September 23, 2010 - What to do...

I have my daughter's first 504 meeting coming up next week. All of her teachers and the rest of the special education team will be there. I've fought tooth and nail to get her services over the last few years and I suddenly find myself in the position where I'm thinking about holding back on certain services.

I've spoken about the huge improvement in my daughter's performance and general attitude at school. This has led me to re-think some of the services that she receives, specifically speech therapy. Last year this service was immensely helpful because the leading specialist on social pragmatics and autism/Asperger's was on staff at my daughter's school. This is one of the reasons that I chose her school for her. Due to budget cuts this therapist was let go and a new person was hired. The new person is just out of college and this is her first year of providing services in a school setting. This does not make me comfortable considering the lack of expertise on autism and more specifically, Asperger's in the rest of the special education team at the school.

Here's my thinking - my daughter has drama class first period, which she loves. This class gives her the opportunity to participate in small group activities, perform in front of her class and through monologues and such, learn appropriate intonations and expression. Speech therapy is a pull-out service, which means once or twice a week, she's pulled from class to participate in services. I think leaving her in class is a more productive and helpful tool in practicing social pragmatics. Also, I don't want her pulled from her other core classes because I don't want her falling behind in those subjects, so I told my daughter not to attend speech therapy until I could get a hold of the principal to discuss this with her. No surprise - she hasn't returned my phone calls.

The speech therapist wasn't thrilled with my decision and called me to ask me about it. I explained my reasoning behind my decision, but she persisted that she felt she could be helpful to my daughter in other areas. I'm willing to consider this, but refused to change my mind regarding the pull-out services.

I feel good about this decision, though I'm certain that I'll get grief about it from the rest of the team during our 504 meeting. The goal for the meeting from my perspective is to take a step back and give my daughter the opportunity to succeed on her own with an analysis of support that she may need now, not based on her needs from last year - that's always the problem with services, they're always a step behind or a year too late. I'm sure that she'll need more supports in place as the year progresses and her work load increases. For now, it's going to be all about walking the fine line of reining in the special ed team without burning any bridges or giving the impression that my daughter doesn't need services. Here we go again - another year of fun, fun, fun.

Remember - DIFFERENT IS BEAUTIFUL!!