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Both my kids went all the way through school in so-called Special Education. When they were done, I did a little dance that I would never again have to sit in a room with learned professionals planning allegedly Individualized Education Programs. Yet those years left their mark, and though my kids are in their thirties now, I'm still stewing about the therapist who said that thing, or the team leader who made that threat, or the social worker who had that attitude. I submit this for my fellow IEP-battling parents, and for those fighting on all sorts of fronts today against people who blithely insist that they know your children better than you do and that you should just sit down and shut up.
* * *
IEP PTSD
You have to understand
that nothing good comes after the words
“You have to understand,”
only a slap of somebody’s idea of reality
that you are woefully ignorant of
and must be made to comprehend.
You have to understand
that your child is limited
and resources are limited
and options are limited
and the system’s ability to do anything
other than what the system has always done
is limited
and tolerance for parents
who refuse to understand that
is limited too.
You have to understand
that the experts know everything
and you know nothing
and should sign the papers
and say thank you.
You have to understand
that you can only ask for appropriate, not best,
because best is not for children like yours
or parents like you.
You have to understand
what sitting in a room with strangers
and hearing your child reduced to numbers,
bad numbers,
hopeless numbers,
year after year after year
can do to a parent.
You have to understand
the way we are weaponized
by the endless well-meaning negativity
and that fighting is the only alternative to fear,
hassling to hopelessness,
adversariness to abdication,
strength to weakness.
You have to understand
that we can’t not advocate,
we can’t not react with anger and doubt and suspicion,
we can’t not take it personally,
we can’t not make it our issue,
our identity.
You have to understand
how it follows us home from school—
the defensiveness, the readiness to assume the worst,
the understanding that everything imperfect
is ours to find a fix for.
Mama Bears can’t hibernate.
You have to understand
how habits formed when our children are young,
instincts sharpened, reflexes honed,
live on well past their usefulness.
When we’re long-forgotten by the educators
who said those things that still burn in our brains,
who started those files that consumed our lives,
who made those judgments we still press against,
who set us on our road of second-guessing
every last decision and triumph and certainty,
we remember everything.
You have to understand
how advocacy denies us acceptance,
and appropriate will never seem best
ever, anywhere, even when maybe it is,
who knows?
We will not recognize it.
We will never let our guard down.
We will never quite trust.
We will never really relax.
We will never understand.
Discussion (5)
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I think your children were at the end of when teachers cared that children learn and bothered to try to teach them academics and learning skills and the beginning of when the adults in schools started using them for their own purposes.
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Yeah, it sure feels that way. We were lucky have some great teachers along the way who loved my kids and made a difference, but the system did not appear to be set up for that. More like the one who told me all through the year that my daughter was "flying" and "soaring" and then sat down at an IEP meeting and said no goals had been met so they'd just roll them over for the next year. That was the end of me being grateful and the beginning of me being a pain in their backside.
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I know it’s hard to face people who know they can outlast you - your child ages out and they stay in their classroom. Based on what I see locally, there are a lot of parents now desperate to have their children actually learn the same “stuff” they did and in the face of maliciously modified curricula have turned to IEP to get tutoring and other resources that address the absence of actual academic content in classrooms. But you actually won: your kids are successful and capable adults who know their parents love them. They will trust you for answers on important stuff before anyone else.
You’ll be a great example and resource to encourage your children to find best available options for their children. Whatever they do, they will not be the first or only.
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I wish them well with that. But I sure wouldn't trust the people planning and executing that IEP to be any more sincere and conscientious than the people maliciously modifying the curricula.
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Both Communists and Nazis were known for their insistence that children belong to the state, though the state graciously let parents feed, clothe, and shelter the Workers and Soldiers of the Future.
Weirdly, American government overreach seems to produce Slackers and Peaceniks.