I have asked a handful of parents I know to share their stories. The first parent has a middle school child with intellectual disabilities and cerebral palsy. She is someone I have known for many years, before her son was born. Through the years I know there have been countless doctor appointments to even diagnose her son. He nearly qualified for a few different diagnoses, but not quite. This alone is frustrating for parents. Knowing what a child is facing can allow parents to attack symptoms and treatment with full force, but until that point the unknowns are daily struggles. Below is a small portion of this mom's heart for her child. ________________________ I am thankful for the culture that we live in where the schools are required to provide my child an appropriate education where I have heard that in many other cultures a special needs child may be considered a drain on society and/or the resources aren’t there to help the child. I know that most everyone my son has had on his team cares about him and that they are limited by the resources they’re given. But I have enough of a fight without feeling like I need to fight my son’s team as well. I have felt that there wasn’t a respect of my input. When I told my son’s team that he doesn’t understand a standard education, they didn’t really take into account my observations of my son’s ability to learn and so the next two years were not at all ideal for meeting his needs. Only after the third year, did his team fully accept what I said and only then did he have a good educational year... all that time lost where he didn’t hardly understand anything that was going on and only because they had to see for themselves that I knew what I was talking about. I understand both sides of the coin: I understand mine most of all, but I do know that educational teams fight a hard battle as well. They have over-demanding parents who don’t respect them and over-advocate for their child as if without any sense of the juggling act that they face with the resources they have verses the needs of their students. And there is the reverse where there is no parental support and little involvement by the family in their child’s education. They have a hard job; I’ve seen people on my son’s team yelled at and hit by their pupils and unappreciated by the parents while all they do is done under a microscope. In an ideal world, they would be respected and I would be respected. There are no easy answers because humans on both sides are imperfect people trying to do their best. I think we should commit to respecting each other and helping to make both sides’ job easier. I should be listened to and my input respected while I should be kind to my son’s team and give them the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to meet the needs of my child. If there were the mutual respect and trust, it could make this hard job of loving and providing for my special needs child just a little easier. __________________________
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AuthorSpecial Education major in a university teaching program. Substitute teacher, previous homeschool mom, wife. Archives
September 2019
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