Being Jessica's Mom: Growing up on the Autistic Spectrum

I am convinced that schools do not offer information regarding the testing and evaluations that are possible until they absolutely have to.  For most parents, if your child is struggling, you don’t know any better than to just follow the process that the school leads you down.  You will have at least (sometimes more) two SST (Student Success Team) meetings, where you, the teacher and administrator sit down and agree that there are some “issues”.  Then they come up with some things to try different, maybe change their seat, give an extension on assignments, informal accommodations.  But you still know something more is happening with your kid and these accommodations might be working with this teacher or at this time of the year, but somehow it doesn’t feel like it is enough.  So you just continue to follow what the school process is.  Well, I am here to tell you, ADVOCATE, ADVOCATE, ADVOCATE!  You are the holder of your child’s educational rights and you have the right to request evaluations for your child at anytime.  The school’s process is about keeping your child in the “least restrictive environment”, which is what we all want, but unless you know really what is going on with your child, the school can’t provide appropriate supports to keep the kids in that least restrictive class.  In fact, like society in general, the school process is set up to be crisis oriented not prevention oriented.  They will wait until kids are blowing out of classrooms with out of control behavior or failing classes because they are struggling with work, before they will come to you and say, ” we would recommend an evaluation”.  You are your child’s biggest advocate and you have rights!  You do need to provide a written request for the evaluation (below is a sample letter I found that you can edit to your child’s needs).  Sometimes (like in Jessica’s case) you do not yet suspect Autistic spectrum and if your child is high functioning, you may not think to request an evaluation for speech or Occupational Therapy (this would check for sensory issues), but you can request all of that to be evaluated.  Once the school has your letter, they will hold a team meeting (and here they will either out right agree to the evaluation or they will try to talk you out of it), STAND YOUR GROUND!  You know your child better that anyone.  Gathering as much information as possible is the best way to get him/her the help that is needed. Once you sign permission for the evaluation, the school has 60 days to complete the evaluation.

As a clinician, I am often encouraging parents to make the request for evaluation, because as a parent, we don’t want our children to get to the crisis place, that makes no sense to me.  Why do we want to set up our children (who struggle naturally) for failure in school and risk impacting their self esteem and worse, that they start to not like school or learning!  They have to be in school for a long time.  ADVOCATE, ADVOCATE, ADVOCATE!

SAMPLE LETTER:

Please provide _________ with a speech and language evaluation, psycho-educational evaluation, psychological assessment and functional assessment of behavior as is outlined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Please consider this letter my formal request for and consent for the school district to provide this assessment.

A Student Study Team (SST) was assembled in January of 2012 to create a behavior support plan to assist _________ in achieving both academic and behavioral goals at school, however, she has not made significant improvement. I am requesting that this team reconvene to review the previously documented behavior support plan. I request to be included as an active participant on the team. Please provide me with copies of all speech and language evaluation, psycho-educational evaluation, psychological assessment and functional assessment of behavior data and results as soon as they become available to you.

I hope that this request can be expedited as _________ has already received multiple official behavior reports, temporary suspension of _________ services and removal from class on several occasions.

Thank you for giving this request immediate attention.
Sincerely,

Tune in tomorrow for more about Jessica and the difference between special education services and a 504 plan.  More information is available on the SELPA website (see my resources list)