IEP – The Meeting Finally!!!!

So we finally went to the meeting for my daughters IEP. It has been about a month since I last wrote about it but I was absolutely shocked at the fact of how the teachers would not take responsibility for their actions. It seems as though they were trying to blame everything on my daughter and the fact that she has a disability but, without saying it because obviously they can’t. The IEP meeting started with reading her goals and it was funny because they started doing all of these assessment tests to try to show that my daughter was making a lot of progress. I of course have been monitoring my daughters education and I have a tutor working with her and I’m working with her on skills as well so the progress that they showed me was what I already knew. They essentially sat across the table and didn’t really care to hear what I had to say and thought that I was being the big bad wolf because I was demanding for certain things to be in force that are already in my daughters IEP.

Even though my daughter IEP states her deficits the school is not doing anything to accommodate that. For example, my daughter took a test the had fractions on it and they graded her off of this test however when she did not get any of them right they felt she should have since it was a fourth grade skill although they haven’t went over it this year. Now I agree that my daughter has to do her part but if your daughter has BIF (Borderline Intellectual Functioning) and ADHD she is very forgetful and that even include skills and it’s hard for them to learn new skills and concepts. I don’t understand why they would have not gone over it with her before they decided to give her a test in which she failed. It infuriates me over the fact that the school system put so much pressure on the parents to produce something that they can’t produce. I can’t make my child any smarter any quicker but what I can do is continue to work with her on skills and hopefully she will pick up on some of the habits.After the IEP meeting they sent over the meeting notes and wrote the parent concerns in such a way as though they the teachers were not doing anything wrong but I guess I should have knew that. I of course was not happy with that so I asked for them to rewrite the IEP amendment along with all the notes and comments that everybody discuss when we were at the meeting.

This made them even madder at me because I will not accept what they want to give me and I’m not going to let them put something in my daughter’s file that’s not reading the right way. Dealing with the school much less the special education system can leave you drained and tired but we must not give up on our children. It is our responsibility to make the school provide the services that they need to provide for our children with disabilities. On the other hand even though our children have disabilities is their responsibility to do the best they can to advocate for the education too. I told my daughter that if you knew that you were having trouble with something and you didn’t tell your teacher you are not doing your part at the student.

I teach my daughter to advocate for herself while she’s at school and that’s my expectations for her. I know she’s a child but she must learn that this is her education and I’m there to support her to continue to grow and flourish but she too has responsibility. Hopefully I can get this all resolved and wrapped up this week so that I can move forward. However I know that it’s going to be a long battle dealing with the special education department for my child so I guess there’s no rest for the weary!

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