If you've been reading for a few weeks, you may remember back in September when I mentioned our issues with my son's IEP and those involved (or, um, not) with it here and here. Since nothing really IEP-worthy had come up in our homeschooling needs thus far, I was content to put it on the back burner for the time being. To be honest, aside from securing paid speech therapy, we had little need for an IEP - at least at the preschool level. My son is diagnosed with autism and an expressive-receptive speech disorder, but he is also academically gifted and compensates extremely well for any deficits related to his diagnoses. I have worked with him on speech every day for years. I have thoroughly researched and implemented an ever-changing sensory diet to meet his sensory needs. He has improved steadily, sometimes in leaps.
Our school district did pick up the tab for our speech services once Little G turned 3. That was a nice relief after paying it out of pocket for almost a year after tracking it down myself. But really, I can't think of much else they've done for us. Perhaps it is the now clouded view I have of them after the rather epic failures on their part when my daughter, as a Kindergarten student, was being bullied verbally, emotionally, and physically by other students who were repeat offenders. And when it happened again in 1st grade, if to a lesser degree. Or maybe my opinion is somewhat skewed after being unceremoniously dumped by our district's special education people into the lap of the virtual charter school with no direction whatsoever. Take your pick; I'm not impressed.
I called the special education department for our charter the same week we were dumped. I've yet to talk to a human being, but I've now left three messages on various voice mail services that claimed someone would get back to me soon if I did. No one has. My son's teacher contact wants a copy of his IEP, but for what? So we can needlessly entwine ourselves in miles of red tape and frustration so another group of people can fail to meet my son's needs? No. I'm over it.
IEP stands for Individualized Education Plan, and the purpose of it is to help children (usually with disabilities) succeed in the pursuit of their education. To date, I have seen nothing that an IEP could do for my son that I could not or have not accomplished myself for him. Since I am the one helping him reach his educational goals, and I would say I'm doing good job since he has never been in a public bricks and mortar school and he is doing first grade Math, Language Arts, and Phonics easily at age 5, even just attempting to involve the IEP people at this point is only causing needless frustration. It is clear that doing their jobs is an inconvenience, even for such a low-needs family as ours. So fine. My son certainly isn't missing out on anything by having these people or that piece of paper absent from his life. Believe that I would be The Parent No One Wants to Deal With if the opposite were true, because I wouldn't just quietly accept the fact that 90% of the people I have encountered thus far in special education don't want to do their damn jobs.
I learned early on in life that we're basically on our own; things like IEPs are there to hold people accountable when they don't do their jobs. Unfortunately, it's almost always easier and overall more beneficial to just educate myself and do it myself rather than deal with all of the ridiculous stress and responsibility avoidance of people who seem to work harder to avoid their work than they would need to if they just did what their job titles require of them.
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