My 14-year-old son has just been diagnosed with ADHD-inattentive type. He started med’s last week and we’ll be seeing his psychologist tomorrow to talk about some behavior issues (extreme shyness/withdrawal) and possibly CAPD.He is scheduled for a central auditory processing exam later this month so we are still in the discovery process.
My question is about the IEP. Here in NJ, the school has 90 days from the initial determination and evaluation meeting to determine if the student is eligible for special services. And it looks like they plan to take everyone of those 90 days before we learn if he meets the criteria. We went the independent evaluation route beginning last March when the child study team’s LD “expert” said no to an evaluation. My son did not fit the profile; he was too smart and had not yet achieved a .4 average! Up to freshman year he made A’s, B’s and a C in Math and foreign language. He ended the school year barely getting C’s in his academic subjects.
We presented the psychologist’s IQ and academic testing results to the child study team in the middle of July and were told that the findings would be accepted, no further testing would be required and that a parent interview was the only part of the evaluation to be completed. We completed the interview 3 days later. My son will start his sophomore year this week without an IEP or 504 accommodations. Apparently the two teams are made up of 10 month employees and nothing was done was this summer.
I know nothing about the content of an IEP. I have read lots of info from other sites, bulleting boards etc. but I truly don’t know what I should be contributing to the IEP process if he is found eligible. I can identify his weaknesses, but not using educational jargon. His main problem areas are extremely slow processing time, executive dysfunction, and demand language output. Can someone give me an idea of what would be in a 14 year olds first IEP? His long-term goal at this point is college, perhaps starting with community college.
Thanks for your help.
Re: What should be in a teens first IEP?
I don’t know if this is the norm, but we didn’t need to know the educational jargon. I simple listed my daughters difficulties and asked how we could accomodate her needs. For instance, she has a tough time with spelling and punctuation and self editing. So her IEP includes goals in these areas and the direction that her work should be graded on content rather than spelling and punctuation. I think an IEP should be written in clear simple terms so everyone can apply it as needed. If your son has a problem with taking notes, then he should be able to have a copy of another student’s notes or a copy of the teacher’s outline. If he needs more time to complete tests, then his tests should be untimed.
So, if you know his weaknesses, then keep asking the IEP team how they are going to remediate his issues and how to accomodate them in the meantime. Once they put it in words you understand, then it is ready for the IEP.
I hope that you have as good an experience with meds as we did. For us, Ritalin and now Concerta worked like a miracle. Our dd is now 13 and has made tremendous progress.
Hope this helped and good luck.
S
If you have yet to try something before stimulants before meds you are putting your son at risk.
The most important thing that should be in the IEP is common sense.
Academia is overated as are marks the honor roll and all those other false standards of success that schools and parents hold so dear.
Caving into the pressure to drug kids to improve their academic achievment is just like giving them steriod so they can make the football team.