Are you wondering how to respond when advocating for services or accommodations, or how to respond during a general conversation when someone is being dismissive of your dds' efforts or challenges?

If it's general conversation, I'd say ignore, skip it. Not worth discussing with folks who don't get it (generally speaking - if you're looking for help with how to respond to educate let me know and I'll respond to that).

I'm guessing (total guess lol!) that you're asking because of running into this at school when advocating, so I'll give you a few suggestions for that scenario - if that's not what you're looking for, let us know a few more specifics. Even if it *is* what you're looking for, it might be helpful to give us a few more specifics so we can be more specific in our suggestions. If you're not comfortable asking in the public forum, send me a pm.

Re how to deal with this when advocating - we ran into it a lot. I never thought of my ds' challenges (DCD, dysgraphia, expressive language disorder) in terms of "mild vs severe" but instead focused on how they specifically impacted his access to academics and his academic performance. School staff would frequently use the tactic of saying the impact was "not severe" or "not significant" *enough* to cause a "problem" (in other words, not a big enough deal for him to be accommodated etc). This was simply a strategy on the part of the school to discourage parents from hanging in and advocating until their student was given the accommodations/etc they needed to receive FAPE. When this happened, we (parents) responded by keeping it simple and using a few key strategies:

1) When the school staff said ds was "not the worst, not the best" etc, we'd respond "we aren't here to discuss the other students, we're here to discuss ds' individual needs", then we would redirect the conversation on what we were trying to accomplish.

2) We kept a few key pieces of data and examples illustrating ds' challenge and needs in a binder that we always had with us at meetings and could pull out if needed. For example, we often (in elementary) had school staff report at meetings that ds' handwriting "wasn't the best in class, but wasn't the worse" - and they usually had an example of ds' writing to show to back up their point. I made sure I always had in my notebook: a copy of ds' neuropsych report with relevant sections highlighted, a very brief description of dysgraphia and how it impacted handwriting (from a credible source), a few examples of ds' handwriting from classwork he'd brought home, and results of a few tests I'd run at home specifically assessing how slow ds' handwriting was. To address ds' expressive language disorder, same basic collection of items and also a list of examples illustrating it and how it specifically impacted him over time.

3) Find a relatable example of how "mild vs severe" is irrelevant. For example, if you're in the situation where the school is saying your child doesn't need audiobooks because her dyslexia isn't "that bad", ask them to imagine going to school without your glasses because you're vision is "only" 20/60 or something like that (sorry I'm not very up on my eyesight terminology!)... but the idea is to come up with a real-life analogy that clearly shows the fallacy of the logic of thinking that "mild" means "it's ok to have to cope".

4) Keep the focus of all conversations on FAPE. Free access to public education, required by law. If a child is struggling to read or having to put in extra homework time at night to keep up with class during the day (that neurotypical students aren't having to do), then that student is not receiving FAPE.

Last suggestion - I'd look through the wrightslaw website to see if there are any articles there about this topic. I'm guessing there are.

Best wishes,

polarbear