Special Education Parent

Special Education Parent

Having a child in special education often feels like parenting by committee. You don’t get to make decisions based on what you feel is best for your own child. You have to get the whole team to agree (which we all know can be quite difficult sometimes). So many people and only one child……no wonder it can feel overwhelming and daunting.

The parent is the only true and one expert on their child. We parents have the only global and over all perspective of our children as people, not just as students. Special education is about how to most appropriately give access to students with disabilities. But students obviously have lives outside of school and this must be acknowledged while making IEP decisions. For example, when a student’s behavior is extremely different at school from any other place, that can be concerning. It is important to understand the complexities of a student and how they respond to different environments with regards to their disability. School staff often try to only discuss the school environment, but it is the parents responsibility to inform the the team of their child’s overall needs and feelings as a person.

When discussing IEP considerations, it is also the parent’s duty to understand the school’s perspective that they are there to educate the student. So while the parent must provide the complete “picture” of the student, the school staff need only consider how the child’s disability effects access to curriculum. This is where the team must acknowledge all aspects of a student’s need, and then apply them to the educational setting. This is often where the break down in communication can first occur between parents and the school. But understanding the perspective of both the student’s needs and the school’s legal responsibility is at the core of understanding how and why an appropriate IEP document is created.

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