Reasonable Expectations Poll Results

Sep 8, 2010 -

Advocacy, Autism/Special Needs, Daily Life, My Little Guy

Reasonable Expectations Poll Results

I wanted to share with the results of the poll on reasonable expectations for how early in the school year IEP supports should be in place.

Of course, legally, we all know that supports should be in place as soon as the IEP goes into effect, based on the details listed for each one as to time and frequency. Realistically, however, our kids start back to school and it seems to be a crapshoot as to what supports are ready to go versus missing or not even started.

For my son, his current IEP has a number of items listed, but only about half of them were in place on Day 1 of school. I had been informed about only one that would not be ready on the first day, so I fully expected the rest of them to be there.

If I had known about the other items that were missing and told when they would be ready, we could have prepared for that and most likely shortened the amount of time that Michael was not participating over the first few days of school.

Anyway, here are the poll results:

[poll id="2" type="result"]
[poll id="3" type="result"]
[poll id="4" type="result"]

Thanks to everyone who voted. Is it sad that it makes me feel better not to be the only one who wasn’t happy on the first day of school?

I did find a helpful article on Wrightslaw called 10 Tips for a Successful School Year and thought #6 was especially interesting:

6. Prepare to Deal with Potential Problems Early.
If your child is in general education classes, prepare for the teacher(s) who wants to see how your child “gets along” before making any changes in the way they run their classrooms.

Teachers often take this position because they want to give their students a fresh start. You may need to explain why your child may fail unless the teacher understands his/her unique needs and provides the necessary services, accommodations and supports.

I do want to say that my son’s team was EXTREMELY responsive when I brought my concerns to their attention the second time (the first time was at a meeting several days before school started).

By the second day, they had located or prepared most of the needed supports and even added a scheduled break that I had requested previously. The autism consultant also came on Day 3 and was very helpful in identifying what was still missing, although he did again have difficulty in the afternoons of the fourth and fifth day.

Since my original post about our frustrations with the beginning of school, I came across this incredibly insightful post by Caitlin Wray at Welcome to Normal, Population: 0 entitled Autism Backa**wards. I highly recommend you pop over and read it, as she says so well what I have been trying to put into words over the past week or so.