Making your next IEP Awesome.
Even with the best teachers and staff, Individualized Education Plan Meetings are kind of terrible. I’ve spoken about how fun it is to talk about all the crap your kid can’t do, and even at it’s best, goal planning is boring. At it’s worst, you’re in for a fight that may or may not eventually require tears, attorneys and mediation. We’ve been lucky in the past couple of years to have had great IEP teams, and willing school districts. Still though, as I spend hours and hours preparing for those meetings, and then IN those meetings, I still can’t escape the thought that there could be a way, or many ways, to make them MUCH more entertaining.
So I took this question to my autism-blogger friends. What can we do to make these meetings AWESOME? Here’s our list:
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- Every time someone says “with autism” correct them to “autistic” then do he reverse the next time they say “autistic.”
- Ask them if they’ve heard of the (totally made up name) theory of development and see if they lie.
- When they bring up goals that your child has accomplished, pat yourself on the back and say, “good for me”
- Bring notes, on the back of the notes have little ditties written so they see them when you lift up the paper. Like on Wayne’s World.
- Give yourself affirmations at random times. “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough…”
- Insist on doing “Duck Duck Goose” around the table to decide who has to read their section first. Demand outcomes of the game written into the minutes.
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