E136: Difficult School Teams
You've tried everything -- and that relationship is just not awesome. How can you get un-stuck in your advocacy this year? In this episode we cover: 1) The reasons why you may be feeling like you are hitting a brick wall when it comes to advocating with some school IEP team members 2) 5 options for small actions that skirt you over under or through that barrier to advocacy Check out the newly updated free resources page!
Do you know that it’s within your Parent Rights to bring someone to your IEP meeting?
Yes? Awesome!
But wait…who should you bring?
Is it a friend? Fellow parent? Family member? Or maybe an advocate or lawyer?
In this episode we discuss 5 different reasons why you would want to bring someone to your IEP meeting.
BUT WAIT…there’s more! We also dicuss the advantages AND disadvantages of bringing someone with you (and yes-there ARE clear disadvantages!)
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E137: Who Do I Bring to the IEP Meeting?
Samson Q2U Microphone: [00:00:00] I’m going to be frank. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to bringing someone to your child’s IEP meeting with you. It is your parent right, but no one really ever talks about the cost of it. monetarily and otherwise to actually bring someone with you. So as we ramp up for the school year to have some big advocacy changes for you and your child, let’s lay it all out on the table and make sure that you can make this decision of who to bring to your IEP, if anyone, in a very intentional way that’s going to help you in getting an IEP that’s truly supportive for your child.
Stick with me because we’re talking about who to bring to your IEP meeting.
You are listening to the Parent IEP Lab, the podcast that helps you become an informed parent advocate to get your child supported and learning in school. I’m Beth Liesenfeld, Occupational Therapist, passionate about leveling the IEP information playing field for parent advocates. My mission of the Parent IEP Lab podcast and also the online courses, workshops, and summit of the IEP Lab is to break down barriers to being able to advocate with [00:01:00] collaboration as it is the most effective approach for advocacy that I saw in over 400 IEP meetings.
We do this by providing you insider information from the school side so that you have context for what’s happening and create informed, thoughtful questions of your IEP team to have a clearer voice in your child’s plan. So let’s 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.
I am so excited because we have a free training happening that you are not going to want to miss because it’s not exactly about IEPs. It’s more a free workshop where we get to interact and really have this amazing conversation about all of the things that you need to do as a parent and if IEPs is one of those focuses that you really want to dive into for this year.
Listen, many of you found me when I was a guest on Tilt Parenting or Parenting That Kid or another podcast, and those people all have their own resources, plus some, right? So it’s easy to get [00:02:00] overwhelmed and want to do all of the things but end up getting nowhere at all.
So we’re going to guide you through that decision making process of if the IEP is one of your top concerns this school year Or if it’s not. And of course it’s going to be much more amazing if you come live, but I always understand that life happens and a recording will be sent out afterwards.
So make sure that you register to make sure that you get your link to join live, or you get the recording afterwards. The link to register is below this podcast in your podcast player, or you can go to theiuplab. com slash august to register for that as well.
You may already know that it is in your parent rights according to the federal law, I D E A, that you can bring someone to your I E P meeting. And if you don’t, you’re welcome. You can, you can check your parent rights by just Googling for them and include the name of your state and your Google search.
And you should be able to find your procedural safeguards as they’re sometimes called, or your parent rights, and you will find within that document that you have the right to bring somebody to your I E [00:03:00] P. But then comes the question, who should you bring? Right? And that, of course, is going to depend on what situation you’re in.
So let’s talk about what kind of support you may need, and then talk about a family member, friend, professional advocate, special education lawyer, maybe outpatient therapist that may be the best choice for you in your situation.
Then we’re going to talk about clear advantages, including the disadvantages, too, of bringing anyone at all.
Okay, so the first one, you might feel like you need emotional support. Um, one of my really good work friends when I was working for the schools was a special education teacher, one of my favorite teachers to work under, so collaborative and amazing.
And she had a child on an IEP. And even though she literally ran some of the best parent friendly IEP meetings I was ever in, she still would cry at her own child’s IEP. And he was doing pretty well. So, all that to say, that even if you have a really solid understanding of what’s happening in that IEP, [00:04:00] it can still be really emotionally hard.
So don’t beat yourself up if you just need someone there to support you emotionally, if for no other reason. The good part about this is that you can choose anyone, but I wouldn’t likely choose someone who is going to talk over you or make you more emotional or pick a fight with somebody so that you would become more emotional than you would be without that person there.
So think of someone in your life that is calm and steady this might be a really good friend. This might be a friend with a kid with a disability themselves. And of course, you can bring an advocate too, but most of the time, it’s not necessarily one that’s going to give you a ton of emotional support. Like somebody that you know on a personal level.
Okay, so the second reason that you might want to bring somebody to your IEP meeting is that you’re overwhelmed by the system and need somebody to say, that isn’t right, or that doesn’t make sense, or just to make sure that everything is going the way it’s supposed to be.
Now, we’re going to talk about advocates and lawyers in a little bit, [00:05:00] but this could be somebody who’s been through the process themselves and is like a friend of yours, or maybe through, you know, a, Down syndrome association, you have somebody that has been there before and really understands that process.
They might be able to say, um, that doesn’t seem right, or I don’t think that the parents want that. So just know that that’s another really great reason to have somebody come with you is if you’re overwhelmed by the system.
The third reason you might want to bring somebody is that tensions are high and you need a neutral party to defuse the situation.
If you haven’t heard about facilitated IEPs, then check out episode 50 of this podcast with Katherine Raines. She works at the Colorado Department of Education and I have been in meetings that she has facilitated and most of the time the state will provide this service for free. It is a neutral party.
They don’t work for the district. They don’t work for you either. They’re free and they come and just slow the meeting down and make sure that you understand everything that’s happening. [00:06:00] So if you’re overwhelmed or if you feel like tensions are a little bit high, this can be a nice person that has knowledge of IEPs, of the process, leads the meeting so that the team, nor you, are kind of running the meeting.
It’s this third party that’s doing that for you. And you can slow them down and ask questions and not feel as rushed through that as well. It’s the best situation I’ve encountered that smooths out feathers and allows everybody to slow the roll and listen to each other.
And plus, again, most states offer it for free. There’s more information in that episode number 50. The fourth reason you might want somebody with you is you feel like you’re being gaslighted. Or you need a major overhaul to the IEP. There’s a lot of things that you feel like you need to fix in there.
This is where it’s super nice to have a professional advocate on your side. Note that free advocates like somebody that you could get connected with through the ARC are amazing. But they won’t necessarily speak up in a meeting unless the child’s rights are being violated.
Professional advocates come with all [00:07:00] kinds of trainings and backgrounds. So make sure that you’re hiring somebody who’s worked in your specific district before if you think that’s important, or people with a specific knowledge of a certain disability category or Make sure that if there’s a particular situation, that that person is experiencing advocating through those particular situations.
And also, just a little tip that you can interview several advocates and ask good questions about their experience and particular type of advocacy. Also play close attention to their personality and ask them what they are like in meetings. You want somebody that matches your advocacy style or complements your advocacy style so that they don’t wreck relationships
that you have spent a lot of time making and then just up and leave after the meeting is done and you’re left with these relationships that you now have to repair. Sometimes you need a stronger personality to help you with a district that isn’t listening, but just know that everybody has [00:08:00] their own approach to advocacy, just like all parents have a different approach to advocacy.
So just know that there are differences and pop into the Facebook group and that link to join it is below this podcast in your podcast player or listen to episode number 30 with Jessica Beattie when she talks all about advocates and she is an advocate herself.
Okay, the fifth reason that you might want somebody to be with you is if you are having some really significant legal troubles. If you feel like the school is violating FAPE, if you have tried every other option. to be collaborative. You’ve gone up the ladder. You’ve approached the special education director.
They’re still not listening to you. You’ve got some really solid concerns about the legalities in your child’s IEP. Then you might want a special education lawyer to be there. And it is awkward as all get out. When you have a special education lawyer there, obviously depending on the special education lawyer that you have, but obviously tensions are probably high already.
And [00:09:00] so if there’s a state complaint or there’s, you know, rising or you’ve threatened to do a state complaint or something else, then emotions are going to be high and tensions are definitely going to be high. But when I was in a couple meetings with social education lawyers, the problem that I had with it is that I never heard the parents talk in that meeting.
And obviously it’s a bad thing when you’re not getting parent input directly from the parent. So just have an action plan if you are bringing an attorney from your meeting that you might have a great relationship with this attorney and they’re just going to step in if they need to.
But if you have somebody that’s going to talk over you and advocate for you and not with you, Then that might be what you want, but it also might be, again, detrimental to those relationships that maybe you’ve been trying to build up or maybe they’re wrecked anyway and you don’t care. I don’t know.
But on the other side, I’ve heard many stories of lawyers wading through the, all the, we don’t have that here and school’s not implementing the IEP.
And as Julie Carter [00:10:00] explains on episode 26 and she talks about when is the time to hire a special education lawyer? She talks about how her role really is a mediator sometimes, and she has that background knowledge to say that’s not legally possible And she can also be an educator of the law to the district, so they might not have known this information beforehand, and now it needs to be fixed in this particular situation.
So Many times they act as mediators to sticky situations, but with the added bonus of their background knowledge in the law . So same advice goes for lawyers too. Interview a few, make sure their approach and their personality jives with what situation looks like, and not only gets you through the meeting, but doesn’t totally wreck relationships that you are stuck with continuing for the next calendar year.
Okay, the final reason that you might want to bring somebody to your IEP meeting, um, you know, as far as my list goes, you might have more reasons that you want to bring somebody. But the last reason is that [00:11:00] you want the input of other people about how your child is doing and strategies that are working and not working for them, you want that voice at the table too.
So back when I was in first year in being an OT, I worked at an outpatient clinic
and this was my first IEP experience as an actual IEP because I did a lot of them when I was a paraprofessional and I shadowed our occupational therapist when I worked as a para at our school way before I was an occupational therapist. But this is the first one that I went as an OT. And when we sat down, that parent really wanted that aspect of who is my kid.
outside of school and what are his strengths and what are strategies that are working from somebody who knew him pretty well from working in the outpatient clinic with him. So she brought me along as this voice to say, yeah, like this is really working for him. We’ve been doing this strategy and it works really well so that the rest of the team could hear that outside perspective of another [00:12:00] professional that could kind of talk the lingo right and also understand what’s going on.
And also just share what was happening outside of the school walls and how he was being successful. So let’s transition now into the advantages and disadvantages of bringing someone to the meeting. And we’ve already talked a little bit about this, but I’m just going to talk about it more explicitly here.
So there are some clear advantages to bringing someone, anyone, right, to your IEP meeting. If you felt ganged up on, if you felt intimidated because quote unquote they have more people on one side of the table and you feel pretty lonely on the other side, then one more person on your side makes you feel like you have backup and that is really significant.
It also is very evident, and this is again from the 400 IUP meetings that I sat in, if you have an additional person there, The school team, the vibe of the meeting is drastically different. It’s a little bit more serious. It’s a little bit more, um, we have to [00:13:00] be on top of things when you bring somebody else.
So just know that that can work to your advantage. Also, if you go through the Ultimate Parent IEP prep course, and just a little bit of a hint, the doors are opening really, really soon. Then you have a clear advocacy plan to just make another copy of and hand it over to the person that’s coming.
And this is especially perfect for, you know, of course, a spouse that can come with you. That goes without saying, but also if you have like a family member or somebody who’s not familiar with the IEP process, then you have that clear advocacy plan that we make in the prep course. And so you can say, this is what my focus on, these are my priorities.
This is what I want to make sure that we cover in the meeting. And so they will be able to step in and catch things that you wanted to bring up if you’re too emotional, or let’s say you get distracted by another topic that the school brought up, um, and things are different, you know, you get. like all kinds of distracted.
There’s so many things to talk about when you’re in those meetings. So it’s another person to kind of catch that and have an impression, have a [00:14:00] interpretation, have things that they noticed about that meeting so that you just have somebody else’s brain there with you, right? Advocates and special education lawyers have a weight to their title more than even, you know, a family member
and they can act as a bit of a mediator sometimes if they’re the right personality, and they can also be able to hold the school a little bit more accountable and ask those informed questions you maybe don’t have the context or background knowledge to know quite yet. Obviously, I am a huge proponent that you need to get yourself to that place where you can ask those questions because again, advocates and special education lawyers, a lot of the times they’re there for a meeting before your meeting.
They come to the meeting with you. They have a meeting with you afterwards, and they might be available for questions throughout the year, but they’re not at pick up and drop off with you. They’re not, you know, doing the communication system every day between you and the school team. So it’s really important that you have this [00:15:00] knowledge, but if you’re feeling like you have some major overhauls or you want some backup to see what questions are asked by that advocate or special education lawyer to the team, then Absolutely.
That’s really, really helpful, So again, there’s a lot of advantages to bringing somebody. Let’s talk about the disadvantages really quick, and I already hinted at these, right? Bringing anyone into the IEP meeting besides yourself brings an air of tension into the meeting. That can be good tension, meaning they sit up a little straighter and they know that they have to be on their A game, But it can also be kind of a bad tension as well.
So some parents or advocates or attorneys believe this to be a really good thing if there’s an elevated level of tension. And from the school side of things, and seeing what happens After a meeting where somebody brings in a ton of tension, meaning they’re being a pit bull and they’re bringing in and they’re saying, yep, you need to do this.
You need to do this. You need to do this. That advocate or lawyer, if they’re [00:16:00] pushy and not collaborative, then the school team is intimidated to do their best. And they actually might not understand why they are being made to do something. So here’s my question to you. Do you tend to do a good job on things that you are made to do?
And I’m guessing not. I’m guessing you do a much better job on things when it’s your idea or you’re involved in the process and you’re involved in the problem solving and you see your role in the whole bigger picture, so it’s the same thing as them, that if you have somebody come in and make them do something, that follow through of the IEP.
in my experience has just not been as good. I’ve also seen other people come in not knowing the relationship, or the nuanced social situation, or the background history, of what has happened between the parent and the school team before. And it’s put everybody in such a tizzy, it throws the meeting off, everything isn’t quite as productive as it would have been without that person.
Really, the big detriment [00:17:00] here is that a lot of times when you bring in that conflict, everyone forgets that there is a child that we are talking about, and it’s all about the child. It becomes this kind of tug of war fight, and the kid is in the middle, and they don’t go anywhere. So, this is why I stress finding a personality of an advocate or a special education lawyer that you jive with, because who is left when the meeting is over?
It’s you. What happens if somebody comes in and pushes all these goals and accommodations through and they get them into the IEP? They think that they’re very successful, but then Three months later, no one is implementing them or they weren’t the right choice of accommodations and goals to begin with.
And so you are stuck with, oh my gosh, it’s not working. I don’t know what to do, instead of having that knowledge and that collaborative relationship with the school team. So not being collaborative can cost you a lot of time and money because what happens is, Most of the time, you go back to that person and you’re like, well, you [00:18:00] know what happened to that meeting.
Now they’re not following through. And that person is going to ask for another IEP meeting, and then it’s going to be this big thing. Or they convince you to file due process, instead of going collaboration route first. And, and really seeing if that’s an option, and if it’s not filing due process, a lot of people will skip to the due process part really quickly.
So if So it can just get really messy when you’re not trying collaboration first and that person that you bring in could make you skip that collaboration piece. Hopefully that makes sense. So if you want to talk it over, your specific situation need some help in making your own decision on who you want to bring?
If you want to bring somebody, then please join the Facebook group. The link is below this podcast in your podcast player and we’d love to hear from you in that group. And if you are looking at your calendar and all of the things you want to accomplish this year and you’re freaking out a little bit, then make sure to sign up for the training to brainstorm what your advocacy priorities are for the year.
[00:19:00] Focusing on the IEP or not, and either way is absolutely okay. So make sure that you’re clicking that link below this podcast in your podcast player. You might have to copy and paste it into your browser, but make sure that you’re reserving your seat for that. Thanks so much for listening. See you same time, same place next week.