Tales From An IEP Meeting
I have two children: one who is typically developing,Wes, and one who has autism, Owen. I can count on one hand the number of parent/teacher conferences I’ve been to for Wes…Owen is a different story!
When a child has a disability or significant delays in more than one area of development, they are provided with an individualized education plan, or IEP. An IEP is a legal document that lays out the child’s level of functioning including their strengths and their areas of need. It’s intended to be a blueprint for how to address the child’s needs at school so that they can be the best version of themselves. An IEP lasts for one year and then it is reviewed and rewritten. IEPs are sometimes amended, the child is reevaluated every three years, transition planning occurs before big changes like a school move, and behavior plans are established. Bottom line, there are a lot of meetings between teachers and parents of children with special needs.
When Owen was little, and I first started navigating the special needs world, I was scared to death of IEP meetings. I had been on all of the blogs and websites that tell you how to prepare, and it was extremely intimidating. I was usually on my own as my husband was at work, and there are typically anywhere from four to eight people from the school in the meeting. That’s a lot for a parent to handle, particularly when they know their child may be struggling.
I don’t remember what year it was, first or second grade maybe, and Owen was spending time in a regular classroom for part of the day. It was his regular ed teacher who started the IEP meeting by sharing a paragraph Owen had written. It went something like this…
My teacher is Ms. ___________. She is a really good teacher. She teaches me lots of things, and she is very nice. And while she is overweight and clearly eats too much, she is my favorite teacher. – By Owen Nelson
Sorry. What?
I remember the teacher sitting there with a big smile on her face as I wanted to crawl under the school’s conference room table. What would she say? Would she tell me that he had no place in regular ed? Would she use it as an example of his social struggles? Nope. She said, “I think it’s great! It’s totally Owen! It’s a beautifully written paragraph, and I am so proud of him for writing it. And he’s right. I do eat too much.” You wanna talk about someone who was able to love Owen for who he is and see his strengths first!
As a teacher, I often think about this experience when I go into any parent/teacher meeting. I want parents of my kiddos to feel like I did when that teacher talked about Owen…not the embarrassment, of course, but the feeling that we are all on the same team and that we all love that child for the individual person they are becoming.
We have been so lucky to have teachers who truly care about Owen and want the very best for him. Sometimes, in the special needs community, there is a feeling of us vs. them, parents vs. schools. Some people will tell you that you have to fight for everything, and sometimes you do have to fight. As parents, we have to be the biggest advocates for our children, but I choose to believe that conflict is not the default setting.
Writer’s note: Please rest assured that we had a very long talk with Owen about why it is not okay to call someone overweight and tell them that they eat too much, well written or not.
