Anyone care to play IEP Meeting or related email or phone call BINGO?

[Anonymous]

My DD graduated with an IEP five years ago and yet all this is so sadly familiar still. Not a phrase, but what comes to mind from these meetings are tears, mine and hers.

[Anonymous]

She’s just doesn’t try, there is no academic impact, we just dont see it, are you sure you want her to be one of those kids.

Aww, the joy of IEP meetings.

[Anonymous]

If they were motivated they would .....
[note - I corrected the Social Worker and said it was not a motivation issue and to frame it that way is concerning]
Let's wait until next Fall to assess ....
[nope - I am asking now and you are on the clock from the day I sent the email]
This is a public school - we can't provide everything your child needs.
BUT my absolute favorite was the BINGO statement. The Coordinator of Special Education stated that the school was not providing my child FAPE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My fav is from the head of special needs services at Langley who CONSTANTLY talked about the superlative achievements of her own two children. Weird, but true. On and on we had to hear her talk about her two MD and PHD kids ---- while our own special needs kids couldn't even get successfully through a Langley day. Fortunately, she has long retired but I never understood why Meryl had to keep talking about the "successes" of her own two kids when the rest of us were struggling. Yes I raised it with the principal but he was out to lunch. It was cruel. There are many of us who think this way.

That can be a BINGO card-an admin bragging about their kids! In elementary we had a principal brag about how her kids all went to Jefferson every chance she got. The funny thing is I even went to an advocate who bragged about how her kid with an IEP went to Yale. I was happy for her, but I found it strange to keep telling us. I think she knew enough about our kid to know we certainly were not dreaming of Yale one day.

[Anonymous]

Here's one.....

Someone goes rogue and actually tells the truth and sides with the parent. (It's a rare one, but it happens)

We kept hearing about how horrible our son was in specials. We insisted the behavior specialist for the county come observe. She actually said something "I couldn't figure out which one was him. The boys in that class were all wild!" (She used a much more creative euphemism to say they were wild and it made me laugh, but I don't recall what it was).

[Anonymous]

When your child struggles with something due to their disabilities and the teacher says "well all the kids struggle with that skill (and she says this no matter what skill you bring up)" Then she feels justified in not granting whatever you are asking for

[Anonymous]

When someone from the school team says, "we don't do that" in response to an accommodation request. (it has to be an i individualized determination about what your kid needs and what is a reasonable way to meet that need.

When someone says "but he has good grades" (as a reason for denying a 504 or IEP)

When someone in the team refers to me or calls me to my face "Mom" as if that is my name. (Even though we all introduced ourselves at the beginning of the meeting, and I remember and use 7 different names of strangers, and they've only got to remember one name - mine.

"We don't have the staff for that" or "That's not how I do things in my class. BOTH in response to raising a complaint about accommodations not be provided as per plan.

[Anonymous]

I was told that it’s not unusual for little boys to be behind in fine motor things and speech (when my 5 yo still can’t hold scissors or string more than a few words together).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When someone from the school team says, "we don't do that" in response to an accommodation request. (it has to be an i individualized determination about what your kid needs and what is a reasonable way to meet that need.

When someone says "but he has good grades" (as a reason for denying a 504 or IEP)

When someone in the team refers to me or calls me to my face "Mom" as if that is my name. (Even though we all introduced ourselves at the beginning of the meeting, and I remember and use 7 different names of strangers, and they've only got to remember one name - mine.

"We don't have the staff for that" or "That's not how I do things in my class. BOTH in response to raising a complaint about accommodations not be provided as per plan..

Being called Mom - I could fill up the entire board with that one.
It is always used in a condescending manner.
I actually interrupted the offender - after biting my tongue for many meetings - and said that my name was X and she was welcome to either call me X or Mrs. Y but Mom was not acceptable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When someone from the school team says, "we don't do that" in response to an accommodation request. (it has to be an i individualized determination about what your kid needs and what is a reasonable way to meet that need.

When someone says "but he has good grades" (as a reason for denying a 504 or IEP)

When someone in the team refers to me or calls me to my face "Mom" as if that is my name. (Even though we all introduced ourselves at the beginning of the meeting, and I remember and use 7 different names of strangers, and they've only got to remember one name - mine.

"We don't have the staff for that" or "That's not how I do things in my class. BOTH in response to raising a complaint about accommodations not be provided as per plan..

Being called Mom - I could fill up the entire board with that one.
It is always used in a condescending manner.
I actually interrupted the offender - after biting my tongue for many meetings - and said that my name was X and she was welcome to either call me X or Mrs. Y but Mom was not acceptable.

Yep "Mom" said in a condescending way definitely belongs on there

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When someone from the school team says, "we don't do that" in response to an accommodation request. (it has to be an i individualized determination about what your kid needs and what is a reasonable way to meet that need.

When someone says "but he has good grades" (as a reason for denying a 504 or IEP)

When someone in the team refers to me or calls me to my face "Mom" as if that is my name. (Even though we all introduced ourselves at the beginning of the meeting, and I remember and use 7 different names of strangers, and they've only got to remember one name - mine.

"We don't have the staff for that" or "That's not how I do things in my class. BOTH in response to raising a complaint about accommodations not be provided as per plan..

Being called Mom - I could fill up the entire board with that one.
It is always used in a condescending manner.
I actually interrupted the offender - after biting my tongue for many meetings - and said that my name was X and she was welcome to either call me X or Mrs. Y but Mom was not acceptable.

You are a rockstar!!!

[Anonymous]

"She's just doing it for attention."

Obviously, this is a go-to explanation for pretty much everything, but when it hit me was re: the daughter of a friend of mine. She is blind in one eye as the result of some kind of medical condition that also affected her pituitary gland (at age 14, she looked like an 8 year old, very pretty but very tiny) and has major learning disabilities (although a surprisingly advanced vocab, yet she doesn't read at all if she can help it and then not well at all).

What she loves, and is incredibly talented at, is drawing. She draws figures that are a bit anime-ish but have incredible life to them. She will disappear into her own world for hours with a sketchpad or notebook drawing her heart out, her face a couple of inches from the page. She's reluctant to do schoolwork at all--doesn't rebel per se, and she's so quiet they don't even notice she's not doing whatever.

This is not about attention-seeking. This is about her doing something she loves to do, which is inherently much more rewarding and reinforcing than math (struggle) or reading (struggle) and she would be perfectly happy if her teachers ignored her all day long.

"He needs to take responsibility."

"He" has severe ADHD, no organizational ability with physical objects, and is completely overwhelmed by his papers and has no clue where his homework is, even though the resource room teacher helpfully organized his folders for him last week (as opposed, of course, to working on a way to teach him basic organizational skills--actually, if all the paper was replaced by digital files, he'd be fine).

[Anonymous]

"We don't actually expect students with special needs to get As, and Ds can be success!" (Sped admin)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about...someone on the team talks to you like you are ignorant and don't know your rights and have never read anything about your kid's disability. Or someone on the team thinks they know better than you do what your kid needs AND said person thinks she knows better than the top person you had evaluate your kid and write a report.

My niece (adult now) has epilepsy. Besides grand mal seizures she had frequent partial psychomotor seizures in school--like she'd randomly get up and walk out of the room--and absence seizures. When she was 14 she was admitted to a medical program where they had monitors on her and simply waited for a seizure to happen so they could get complete EEG (and I think other) testing results, plus they videotaped the seizures she had there (she later had brain surgery, which almost eliminated seizures, but only for a year or two). My sister had been battling the district for a long time by then (refused 504 plan, refused IEP, the poor girl was ridiculed by classmates because she would sometimes urinate during a grand mal seizure, and in 10th grade her mom discovered she ate her lunch in the bathroom to avoid facing a few hundred other teenagers in the cafeteria).

So, my sister meets with the principal and shows him the evaluations and recommendations, and he says "well, you may be able to pull the wool over the doctors' eyes but I know what's really going on here" and further that "parents lie all the time." My sister was dealing with some major medical problems herself, her husband's crappy job had him on the road most of every week, her daughter was increasingly depressed and more than once actively suicidal. Over the next year they basically threw in the towel, my niece tried their alternative school but could not maintain their strict attendance records (she'd be very tired for a day or so after a seizure and was always falling asleep) and got a GED. (She's doing. . . ok. She definitely became a functioning alcoholic although her seizures are mostly associated with her period; she twice made serious suicide attempts that put her in ICU but that has not happened for 4-5 years now, her love is restaurant cooking and she hasn't been unemployed a day in her life since she was 15--she's 30 now. When she goes to work in a new restaurant she tells her coworkers how to respond if she tells them she thinks she is about to have a seizure and how long to wait before calling 911, since usually that is not necessary, and only once has she had an employer who had an issue with her epilepsy).

[Anonymous]

Yes. I've experienced many of these. Not sure what the solution is. But I think I have a full board now.