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Sorry about the horrendous sounding meeting. I have been there as well. You say things that should be obvious and they stare at you blankly. Why is he classified as Speech impaired and not LD? We had the same issue with DS who had a speech IEP written at age 4 and then a couple years later, school claimed that they can't do anything like OT, etc. because he has a SPEECH IEP. I think in terms of speech, it may limit the services. What they need to do, (and what I insisted on) was a re-evaluation, putting him into a better category, so they switched him from Speech to PI (physically impaired) and then we were able to access services like OT and Dape (adpated phy ed). With Learning Disability, it is also the case that you can access a full range of services. If they have already evaluated him, it should be a matter of checking off the correct box. When is the last time he had a comprehensive eval?

I remember looking into it, and at least in our state, speech services are treated differently. So a "speech kid" is not really looked at like other special education students, probably because most of them are ultimately exited by the time they are early to mid elementary. Maybe aeh can weigh in...

It doesn't sound like they are meeting his needs, regardless of how speech IEPs work. If he fits into a different category then they are required to put him there and give the necessary services.

Sounds like maybe they are creating a solution and then crafting his needs to match it...

If you call your State Dept. of Ed--Special Ed there is probably someone there who answers parent questions and you could ask about Speech IEPs and eligibility for SLD. There may even be a State manual for assessing SLD posted online or an eligibility checklist. I was able to find the regression tables and guidelines for tests they should use to assess kids, etc.

Hi Emma,

I'm so sorry to hear about how the IEP meeting went - I tend to agree with Pemberley - it sounds like the school district knew what they wanted the solution to be and they tried to morph the diagnosis/issue to fit the solution.

I think I've asked before and I'm sure you've checked into it.. but just in case you haven't - some states have non-profit legal groups that specifically help with cases related to disability. If you had a state group in your area, they might be really useful in answering the legal questions re IDEA etc.

Wish I could offer something more in the way of help!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Families must must must get on the same page for the sake of their child/ren. Parents and child being advocated for must talk in advance and agree on what goals they are working toward.

Schools may leverage any potential disagreements between family members to use a "divide and conquer" strategy.

In every family, the division of labor and tasks each person performs may be different. If one spouse has researched IDEA and gifted education, the other may need to be brought up to speed. For example:
- One might send the other links to information and help connect the dots.
- One might encourage the other to sign up on the forum and learn from myriad uninvolved parents.
- Having a third party (advocate) may help the family members communicate on this topic with each other.

Every family is different... whatever approach works for your family, the two parents must be on the same page to successfully advocate to the school on your child's behalf. The child ought to also have some understanding and say in the matter, appropriate to their overall development, age, maturity, etc.

EmmaL, you seem to be very concerned about your posts being quoted and have also deleted many of them.

My advice is that if the information you're disclosing is so sensitive, you should stop posting it in a public place. Once you put something out on the Internet, you lose control of it completely. You don't know if others are taking screenshots of your messages or quoting them elsewhere. By "others," I mean employees at your child's school or your ex-husband or people who know him or know school employees. Or lawyers in family court.

You're obviously stuck in a very difficult situation. Is the Internet really the best place to go for help? Or might the situation just get worse for your child if this PUBLIC conversation turns into grist for the dispute mill?

I think whenever anyone posts about problems with a school or other sensitive or personal information, be it special ed or advocacy for gifted ed, specific test scores, etc. people should refrain from quoting the person because then it's impossible for them to remove the information later. It's an easy way to help someone else out. Sometimes it's worth a small risk in order to get information from people here, esp. if you know you can delete within a couple days. But the quotes are really not necessary.

Yeah, indigo. You should know that when someone posts sensitive information to an international public forum that means it's private. If posters don't want to be quoted they should state that in their OP. People can kind of infer a lot from what is responded with anyway.

It probably isn't the best place but it is I imagine the only place where there are people who understand and help. I am sure if the OP had trustworthy knowledgeable people to talk to in person she wouldn't be here.

The same applies to many of us.

Once you post something on the Internet, you lose control over it, full stop. There are spiders that scan pages for content for the purpose of indexing and other reasons. You have no idea if any of the information they find is being saved on someone's hard drive or re-oposted via their server. That is, except for the Internet Archive (aka the Wayback Machine). The whole point of that organization is to archive stuff that's on the web. I found deleted posts from this site that are live on that one. The people running it are unlikely to delete things, as the whole point of the organization is to archive stuff that was posted PUBLICLY by a person with a right to post it.

Will say this again, and understand that I'm trying to help here: once you post something online or send it via email, you lose control over it. Full stop. If you don't believe me, ask the Democratic National Committee how the whole email confidentiality thing worked out for them. People here may agree not to quote you, but that doesn't change the fact that right now there are 52 spiders online at this site (down from 81 earlier), and you have no idea how many of them are archiving content.

I'll also add that I don't think this site is an appropriate place to air grievances that are internal to a family or are playing out in family court. We had an ugly thread here a while back where mom wrote in to complain about something, and then dad replied, having found his wife's messages. He was clearly very unhappy and thought she'd misprepresented his and the school's position. It was awful, and presumably didn't help their child.

But it did help the lawyers.

Remember, lawyers are people too! Even family lawyers!

Chat board messages and e-mails are one of the litigation happy places. It's sometimes like finding an old buried pirate treasure full of gold, diamonds, and rum.

Back in the day, I spent many a billable hour on the Wayback Machine. Just used it the other day to see if a lawyer was fired from a local firm. It's good for tracking lawyer-firm employment history.

And I remember the days, back when I was fighting the great corporate intellectual property disputes, I would spend lots of time downloading websites to use in depositions.

One of those days, during a deposition, I had a nice filet mingnon sandwich in the local club. I tried to have it for lunch the next day, as well. That did not go quite as well, if I recall correctly. It was a nice little place. Part of the old rust belt industrial sector. Had that old school vibe. It was in decline, though. So there was a sadness to it, as well.

Good times.

I understand your concern for oversharing, and fortunately this forum allows members to edit posts. Therefore I have edited my post to speak in generalities, for example masking the gender of the poster, spouse, and child. In the future, if you should have a concern, please feel free to PM me (or any poster with whom you may have a concern). This may both keep a thread from "going haywire" (as you say) and also provide a quick communication to the poster (as a poster may set his/her profile to request an e-mail notification when a private message has been received).

Meanwhile, it is beneficial to have had this discussion of privacy. It seems this used to come up a few times a year, and it has been a while.
- As there is no board rule against quoting what another has posted (and the board provides two options to do this - Quote and Quick Quote), dusty has provided a useful tip: to consider stating in your original post that you do not wish to be quoted.
- More good advice exists in heeding Val's important reminder that internet posts may be automatically copied and replicated... existing long after deletion from this forum.
- It is not often easy, but keeping posts focused on the information which one is seeking rather than posting a rant may also help reduce oversharing.
- If your screen name may reveal your identity you may wish to change that for further anonymity.
- Once grown, our gifted children may also read these posts.

Davidson Gifted Issues Discussion Board rules state, in part:
As many of your concerns seem focused on special needs, are you familiar with the wrightslaw website and the book, From Emotions to Advocacy?

Thank you all, so much for your help. Because of all of you, DS was accepted to a private school that supports 2e students. Reasonable minds might disagree about enrolling DS, so I don't yet know if DS will be able to enroll for the upcoming year.

Emma, fingers and toes crossed for you! I really hope he is able to attend, and get the support he needs. Amazing work on your part to get this far, under such difficult circumstances. Your son is one lucky young man to have you in his corner.