All right, no one is to stone _anyone_ until I blow this whistle. Even... and I want to make this absolutely clear... even if they do say, "Jehovah. "
I'll put myself in line for some of those stones, because while I do agree that it does put a lot of pressure on a 9yo to stand up to authority (especially for compliant girls who have grown accustomed to hiding their abilities for some time), the child does need to be aware that they have a role to play in obtaining their own accommodations. If the parent says one thing, and the child denies it, that just makes the parent look crazy, and the staff will do nothing, convinced that they're in the right. If the parent says the child has a certain ability level, and the child does not demonstrate that for the teacher to see, then once again, the parent is delusional, and the school knows best.
This is how I framed it to my own DD9 in previous, critical years. We had to help her see how the school sees her, and show how she can help influence their perceptions.
We also decided on a strict policy of self-advocacy first. In other words, if DD brought a school problem to our attention, the first thing we wanted to know is what
she had done about it. Who had she spoken to, what did she say, and how did they respond? We might then coach her in other resources at her disposal... a different person to talk to, another approach in talking about it, etc. Only when we were convinced that she had used all the reasonable means at her disposal did we propose our own direct involvement.
Finally, I think it may be worth your while, the next time you have a meeting like this, to have your DD sit in with you from the start. You never know what ideas they might be forming about them if they're kept in the dark. We thought we were doing a good job of briefing our DD on them when she was not attending these meetings, and we found out later that much of her angst during her 1st-grade year was based on the incorrect notion that her parents were the ones who had advocated for her to remain in first grade, when the opposite was true: we were arguing consistently for a grade skip throughout the school year, and as their alternative solutions were proving more and more ineffective, their stated objections grew more ridiculous. We had quite a job convincing her of the truth, and of regaining her trust, which ended up being the root cause of a lot of her home meltdowns that year. She finally came around when we had an end-of-year IEP review with the VP, who casually said, "Well, at least we've finally put an end to all discussion about a grade skip," and DD was sitting in my lap when I retorted with, "We most certainly have not."
