134: The Most Effective Advocacy Approach
Sitting on the "school side" of the IEP table gave me a TON of insights into what approach to the team (suprisingly regardless of case manager personality!) was the most effective. Feel like a "bulldog" at IEP meetings?
Sitting on the “school side” of the IEP table gave me a TON of insights into what approach to the team (suprisingly regardless of case manager personality!) was the most effective.
Feel like a “bulldog” at IEP meetings? Chances are, behind the scenes your child isn’t getting truly the best service.
Feel like you have no input to share and you are lost in the process? We can give you some confidence to know what to ask and what your role is.
Because the most effective approach, is of course, somewhere in the middle.
In this episode, we cover the 3 different approaches to advocacy and how you can get to a place of “middle of the road” and why it’s so important to get there!
Download the free IEP Step-By-Step Process Guide: https://theieplab.com/iep
Download the Podcast Listening Guide: https://theieplab.com/listen
E134: Most Effective Advocacy Approach
Beth: [00:00:00] Raise your hand. No, I promise no one will see you. If you have come into an IEP meeting totally passive, feeling like whatever the school team decides to put in your child’s IEP, that’s just going to be fine because you have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, and they appear to be nice people who care about your child, so it must be fine, right?
Okay, put your hand down. Now raise your hand if you’ve come in hot to that IEP meeting, like really upset and really anxious, fuming, mad, felt unheard leading up to the meeting, which just made it worse in the meeting, and feeling like the school IEP team wasn’t doing their job and they just didn’t care about you or your child at all, and why are they even a teacher anyway if they don’t genuinely care about kids?
Okay, put your hands down. I don’t have to tell you that from all of my 400 plus IEPs that I’ve sat next to or across the table from parents in, that these two scenarios [00:01:00] happen all the time. So you definitely aren’t alone if you raise your hand. But today we’re talking about truly effective way To approach an IEP meeting.
And I think you already know these two scenarios, although they’re very common, they aren’t necessarily the most effective way to get your child the support that they need. So stick with me because today I’m teaching you about my top secret Goldilocks approach to advocacy that comes straight out of my ultimate parent IEP prep course.
So stick with me.
You are listening to The Parent IEP Lab, the podcast that helps you get an effective IEP plan for your child so that you can get them supported and learning in school. I’m Beth Liesenfeld, Occupational Therapist who started to notice trends in parents who got effective IEPs for their kids without having to fight the school.
My mission is to help you learn the pillars of knowledge that I saw these effective parents use in their advocacy and also to provide insider knowledge from the school. School side so that you have context to turn that into informed intelligent [00:02:00] questions that actually get you somewhere with the school i e p team.
So let’s dive into the topic today of advocacy approaches 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.
Samson Q2U Microphone-2: Have you ever found a new podcast and it’s amazing. It’s exactly what you need to hear . And then you get into it and week after week you start saying, okay that episode doesn’t necessarily pertain to me, but I still want to keep listening because it’s so helpful.
Well, We’ve kind of hit that mark as far as the Parent IUP Lab has gone because 132 episodes later and we’re starting to have some episodes that really focus in on some really niche, really small topics that may not pertain to you, but you also might be missing past episodes that would be super helpful for you.
So, that is why I went through every single episode of the Parent IEP Lab podcast. We selected the most helpful ones and we organized them into categories. [00:03:00] And that is available for download in the Parent IEP Lab podcast guide. So you can snag your free copy at theieplab. com. And if you’re like, well, what kind of categories are you talking about? In it, we break down if you are new to IEPs, what episodes are most helpful for that. We also have a neurodivergent student category. We also have a student with medical disabilities and learning disabilities so that we focus in on the topics that are most helpful for you.
And of course, we also have a top downloaded category as well. So click over to get your free listening guide, head over to the IUPLAB.
com slash listen. And that link again is below this podcast and your podcast player. Now let’s get into the episode.
Beth: Okay. Let’s get into the topic today about Advocacy Approaches, oh my gosh, I love this stuff. I love talking about the relationship part of IEP advocacy. And yes, I love talking about the process. I love breaking it down into easier steps and what is supposed to happen.
But this, [00:04:00] this is where effective advocacy comes from. I actually held on tight to this framework for so long. so very long, and I didn’t want to put the Goldilocks approach to advocacy out there for free, like in the podcast, because it’s very prominent in the Ultimate Parent IUP prep course. But then I started thinking about this is just way too important for me not to put it out into the world, no matter if you come into the prep course or if you don’t.
Like, I just, I need you to understand the different approaches to advocacy, and to really be intentional with how you come into that meeting. It makes so much of a difference in what your child gets in their IEP, and it shouldn’t, right? It shouldn’t matter at all. So I think it’s my sociology background.
So I’m an occupational therapist by training in grad school, but in undergraduate, like 15 years ago, from Kent State University, I graduated with a major in sociology, which is the second year. study of groups of people. And then [00:05:00] a minor in cultural anthropology. I wanted nothing to do with the other part of anthropology, which is digging up bones.
And I wanted to hear about different cultures and different ways of life for people. That was like my obsession when I was an undergrad. And so it’s so funny how I didn’t think that that was going to apply to anything that I did. I didn’t know about OT at that time. And so fast forward when I’m sitting in IEP meetings and I’m noticing these trends of of parents trying to advocate and really noticing personality trends of case managers and who’s easy to work with and who isn’t, that I started to be like, Oh, I’m using my sociology background because I’m picking up on trends and what’s happening, right?
How is this person getting a really amazing supportive IEP with like all the bells and whistles? And this person isn’t. What is happening? And so I started to put together these trends, right? Which is kind of what we do in the podcast and also definitely what we do in the Ultimate Parent IEP Prep Course as well.
So, [00:06:00] over the course of those 400 IEP meetings, I just started to notice how the school team reacted to these different advocacy strategies and approaches. And it’s so important. So here we go. It’s called the Goldilocks Approach to Advocacy because you basically have three options in the way that you approach your advocacy and come into that IEP meeting.
So you can be really passive, and we’ll talk about these words a little bit. Really, passive and aggressive are the easiest ways to explain the approach, but it’s deeper than that, right? Like, these aren’t the best words to explain this, so I’m still working on it. So, you can be really passive coming into that meeting.
You can say, okay, whatever you guys want to do, I’m game with, I’ll agree to whatever, and you can be almost aggressive. aggressive, right? You can be coming into that meeting having a clear idea of what you need them to do, what is going to happen, and then you can also be somewhere in the middle. And so, there’s a very [00:07:00] fine line that has a lot of tact and a lot of skill and a lot of emotional control in the middle.
And that’s what we’re shooting for. That’s that just right approach that I’ve seen in so many IEP meetings. And it’s like magic. It’s so exciting. When you leave those IEPs, it’s like you’re buzzing because everybody’s so excited to implement this IEP. It’s really incredible. So I want that for you. That’s what we’re striving for is to you go into an IEP meeting with this confidence and you leaving with this.
Everybody’s excited to work with your kid and try out these different strategies that you think that they might work and might support for your child and have them make progress. It’s, it’s really Really incredible. I’m getting goosebumps even thinking about that.
So let’s just kind of dive into what happens when you take one of these three advocacy approaches. And this is where the behind the scenes really comes in because it can look all you know, formal or whatever on the surface when you’re in the [00:08:00] meeting. And then I want to explain what happens after that meeting and what happens to the implementation of the IEP after that advocacy approach is used, okay?
So for example, let’s just take the two passive version first. So the first district that I worked in had a very large population of parents That were, you know, what I’m calling passive, but that’s not exactly the correct term. And let me explain that a little bit. This particular area that I was serving, where the school was, had a particular culture of people who lived there.
And this particular culture of people really believed entrusting people who had a specialty. So they would, you know, if they went to a doctor, they would trust that that doctor knew what they were doing. And so the same thing happened in education. They would come to those meetings and they would say, yeah, well, you’re the occupational therapist.
Like, you know, this better than I do, like, like go for it. And they wouldn’t really have [00:09:00] much of the input because they just were taught to trust that a person with a specific specialty in a specific area were to be trusted and respected and that they knew what they were doing. And that’s all well and good, right?
But what happened is, that was my first year in schools. I had been an OT for a couple years before that. But that was my first year in schools, and so I came in asking the parents, hey, what do you want to see from them? What are you expecting? What’s the rate of progress that you’ve seen? What are you seeing in the home environment that would be helpful for us to know?
Like, kind of, you know, doing an interview and trying to get their perspective. And they would look at me like, Why are you asking me those questions? Because they didn’t understand that it is really important to have parent input into an IEP, and I didn’t know the kids very well because that was my first year there.
So any insight coming from the home and somebody who knew the kids so well would be helpful in me making [00:10:00] that plan and the goals and, and kind of knowing what to expect and what works for them, right? But that just wasn’t part of their culture. It wasn’t what they were expecting. So they gave me these very confused looks.
Heh heh. The other thing that happens is, if you are new to this whole process, and I’ve heard this so many times from people who were like, Well, I didn’t, I didn’t know any better. Like, I came into this process. It’s very confusing. It is very overwhelming. These terms and these acronyms are so confusing that, of course, like your first meeting, you just don’t know anything.
So you’re going to trust that you’re doing the right thing because you don’t. know what they offer. You don’t know what’s typical. You don’t have anything to compare it to. So how would you know, right? So especially if the team is the one to initiate that evaluation, or if you’re transferring from birth to three services to school age, you know, they have their paper trail.
They have their own list of concerns that they’re seeing in the school. So you’re like, oh, okay. Yeah. You’re seeing that support need in [00:11:00] school. Okay. Yeah, this makes sense that you would offer this service to address that and this goal kind of aligns and okay, like it kind of makes sense. So I’ll go with what you have on paper, right?
And actually, sometimes it works out okay, especially if you had a very young child. Um, you know, sometimes it’s like. Like preschool teachers kind of know their kids. They know what skills they’re looking for. You’re doing a lot of play. And so, yeah, like a lot of time that works. But then a lot of parents, when they get into, you know, second, third grade, and maybe your kid is struggling in reading or math or the skills get harder.
They get harder than preschool. They get harder than kindergarten. And then you see. Oh my gosh, okay, there’s something up and I don’t think they’re getting the right support they need. And now all of a sudden you’re like, oh my gosh, like I need to learn this whole process and I didn’t think that I needed to put so much effort into it, right?
But it, it does and it’s worth it. It is so worth it. Okay, so maybe the school team didn’t [00:12:00] initiate the initial evaluation and you have had to fight tooth and nail to get that initial eligibility, you’ve had to really fight for them to actually qualify them and get them an IEP, and so that’s been this huge thing that has been you diving into research and really finding podcasts like this and, and Google searching and trying to look up examples for request letters.
And it’s been this whole thing, right? That is a whole nother thing that puts you on a whole nother track because already you’re feeling like you’re not being heard. Your concerns aren’t being heard. Your child might be struggling and you think that they need support. But the school team isn’t concerned or they aren’t listening and maybe even they aren’t seeing the same things at school as you are at home.
And so there’s this discrepancy where they’re like judging you and it can be this whole messy pile of mess, right? And that is no fun for anybody on [00:13:00] either side of that transaction. But it’s just so hard for the parents that I’ve worked with in this situation. It is. It’s the worst. Like, it just feels so icky, right?
This is your kid, and when people aren’t listening to you, it’s so incredibly frustrating. I can’t even imagine. I mean, I’ve heard it from the people that I coach, but I just, I can’t even imagine being in that situation. So what happens is, you might get off on the wrong foot from the get go and you keep having these negative experiences where you don’t feel listened to and you, and you feel like your concerns are swept under the rug.
So this tends to build your emotions, your trepidation of going into the IEP meetings and And, you know, rightfully so. And you start to come into these meetings so anxious and overwhelmed because they’re still part of the IEP process or these big terms that are confusing, but you don’t feel comfortable asking for clarification from the team because you don’t want to seem like you don’t know what you’re doing, right?
Or you feel like you’re judged already, and so you don’t feel comfortable asking those questions. And [00:14:00] I’m I want to apologize. I realize that I’m not part of your IEP team, very likely, but I want to apologize for that, it’s just a mess. But the cool thing is that you keep going because your child deserves support, and so you end up being this person nicknamed a bulldog advocate, or you’d be more aggressive than you ever thought you would be, and now you just feel stuck.
Even if you wanted to, you might feel like if you back off. That they’re going to stop supporting your child, right? And so I want you to know that there’s hope that you can change your approach to advocacy because I’ve seen it happen. So both situations actually have a lot of hope
built into them. You do not have to continue to advocate the way that you’ve been advocating. You can either step up your game and really become more confident in your role if you’ve been a little bit more passive than you want to be. And if you’ve been a little bit overzealous and maybe really anxious coming into those meetings, [00:15:00] it might feel like you can’t stop or they’re just going to stop serving.
But I want to tell you this story. Because this didn’t happen in this situation and there, there is a way to come into your power by not being overly aggressive. So let me tell you a story. So there was this particular kid who was in a different district. We heard about him, right? Oh, yep, he’s going to be transferring to your school.
You know, they moved into your district. He’s going to be transferring. Okay. The school team and the parent wanted somebody from our team to go and observe. So they did. And it was like this whole buildup of like, Oh, this is, this is a really hard family to work with. And this is, you know, such a situation.
And this kid is so hard to work with and things like that. Well, the school psychologist went over to observe and Really? He was He was awesome. He was this amazing kid. Yes. They had a ton of like structural supports in place, but he was doing pretty dang well. And so it wasn’t really this big [00:16:00] deal. Right.
And so he transfers and he starts in our school and you know, it’s. It’s this thing, we have this kid starting and everybody knows about it. And so, it was a hard transition. It was a really hard transition because he was a, a kid that needed relationships. And so, of course, those relationships take time to build up.
And so, this mom was such a, a staunch advocate. She came in and anything that went wrong or if she wasn’t getting really good communication, she was very quick to let us know that she was unhappy. Okay, so it was this kind of, like, aggressive thing and, you know, our director had to step in because there were so many emails and so many, like, accusations that they had to step in and kind of say, okay, like, you need, you need to stop, like, we need to stop and just take a breath.
Um, and so things got maybe a little bit better, but I, we still have no idea what happened, but we were coming up on, I think, our second [00:17:00] IEP meeting. for this child. And all of a sudden it was like a very different feel when we came into the meeting. So usually there was a lot of emails leading up to the IEP meeting, you know, about draft IEPs, about, you know, more than that, right?
Like, is so and so going to be at the meeting? Like, pretty stressed. You could tell this parent was pretty stressed. And this particular IEP meeting, it was like, oh. This hasn’t been a big deal. Like, of course she asked for, you know, a draft IEP, went back and forth with that, you know. We sent that off and it seemed to go better, you know.
There wasn’t all of these kind of stressful emails back and forth. There was no accusations. There was no kind of personal attacks on anybody. So we got into that meeting and, yeah, she had an advocate with her, which she had had an advocate with her before, but the whole tone was different. What happened was it was just a great meeting.
I mean, it wasn’t that she was totally passive. She wasn’t. She had questions about goals. We kind of changed some things. We [00:18:00] changed accommodations around, you know, we talked about different support. We talked about how he was doing, but really it wasn’t this overly dramatic thing. And I will tell you the emotions after that meeting of the whole entire staff was just to take a deep breath and let it out and be like, I can’t wait to work with this kid and see what progress he’s going to make, because the kid himself had made a ton of progress by being there, and so it was really cool to just see how quickly, I mean, this was in the matter of two weeks that it went from contentious To not so contentious anymore.
And yes, everybody was in that meeting. Like the special education coordinator was in there and the advocate was in there and like, it was a big meeting, right? But it really wasn’t contentious anymore. It was just keeping that child in the center of the meeting. And that parent flipped that switch. on her own.
Like, it really didn’t come from anybody else. So, I just want to [00:19:00] tell you that story to give you a little bit of hope that you absolutely can change the way you’re advocating, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be this big thing. It can just be a change, and it can change the way that IEP is implemented after that meeting.
So, last little part here, let’s talk about what we’re striving for. And, of course, I never, uh, ever want to tell you what to do, right? You are the only person who knows exactly the situation that you are in with the school. If it is contentious and it’s mostly on their side, then, you know, there’s only so much that you can do because you can only control you.
But I’m telling you, from the over 400 IEP meetings that I have been in, this is So effective with every single case manager personality style and the easy ones to work with and the really hard ones to work with. This works so much better than any other approach to advocacy. So I realize. [00:20:00] That things might be out of your control, but you absolutely do have control over the way that you approach this IEP meeting.
So let’s talk about this Goldilocks approach to advocacy, which of course is just finding that just right approach. Of course, we’re kind of taking this fairy tale and we’re saying, okay, what is going to be just right in order to get your child the support that they need, right? So it’s this just right approach.
You want to be firm. You want to know what’s going on, you want to be prepared, but you also want to be approachable by the team, right? You want to be able to say what accommodations aren’t working, and they’re not scared to tell you which ones aren’t working, right? You want to have open and clear communication, and that’s just what this approach to advocacy does, okay?
let’s talk about what you can do to really have this approach of being super effective and really stepping into your confidence.
So here’s three really quick things to help you get to that place so that you can have [00:21:00] that just right middle of the road. Confident in your parent input, but still approachable with the team, right? One key is to be prepared. You know your priorities. They’re organized. You can put your concerns and have expectations from the team that fit with the setting, meaning you know what is typical, you know what can address these kind of things, and you can write all of that into one concise paragraph.
This is like the hardest thing ever, right? But if you are prepared with that one or two paragraphs, and you’re concise, and your team can understand what you’re asking and why you’re asking for it, That is money, okay? That is so effective. The second one is what I talked about in the example, is knowing your power to set the tone for the meeting.
So when you are prepared, when you are able to, to really own your emotions, but stay relaxed in the moment. Um, and [00:22:00] here’s the key, ask really good questions, right? Because your IEP team is really going to be the best resource for you to ask questions from because they’re actually in school with your child.
So if you can stay relaxed and ask lots of good questions it is amazing what comes out of those IEP meetings. And then the third thing is to know your parent rights and to know what to do if things don’t go right. If you feel like your child’s rights are being violated, if you feel like they’re doing something that they’re not supposed to be doing, to have the resources to come to and say, is this right or is this not right?
Look at your parent rights and actually understand what’s in them. No who to go to to ask those kinds of questions like maybe the IEP lab. I don’t know. Then that really helps you step into that meeting with confidence. So just a little fun note though. These parents that I saw execute this approach really well, they still had a reputation.
It wasn’t that they weren’t known [00:23:00] around the school, but it just had a different tone to it, so instead of saying, oh my gosh, that parent is really hard to work with, or oh, that parent is really easy, they’ll agree to everything, It was this, hey, this parent wants to draft IEP by this time. We’re going to look over the goals.
They’ve already submitted their input. It is a tone of like, the whole team has to be on their A game because this parent has the expectations that everybody’s going to be on their A game. The case manager being a little bit nervous to come to that meeting, And so they are more prepared with what they’re presenting because they feel like they have to be put together because they know that this is a good parent advocate, and they want to be prepared for this parent.
It’s so awesome. It’s so cool to see from the back end. I was like, yeah, this parent has an amazing reputation. And then just one more thing before we wrap up is Just remember that I really, really do appreciate advocates and lawyers. They’re amazing, and they can absolutely get [00:24:00] you started, but there are drawbacks to having them, too.
Even somebody who was in the Ultimate Parent IEP Prep course last time, they kind of gave me a follow up email a couple weeks ago, and they’re like, We got an advocate, but I’m not sure it was the right choice. Because it changes the dynamic of the whole team, too. And the other thing is that… they aren’t as involved as you are.
They don’t understand what the relationship actually looks like, what the history has been. You can tell them in a summary, of course, but they’re not going to be as involved and as knowledgeable as you are. So really, the only person who can truly be a really effective advocate. Because you have more contact time with the team, you know the history, you are part of that relationship with the team, you of course know your kid better than anybody else, you will be the better advocate than an advocate or a lawyer will ever be for your kid.
If you become a knowledgeable parent. If you need more help in getting to a place of just right or that [00:25:00] Goldilocks advocacy approach, then make sure you’ve downloaded the free IEP process step by step guide. The link to that is below this podcast in your podcast player. And this is so important because knowing a little bit about how the process should go is absolutely the first step into stepping into your confidence as a parent advocate.
Okay, I’ll be back on Tuesday
make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you don’t miss the next couple episodes, of course, and leave a rating and review of the podcast if you found it helpful. Again, if you have… Any friends or any Facebook groups that you’re a part of that you feel like people would benefit from this episode, feel free to drop the link to this episode in those Facebook groups or send directly to a friend.
And I would appreciate that as well. Have a great few days and I’ll talk to you on Tuesday.