Keeping the emotions out of it.

You sit down to read an email from your child’s school only to discover they are dodging the issue, question, or situation with condescending language when suddenly you feel your own temper start to flare and are flooded with emotions, STOP! Do not hit the respond button. This rage we feel is our instinct when as parents we are seeing school agencies violating our children’s rights, but this reaction will not get you anywhere.  Unfortunately, emotions will not win the battle, but facts and the law will.

Its these types of moments I tell families to take a breath, step away from the laptops and reset. You must let the dust settle before you respond. This is also where knowing the law and your child’s rights are essential. If you “roar” back as the mama or papa bear, most likely your emails will be ignored. You must go back look at the issue or issues at hand and pull out the FACTUAL data not the emotion.  I know this is difficult especially when it comes to our children and their academic success, however this is what I like to call “The Politics of Education.”  Once you learn to play this game, and it is a game unfortunately, your voice as the parent becomes stronger. Knowing the rights your child is entitled to have under Federal Law IDEA not only forces these school agencies to take you a bit more seriously, but it gives you the parent confidence that trumps the emotions.  Write a draft of your email, have a friend, family member or advocate review it. (Many advocated will serve on a consultant type biases for this very thing.) Once this step is completed, THEN send your response.

Keeping the emotion out of correspondence is hard but essential. If you end up going the rout of state complaint, mediation, or due process, the players in those situations will not care about the emotions, they just want the facts.  Working with an advocate can help facilitate these types of correspondence especially when as the parent we are too upset to come across non-emotional.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading in NOT a natural process

Did you know that our brains are not born with the power to automatically start to read. Reading is not a natural process and therefore must be taught but taught correctly. For many years the approach to reading has been very basic, which explains why the learning process has been so difficult for so many young readers. Finally, more and more states and education agencies are stepping up their efforts and switching to more intensive reading instruction with a heavy base in phonics.   Typically, this scientifically based instruction is ideal for children with Dyslexia, however, this approach benefits ALL children.   Children would engage multiple senses in the learning process though sight, speech, touch, and sound to help imprint words into their brains.   Our school districts are slowing increasing their Dyslexia screeners, literacy instruction and teacher training. These programs have been shown to drastically improve the literacy rates of children across whole demogr...
Read more

Compensatory Services, Now what?

 Lately as families continue to see the repercussions of the Covid-19 closures and the impact on learning it had on their students,many of our school districts are granting Compensatory Services to families in hopes of recoup educational loss or discrepancies of being out of compliance of a child's IEP. Essential this is when a special education student is deprived of FAPE, a school district fails to identify a child with a disability, as well as failure to develop an appropriate IEP. But how does this works and how do you as the parent make sure the county holds true to their word and delivers these services to your child? First of all your child has to qualify for Comp Ed. Is there significant documented evidence of denial of FAPE for this student?  If so, you want to meet with your local education agency to discuss. The amount of Comp Ed is determined by Attendance Documentation,  IEEs, Evaluations Documentation of services delivered How far behind is the child How lon...
Read more

IEPs: Making Sure Parents Have All The Elements.

 Individualized Education Programs: A written statement for each child with a disability that is developed, reviewed, and revised  U.S.C 1414 (d) Fancy language for the most basic idea regarding a child's education program. What I mean by that is this document that has been carefully crafted by the team is specific PROGRAMING designed to support YOUR child with the disability, and not a generalized approach.  The programming is what has been selected though hopefully, scientifically based research to show that this will support the child and allow them to access the general education curriculum and help facilitate closing the educational gap.  This document must always contain your child's present levels through updated testing, CLEARLY identities your child's disability and how it impacts learning. The IEP must have MEASURABLE goals  and progress reports to show growth and mastery of these specially designed goals, as well as allow the child to have access to t...
Read more