The Grim Reaper takes a break to ensure his safety while the ill-prepared firefighter keeps his distance just in case
(originally posted 10/2015)
A couple of years ago I was coordinating a party for my child’s 4th grade classroom. 20% of that classroom had food allergies. I gently reminded parents the goal was for all children to be included, be safe and have fun. I was perplexed when one parent refused to change a cookie decorating idea which did not meet these basic criteria.
“Kids who can’t make or eat them can at least enjoy them for how cute they are!”
In what I believed was a teachable moment, I reminded her this still excluded a fifth of the class and also created a potentially dangerous situation. This parent became so incensed that she quit the committee. While I still get as excited about Halloween as the next guy, I was horrified as one of those children was mine.
Another parent was willing to not only exclude him, but risk his safety because she was so excited about her adorable cookie project.
Halloween has become the holiday where those children with differences become the most exposed and have the potential to be the most left out. The numbers of children with food allergies and other differences have risen sharply since I was a child. As a parent with kids with food issues and also autism, it took me many years to figure out ways how to adapt the most super-fun holiday so it was still fun. Turns out, there are lots of ways to do this both as parents and as community members.
Here are some of the top ideas for the “BIG 3” to make Halloween still the coolest holiday ever
1. FOOD ALLERGIES:
a. PARENTS: Sort out the candy with your child to teach his what is ok to eat. Have the “SWITCH WITCH” visit later that night and exchange that bag of candy full of offending allergens with a present. Your child will be thrilled to have the best of both worlds. And hey, there is no rule that says the switch witch can’t give you that bag to stash away and secretly eat after the kids are asleep.
b. SUPPORTERS: If you paint a pumpkin teal and have it on your front porch it will alert parents of kids with food allergies that you have an allergen alternative available. If you are planning a class party, ASK about allergens—be sure to ask about brand specifics and preparation—that can all play a role in safety. Please remember what it would be like to be 8 years old where everyone gets to eat really cool looking cupcakes except for you. If that were easy to do, none of us would ever be on a diet. The willpower of a child with a food allergy is like nothing most of us can ever understand.
2. SENSORY DIFFERENCES
a. PARENTS: Respect your child’s sensory difference. If noise is an issue, avoid those homes that go all out for Halloween. Your child might be in for a “jump scare” that will end his evening of fun. Costumes are not always made out of the finest of materials. Have him choose his own and try a number of options until one feels right. Contact your local support groups for special needs—there may be sensitive Trunk or Treat nights available which may suit your child much better.
b. SUPPORTERS: Teachers and room parents—if you have children with special needs in your class, tone down the scary a bit. Spooky music should not be on full blast and the mulling around of 25 kids in costume might be disorienting. Have a quiet space outside of the classroom where the child knows he can go to escape if overwhelmed. And for Pete’s sake NO BALLOON POPPING ACTIVITIES OR STROBE LIGHTS!
3. AUTISM
a. PARENTS: Create visuals to help your child understand what to expect at school parties or trick or treat. Try on the costume ahead of time. If your child does not want to participate in Halloween festivities, don’t force them. Throw a small party at your house with old school fun and invite 2 or 3 children he knows for trick or treating. Stick to familiar neighbors homes and buddy up with a child who can model. Sometimes “just a hat” IS a costume with enough thinking on the fly.
Freddy Krueger as a child…before all the drama. He just wanted to feed everyone cereal and soup.
b. SUPPORTERS: If a child does not say “trick or treat” or “ thank-you” he may not be being rude. He may not be able to speak or fully understand what is expected of him. Same goes for a child who appears too large or too old for trick or treating. If a child grabs a handful of candy or doesn’t seem to know what to do when you hold the bowl out, give them a prompt of what to do or physically help them. Their fine motor skills may be impaired and the ability to just pick one or two candies from a dish might be difficult. Still compliment an aspect of their costume even if it seems incomplete. This is still their Halloween too!
The anticipation of Halloween is still timeless. As a parent, I find myself still caught up in creating spooky Pinterest fails and contemplating what candy I can pilfer from my child’s treat bag without him noticing. Some costumes are so realistically scary that I am not certain my red meat consumption hasn’t finally caught up with me and am opening my door to the actual Grim Reaper himself. There is a revolving door of Elsas and Harry Potters who could just very likely just be the same child over and over again capitalizing on those homes with full sized candy bars.
Those of us who try to make our kids feel included no matter what can get very good at scooping up the world around, tying it in a different bow and re-presenting it to our kids and Halloween is no different. With the help of our community, little tweaks can make all the difference between Halloween being fun or being truly scary.
My brother and I were sitting on the couch chatting about politics last winter when I showed him a segment from the Daily Show. It was a humor bit about calling a Wyoming elementary school to find out if they had a gun in the event of grizzlies. There was a laugh track and a brief photo of a gun, so it was odd to me when A2 gasped loudly, stood up from the couch waving his hands and both tearfully and fearfully begging, “No gun! No! Shoot, no!”
We are not hunters nor are we gun enthusiasts and neither are my friends. As far as I know, A2 has never seen a gun in person or on TV, given 100% of his viewing includes Barney, The Wiggles and NBA. He has never heard a gun shot. Neither he nor his brother ever pretended things were guns. He has been known to blow some zombie pirates away gleefully at Chuck E. Cheese, but those are not even guns.
I reached for him to comfort. He pulled away and continued to plead “no!”
A2’s language disorder renders him without the ability to elaborate and his anxiety rendered him without the ability to say much of anything as he stifled tears. I was perplexed.
The next time I saw his Intervention Specialist, I asked her how they handle lock down at school since I grew up when there were only tornado or fire drills. I literally have no concept of what they do. She informed me they tell the kids it is in case there is someone in the school who should not be. No mentions of guns or lack of personal safety, she assured me.
Fast forward one month.
While visiting my mother out of town, A2 was playing in the bathtub when suddenly he became very quiet. After staring off for a few moments, he pointed and gasped ” No. Shoot. No. Boom!” I tried to follow his gaze, when I saw this….
What in the world is “No shoot boom?!”
Apparently, the item of concern was the bottom of an electric toothbrush and he would not get out of the tub until I removed it from the bathroom.
Upon further inspection
My child who has no experience with violence or guns knows what a gun barrel pointing in his direction looks like. He knows he should be afraid. And he clearly was now on two very different occasions.
I HAVE NO IDEA WHY.
He is never, ever alone with an adult we don’t know well, generally not even family. His aides are almost always supervised.
There is only one place it is possible. This meant we would have to question the people at the place he spends the most time and we are to have the most trust. The ONLY place where he has potential to be alone with adults without us.
How in the world does one even go about doing that without placing the teachers, therapists and paraprofessionals in a position of not only defensiveness, but of questioning your motives or your sanity as a parent. A2 went 11 years with no mention of guns let alone a knowledge and fear of them. We had no other option than to ask because we don’t have the option of taking anything for granted in our world.
What is the worst case scenario you can imagine for your own child?
Those of us with anxious personalities can come up with a bevy of outrageous ideas when it comes to our child’s safety. However, let me assure you, when you have a child who cannot tell you anything while paired with the knowledge they will likely outlive you, you don’t have to have to be Type A, neurotic, high-maintenance, helicopter or any other of the words that may be assigned to you behind a closed lounge door by people who don’t truly understand the fears of every single parent of a child with a disability. We send our kids out into the world as a leap of faith in their teachers, therapists and caregivers. And we also have no choice but to accept whatever the answers are when they have nothing solid to give us in moments like this.
I have worried about many things throughout A2’s life, but gun violence/gun safety has been super low on the list of worries that keep me up at night. (Let that one sink in for a minute….). Almost more so than my frenzied concern over where A2 might have gained this new-found awareness was my sadness in knowing something stole a level of innocence from his blissful naivite about how the world works. We don’t have difficult discussions in the way my friends do with their children when they show up wide-eyed and fearful about confusing and upsetting events of the world around us. So many things that we as adults keep our fingers crossed behind our backs as we reassure them they are safe, hoping with all our souls we are right. I have assumed because A2 has not seen hurricane devastation up close and personal, cannot conceptualize a mushroom cloud and has never seen an automatic weapon mow down 500 people while enjoying themselves at a concert that he does not contemplate or worry about his own safety in these ways. That the things that fill his iPad with cartoon characters and songs about fruit salad are all he should worry about. Man alive…I am pretty sure I was wrong. Maybe the belief this is true is to protect my psyche, not his.
I have to take my best guesses as far as what my child does and doesn’t understand about the world. I also have to take my best guesses as to how he is affected by those things. It’s not wrong for me to shelter my tween from guns. For us, there is no meaningful teaching of gun safety or exposure that doesn’t end in a loop of doing it wrong somehow. The stern warning of “STOP! DON’T TOUCH! LEAVE THE AREA! GET AN ADULT!” is a useless four-step command since my child can only follow a two-step with any regularity. He certainly doesn’t have the fine motor skills to learn the power and healthy respect a gun commands under adult supervision at the shooting range.
So according to the professionals, my non-dangerously-mentally-ill kid (who does not have an aggressive or hateful bone in his body) who can technically have a gun just like everyone else when he is 18, can’t be taught how to handle it carefully, how to shoot it or when to use it, yet I am to expose him to firearms in a way that won’t frighten him and also so he knows they are not toys and won’t pick them up. I would very much like the manual on how to do that.
There are 300 million guns in the US. It sounds like my child has seen one of them in a way that caused him a great deal of upset and anxiety and how that happened will likely always remain a mystery. We have dulled our senses and turned down the volume on what we are willing to accept as normal here. And this uncomfortable truth will eventually spill over onto my beautiful boy who can never tell me what happened.
This tower is 4 years total of educational paper work for 2 kids and represents approximately over 300 hours of meetings, evaluations, reading and combing over data….JUST AS THE PARENT
(originally posted 9/2016)
I is for IEP, IDEA and Inclusion.
These three “I” words have forever changed me as a person.
If you have a child in special education, you probably just had a shiver run down your spine just by reading those acronyms in print and may be thinking the same thing. All of these things serve as a blessing and a curse to our kids and also to the educators and administration serving them. Back in the day, the Individuals with Disability Act (IDEA) was enacted to refine and replace what few laws there were to protect children with disabilities within the education system. It was meant to also focus more on the individual rather than on the disability itself. IDEA has been re-written several times since 1990. There are several things it does both in a good way and also in not such a good way:
FAPE: It provides a free and appropriate public education to all kids regardless of disability at public expense. The key word here being APPROPRIATE. The downside: There is a pretty decent chance that what you and your child’s test scores say and what you know is appropriate will be very different than what the district thinks is appropriate. And most likely because of that other key word….FREE.
EVALUATIONS: This law makes sure children with disabilities are evaluated in a way that makes sense. We don’t want to use one specific test to decide if a child needs special education services. Not only is discrimination prevented, ideally these evaluations serve as a tool to know exactly what they will need educationally. The downside: Evaluations are only as good as the people trained to administer them and only as good as the educator who can recognize an issue in the first place.
Individualized Education Program (IEP): These are legal documents that establish goals, accommodations and modifications to the general curriculum and access to qualified professionals to ensure a child with a disability is learning at the right pace and to his ability within their environment. These plans level the educational playing field for those with a disability. The heart of special education. There are 13 categories under which a child may qualify: specific learning disability, speech and language impairment, blindness, deafness, hearing impairment, visual impairment, orthopedic impairment, traumatic brain injury, autism, multiple disability, other health impairments, emotional disturbance, intellectual disability, The downside: Because they are legal documents and may be audited and are monitored on a quarterly basis, educators may have a very high self-preservation incentive to make certain your child is meeting his goals….at least on paper. The more savvy the parent, the more tricky this can become.
LEAST RESTRICTIVE ENVIRONMENT (LRE): This ensures your child is placed in an environment that meets his needs as independently as possible in an educational setting that is appropriate for him. The goal is to work toward the LRE. The downside: For those of us with kiddos with Autism or executive functioning issues, this is not always cut and dry. Especially those without intellectual impairment but perhaps have a language disorder or another issue which may stand in the way of independence. An emerging issue in the field is for those kids who are considered “twice exceptional”, such those who are intellectually gifted but with severe behavioral issues. And what does “least restrictive” mean anyway? My kid who needs 1:1 to learn can totally sit in a regular classroom to do that. However, I believe educators interpret LRE to mean that he be in a contained classroom without a 1:1 because then he might have more physical independence in that room. Who is right?
PROCEDURAL SAFEGUARDS: Protections for your child…..protections for you as a parent. Because of IDEA, there are procedural safeguards in place to make certain your child is receiving the services the school says they will provide and a protocol to follow if you believe they are not. Additionally, these protections allow for parent participation and child participation as equal members of the child’s school team. The downside: Let’s face it. If you are not an educator or even know where to go to get what you need, you will never be an equal member of your child’s team. Procedural safeguards and parent participation are ultimately only as good as the questions you know to ask, as your attorney and as your bank account. The catch-22 if you do live in a very good school district? There is a good chance that anything that goes to due process is going to take a LOOOONNNNNGGG time. And think about that for a second. If there is a FAPE violation and it works its way all the way up to a due process hearing doesn’t that seem counterintuitive for your school district to allow little old you to go to court with them? Wouldn’t it make more sense to fix the problem since it would be much cheaper and less time consuming to do so? It’s not. At least not to them, because no matter how much the district doesn’t want to throw money at something, they can still probably afford to pay a better attorney for much longer than you can. And besides, the year and a half it could take…perhaps that child won’t need what it was you were asking for by then. Or worse, make your life complicated enough that you will have to back off and not follow through. That seems like a pretty good gamble for a district. It also doesn’t set a standard for other families to ask for the same.
The last 25 years have been interesting ones for the education system as a whole. When the parents who walked before us clawed and fought and struggled for these laws it was at a time before the internet, before all the revisions, before standardized testing existed in the way it did, before No Child Left Behind and before Autism was 1:68. IDEA is necessary no matter how you slice it, however it exists in a very different system than it did in 1990.
At this point I know a lot of the law like the back of my hand and the parts I don’t know, I am now educated on how to find those rules.
I have a list of socio-emotional goals for almost every developmental issue at my finger tips and I have an entire community of people going through the same struggles I am at the click of a button day and night. All of this has been achieved through this tiny-huge world we have online.
I know exactly the gap closure between special education kids and regular ed kids, not only for my district, but for my child’s school.
I know the 6 payment tiers that exist and the formula used to calculate how much extra funding my district receives for each of my kids for using special education services.
I know what belongs where on all 13 sections of the IEP and how to make a goal measurable.
And I know when I am being BS-ed.
I don’t know all of this because of my training…I know it because I live in 2016 and any parent with a computer and the desire can learn the same.
In 1990, my school district certainly was not expecting 1 out of every 6 children attending (or 15%) to have some sort of developmental disability or for the Autism rates to be 600% higher. My child’s elementary school currently has about 700 students and about 100 IEPs (last I heard)–all while serving about 29% of their students as English as a Second Language with limited proficiency. Teachers are stretched thin. Inclusion and LRE are so important for our kids future, yet most regular education teachers were not taught the basics on how to include and teach special ed kids in differentiated instruction or how to manage a classroom where there are multiple children with conflicting accommodations. (ie: When Johnny gets stressed, he can crumple paper…but Jimmy’s auditory sensory integration issues make it impossible to keep it together when he hears paper crumpling….). Parents are communicating, educated and knowing the legal hoops to jump through if their children’s rights are being violated. It is a system that cannot hold itself up and still serve our most vulnerable children to be the most successful they can be. Parents…please keep fighting for your kids. Please keep learning everything you can. Educators…please do the same. I do not have the answer. I am just hopeful it is found before my children have to move on from the “protective bubble” of IDEA and there are no grown up IEPs.
My home phone rang the other day right before my kids got home from school.
For those of you who do not know what I mean by “home phone”, its that thing that plugs into a wall and has the # symbol that cannot hashtag anything. When the home phone rings, I typically keep doing whatever I am doing unless I am feeling a bit of whimsy to torment . The only other time it rings is when someone at the school does not know to call my cell–which often then strikes fear in my heart. So I picked up.
“Mrs. ATeam?”
Gulp.
It was A1’s new science teacher calling to say, “First of all….let me tell you I think he is hilarious. He made this cartoon strip ….”
He then went on to disclose all the other things drenched in awesomeness while I was waiting for the “Second of all….” part. That part never came.
He called me to tell me I had a cool kid. And that was it.
I am already too experienced with the school system to be naive. That same morning I had to send an email to kindly remind another teacher to carefully review A1’s IEP and Health Plan as there were some important things not being followed. Coincidence to hear from the science teacher the same day? Probably not. I am guessing he may have just been reminded that he had a kid in his 4th period class who has an IEP and a Health Plan. Maybe not, but as I suggested being doe-eyed does not work as well with crows feet.
Unfortunately, what struck me most about this amazing phone call is that in the 3 years that my younger child has been in public school–my very speech impaired child–I have never ONCE received a phone call from a regular ed teacher just to tell me about his day in their class. There are two things you need to know:
1. He tries to tell me about his day. Every day. And without context, we cannot understand what he is trying to tell us.
2. I have ASKED for this type of communication from regular ed. Over and over. Every year. In front of other people. To almost no avail.
So, regular education teachers, this advice is completely free of charge. The key to keeping us special ed parents at bay.
1. CONTACT US FIRST: Before school even starts, call to introduce yourself and ask about our kid. Give us your contact information. Assure us you are the extra eyes and ears for a kid who has no voice.
2. DON’T ASSUME THE INTERVENTION SPECIALIST IS JUST TELLING US EVERYTHING. My kid has a whole 30-60 minutes a day of direct intervention specialist time required in his IEP in our high-end-award-winning-district. My severely learning disabled child with a severe speech disorder. The paraprofessionals who are with him most of the day are not permitted to communicate with me directly due to their classified employee status. We often get second hand info from our IS that sounds something like “had a great time in music class learning new songs” likely because that is all SHE gets told. The small tidbits we do get…well, that’s ALL we get to know. The nuances are never there for us. We don’t get to hear if they are making a new friend, if someone hurt their feelings, or if they liked something they learned about. And those things are definitely happening in my child’s world. No matter how hard he may try to share those things with me, if I have no context, I will not know at all what he is telling me let alone what questions to ask. The paras also are not allowed to attend IEP meetings even at my request. Were you aware of any of that? A2’s Intervention Specialist has 10 kids who can’t tell their parents anything about their day.
She is ALL of their voices….and she is trying very hard to be all knowing by being the 3rd party communicator. But why?
This is a team approach. While you do have 25 kids in your room, if they are lucky and have parents who actually ask them about their day, their kids can tell them. You have so much you can tell us and I guarantee all of us want to know.
3. INVITE US IN: To volunteer, to be a fly on the wall, to talk about our kids to your class. Did you know that neither you nor any of his other caregivers during the day are allowed to divulge any information regarding our child’s diagnoses to the other children due to HIPAA**? And there are SO many questions from children aren’t there? If you have an inclusive classroom, the information a parent can provide the children can be invaluable to the inclusive environment. Offer to include the IS to help that parent if they express interest but are uncomfortable.
**IMPORTANT DISTINCTION: FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) any information that is directory information is ok to give out. So If a parent is asking for another child’s last name or to get in touch with another family, that is not confidential information if the family did not opt out of directory information. You just can’t tell us the child is on an IEP or anything regarding diagnosis.
4. RECOGNIZE WE UNDERSTAND YOU ARE BUSY: We are not to have a “gotcha” moment. I cannot imagine being a teacher right now. Huge classloads, jobs dependent upon test scores that are dependent on more than just your ability, differentiated instruction, outliers flying under the radar, helicopter parents, uninvolved parents. A 10 minute phone call once a month to tell us something we wouldn’t know without your call us huge for us. If you do that once a month without fail you will likely rarely hear from us. But your principal will almost definitely hear from us. To hear how awesome you are.
5. INCLUSION AND INTEGRATION ARE DIFFERENT: This doesn’t mean let a special ed kid also have a desk and have peers help him hang up his backpack (though we recognize the value in that too). I mean if you take a picture of our kids to put on a bulletin board, make sure it is a good one like everyone else. If you are reading to the class and you ask a question the other kids can answer, figure out a way to ask a question that could include our kids’ ability to answer. While you have kids who can fall through the cracks, ours have absolutely no way to mountain climb out of those crevices without you. I am sure like us you don’t want them just to be a warm body at another desk. Ask their IS for strategies–that is why they are there.
BONUS #6 also at no charge: THE MOST DIFFICULT PARENTS ARE LIKELY YOUR BIGGEST ALLIES: Yep. We are the wave makers, the getter-doners. We figure out what you want and need and we try to get it for you especially if it will benefit our kids. Sometimes you don’t even need to tell us what that is. We figure it out. Assume nothing regarding our motivations.
For those of you who went into regular education vs. special education–those days are long gone. Inclusion is not just the responsibility of your Intervention Specialists. Much like us parents of kids with special needs…we started out in the exact same place as all the other parents in your room. Maybe even as you did too as a parent. Our journey veered off years ago but the desire to get to know the same thing we would have if everything turned out as expected has not.
The nights you rise up out of your bed and wander our dusty floors? Are you looking for something you cherished for a moment in that mysterious place between the consciousness of dream and the awareness of waking?
Are you on an enchanted night walk floating through a maze of fireflies and bubbles unaware of the world that holds you back?
Could you be lost navigating the spooky hallway forest, familiar and friendly when the path is lit by the morning sun?
What do you dream about sweet boy?
Those nights your shriek summons me like the siren’s song to find you swimming in your twisted sheets? My soft words are not your anchor. You push me away from the helm with your kicks and punches as if resisting being dragged to the bottom of the sea by the mighty whale you have have come to exact revenge.
How do I teach you to breathe when you emerge from the black water instead of screaming?
You wake gasping for air.
What do you dream about sweet boy?
When you sit bolt upright rubbing the glitter of sleep deeper into your eyes with the fists that once fit in the palm of my hand? You rise with a dreamy smile that does not release either of us until you snuggle in as close as you can. It is how you summon the halcyon to create the calm winds that smooth the waves.
You drift safely on your back.
Do you know you dream sweet boy?
Can you separate day from night? Do your lost words in the light morph into the demons in the dark who suck the words from your cherub lips?
Do nocturnal fantastic birds of flight carry you away and release you from your forced secrets of the day? Are those birds the thing with feathers? Do they chirp the same songs they sing to me?
Do you not dream at all sweet boy?
Perhaps instead you play with angels who speak your native tongue. You drift off to the place where I am not allowed to go with you. You run freely through the fields of joyous detail or you ramble in teary despair in the wings of the worldless knowing you are understood and safe.
Because no matter the circumstance of night, in the morning you wake wide eyed and blinking and peaceful.
While it is understandable why a parent like myself with a child with significant disabilities within a public education and governmental system would feel overwhelmed by all of the details, the truth is I felt that way about political systems before I even had children. I am very Gestalt and particularly nervous when it comes to leaving out a detail. The Whole Is A Sum Of Its Parts is most assuredly how I have always seen the world. If I miss a piece, I promise I won’t understand the big picture. Often the bigger problem is knowing whether I have missed a piece, so I comb and comb for those pieces until I end in a pile of crumbs. And then? Well…..once I sweep up…watch out.
Our collective current public educational system is fraught with problems that overwhelm me to even consider how they can be overcome in a fair and meaningful way.
And to be clear, this does not mean our educators are at the top of the problem list. I would challenge anyone who believes this is the case to go spend one year as an educator in even a high performing suburban school district. The financial, legal, logistical and social constraints that exist would send a person without the passion to make a difference in the the lives of kids running to do almost anything else. The issues that exist in public education are systemic in nature. They are systemic but not static so I have believed it possible to slowly turn the ship around. Fully funding IDEA would be a great start…but that is the thing about getting overwhelmed by details. Out of survival, you hone in on what will have the most impact on your own world to create your own big picture.
It would be easy to turn this into a 5000 word article and focus on all the talking points about why public education is failing everyone and also on all the fundamentally terrific things public education is doing right. But focusing on those things is the parlor trick we all seem to be falling for these days. The guy with the horns and the trident is awfully entertaining with his sleight of hand while we’re busy, a well heeled woman sitting before the Senate is making plans to create a systemic and fundamentally flawed plan to oppress and contain the most vulnerable children.
There is no time to yell about unions or standardized testing or who we are not listening to when we don’t have an adequate solution and you don’t have the details to understand why they are there in the first place. It’s like slapping yourself in the face.
Yesterday at the Senate hearing for confirmation of Secretary of Education, opponents of Betsy DeVos were alarmed at just how unqualified she appears to be for this position as evident by her lack of knowledge of crucial educational and fiscal details and seeming inability to directly answer questions. Mrs. DeVos struggled in the brief periods of questioning to give details about how she will ensure/protect/educate. I am not so certain that having someone who understands every detail of public education is actually necessary or even preferable.
However, I do not believe that Betsy DeVos was one bit “confused” about the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act being federal law and not something that the states decide. I do not believe that she doesn’t understand the difference between proficiency and progress. I do not believe that she was having trouble answering questions but rather she answered those questions loud and clear.
Should all schools, public, private and charter have EQUAL accountability standards when accepting taxpayer funding?
Do you think that all schools receiving federal dollars should have to adhere to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act?
Should schools receiving government funding have to have the same reporting systems for bullying and harassment?
Will you enforce the law for disabled children should the charters go into place and they might be accepted at the charter?
Will you defund or privatize public school?
Instead, Mrs. DeVos let those members of the Senate know how happy she would be to make these discussion points in the future.
No…. I don’t think Betsy DeVos was confused. I think she doesn’t care, because in her world the devil is in THOSE details and it appears sometimes the devil comes in the form of anyone different or disadvantaged.
Her plan it seems is to create selective schools that she won’t state whether they will adhere to the federal civil rights protection for disabled students or potentially even for just their protection at all. Over time, disabled students and socially/economically disadvantaged students, students with behavioral issues are going to once again be segregated due to selective admissions processes, “waiting lists” differences in educational accountability and financial discrepancies between those who can afford the gap in tuition not covered by a voucher. There will be no such thing as inclusion in schools it will vanish with the details.
For me, this isn’t a matter of lack of understanding or even sour grapes. I live in a state where there is a “scholarship” program available for students identified with a disability which we used for A2 through pre-k and kindergarten. Given his Autism diagnosis, he qualified for (at the time) a $20,000 voucher through the state board of education to use with a scholarship provider. Our district was still responsible for writing his IEP so we would meet annually to update. We found an excellent match for him at a local private, not-for-profit Autism school and in just three months I was pleased to show our district the tight data tracking his improvements.
Short of realizing he wasn’t getting everything he needed in public school, overall, we had a positive experience using this system because the stars were aligned. A kid happened to move away opening a spot in the classroom, otherwise A2 would have been on a waiting list. Our district did not transport him so I was unable to work much so I could take him the 20 mile round trip jaunts twice a day. Things were very tight for awhile because we were still responsible for $8000 a year out of pocket toward the tuition.
The biggest trade off? By accepting the scholarship, we relinquished our rights to FAPE (Free and Appropriate Public Education). In other words our “school choices” were:
Stay put and spend thousands on attorneys to try to prove he was not getting an appropriate education (as evidenced by the amount of progress he made with a specialized ABA program)–but in the meantime, if we filed due process based on the law, he would have had to “stay put” until a resolution. Which could be years.
Find another school that could accept him, provide our own transportation, find $24,000 for three years of out of pocket expenses AND hope he gets what he needs because the private school technically does not have to follow the IEP. Nor technically are there any repercussions for not meeting his needs.
Choice? Like the Sophie’s Choice of the outcome of my child’s future. They both sucked. We only had a brief period of time to harness the little spongy brain of his. We were very, very lucky it worked out the way it did. But we were also very, very lucky because we are upper middle class white, intact suburban family with one paycheck that covered everything and a kiddo who did not present with behaviors too difficult to handle. We were very, very lucky because the school was pretty great at what they did with a caring team to boot. I am not against the idea of a voucher system and school choice, but in order for it truly to be choice, the playing field must be appropriately leveled. Otherwise, it is only really a choice for some.
Betsy DeVos wants to turn this ship around, but there is a huge iceberg in the way and only enough lifeboats for the privileged and the able-bodied leaving everyone else, including my beautiful boy to go down with the ship. Our educational system needs fixing, no doubt…but first do no harm.
You did not ask to be born. You did not ask to walk this earth and you certainly did not create your own realities and struggles….at least not yet. You did not get to choose me as a mother. I can guide you in ways that I think will ease your journey but ultimately your external successes and failures will be YOUR successes and failures. You get to have those on your own and I will rejoice and celebrate and swell with pride as if I created those monumental moments but I do not get to take credit for those. I will feel guilt or shame or sadness in your failings or perhaps I will distance myself from them for those same reasons, but ultimately I don’t get to take credit for those either. Whatever respect or love you have for me through each stage of your lives is created, taught and fueled by me and while those things feel like an expectation when it comes to a mother, in every other situation those things are earned….I will assure you it is the same in our case. It is not my expectation that you celebrate me today. If anything, the onus is on me to celebrate you. You made me a mother and by proxy after 35 years I was given the gift of the ability to feel love unconditionally. I don’t choose to love you…..I have no choice. What I do with that part is up to me. You do not owe me for being attentive to your needs, by making you a priority. That is my contract with you regardless of circumstance.
So on this Mother’s Day, I celebrate you both. The loves of my life. May you:
–Never feel as if your existence was a burden to me.
–Always feel like a joyful priority, even when I have forgotten to appreciate that myself
–Recognize that you are separate from me….that my sadness is not your sadness…my expectations should not be your expectations, my disappointments are not your disappointments. If I am doing this right, I will not feel like your obligation.
–Know that in my humanity the above might not feel that way because nothing makes me feel more joy than your joy….nothing makes me feel more worry than your worry…and unfortunately there is not much I can to about that.
–Never feel less because I acknowledge your differences.
–Always feel safe in telling me your thoughts and ideas no matter what.
–Know that when I don’t understand your needs that you may not be able to change that but you can ask me for more patience
–Always feel the love and respect I have for you and I hope that I have done my job in teaching you how to have the wisdom to distinguish and create healthy distance as you grow when others are not treating you with love and respect who should be. Including me.
–Know that if I am feeling selfish or if I cannot manage something when it comes to you I will protect you from that by being honest so you never misunderstand my intentions.
If I am raising you right, for me every day should feel like the holiday we are told is Mother’s Day. But for today, I celebrate and thank you for being given the privilege of being your Mom. Now let’s get to the Zoo.
I read a story this morning in the news about a woman in Texas who stopped on the side of the road to chat with a homeless man. Since she passed him in the exact same spot for three years her curiosity finally got the best of her . You can see it here. He was thin, unshaven, filthy. We’ve all passed “him” on the side of the road, haven’t we? Remember the Man-With-The-Golden-Voice several years ago who hung out by the highway and became a media sensation? I passed him…sometimes twice a day on the way to my child’s school. There he was–all wild haired and looking strung out. And then there he was on Dr. Phil with a Cliff Huxtable sweater and a haircut. A former radio announcer who succumbed to addiction. We were all cheering him on–he had a Golden Voice and would contribute to society with those gilded vocal chords. And my, wasn’t he handsome with that haircut? He could practically be someone we knew!
I digress. This woman from Texas stopped to ask this man why he was always in the same spot all day, every day. He told her he was waiting for his mother because that is where she left him.
He was waiting for his mother. Right where she told him to wait for her.
To be sure, his mother was not coming back and this man struggled with mental illness. But maybe she really did leave him right there the last time he saw her. This could very easily be my beautiful boy.
Let me give you some background on this….
What you might not know is that he didn’t suffer from mental illness…that came later in life. He also had Autism with a speech disorder and a learning disability. He was raised in an affluent suburb with the best schools in the state but they failed to teach him to read. This man’s parents were older when he was born, were highly educated, had good jobs and didn’t retire until they were forced to. His grandparents were all elderly and required care themselves. His father had excellent medical benefits at work that covered most of his care and his mother was extremely resourceful and was able to access everything available from funding to therapies to alternative treatments. This man’s parents saved as much as they could and because of his unique needs, his mother could not work full-time. Care for a disabled child is a commodity. In childhood, the man’s parents tried to give him the most enriching life possible with as much exposure socially as they could. He found so much joy in being out in public going to sporting events, concerts, religious congregation events and festivals. His parents looked at spending money on these activities as investments since staying at home did not provide him with any social opportunities at all. After he was about four years old, there were no more parties or play dates or neighborhood shenannegans. His parents were his best friends and gave him a life outside of the house.
This man was once an exceptionally adorable little boy and it was so easy for him to get attention and love almost anywhere he went. That is, all the way up until adolescence. It became confusing to him when people didn’t respond in the same way when he would wave at them and say “hey!” or approach their table in a restaurant just to say hello. His parents put off making a trust because the idea of appointing a guardian was so daunting. How do you ask someone to make sure your child is OK for the rest of THEIR lives? How do you ask them to make sure that child has a guardian beyond THEIR lives as well? Given his parents became increasingly socially isolated as he grew older, it was hard for them to even consider options. So they just didn’t and hoped for the best.
The boy grew into a man and it was important to his parents that he felt like one. They insisted he held a job and helped him find work wherever they could. As they grew older, their health issues became too much for them to be able to continue to change diapers or physically help move the man to safety when he got upset and ran in the direction of danger. The man’s health care waiver ran out when he turned 22. Reluctantly, his parents dipped into their accounts for his care and in less than 5 years, they ran through their life savings. The same amount of money that would have been considered sufficient in any other situation in old age. The parents did everything right. The man worked hard his whole life to be the most contributing member of society his parents could push him to be. And yet…..one day on the way to a doctor appointment, the mother asked the man to wait outside. She was afraid that if the doctor saw she was trying to care for an adult with a disability he would be taken away…taken away to live in a substandard long term care facility…one that was short staffed where he would be living with strangers. The Medicaid cap would release him to the streets when it ran out. Well…frankly, it was better to let him wait outside, she must have thought. That is until at that doctor appointment he determined she needed surgery immediately because all the nausea she was having recently turned out to be repeated heart attacks due to a blocked artery. Only she didn’t make it in time to let anyone know her beautiful boy was waiting on the curb for her.
And there he sat for 3 years. Wandering for food. Wandering for help, but due to his speech disorder and illiteracy, there was no one who understood him enough to know who he was or what he was looking for. He looked crazy. He looked drunk. He sat and wandered until that nice lady finally stopped to ask him who he was.
This could be my son. My beautiful boy. The kiddo who is 11 years old right now. Of course, it is not. I actually know nothing about this man from Texas or his background. But I certainly can imagine this very real scenario. It is a scenario that keeps me up at night with the exception of the kindly stranger and the happy ending on channel 10. For those of you who believe people who live off the system have made their lot in life or that they are owed nothing…is this who you picture when you see the guy sitting on the side of the road? Because that guy may have once been my beautiful boy….your white, upper middle class neighbor’s child who you thought was a ‘cool little dude’. Where do you think those kids go when they have no one? (and if one more affluent person who knows my child says “well….THAT’S different” be prepared to introduce me to someone else you know milking the system. Go ahead…I’ll wait right here.). Because you personally know me and because you personally know him and we kind of look like you does not make him more deserving than the dirty adult sitting on the curb you think you have never seen before. That guy that is owed nothing. You just don’t recognize him because you keep your eyes on the road.
I don’t think…I KNOW that one day I will die. Unless I sell my soul to the devil, I am not sure how I will manage to work a steady job through my own elderly death that will happen AFTER his . I keep reading how his care should all be on me. And it most certainly is. And my husband and I have done everything we are supposed to do.
Today. Call your congress people TODAY.
Don’t know who they are? Click here to get the name and contact of your National/State/Local representatives. Don’t know what to say? Pick out the parts of this article that spoke to you the most and read it to them. Remind them that NO ONE is a throw away person….not any of their constituents. Not even the ones that cannot vote.
Stop what is happening with the repeal of ACA. $800 BILLION cuts in Medicaid are going to be made for tax cuts to people who don’t really need those tax cuts. Medicaid will come in block grants to states with caps….and those caps come quick. Where will my baby go when he meets his cap? 1 out of every 6 children have a disability and many of them depend on their families to ensure the bulk of their care and with Medicaid to help where they cannot. I have split my time between working and paying taxes to the country I am asking to help and also providing his care. What happens when my child is not in school and needs full time care? How do you keep a job and ensure your commitment as a tax payer while also fulfilling your duty as a parent of a disabled child? If I don’t have a job, he is a freeloader. If I do have a job, I am a freeloader AND negligent. The circular logic for the reduction of assistance and subsidies is just that ridiculous.
I am glad to hear that man from Texas is doing well. I am glad there are middle-class individual citizens out there who might stop their cars to find out how they can help. This, however should not be my son’s disability policy. His life is worth more than a sound byte on the local news.
The sticky wicket of Autism. There are some moments I feel particularly lucky for autism. Those moments I watch slip away from my friends who’s babes with bountiful curls framing cherub faces ask for the straightening iron ……who have their gossamer wings clipped to keep their feet firmly planted on the ground….who no longer rub the wonder of dreams deeper into their eyes when they are sleepy. I would imagine it’s the bittersweet joy of having children, watching the transformation from innocent angels to inhabitants of earth. I get to cavort with an angel for longer. I still get to hear a gasp followed by “look mommy…moon!” I still get warm snuggly visits at 3AM. Bubbles are still magical. Raffi is still the only fully grown man who can sing wheels on the bus and get a rousing sing a long at our breakfast table. A2 can still do interpretive dance in the aisle at the synagogue during prayer while onlookers smile and nod as if it is part of the service. But it’s not for much longer. As those other children blossom from midlings to Ivy League applicants, A2 will likely still ask for The Muppets or try to squeeze himself onto a tricycle or squeal “go faster daddy!” as he coasts down a hill on a tandem bike….the promise of youth in the body of an adult where looks from strangers will fade from smiles when asked “what’s your name”. It’s not natural to pray you outlive your child, but we both agree as long as there are songs to be sung, dances to be danced and bubbles to blown we will move with him and try to always see the wonder of his world.
Sensory differences are a common symptom of autism. Often kids on the spectrum can become overwhelmed by these differences. A1 tells me that a public toilet flushing sounds like a bomb going off and for several years he avoided public restrooms. A2 flaps his arms and locks out his knees whenever he is filled with anxiety. Kind of his virtual rocking chair….or else he is just hoping to fly away from the dentist/barking dog/hand dryer. As autism-folk we try to build awareness by creating overwhelming scenarios to get NTs (neurotypicals–yes, we have a name for you) to sympathize the plight of the kid flicking his fingers in front of his face as a way to stop having his eyes taking a million pictures at once or the kid who is pacing because he can’t tell where his body is in space. But sometimes, I am fairly certain that some of those sensory integration differences are not experienced in a negative way and sometimes there are common things that just look, sound or feel like something not of this world. If I could only take an x-ray of A2s little mind and see what he could for 10 seconds. (Feel free to smile at this picture….)
My brother and I were sitting on the couch chatting about politics last winter when I showed him a segment from the 
I read a story this morning in the news about a woman in Texas who stopped on the side of the road to chat with a homeless man. Since she passed him in the exact same spot for three years her curiosity finally got the best of her . You can see it 
Running through Water 