Child Participation in IEP

Legally the child must be INVITED. Most of my high school parents felt the same as you, and of course, most teenagers would rather die than have to attend an IEP meeting! So accept the invitation and go without your child.

Janis

Although my son is only 10, I believe it is very important for “him” to attend. He tends to believe that the meetings are conspiracies against him. Since attending the meeting, he now knows what goes on behind the closed doors.

He gets called in from his classroom after everything has been pre-determined and settled. We then do a “review” with him in the room. That way he hears no difference of opinions (I’m being diplomatic, of course) and just hears the big picture. But he thinks that its the entire meeting. He then has his say and of course usually has nothing to say, but feels involved.

I personally think it is very important for him to be there.

I have started taking my daughter to IEP meetings at 12. She has become more used to talking about her difficulties and knows whats on her IEP. She starts telling the teachers what is on her iep. I think it would depend on the child and the disability. I have extremely hostile IEP meetings—the district is sending their attorney to the next one in 2 weeks plus 3 admin staff, plus inclusion teacher, plus…..Though they objected the first time I brought her, I find that they toned down the language and treated me with a little more respect—not much, just a little. I think my daughter also realized how much I am doing to get her an education—it also convinced her that the principal is an idiot. so there can be positive benefits to the process. I brought paper and pen so she could sit and draw the whole time—she didn’t always focus on what was going on.

Wow. We really have differing ideas about this. Under no circumstances would I ever consider taking a child to a hostile IEP meeting! And while I intend for my child to understand that God made her learn a little differently than some other children, no way would I have her in a meeting where things like her IQ would be discussed. I certainly believe that an older child should be informed about the IEP and also have input which I would convey to the team. But the vast majority of teenagers want to be seen as “normal” (whatever that is), and they do not want to be called to the office in front of their peers for an IEP meeting. As a matter of fact, most teenagers would not really want to be seen hanging out with mom in the halls! In the three or four years I was at the high school, I can’t think of a single time the child came with the parent to the meeting.

I think sitting and talking about a child’s deficits for an hour or more would be extremely harmful to the child’s self-esteem, as if it is not already beaten down enough daily. Most parents feel intimidated enough sitting there with the team…just imagine how the child feels in a room full of adults. I realize the process is designed to include the child for transition purposes, but it is very possible to get the child’s input without them being present for the entire meeting.

Janis

I like the way you do it, Lulu. Much more appropriate!

Janis

First, our district does not consider IQ’s—they won’t test for them and feel it is not relevant. Second, I fight to have the meeting private and it is not anywhere near peers—no one would know what she is doing, unless she told them. We are very frank with our daughter about her strengths and areas where she needs special help. She (and my other kids) do not mind hanging out with me at school, because they are very used to it from elementary school. I know many of their peers. Because of her disability, she processes information in different ways, and she makes occasional comments but nothing negative is really said about her. She wants to be there, she wants to hear the principal make promises (because then she knows about it when the principal fails to follow the iep). My daughter is highly gifted and she was the one who spoke up first and asked to come. She is very articulate about areas she needs help and will tell us sometimes what will work and what won’t work. She basically is already rejected by 95% of the peers and this will not change at this school.
It is very situational dependent—but for my kid, it gives her power and understanding—so when the iep is not followed, she can take heart that she can speak up and remind people of it. she is part of the behavioral plan—it is only with her cooperation that it will work—she doesn’t really care what most people think.

I agree that your situation is not the norm and certainly whatever works best for an individual child should be considered as always.

Janis

Your 14 yr old is not a child, but a teenager. He has a right to go to the meetings because you are making decisions about his life. This is what can happen if you don’t include your son in the IEP meeting:

I have been meeting with all of my kids on my caseload, particularly with the new ninth graders. Yesterday, I met with one of my boys who was labeled SED, severely emotionally disturbed. If he actually was the boy discribed in his IEP, he was one I was going to have to watch very closely. He is very smart, passed all of his state tests with very high scores but he was very disruptive. He wasn’t included in his last reevaluation or IEP, both held last spring. I had spoken to his teachers and they said that he was doing all of his work and was causing no problems in the classroom. So, I picked him up in his basic skills classroom for a meeting. He didn’t know what an IEP was or even why he was in sped and labeled. He was truly baffled. I am a very up front person with everyone particularly my students. They are not children any more. If a kid doen’t know what you expect out of them, how will they meet their objectives. We went through his IEP and he was not only shocked but amazed. One of the concerns of his mother last year was his acceptance of his lack of relationship with his father. When he read this, he said that he hadn’t seen his dad for the past four years and it was fine with him. He told me that his real father was his step-dad, whom he adored. He said that he was very close with his mom as well and he was determined to get all A’s this year. I told him about the Advanced diploma and he asked me how he could get that. I told him about the AP (advanced placement) courses and that I felt that he should strive for them later in his school carreer. He asked me how he could get out of SPED and the label? He said he wasn’t that kid anymore, that was in the past when he was having trouble with the divorce. He was concerned about his future with the label. He asked me if colleges would get that information and what would be the result. I told him that if he mastered all of the objectives, (that he never knew he had), and was good in class and do all of his work, I would call a meeting for dismissal from sped. He thanked me for talking to him, noone had ever done that before. He also promised me that I would be calling that meeting this year, he wanted nothing to do with the label or the department.

I think that this example should be enough to convince you that you should be up front with your son and tell him what people as well as you perceive him as being. You may be surprised, when, as in the above example, the ‘child’ is told what it is all about, he may be able to help himself change. My daughter knew after the testing when she was seven that she was diagnosed a dyslexic. I never left her out of the loop because I wanted her to know that there wasn’t anything wrong with her, she just learned differently. I think with this knowledge and our support, she has become all that she can be. She is on Dean’s list in college. Think about it, what is the use of having objectives if you don’t know about them. It can’t be a one way street, the child has to be accountable for completing them as well as the teachers.

My daughter, age 9, when to her first IEP meeting this year. She was a little bored, but I wanted her to see the workings and most of the teachers/professionals had only positive things to say. She knows she has weaknesses and I teach her that the IEP is a meeting to help her figure out the best way to succeed in school. I want her to learn what she is entitled to, and what is on that IEP early so she’ll know if they are not following it.

Each situation is unique. If they had only bad things to say and negativism was paramount, I would probably choose not to have her attend at this age.

I stumbled over this when looking for a timeline on reevals! LOL. but it definitely goes along with what you did,which was to inform,or discuss with the student to ensure that their desires or interests are also considered in the transition IEP.
b) Transition services participants.

(1) Under paragraph (a)(7) of this section, the public agency shall invite a student with a disability of any age to attend his or her IEP meeting if a purpose of the meeting will be the consideration of—

(i) The student’s transition services needs under §300.347(b)(1); or

(ii) The needed transition services for the student under §300.347(b)(2); or

(iii) Both.

(2) If the student does not attend the IEP meeting, the public agency shall take other steps to ensure that the student’s preferences and interests are considered.

for the parents of teenagers in particular.

When your child reaches the magic age of 18- or when they head to college- whichever comes first- all of this advocating becomes their responsibility - not yours. They invite you to the meetings( under IDEA if still in HS- 504 in college)- they sign a release allowing the school to share information with you- they make the accommodation plan with the learning specialist at the college and then request those accommodations from their professors. This is daunting for many freshman but it is a fact and while you may cheer them on and advise them you are not the primary player in the process anymore. The sooner you begin engaging them in the process and keeping them informed about what it says in those reports the better able they will be to work effectively in their own best interests.

Robin

Absolutely. I think it is very appropriate for the teacher or teacher and parent to sit down with the student in an informal meeting to discuss these issues where the student’s input is needed, just as Shay did with this boy. Not many teens will feel as free to speak in an IEP meeting with 8 or 10 adults. And yes, of course, a student should be informed about the goals and objectives. All of that can be done in an informal setting which will be more comfortable for the child.

Janis

I teach high school students, and I always request that the student be present at the IEP meeting. Not all students attend, but most do. A student’s participation in the IEP can be very valuable, not to mention eye-opening. On more than one occasion when a student wasn’t present, I’ve had parents request, for example, a “homework notebook initialed nightly by teachers.” After the IEP was signed, and I later discussed the IEP with the student, he was furious! He looked at me like I was nuts! You want me to do WHAT? When everyone is present, everyone is on the same page, everyone is aware of the expectations. No surprises! Then you can spend your time delivering appropriate services, not intervening in parent/child battles. Not only that, but I always ask the student at the meeting, “What can I or another teacher do to help you be more successful here?” I usually get some very helpful, insightful responses!

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This may happen earlier than college. In high school, my daughter made many changes to her program with just her and her (luckily very good) guidance counsellor. Yes, parents are supposed to be informed, and no, they often aren’t.

I’m not there yet, since my older son is only 11, just starting the 6th grade. But I was wondering how well it worked having high school age NLD kids in an IEP meeting? Do they get to the point by then that they can recognize their weaknesses and accept help?

I know that the rough rule of thumb with NLD kids is to expect them to act about 2/3rd’s their chronological age from a developmental standpoint. I think that fits my son pretty well. He’ll be 12 at the end of Nov., and if you give him about the level of responsibility that you’d expect of an 8 year old, you won’t be disappointed. Sometimes he far exceeds that, but you can’t count on it.

My son is totally out of touch with his own ability level. He’ll sit in front of the Olympics and say, “I can do that! That’s not that hard!” He doesn’t realize that he has a problem until he’s in way over his head. A few months after whatever turmoil he’s gotten himself into, he’ll have a rather revisionist memory of what actually happened, and of course, won’t recognize his own poor judgement as having caused the problem.

I would love to think that by 14 or 15 he’ll be able to participate in a team meeting in a meaningful way, but right now it seems a far off hope. Are there teachers or parents of NLD teens who have been there and done that yet? Do they really figure it out by that age?

Of the (few) parents of NLD late teens that I know, most have their children either in a small college with a very strong LD program, or the kids are still living at home and attending a local community college. There’s one parent I know who has just sent her daughter off to an out of state college, but again it has a strong LD program, and the daughter is aware eniough of her need for support that she has willingly helped set it up so that the LD support people are in close contact with the parents.

So far, what I see is a kid who got all excited about an extra credit project from his English teacher, spent hours working on it Thursday night, put it in a bag ON TOP of his back pack to take to school on Friday, and then left without it anyway. Fortunately, the teacher was kind enough to tell him he could bring it Monday, but he has twice over the weekend taken it out of his back pack to show pople (he’s very proud of it) and it hasn’t made it’s way back in. Tomorrow morning, _I’ll_ make sure to hand it to him on the way out the door.

Karen

Having an NLD teen was why I posed my question to begin with.We have always shared both goals and accommodations with Tiger. And since 4th grade, his teachers have also gone over his IEPs with him. And the neuropsych who tested him reveiwed (in general terms) the test results with him.

Tiger has always shared his opinions with us. But he has always refused to say anything that he believes would make him look bad (most of what we hear at home) to anybody at school. My concern about having him attend meetings is 1) the meetings have been adversarial, and 2) Tiger’s processing is slow, and he needs time to think about what he has heard before he responds. and 3) I worry that he would be put on the spot by somebody from the school asking for his agreement. His first instinct is to answer quickly, be polite and say what he thinks they want—before he has had a chance to think through what is being said.

And the 2/3 of chronological age describes my son as well. But it is very deceptive. He is tall with the vocabulary of an adult, and it is easy to miss how young he is emotionally.

I am not suggesting that he doesn’t need to learn to advocate for himself. He does. And I would like to see him work on role playing and practicing advocating for himself with a classroom teacher until he feels ready to do this in real life. But even this only requires dealing with one person at a time. I find the IEP meetings with a million school personnel intimidating, and I just wonder if this is an appropriate forum to use to teach him to advocate for himself.

Thank you everyone for your answers. You have given me some new options and alot to think about. Linda

Thanks for validating my feelings! I was reading these posts and thinking, “This doesn’t sound like something my NLD’er is remotely ready for!”

We do exactly what you do in terms of going over his IEP with him, and letting him know, in a general sense what goes on at the meetings. And I try to get his input before meetings too. Although at this point, he’s been unable to give me anyy meaningful input, I think it’s important to ask. Also at this point, there are certainly things that we negotiate for in his IEP that he would not not want if he had a choice. (OT when he was younger, keyboard training now) that I still think are vital to his long-term success. It was difficult to get those services for him, and there is no way I would have wanted him to either listen to or participate in the negotiations.

Also, like your son, mine is tall and well-spoken. It’s all too easy for adults who don’t know him well to expect him to respond at a level older than his age, rather than younger. That’s been a problem since his two year old tantrum phase!

Self-advocacy is something we work toward all the time, and the specific reason that he works with the school psychologist once a week. (another thing that HE wouldn’t have included in his IEP!)

Karen