Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Stuck in a useless IDEP process

I just wanted to say that you aren't alone. So many parts of your story match my experience with my two kids over the last few years.

Some things that we've tried (to varying degrees of success) -
- volunteer if you can - being able to be in the class and see what is actually going on was very valuable. That said even if you can make your schedule work, many schools/teachers don't allow this so it can be a challenge. I do think that volunteering (and showing them that I'm not an insane person who only makes demands) helped.
- spend time advocating for a good teacher match - honestly some teachers are never going to get it (or they are going to take forever to get there and I don't have time). If there are 3 teachers teaching a grade I ask the school to place my kid with the teacher that actually will/can differentiate the most. Of course this assumes it is a big enough school that there are more than one class per grade.
- research your options for gifted programming both in your board and in anything else that is possible in your area (again - depends if there is more than one choice...). In the end moving schools was the best thing that we ever did for DS and we're now hoping to move DD.
- my DS's horrible behaviour when he wasn't challenged was a blessing in disguise. It allowed me to approach the school with ideas from the angle of "I think it will help you if you try.... with DS"
- join forces with other parents in the same boat. It is harder for them to ignore the needs of 2 or more kids than it is for just one.
ETA - we picked one thing to start and then worked from there. For both of my kids it was math and the repetitive work sheets that were too easy. We started with that and then slowly built from there.



In all honestly most teachers have little to no training on gifted education needs unless they have made a point to search for it. If you have a kid far to the right of the curve they might never have come across a child like yours before. If they have taught a gifted kid before many don't realize that gifted is actually a huge range and think that one gifted kid is like another. Most of them are juggling the needs of multiple IEP's in a single class. There are so many reasons that it is hard to get amazing differentiation in a class but it doesn't mean it is impossible.

At the end of the day IMHO it comes down to the teacher. We've had amazing differentiation without an IEP and we've had a pretty good IEP that was completely ignored. Our best IEP was 3 years in the making - we slowly improved it every time it was reviewed and the school was much better as they got to know the kid and started to see what I saw.

Good luck!