Our Second Official IEP meeting

So I probably mentioned that we had to hire the child advocate. 

I'm so glad we did (not that I really want to keep throwing money out the door).  Still, all of a sudden everyone got on board really fast with everything that they should have been doing in the first place.  This seems to be how this works.

We gave the public school system a second chance and they started to work. They are scared of course because they already missed their deadlines and they lied (remember I have it on tape and I told that to our new school staff which probably got passed along).

What astonished me the most was that we had to put our school (the "best" school in our area for learning disabilities) on the bad list.  They lied to me too.  I had to hit them with our child advocate also. 

They would have let my daughter go without the testing she is legally entitled to have also.  They knew what they were doing.  How do people sleep at night?  I may have to buy them all some Sominex.  Do they still make that stuff?  I dont exploit others and therefore I have no trouble sleeping.

The child advocate has to maintain a relationship with all these folks so they are making excuses for them. 

Still, I want anyone reading this to see what happened from my point of view.  My lesson here is this:

Parents are the only ones who really care here, everyone else is secondary.

If you have a personal experience with IEP's and those working on your "team" that is better than mine consider yourself lucky.

So at that Second Initial IEP meeting (yes I'm being sarcastic calling it that), I got some results from a speech test and a whole list of additional tests that are going to be performed.

The speech test showed that in many categories she is average or above average.  Lovely,  any mother wants to be told their kid has no trouble, is perfect etc.  In a non-child advocate situation they would have written her off at this point as not needing further testing. 

Not the case when you have hired a watchdog to make sure no one is slipping out of doing work.

Even with the majority of the speech results looking great there were some potholes where she was completely unable to answer questions correctly. 

This, my friends, is dyslexia. 

The potholes.  Those are her dyslexia. 

I imagine myself saying to her brain,

"Nice to meet you face to face Madam Dyslexia, now that I know where you are hiding I am prepared to make sure my daughter gets what she needs to handle you".

This is what testing (once again testing she is legally entitled to and that those folks are required by law to provide to her whether they feel like working or not) does for us parents. 

It gives us a road map, an introduction, a heads up.

We need these.  Those of us who really do want to know how our child's brains work.

Our children are not:
stupid
lazy
not applying themselves
not good at paying attention
or whatever it is that you have been told or thought. 

They have a learning difference. 

Difference- not disability- let's get the terminology right. 

Welcome to our story.  I hope it helps you with yours.