E102: Understanding Your Child's IEP
Do you really know what's in your child's IEP and why it's so imporant for you to be able to understand it? Tune into this episode where we talk about why it's imporant before you even start advocating to know what's in the document, and also 6 things you should be looking for when you look at your child's IEP to understand it!
Do you really know what’s in your child’s IEP and why it’s so imporant for you to be able to understand it? Tune into this episode where we talk about why it’s imporant before you even start advocating to know what’s in the document, and also 6 things you should be looking for when you look at your child’s IEP to understand it!
E102: Understanding Your Child’s IEP
[00:00:00] I’m wondering if any of this sounds familiar. So even though you are very focused on advocacy for your child this year, you may have to think about if you have a current copy of your child’s IEP. And even if you know where it is, when is the last time you looked at it, do you avoid looking at it? Because it’s overwhelming.
Have you ever been told that your child’s IEP was good or quote unquote bad? But not known what they meant or how they got to that conclusion. Today, you’re getting a sneak peek into answering all of these questions because today’s topic is how to understand your child’s IEP. And we’re going to throw in there why it’s so important to.
You weren’t listening to the parent IEP lab, the podcast that helps you get an effective. IAP plan for your child so that you can get them supported and learning in school. I’m Beth LEAs and fellow occupational therapist, who started to notice trends in parents who got effective IEP for their kids without having to fight the school.
My mission is to help you turn insider knowledge from the school side into effective parent advocacy for your child. Using those [00:01:00] very successful parents as model the parent IEP lab focuses on providing you knowledge about your parent role in the IEP and taking away the stress of an upcoming IEP meeting.
Through the ultimate parent IEP prep course, but also on the podcast, we highlight commonly miss parent advocacy opportunities between IEP meetings, which is really how you avoid having a fight with the team. So let’s dive in and think about what we can change and tweak to get the right formula for success for your child to learn and grow at school. Welcome to the lab
If this is a topic, you feel like you need a little help in understanding your child’s IEP. Then listen to this episode, but then if you still feel like you need some help check out the IEP bootcamp, that’s happening January 27th to 29th. It’s all about getting you support and finally understanding your child’s IEP so that you can have a clear baseline and understanding of where your advocacy efforts should be focused. In 2023, the schedule for the live events has just been posted on the page.
So check it [00:02:00] out in the link below this podcast in your podcast player, or you can check it out at www.theiuplab.com/bootcamp.
I hope to see you there.
Now, typically I’m a really direct person. And we talk about this in the ultimate parent IEP prep course that we talk about communication styles and we take a little test communication test, and we talk about how we communicate. And I am such a direct communicator. I envision you studying.
In your car or taking a quick walk, if you happen to have time for that. And I just imagine you so busy, but every time I’ve like slowed down and shared something about the business or chaired something about me personally. Um, I get a ton of comments
and feedback that it’s really helpful and really enjoyable to you that you get to know a little bit more about me and the business. And so what I’m going to try do a little bit today is share a little bit about the state of the IUP lab. And what’s happening behind the scenes because i know i also enjoy hearing that about the [00:03:00] businesses that i follow too I’m just going to try to relax a little bit and have fun with the podcast instead of being so. So, so focused on like giving you all of the information in like 20 minutes or less. Right. So hopefully it comes off a little bit less hurried to you, but still just as valuable.
So here’s just a little bit of an update about the IEP lab. So it’s just me running the IEP lab and I’ve ran it for a year and a half now. And if you haven’t listened to like the last trailer or you haven’t been in a free webinar yet. You might not know that I had the opportunity to dive all in, on the IEP lab for the past year.
We had a lot of childcare issues as related to COVID not necessarily COVID itself, but COVID staffing shortages afterwards. And so, so much so that, my son was going to daycare and getting quarantined like six times in. Two months. And so I couldn’t really hold down a stable, like, steady job that wouldn’t allow a lot of flexibility [00:04:00] like that. So AKA, I ran out of time off in the schools, like really, really fast, um, year before last.
So now that we kind of have that ironed out. You know, we’ve switched daycares. It’s much better.
And so it’s been interesting because over the past couple of months I’ve been like, okay, well that the parent IUP lab, the podcast is growing, we are growing at least 10% of downloads to the podcast every month, since August, it’s been really crazy. So it just tells me that you might be sharing it with friends or sharing it to parent Facebook groups that you’re in.
Um, and every once in a while, the only thing I can see is downloads. So, you know, when I go in there, I’m like, oh my gosh, somebody must’ve shared it. Like, this is a crazy download day. So. It’s been really cool, but I’m so committed to having all of my products, like the parent IEP prep course.
And he bootcamps, like the bootcamp that we’re running is $19 and you get recordings of everything. So that’s like crazy inexpensive. Most of these things are like at least a hundred dollars, right? The summit was [00:05:00] $27 for the VIP pass. It was free to everybody to really provide, um, provide access to this information because I don’t want cost to ever be a barrier for somebody trying to get help with our IEP.
And since I’m so committed to that, of course. I haven’t made enough money through the parent IEP lab or the IEP lab, which is the business side, um, for me to take an income from it. So now that we’ve gotten daycare kind of figured out. I’m starting to take clients in early intervention, and a mix of adults and kids in home health, which is much, much more flexible than, than schools. And it’s really fun to do early intervention because it’s parent coaching. So I just feel like I’m talking to you, right. I’m talking to you and I’m.
Helping in therapy sense, but I’m also just having a lot of contact with parents, which is what I found that I absolutely love. So you may see me less popping into social media to do lives or things like that. Um, or stories, you know, just a heads up there, but. I’m very, very committed to continuing the IEP lab. You know, I have.
[00:06:00] You know, coaching clients coming in on the side where we do an IEP audit together, and then we do coaching afterwards. Of course after I took this job and I started, I, I started getting all of this context to like, you know, speaking conferences in Boston, Massachusetts and review IEP is for people and, you know, the bootcamp is coming up. And so it’s so funny that. Yeah i’m going to commit to like taking on private clients like locally and then of course the IUP lab is probably gonna explode on me which i’m not complaining about so um just a heads up there if you see me less on social media and things like that
So, I don’t know if you happen to be business savvy or have your own side business. Cause I feel like parents, a lot of the times have their own side businesses, but right now, as I’m recording this, it’s the middle of January and it’s tax time for very small businesses. And of course, like I do all of our bookkeeping because you know, we’re really, really small over here.
Um, so I’m getting ready for a tax season and I’m like, oh my [00:07:00] gosh. IEP or so like taxes. And you may be like, no, no, they’re not bad. Like, what are you talking about? But if you think about it, taxes are confusing to those that don’t work in the field all the time. Like I’m not a tax person, I’m not a bookkeeper.
And so they’re confusing and I just wish somebody would like break it down and say, okay, this is what you need to know. And this is what you can write off. And this is why you can’t write off. And yet there’s like some expectation from like our accountant that I’m supposed to know this stuff. Right.
I’m supposed to know what I can write off. I’m supposed to have my records in order. You know, it’s just record everything. I’m supposed to have everything separate, like, but nobody tells you that upfront. So it’s been this like super tedious way of learning because I’m Googling things or I’m like trying to follow people that will tell me what I need to know, but I just wish somebody would like.
I sit down and just like, tell me. Like, okay. I don’t mind keeping the [00:08:00] books, but like, what do I need to do? Right. And I just feel like I have a piece of the same way. Like nobody just sits you down and it’s like, okay, so this is your parent role and this is what you need to do to like take advantage of it. And so obviously, like that’s what I’m trying to do in the podcast. Right.
And then I just feel like. Yes, your accountant is there to like, watch your back, but you always have to sign something. That’s like, oh, it’s my fault. If I get audited and something is wrong, like it’s all that responsibility is put on me. And I feel like that’s parents in the IEP process. Right. I’m wondering if you feel it this way too, because.
It’s like, oh, well, if you don’t take advantage of the IEP system, or if you didn’t know something was the thing, like a draft IEP or a service was available and you didn’t know. Then who misses out well, it’s you and your kid. Right. And that just stinks. Like there’s nobody to like guide you through it, even though people are supposed to be right. Like your accountant is supposed to have your back.
Your child’s case manager is supposed to have your back and like, [00:09:00] do everything right. And have your child’s best interests at heart. But like sometimes they just, they’re not interested or they’re too busy to teach you about it. And so it’s just like disappointing. Right. And then at some point you just want somebody else to look at your stuff and just tell you a figure on the right track. Right?
And I feel like this about IEP is I get contacted a lot, um, from everybody in the ultimate parent IEP prep course, like I’ve added an IEP review in there because people were like, can I just send you my IEP? And I was like, oh my gosh. Yeah. Like, why, why didn’t I ask for that? So,
We’ve added that to the prep course
and also that’s what the coaching clients coming in to me are doing like, Hey, I really want you to be able to look at it. Tell me what you think. And then we can talk about what I can do from there. And so that’s what we’ve. Kind of combine some of the coaching package and the IEP audit together to just make it one, because it’s silly to give you coaching without me seeing the IEP. Right.
And that’s how I feel about taxes too. Like, will you just look at it, look [00:10:00] at my books and just like, tell me what to do better next year. So I keep like improving, so I keep. Not having to pay thousands of dollars then. In taxes that I shouldn’t have to pay. Right. I’m also paying taxes, but goodness gracious. If I can not pay
a ton more than I’m supposed to, then that would be great. Right? So that’s just what I’m feeling right now is like deepen the tax season is coming into IEP season. There’s a lot of IEP is happening in the spring. They always happen this way. There is a reason why a lot of them happened in the spring. And we can talk about that later, but, um, you know, we’re talking about the essentials today. So sitting down, I hope that I can find somebody eventually.
They can sit me down and say, Hey, these are the highlights of taxes. Like, just make sure that you’re doing these things. Or if you get your tax return, or if you look at your books, just make sure that these five or six things are, are present. And that’s what we’re going to do today. So, you know, today, I really want to start though with why it’s so important for you to understand your child’s IEP.
And this is like, Understand the paperwork [00:11:00] part. And if you haven’t listened to me a lot, you will know that I’m obsessed with the paperwork. I really love the paperwork. Because that is ultimately what matters that, and of course the implementation of it. But if you ever have to get an advocate, if you ever have to get a lawyer,
If you ever have to make a state complaint like that paperwork is what backs you up. And if you don’t have that right, or if something is off, then it’s really hard to like, you know, make a state complaint that they’re not following it. If it’s not written correctly, or if it’s written very confusingly, which happens a ton.
So I’m pretty into the paperwork. I love teaching you how to look at the paperwork because it’s a legal system. That’s what matters, right? So here are five reasons why it’s so important for you to understand your child’s IEP. Number one is that you have to know.
If, what you guys talked about at the meeting is actually in the IEP. So many times people are like, okay, well, we talked about that and then I don’t remember because so [00:12:00] many teams will like talk in circles. Do you know what I mean? And so you talk in circles, talking circles, and nothing ever gets like really solidly written in there. And then you get the finalized copy and you’re like, wait, isn’t in here. And I just don’t recognize how it’s written in here or is that what we talked about? I don’t know. So you have to understand, like, what you talked about is, or is not in the IEP and obviously that’s an issue if it’s not in the IEP, but I see that happen so much.
Number two is if your child is struggling, you have to know what’s already being provided. And figure out what supports are missing. So, so many times for like, okay, sensory. Okay. Sensory. Okay. Sensory, like they need sensory support. But then you have to realize the design of how they’re intending to support your kid.
In sensory differences to know if it’s working or not, or what’s missing, like if they’re totally missing some social skills, struggles, and it’s bleeding into the way they’re learning, because they’re so stuck [00:13:00] on, you know, something that somebody did to them, but they don’t know how to spell to advocate.
Like that’s all related. Right. And so if it’s missing in the IEP, we need to know Well, is it in the IEP and I’m just missing how it’s written in there or is this really missing? And do I need to advocate for it really hard to be in there? Number three is if things are going relatively smoothly, but they could be better. This is almost harder than like a glaring issue
and if you know how to read the IEP, you can look for changes and little tweaks to suggest during IEP is, or you can ask really informed questions during parent teacher conferences or. If you just pop in to say hi, and you have a couple of questions for them, it like. The the more, you know, what’s actually in the IEP, the more you can figure out. Oh, well we thought the challenge was this part of writing.
But now I’m thinking that we might’ve been wrong since we’re giving support there and it’s not making it any easier. So like, we need to change it. And so those like small nuances, like the deeper [00:14:00] you understand that paperwork. The more, you can understand that the more specific questions you can ask the teacher, like, Hey, is writing hard because it’s like physically hard or is it hard because they have a hard time.
Thinking of a sentence and holding it in their head long enough to get it out. Right. Those are two totally separate ways to support a kid in writing. And if you know, what kind of questions to ask. Based on what you’re already supporting the IEP. It makes a huge difference. Like huge difference night and day.
Number four is how are you to know where to focus your advocacy efforts without knowing the state of the IEP right now? And if it supports are all of your child’s needs or not. So this is. Pretty rhetorical question. You can’t, you can’t. I understand where to focus your advocacy efforts without understanding the IEP.
Many many, many parents waste their time and even more precious your emotional energy. Right? You do not have a lot of emotional [00:15:00] energy that is finite. Right? You wake up. With so much in the morning. And if IEP advocacy, and if you’re trying to change the whole entire document and totally rip it apart.
And you’re trying to advocate for every little thing. You’re going to run out of emotional energy, but if you can boil it down to the things that matter most for your kid, and then you gain some ground and then you gain some progress. You have to understand what’s already provided in the IEP and what’s working.
So that you can focus that emotional energy on what’s not working and what’s going to be the biggest, best outcome for the emotional energy that you have to advocate. Right. And then lastly, probably the most common thing that you might not even notice is that in a time crunch, such as, when you get a draft IEP with not enough time to read it or not enough time to send it to your advocate or your lawyer, whoever you have.
You need to know what you’re looking for, right? Otherwise, you, aren’t taking advantage of that huge. [00:16:00] Benefit of having that draft IEP, if you get it. And you’re like, I don’t even know what I’m looking at. Then you go into the meeting just like you, haven’t seen a draft IEP at all, and that’s just such an advantage for you
to have a draft IEP and to formulate some questions and say, oh, I think this support need is missing. Or you can provide valuable input to change the implementation of the IEP. In the IEP meeting instead of like six months afterwards when it’s not working and nobody can figure out why it’s not working. Right. So those times where you feel that time pressure, if you know what you’re looking for, it’s obviously so much less stressful, right? So that is why it’s so important. I mean, I feel like you’re here, you’re listening to the podcast. If you’ve listened to a lot of episodes, then you already know, right. You know, that you having some context about how this is supposed to work helps you so much in trying to get your kid the supports that they need.
Right. So in this last little part, of course, I’m trying to do this, like in a podcast and I’m trying to keep it as short as possible. [00:17:00] So we’re going to go rapid fire through six things to look for in a draft IEP to understand your child’s current IEP. And of course, if we get to the end and you’re like, oh, I would really like a deeper dive into this.
This is exactly my framework for the boot camp. That’s happening January 27th to 29th and recordings are automatically provided. So if you are like, oh, I can’t do that over a weekend, or that’s super hard for me. You automatically get that and you get the opportunity to ask really pointed questions in that Facebook group for seventies afterwards. And I will be in there supporting you. So, you know, let’s go through like rapid fire. You have your child’s IEP in front of you, or you get a draft IEP. Like, what are you looking for? Right. So first things first, make sure that you have a copy of your IEP and you know where it is.
Right. If you don’t have a copy of it, you can contact your case manager or a teacher at your school. Or if you don’t even know who that is because staff changes all the time. Then you can contact the district office. So you can just ask the secretary and call there, [00:18:00] or you can call the principal of the school and say, Hey, I need a copy, blah, blah, blah. They’ll refer you to who you’re supposed to go to. It really should be the case manager, which is usually the special education teacher or the speech language pathologist.
If your child has speech only. And so you should be able to get a copy of that. Like no problem. Like now, since COVID they have been sending things electronically. Not every district is, but most districts well, And I am a huge fan of housing things in the emails that I can search them and find them whenever I need them.
So number two is know in your own head before you even pull out that IEP. Knowing your own head, what you’re most concerned about and what your child’s biggest support needs are better yet, have a list of all of your child’s support needs. And before you were like, well, I’m not in the educational environment, I don’t know that you know, more than you think you do. I’m pretty sure I’m pretty sure if you started a list, you’d be like, oh, well,
Math is really hard for them. Social skills is really hard for them. Like the more that I have parents in that coaching part of the prep course. The more that [00:19:00] I am understanding that you really just with a tiny bit of encouragement, you absolutely know a lot of the challenges that they’re having. And even when somebody brings up something, that’s a challenge. You’re like, oh yeah. Well, I just forgot to think of that one.
Like, you know, even though you’re not in that environment, you know, I’m totally confident in that. The next thing is what to look for in present levels. And this is going to be the longest one. I’m trying to be quick about it though. So the present level should read like a picture of your child’s school life right now, and also who they are as a person. And this is what’s lacking most of the time.
Details about strengths. This shouldn’t be a list of just compliance-based surface strengths, like, oh, there’s such a nice kid. And they love doing reading on their own. Okay. That, that tells me a little bit, but I need more. It also needs to have details about challenges that target, what is so hard in the area of need. I already gave that example about writing.
What is it about writing? That’s [00:20:00] hard. Is it physically forming the letters? Is it the coordination part? The motor part? Or is it, you know, holding things in short-term memory in order to get it out. Or is it even like grammar or thinking of a sentence to begin with, or that sentence structure? There’s so many ways to explain an issue within an issue. Okay. Math is hard. What part of math is hard? You know, so get as detailed as you can in that present levels.
And yes, I’m saying this to the team, but also you can add these details to if you know them. Or you can ask really good questions to get the team, to think about why they’re so hard, right. It should have goals from the past year and progress with an explanation of why it was met or unmet not to judge it, but just to like inform everybody on what was working, what wasn’t working so that you can design the goals better next year. Right? It’s it’s this lab concept. It’s this technique.
EMEC IEP concept where everything should be changing, moving, getting better. As we learn more about them as a learner, [00:21:00] right. It should have both kinds of data, both qualitative and quantitative data. That makes a perfect, beautiful clear baseline for goals moving forward. And of course it should also have parent input in it. Okay. Got through present levels. Okay. So goals are next.
They should be easy peasy if the present levels or the plot is sometimes called is detailed enough. So take that baseline from the present levels or the cloth. And identify the biggest barriers to learning and what the support needs are, and then leverage those strengths. That’s why we want them so detailed.
Leverage those strengths, maybe they are really good at memorizing things. Maybe they love checklists. Maybe they are loving technology and they’re a gamer, right? That’s a total strength. So make those goals easier and more enjoyable to achieve and less frustrating for the team. To help your child achieve those goals by knowing what their strengths are in leveraging those right.
Number five is accommodation. So taking the trial and error approach of accommodations, I have a former episode [00:22:00] on this if you need it. Look at the accommodations that are working and which ones aren’t and that’s okay if they aren’t now, you know, which ones not to try. Okay. Right. So again, be more specific with the accommodations. And then also, if you had no idea,
What accommodations are working, what aren’t working now, we need to kind of back up and really build your skills and like communicating expectations. About this being a dynamic process and you understanding it, meaning to change. If things aren’t working, that you’re not going to file a state complaint every two seconds. If you find out that they aren’t implementing an accommodation, you want them to be honest with you about what’s working, what’s not working and also like building your awareness for like you setting the tone.
Cause parents absolutely set that tone for the meeting. Um, I’ve even done a free webinar on this. Like it’s so important. And then relationship building with that team, right. Even if things are touchy. I have seen parents turn this around in a matter of four to six weeks. It’s awesome.
And then again [00:23:00] for combinations, like you’re looking back at that present levels, everything starts with the present levels. So again, leverage their strengths for combinations and you can probably sit down at that draft IEP or the current IEP and say, I’ve tried this accommodation at home and it really doesn’t work. Like I don’t think that’s really the issue. And so what you thought was going to be helpful at that IEP meeting, you can be like,
I don’t know if this is working, let me check in with the team and see if it is right. And that’s that’s okay. Now let’s change it. Right. Let’s make it more appropriate for them. And then the last one is services. So look at the services. Looking at the goals and the accommodations. What support do they need to access those accommodations or to make progress on those goals?
What teaching do we need to do what support needs to be available if we are teaching self-advocacy skills or math or literacy. Like who is the best person to be able to do that? Like, you wouldn’t want me teaching literacy. That would be terrible. I’m not trained in that. Right.
So you wouldn’t want the OT to do [00:24:00] that, or are we supporting like sensory needs and social interactions and who is going to be. In the building who is going to be present during that anyway, or it’s like super easy for them to come in. And support that. And who is the most skilled at doing that? Who likes to do those kinds of interventions, right? Who is the best fit on this specific team to do that? And that might change year to year, too.
Self-advocacy is a really good example for this where yeah. An occupational therapist can totally work on self-advocacy. So can the special education teacher, so can the school psychologist, so can the counselor, like a lot of people can work on this and even more so the general education teacher can write if they’re in that general education classroom. So who is going to be the people’s responsibility for implementing that and really teaching the skills because it can be many different people.
So we have choices, right. And that’s an amazing advantage in my opinion, right. So, of course this is super quick. That was a [00:25:00] really, really fast overview of why it’s so important for you to understand the IEP and also what things you’re looking for. Right. So if you’re like, oh yeah, I would love to learn more about this section or this section.
This is basically my outline for the IEP bootcamp. So If you’re interested in getting some feedback in diving in more detail about what exactly you’re looking for, if you want that conclusive. Like yeah. I think my kid has a pretty good IEP or no, I think we’re missing some really big pieces in this IEP. You will have just a clear vision of where you need to go and where your advocacy efforts need to be focused moving forward in 2023.
So go ahead and check out the IEP bootcamp is happening live January 27th to 29th, and we’re going to have some quick wins even. Even in the days before that inside the Facebook group. So it’s going to be really fun. I’m going to give you so much time to digest the information. And I am boiling it down into like really quick, like 30 minute presentations each day, and you [00:26:00] automatically get those recordings. So it’s all provided at $19 and you can upgrade for 27 more dollars if you want the VIP experience, which just means that you can ask very specific questions about your child’s IEP.
And I will answer them in a live setting so that we can actually talk back and forth, which will. So nice. So check out the IEP bootcamp. It’s happening January 27th, 29th, but recordings are automatically available as well. And then support in that Facebook group for a week afterwards so you can check that out at the IUP lab.com/bootcamp.
Or the link to check it out and register is below this podcast in your podcast player as always. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for sharing the podcast. If you haven’t rated and reviewed the podcast yet, I would totally appreciate you doing so. And so I will see you same time, same place next week.
Thanks so much. Bye.