I'm dealing with the oldest's IEP and I have a lot of personal support, which I'd cave if I didn't have. I need the support and love, and help to keep up my confidence, so I'm posting a lot of updates about the challenges I've been facing with this IEP review on Facebook and it seems to be the only topic of conversation I'm having with anyone in my personal life who will listen. I'm not sure if it's proper for me to do this on either front, but it's helping me retain the confidence I need to continue to advocate for my child. I need to trust in myself that what I'm doing is right and just, but keeping that trust is really hard.
I awoke this morning with my head reeling about something put in the IEP by the school nurse. Yesterday, she told me she "added a little something" to the document to expand on one medical record I provided to the school. What she added is dangerous, in being that it does not reflect his cognitive, expressional, or physical history at all, and her own "conculsion" was taken from something totally out of context. The risk to having her "little something" in his IEP is that if someone read it they could deduct that all the struggles that the eldest has could be attributed to this one physiological factor. We are already working with an entorage of medical experts, and what she put in there is nothing that these specialists have ever noted as a concern.
In the IEP review process, there is one bully, or pit-bull, that is involved. This woman is purely vindictive, I was even forewarned of this...and she has lived up to the rumors about her. Having this medical wording in the IEP, which is a legal document in his school records, could give basis for someone with the wrong intentions, like this woman, to deny my son of services because adding therapeudic services would not help improve any of his struggles since they appear to be physiological.
I was so disturbed by this that I woke up this morning with a start, raced to the kitchen, pulled out the draft IEP document, and re-read what she wrote. I was so upset that I couldn't even get the kids out of bed becuase I was crying about this, feeling like 'everyone' is pitting against me in this IEP. My only saving grace was that my mom, who was a school nurse for years, would be over in 10 minutes and could help me by reading what she wrote and telling me if it was proper for her to include it. My mom confirmed it wasn't right for her to do her own medical deduction or include it in the IEP. She helped me get a plan in place that all I need to do is talk with the school nurse to have it removed.
The IEP meeting next Tuesday will be hard enough with this pit-bull personality leading the meeting on behalf of the school, and us advocating for more OT services for my son. I want to try to get the medical portion of the document reworded so come Tuesday, it's a non-issue that we don't even have to discuss.
I need to convince myself that this school nurse did not add this wording to try to support the need to not add more services, just that she was trying to help (though I have not yet confirmed this...but I can't assume her intentions were bad).
What the school nurse doesn't realize is that by adding those 4 sentences to the IEP, even with assuming her intention was pure, has caused me huge heartache, sleeplessness, tears, anxiety, depression, lack of focus at work, an unhealthy obsession with this IEP, and left me feeling like the entire school is pitted against us. I know she didn't realize this, since this is just her job. And perhaps I'm insane...because how could 4 sentences make me feel so out of control and plagued with so many negative emotions? Even though being a mom is a job, this is my life, and I have to live it in both the hours I'm awake and even through my subconcious in the hours that I sleep...it's unavoidable for me, I can't leave it at work or check it at the door when I return home every worknight.
Maybe I shouldn't take full credit for finding the ephipany during my sleeping subconcious the that we need to remove this text from the IEP for the risk of mis-interpretation. Maybe I need to give credit to some higher power, like my guardian angel. I can imgine my angel, whispering in my ear while I sleep that I need to check her part of the IEP again and have that text removed. I'm not sure, but all I know is that this is my life and it's what I'm living 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year...so it's impossible to not be obsessed both in my concious and subconsious.
5 more days until the rescheduled IEP, and hopefully I will have closure (for now).
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