Find out what the local ISD is like for children with special needs and work with the teachers
Will and Stevie’s first day of school, 2019.
“‘I love ARD meetings!’... said NO parent ever!”, laughter ensues. I am currently in the middle of the boys’ ARD meetings and the speech therapist, who has a fantastic sense of humor, replies to my comment. I smile and sigh with relief because I’m glad I have this kind of fun, yet professional, relationship with my sons’ teachers and therapists at their school.
ARD stands for “Admission, Review and Dismissal”, and it is the term specifically used in Texas; in the rest of the states, these meetings are called IEP meetings. These are federally mandated meetings to review the IEP, Individualized Education Plan, to ensure that all parties involved in the education of the student are in agreement with the services that will be provided to the student. The hope is to provide children with special needs all the necessary accommodations that will allow them to perform to the best of their abilities alongside their non-disabled peers. The IEP is the goals set for the student for the academic school year by those present at the meeting. These can range from specific abilities within an academic subject, like “the student will be able to answer basic reading comprehension questions such as characters, setting, problem and solution in 4 out of 5 trials”, to behavioral ones, like “when given a non-preferred task/activity, the student will begin the task within 3 prompts, in 4 out of 5 trials per day over 3 consecutive data collection days.”
These meetings are attended by the student’s general education teacher, special education teacher, the school’s diagnostician, the school’s psychologist, the school’s principal or assistant principal and the parents are invited to participate, but are not required to be there, interestingly enough; however it is required that they be invited by the school. If the proposed meeting time does not suit the parents, they then have the option to reschedule the meeting, participate in the meeting by phone, or the parents can give permission to the school to have the meeting without them (however, I absolutely highly recommend you to find a way to be there. You are your child’s best advocate). It is required to have the ARD (or IEP) meeting once a year, but you as a parent, as well as the teachers, can ask for another meeting to help the student as issues arise for him or her.
We did quite a bit of research while looking for the best independent school district in the area. We found a few, mostly in the suburbs, and settled on one because of its central location as well as their reputation for being a good district for special needs students. However, when you get down to it, it really is all about the teachers and staff, and how the students respond to them. Finding the right district for your family gets you halfway there.
In order to understand how to navigate this world, we all need to be trained on how it operates. I find that our schoolteachers are our treasures because they have decided to take it upon themselves to train the next generation. We as a society decided to outsource this part of child development. We standardized it among public schools with the hopes of providing a free and complete education for all in order to move society forward.
To make the beautiful journey that is the education of the next generation a fruitful one, requires us, the parents, to be in a relationship with all the teachers and staff that interact with our children. They need us as much as we need them.
Having been blessed to be a teacher for 15 years and a mother for almost 10, I can say with full authority that I understand both parents and teachers alike:
The parent has to provide the basic necessities for the child, life lessons, the ways of being in the world, and unconditional love. We are always hoping we are saying and doing the right things, and that the children will receive and understand those messages in the way we meant them. I always think back of the moment when they gave us Will at the hospital and told us it was time to go home. “Aren’t you coming with us?”, I asked the nurse. She laughed, of course. But I was scared. How was I, me, Nicole, supposed to raise this child to be a good, upstanding citizen of the world? Nobody gives you the parenting manual, which is mind boggling when you think of how important the formative years are. All you have is how you remember being raised, those things that you feel your parents did right. But what if there are other ways, more effective ones, of raising a child? And by the way, if you have a spouse from a different cultural and religious background, get ready for those conversations. Whatever you thought you and your spouse could live with in each other is deeply challenged when you decided how to raise your children.
The teacher has a lot of the same basic requirements like the parent except he or she has to teach to a group. The teacher has to have good class management, a deep understanding of the subject matter and a working knowledge of the level of ability of all her or his students. He or she is in charge of forming other set of skills and behaviors for the set amount of time they have with the students. They also have to build a rapport with each other to facilitate this learning, which takes practice and finesse.
The students have to listen to and respect the teacher. The students’ role is to meet the teacher at the lesson, by receiving the knowledge, assimilating it and truly learning the subject matter for their own sake (something students don’t tend to appreciate until maturity sets in).
Hopefully, both the teacher and the students enjoy this process.
If everybody is feeling their best, at school and at home, everyone will most likely be compassionate, caring and non-judgmental toward each other. They will be good stewards and help each other as they learn throughout the day.
However, there are days when this is not the case. We are all going through something at any given moment in time. Sometimes the parents are sick, sometimes the kids are tired, sometimes the teachers are exhausted. Some have family members battling cancer, others are battling it themselves. Etc. Life is in session for everyone.
Therefore, if we all provide space for all of us to BE, understanding will come naturally.
When I speak to our teachers and staff during our ARD meetings, I keep all of this in mind. The teachers want to help my children, and not just mine, but all the children they serve. It is one of their responsibilities, one which most teachers take seriously before becoming a teacher. However, they are human, dealing with many other humans, all in development. As a parent, it is my responsibility to work well with my boys’ teachers. So I approach every meeting with an open mind, gratitude, kindness, compassion and space for us all to have a candid discussion from a place of caring and clarity.
Because of this, developing excellent communication skills has been a sort of requirement in our everyday life. It can be very easy for our emotions and fears to get lost in translation, so I make sure to be as transparent as possible.
If I feel like I cannot communicate clearly, writing down what I would like to discuss at the meeting can be priceless. If necessary, I ask for help. Sometimes it is in humbling ourselves and risking sounding “ignorant” in front of others, we can get a better solution than we thought possible. There have been so many times that I have had to ask people to “please explain this to me as if I’m a 5 year-old”. It is not necessarily a fun experience, especially in situations where you want to be seen like you’re in control, “I’m the parent, right? I should know better what to do with my child”, but it is effective.
We all need to follow the same advice we give to our children, especially in emotionally charged meetings like these:
· Be kind.
· Speak with sweetness.
· Be grateful.
· Listen without judgment.
· Speak your truth.
· Concentrate on the wins.
· See the challenges as just that: an occasion to which we can rise, not to “win-over” someone else. The challenge is not just the child’s, but ours, the whole village of support.
· Own your power and you’ll never feel the victim. Nobody can offend you when you know who you are. You have nothing to prove.
If you happen to be dealing with a group of teachers and staff that are not open to a discussion of this sort… win them over with kindness. They might have some old wound that is being triggered by something you said or the situation itself. You still need them on your and your child’s side.
If you do need to place a complaint about something, make sure you come prepared with a solution or a series of questions that can uncover a solution with everyone in the room. Tell the teachers what works and what doesn’t work with your child at home. This is the excellent opportunity to share those secrets with each other.
An example:
Stevie was having a tough morning and did not want to go into school but we were in the car line. I was starting to get upset and annoyed at the whole situation, but I remembered what it was like as a child those days when I didn’t want to go to school. I had to practice compassion with him.
I pulled up the car out of the car line, and got out with him while one of the teachers was patiently waiting to take him inside to class. Stevie responds well to tactile input. So to help him breathe through his sadness and anger, I put my finger to the tip of his nose, and as I traced it upwards to the top of his head, I said “Inhale”, and as I traced the finger back, I said “Exhale”. After doing this three times, he was ready for a big hug and feeling much better. He was able to say goodbye with satisfaction, and that afternoon I was told he had a great day at school. The teacher that was patiently waiting to take Stevie in that morning told me she was stealing the technique and using it on other kids.
What’s funny is that I had recently discovered that technique at home with Stevie because he was having a melt down and me breathing in front of him was not working. Something told me to put my hand on his nose and he immediately started to shift his awareness to his body instead of the anger he had been sitting in. We were being open to creativity in an emotionally charged environment and it worked. I now had a new tool in my Stevie toolbox that I could share with everyone that worked with him. To this day, I’ll put my finger on his nose to remind him to breathe. It doesn’t work all the time, but it is a tool we still have at our disposal.
In the end, one of the hardest truths a parent will ever need to cope with, especially one with a special needs child, is that their child will have to live independently. They will have their own lives, making their own decisions, impacting people around them and others impacting them. All we can do as parents is what I tell my oldest child:
I am training you to be in the world. You WILL live without us, and you will make choices that will have consequences. While you exist in this world, to be understood and to understand others, you need to know the rules of it, its culture (or cultures). In order to bend, or even break, the rules later in life, you need to know what those rules are first.
I want him to understand people’s boundaries and to respect them when they say “no”. I want him to learn how to follow directions, and understand that there are certain societal norms to be followed. This will help him succeed in advocating for himself and living that full independent life I want him to have. But…I also don’t want him to take “no” for an answer in cases where he can find a solution. This is what I mean when I say that to “bend the rules… you need to know what they are first”. Instead, I want him to have the creativity to choose something else, something no one else has chosen before, and create a completely different way of being or doing. This is where his own individual uniqueness can be his super power. His genius lies in the way he sees the world and I definitely do not want to snuff that flame out. This is true for all of us.
It’s about us as parents being involved in a balanced way. We don’t do too much or too little. We are there for them, but it is their life. They are not ours. They come through us. All we can do is train them the best way we can for the life they choose to have.