you and I will be talking to my child about it. How can we support each other with making changes? I know that sounds super uber political. However, you are working with this team and your child goes there every day to them, so your key number one goal is to keep that relationship tight.

Speaker 2: 6:43

There is no reason for you to apologize for your child's behavior, but there is a reason for you to say, hey, I recognize this behavior is causing frustration in the environment that he's in and I want to help you. However, I'm not at school with you, so what can we be doing here? What is it you need at school to be more successful? And then, how can I help from at home? Because sometimes, if we're not going to be there, there's not a lot that we can do to help even from the home environment, because things don't always carry over With special needs children. What happened in the morning at 10 am, getting punished in the evening at 5 pm is not going to be effective for a lot of children. So we have to make sure we communicate with the school about what the expectation is for them to tell us and then for us to do with it. So think about that. Another way to respond is I understand what you're saying and I definitely plan to talk to his therapist or his provider about strategies that I can do to help the school and home. Again, to help the school and home. Therapists and providers and doctors do have some suggestions that can help at school too.

Speaker 2: 7:57

I always would circle back if you know that there's a problem and you've said, hey, I'm going to check into something, I'm going to talk to my child. I would circle back with them within a few days to a week or two and say I have done the following how are things improving at school? Please let me know what you guys have done and what results you're seeing. If you feel emotional or struggle with communication with these educators, consider consulting an advocate. A friend or family member is a good person for you to talk to, but an advocate who's very familiar with special education laws and rights is or even a previous educator, is going to be on your team. They're going to know what it is the school can and cannot do, because sometimes the school will tell you they can't do something and that's because they don't want to. So they're going to tell you what the school can and cannot do. They're going to make sure to push for the things the school can do to help your child if that is in the best interest of your child. So if you're feeling emotional and you're struggling with your communication you're struggling to get what's best for your kid I highly suggest talking to a special ed advocate. I am going to have actually an upcoming episode where I interview an advocate. So please look for that episode and we'll be able to get you a lot more information on that.

Speaker 2: 9:17

Another tip on this one is it does help to see the SPED teacher as a human, just as you are as a parent. They're not perfect either. They're not going to make every decision. That's a hundred percent right. They have 15 plus kids in a classroom and they're trying to work for the special needs of every child. So when you can give them grace and another chance, sometimes it helps them stay more calm and work harder for your child because they feel that peace, that communication and that acceptance from you too. So that's a good place to start as you move along this path of working with educators. Another thing to think about I see this with a lot of educators that are more in the general ed population. They start seeing accommodations as extras or advantages.

Speaker 2: 10:03

We actually had during an IEP meeting. We actually had someone say to us well, if I give that to your son, how is that fair to the other children? I was really grateful in that moment for my SPED advocate, because I don't know if you've seen the movie where the anger guy and like fire comes out of his head and it's straight up and down. That was me. Fire was coming out of my head. I was like what? And my advocate just took over and it helps. It helps me not lose it and overreact and it helped the meeting flow that I had that advocate there.

Speaker 2: 10:44

Accommodations are not extra, accommodations are not advantages. Accommodations are there to provide equal access equal access to the curriculum and, yes, you're going to have to remind teachers of this. So sometimes, before we go into these IEP meetings, we might want to have like a little elevator talk about what accommodations and modifications really mean. And this is more seen if your child is in any general education classes. Maybe they're in co-talk classes or classes with a general ed teacher who hasn't been trained as much as to why children need accommodations and how those accommodations are helpful, not enabling they are helping. So just something to be prepared with.

Speaker 2: 11:27

Or it might be something that an elevator talk 30 second speech you want to have for the next time you're out and you're at a business dinner and someone mentioned something that might have happened. We've been at dinner with some friends and I mentioned, oh yeah, he needed extra time on that assignment and someone said, well, if you give him extra time, then doesn't that mean that he should have his grade taken off for that? And I was like, well, no, that's part of his accommodations. Well, everyone else didn't get extra time and I needed to be prepared and I wasn't in that moment because I didn't expect the conversation with friends, so expect it A little elevator speech on how accommodations are not an advantage, they're creating inequality, they're creating equity, and accommodations and modifications do that and we need to be ready to prepare.

Speaker 2: 12:22

We need to be prepared, excuse me, to educate others on how that happens. Any and all paperwork on your child is a living document, so keep that in mind. With IEPs and 504s is that if you had a meeting in September and something's not working, come November you can call another meeting and say I think we need to revisit this. We need to revisit this, we need to add an accommodation, we need to change something. We need to possibly even look at changing the way that the assignments are given to our child or the way that a certain teacher addresses our child, because that teacher is triggering and it shuts my child down or excites my child and causes them to explode. It is a living document. It is not set in stone and it can change as needed for your child.

Speaker 2: 13:15

So remember that you have the right to call another meeting, regardless of timing. All staff that work with your child should respect your child and your child's needs. As we as parents know, not all disabilities are obvious, and there's been many times with my older son that we have had someone say he doesn't look autistic. I'm like, well thanks, but I don't really know what autism looks like. It's not a look, it's behavioral and neurological. So let's talk about what that means. And that happens even with teachers. They can be doing well for a while and then something can trigger your child and they don't do well and the teacher goes well. They just have to learn to deal with that disappointment. Well, no, but there's something that happened that caused that. So it's not dealing with disappointment, it's dealing with a disability. So we have to sometimes help educate, and that can be exhausting I know I've done it. And then there are times that it can be ineffective if you don't have outside help, and that's why I highly suggest consulting an advocate. So here's some tips and tricks Before considering removing your child to any school, tour the school and come with specific questions related to your child.

Speaker 2: 14:35

Talk to them specifically about what is in the IEP 504 special education document. Be prepared to talk about your child's strengths and challenges during every single meeting. Bring your own list, but demand that out of others. A lot of times, when teachers start talking, they jump immediately to the things that are wrong or they go ditto that's what someone else said. Say, I would like to hear something good that's going on in your classroom and give me an example, please, of something, a way that you found works for him, something that worked. Or give me an example of something that's not working so I can help with that. Consider having a friend or an advocate help you communicate. This is one of the ones I love Believe 50% of what you hear and hopefully teachers will believe 50% of what they hear. We know that stories get mixed up in between. So when your child comes home with a story, start with okay, thank you so much for telling me that. And then go to the school and ask for their side of the story, without giving up too much of yours. Just ask for theirs, and then you can start to work out what's in between. Recognizing both parties in this are human and the partnership and keeping lines of communication open and respectful is what's going to be best for your child.

Speaker 2: 15:59

If you or the team want to try an intervention, go for it. Try it. Then, after a few weeks, meet again to reevaluate IEPs and 504s can be revisited as much as necessary. So make sure that if you think an intervention will be successful or help, or if the team does, even if you're not sure if it'll be helpful, let's try it and then say, okay, but I'd like to reconvene in three weeks or four weeks or whatever the timeframe is. That will work for checking and then we'll know if it's working.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Foster relationships with educators and all staff by spoiling them. I do advocate for spoiling them, even if you're not a fan of theirs, even if you don't feel that they've done the best in the world for your child. Sometimes just showing them that little bit of appreciation pushes them to work a little bit harder and they recognize and they remember that when the time comes. Finally, get to know other SPED parents, especially ones that attend the school that your child is going to go to.

Speaker 2: 17:00

We learn so much from each other's experiences as special needs parents. That is what we have. That is our gift to each other. Our experiences, our stories, our triumphs and our failures. These are our gifts to each other. We can learn from them and we can use them as stepping stones so that each interaction we have going forward gets a little bit better. Thank you so much for joining me today. As you've heard, there's going to be several more episodes about education and how we, as special needs parents, can learn what are the rights of our child and the differences of what's happening within that education system. So I look forward to seeing you again.

Speaker 1: 17:44

Please reach out on my website, specialparentorg and let me know if there is anything that you need. This program is made possible by friends and partners of the Special Parent Podcast. For more information and to join our mailing list, visit specialparentorg.